Do you agree that a production of Hamlet should lead the audience to sympathise with the younger generation and despise the older? Consider how the relationships between parents and children might be presented, focussing on at least two scenes for more de

Maria Wright

Hamlet Coursework

March 2002

“Do you agree that a production of Hamlet should lead the audience to sympathise with the younger generation and despise the older? Consider how the relationships between parents and children might be presented, focussing on at least two scenes for more detailed discussion.”

Relationships between characters of the younger and older generations is a main focus and central theme of Hamlet. The play differs from convention in that older characters are generally found to be the ones who have acted wrongly or who have made mistakes. The younger generation, Hamlet included, tend to act according to what they believe to be morally correct and appear to have a greater conscience and sense of justice. Generally, productions of Hamlet present the younger generation in such a way that the audience would feel sympathy with them and disgust at the actions of the older generation. However, there are exceptions to this and at certain places in the text, sympathy could be drawn to the older generation. Parents and children also have complex relationships in this play, something found particularly between Hamlet and Gertrude. The way Hamlet behaves towards his mother has caused much debate over the emotional complexities of their relationship. Yet different interpretations of the text are found and the way the relationships between parents and children are presented varies.

The way Polonius behaves towards his respective children gives an interesting insight into the different ways male and female children were treated by their fathers in Elizabethan times. In Act 1 Scene 3, we also see how Polonius feels about his daughter’s response to Hamlet’s courtship and the way in which Ophelia reacts to his orders. The scene begins with Laertes administering brotherly advice to Ophelia on how she should handle Hamlet’s advances. He tells her not to be too keen or quick to accept a proposal of marriage from him. Ophelia takes his advice to heart, but tells him to make sure he himself lives by this advice. When Ophelia and Laertes’ father Polonius enters, he commences a long speech full of fatherly advice for his son to heed before he goes away to university. He tells him to do all things in moderation, to have fun but not to make trouble and finally ‘to thine own self be true’. This advice is very paternal and administered in a loving way; he ends his speech by saying ‘my blessing season this in thee’ which makes the speech seem affable and helpful. The juxtaposition of this scene in which a traditional family relationship is demonstrated, to the previous scene in which Hamlet had been feeling a sense of detachment and mistrust of his family, highlights the contrast between the two families and Hamlet’s feelings of discomfort in his new family structure. For example, in the soliloquy in the previous scene Hamlet had said, ‘how weary stale and unprofitable seem to me all the uses of this world’ whilst reflecting on the death of his father and his mother’s marriage to his uncle. Polonius’ father son advice is also recapitulated in the next scene when Hamlet meets the ghost of his father, but here it is with more serious and grave intent. The ghost tells Hamlet ‘Let not the royal bed of Denmark be a couch for luxury and dammed incest…but howsomever thou pursues this act, taint not thy mind’. This advice from the ghost for Hamlet to carry out his task but not to go to far as to loose his purpose echoes Polonius’ warning to his son to do everything in moderation.

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Laertes seems grateful for this advice and before he leaves, he reminds Ophelia of what he had previously told her. However, after Laertes leaves and Ophelia is left alone with her father, we see a change in Polonious. He becomes very stern and angry with his daughter, demanding to know what Laertes had said to her. In Kenneth Branagh’s film version of this scene, Polonius is particularly strict, going so far as to grab Ophelia’s wrist and push her. Just after Laertes leaves the room, Polonius shuts large iron gates, which seem to symbolise his caging in of his daughter. In the speech that follows, Polonius warns Ophelia to ‘tender yourself more dearly…or…you’ll tender me a fool’ and that she must ‘be somewhat scanter in (her) maiden presence’. He is concerned that Ophelia has been deceived by Hamlet and heartlessly commands her to cease her association with him. In this scene, we see that whilst Laertes and Polonius seem to have a healthy father-son relationship, they both have a controlling relationship with Ophelia. However, Ophelia is more fearful of her father than her brother and the scene ends with her saying ‘I shall obey my lord’ whereas at the end of Laertes’ advice, she lightheardly warns him to follow his own advice. This is a typical example of the relationships between father and daughter found in the Elizabethan era. Fathers were very protective of their daughter’s honour and chastity, as it was a reflection of their status. A chaste daughter was valuable currency in the marriage market and it would be expected that a father would intervene and direct a daughter’s choice of suitor. It would have therefore been very important for Polonius that Ophelia was not rejected by Hamlet. Daughters of noble birth in the sixteenth century were subject to the designs of the men in their families. This goes some way to explain Polonius’ strict attitude towards his daughter. In the Kenneth Brannagh version of the play, Ophelia appears alarmed at her father’s outburst and willing to obey him, if reluctantly. However, in the Zefferelli version, Ophelia says ‘I will obey my lord’ with a hint of disinclination and resentment. In this version, Ophelia was presented more like the moody teenagers of today; rolling her eyes at her father and appearing not to value his advice.

In most productions of this scene, sympathy is generally felt with Ophelia. She obviously really loves Hamlet but has been forbidden to see him by her father and strongly advised to resist his advances by her brother. Yet it would be incorrect to say that sympathy is felt purely with the younger generation. Laertes is young but he still acts in a patriarchal and commanding way towards his sister, which may lead an audience to dislike his arrogance.

In the closet scene where Hamlet finally confronts his mother, we gain a new insight into their relationship and one that we had not previously seen. Here, Hamlet releases all the pent up emotion that he had been hiding beneath his assumed ‘antic disposition’. We also see many elements of Getrude’s character, and may end up feeling some sympathy for her, as Hamlet viciously berates her for her betrayal of his father. At first, Gertrude takes on a formal and conventionally matriarchal tone with Hamlet, reprimanding him for his disrespectful behaviour towards Claudius. She says ‘Hamlet, you have thy father much offended’. However, Hamlet immediately takes control of the conversation and makes clear that he will not accept being scolded by his mother when the crimes she has committed are far more serious. He cruelly mimics her words saying ‘mother you have my father much offended’. In this scene he almost seems to assume the disposition of a fundamentalist preacher, condemning Gertrude for her immoral acts. He goes into such detail of the sexual crimes his mother had committed, admonishing her for living ‘in the rank sweat of an enseamed bed, stewed in corruption, honeying, and making love, over the nasty sty’, it is possible to interpret Hamlet as having a repressed Oedipus complex. The vivid imagery conveys incestuous undertones and many directors, when presenting this scene show Hamlet molesting his mother or handling her violently while he details her sexual misdemeanours. In the Zefferelli film version of Hamlet, Gertrude even kisses her son passionately to silence him. Modern critics suggest that any Oedipus complex Hamlet may have had was unconscious and was expressed through his behaviour in this scene unwittingly. Freud said that Hamlet differs from Oedipus himself in that he doesn’t purposefully enact his desires, but represses them. Hamlet’s repressed desires therefore make him, according to Freud, the quintessence of the modern person who contains their Oedipal cravings in everyday life. Although this modern interpretation is popular, it is possible to interpret Hamlet’s apparent obsession with his mother’s sexual behaviour as an example of how hurt he was that she had seemingly forgotten about her marriage to King Hamlet so quickly and had not even considered Hamlet’s dislike of his uncle when she legalised the union. I think that any Oedipus interpretation of this scene was not purposefully intended by Shakespeare when he wrote the play as this kind of psychological reading would not have been known in the seventeenth century. However, for a modern audience, this implied incestuous relationship could introduce a new and interesting side to his character and would bring about a novel complexity to the play. I think that this interpretation is convincing and feasible given the explicit detail of Hamlet’s exposition of his mother’s sexual crimes.

Another factor, which makes the closet scene one of the most significant in the whole of the play, is that here our sympathy with Hamlet may start to wane and we may begin to feel pity for Gertrude. Irrespective of how supportive we may have been for Hamlet in his mission to exact revenge for the murder of his father, in this scene it may be said that he goes too far in his condemnation of his mother. Compared to what Claudius had done, Gertrude was relatively innocent. She was unaware of Claudius’s true nature and seems genuinely horrified when she learns from Hamlet of what he had done Her only ‘crime’ was falling in love, or lust, very soon after being widowed. She says ‘thou turn’st my eyes into my very soul, and there I see such black and grained spots as would not leave their tinct’. At this point she is truly sorry for what has happened, and remorseful for upsetting her son whom she honestly loves. A.C Bradley says of this, “though she knew that he (Hamlet) considered her marriage ‘o’er-hasty’ (ii.i57), she was untroubled by any shame at the feelings which had led to it”. On the other hand, we may continue to despise the older generation, as they only seem to be antagonising Hamlet’s already delicate mental state. When the ghost reappears he reminds Hamlet of his task to avenge his death without causing harm to his mother. At this point, an audience may feel that the ghost has set his son an almost impossible task and they may dislike the older generation for this reason. Also, Gertrude’s tone at the beginning of the scene is formal and constrained, as she is putting on an act in order to expose Hamlet’s madness in front of Polonius. As she is effectively deceiving her son, an audience may start to dislike her, should they already feel she did the wrong thing in marrying Claudius so soon after King Hamlet’s death. This could be yet another example of her ‘treacherous’ nature for a more cynical audience.

Generally, Hamlet is a play which is interpreted as showing the younger characters as the ones acting in a morally correct way. Hamlet, in his long soliloquies, laments over the tragedy of his father’s murder at the hands of his uncle who then went on to commit ‘incest’ by marrying his mother. His intelligent and poetic way of putting things means he is seen as the underdog in the play. However, when he acts on impulse, exaggerating his reactions to situations, we can sometimes feel that he is not handling things well. Furthermore, Hamlet’s continuous procrastination in exacting revenge may lead an audience to become impatient with his emotional turmoil; they may feel he is brooding unnecessarily and dislike the way he is behaving. Yet in comparison to the treachery and lack of sound judgement that the older generation shows, the younger generation appears to be the ones ‘in the right’. For many, the only character of the older generation for which we can consistently feel sympathetic is the ghost of King Hamlet. Depending on how the scene in presented, an audience might feel sympathy for Claudius when, in Act 3 Scene 3, he wishes to repent for his crime but is unable to. The line ‘O bosom black as death! O limed soul, that struggling to be free art more engaged; help, angels!’. This does not last long however, and he continues to be potrayed as an ‘evil’ character through his multiple betrayals of his country, his nephew and his wife.

An example of a character to which we react ambiguously is Polonius. In some interpretations of the play, Zefferelli’s film version for example, Polonius is portrayed as harmless fool whose plans never quite work out but who genuinely cares for his daughter. This is shown when Ophelia comes in distress to her father after Hamlet had visited her in her bedchamber. In the Zefferelli film version of the play, Polonius seems honestly concerned with his daughter’s welfare, and upset about what had happened. In the Kenneth Brannagh version, Polonius is more of a devious and sly character than a kindly old man. For me, this interpretation of Polonius’ nature is more convincing considering the way he behaves; the way he sends Raynaldo to spy on his son and spies on Ophelia and Hamlet suggests a devious side to his personality. But the two completely different ways the two directors interpret this scene shows that different readings of the text and stage directions are possible.

How Hamlet is produced can attempt to emphasise the sense in which the young are virtuous and brave and the older generations are corrupt and venal. However, the genius of Shakespeare means that the relationships between generations are complex, subtle and multi-faceted.

Bibliography

‘Hamlet’ - Paul Carter

Cambridge University Press 1989

‘Shakespearean Tragedy’ - A.C Bradley (3rd edition)

Macmillan 1992

‘Shakespeare the Basics’ – Sean Mc Evoy

Routledge 2000

Maria Wright Hamlet Coursework.doc 02/05/07