Elsinore is shown as a world of spies and ruthless politics where Claudius uses any means necessary to take and maintain power. For example, when the audience is introduced to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern they are revealed as false friends, employed by Claudius to spy on Hamlet, ‘That you vouchsafe your rest here in our court some little time, so by your companies to draw him onto pleasures and to gather so much as from occasion you may glean’. Hamlet is initially shown as the victim of a politically treacherous court, deprived of his privacy and betrayed by his friends.
Some audiences, particularly those of the early twentieth century, might see parallels between Hamlet’s unwillingness to revenge the death of his father and his reluctance to fulfill his own sexuality. His treatment of Ophelia, where he is shown as torn between crude desire and cruel rejection, reflects his seeming impotence when it comes to the act of revenge. Hamlet’s flaw, his inability to act, is also seen in his longing for suicide that he can never fulfill. Death, and the realization of human imperfection and falseness of women in particular, have disillusioned Hamlet to a point where life has no value. The soliloquies reveal a suicidal state of mind, for example, ‘that the Everlasting had not fix’d his canon ’gainst self-slaughter’. Yet, here too, the character is shown as unable to act, in contrast to Ophelia, whose suicide can be seen as her only means of escaping the corrupt court where she, too, is simply a pawn in the pursuit of power. ‘I’ll loose my daughter to him. Be you and I behind the arras then, Mark the encounter’. Polonius, like the authoritarian father he is, he demands ultimate obedience from Ophelia with no regards to her feelings. He uses human bait to tempt Hamlet and capture him like an animal.
In my reading, Hamlet’s conclusion, ‘But break, my heart, for I must hold my tongue’ signifies Hamlet’s isolation within the court and one can sympathise with his situation as one can imagine and see in Hamlet’s confusion the emotional impact upon him. He feels he has to suffer in silence as the rest of the court disagree with him and accept the marriage even though it is morally wrong. His silence is, of course, also a calculated response to the duplicitous nature of relationships in Elsinore.
Hamlet’s filial obligation agonizingly plays upon his mind. The audience meets a man battling with his conscience as he has been delaying the revenge he is supposed to be fulfilling. This sense of filial obligation is accepted in the Elizabethan era and the audience, accustomed to the dramatic conventions of revenge tragedies would have expected Hamlet to fulfill his duty toward his father. However, they would also have understood the dramatic importance of a delay before this dramatic resolution could be reached.
In the second soliloquy, Hamlet is again showing signs of distress and self loathing. Shakespeare portrays Hamlet as a cunning revenger as, after his burst of self loathing, Hamlet creates a cunning plan to trap Claudius. ‘The play’s the thing wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the King’ Out of his grief he creates a mission for himself, showing that he is not weak in the mind. In the nineteenth century, the Romantics A. W. Schlegel and S. T. Coleridge suggested also that Hamlet is incapable of action because he tends to philosophize too much. Taking the cue from his own words, they proposed that Hamlet's ‘native hue of resolution is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought.’ According to Coleridge, Hamlet had ‘great, enormous, intellectual activity, and a consequent proportionate aversion to real action.’ Coleridge concluded that ‘Shakespeare wished to impress upon us the truth that action is the chief end of existence.’ I agree with these critics, I especially find Coleridge’s view interesting, as when the characters in Hamlet finally act, it brings about their death. Shakespeare presents this in the character’s of Hamlet and Claudius.
When Hamlet is first introduced to the ghost and he is left to ponder whether it is telling the truth, he is left confused. Hamlet is depicted as a weak revenger, for example, ‘The spirit that I have seen may be a devil, and the devil hath power t’assume a pleasing shape’. This soliloquy shows Hamlet wondering whether he is a coward for delaying his revenge, Shakespeare shows that Hamlet is unsure of whether he should exact revenge and from my view he doubts whether taking revenge on his uncle is the proper course of action. He admits to doubts on the ghost’s honesty, not to doubts on the morality of revenge. Hamlet delaying maybe an unconscious attempt to avoid it as he does not think it morally right, showing him to be weak as he cannot admit this to himself, and so he carries on to tragically exact his revenge. The critic William Hazzlit, is in agreement with this, ‘he scruples to trust the suggestions of the ghost, contrives the scene of the play to have surer proof of his uncle's guilt, and then rests satisfied with this confirmation of his suspicions, and the success of his experiment, instead of acting upon it. Yet he is sensible of his own weakness, taxes himself with it, and tries to reason himself out of it....Still he does nothing; and this very speculation on his own infirmity only affords him another occasion for indulging it.’ Hazzlit emphasises again the defect in Hamlet’s character as when he has proof regarding the ghost he still fails to act.
Another judgment of this soliloquy is that, although Hamlet is undeniably committed to seeking revenge, he cannot act on behalf of his father due to his revulsion of bloody revenge. A critical judgment of this is, ‘Hamlet's sense of himself as a coward is derived from a crude, simplistic judgment turning on whether or not he has yet taken any action against the man who murdered his father. His self-condemnation takes several bizarre forms, including histrionic imaginings of a series of demeaning insults that he absorbs like a coward because he feels he has done nothing to take revenge on Claudius’. This is reinforced by the tone of Hamlet’s speech, ‘A dull and muddy-mettled rascal, peak like John a dreams, unpregnant of my cause, and can say nothing’. Hamlet forces himself into a frenzy, creating an anguished and desperate tone forcing the audience to feel compassion towards him.
In Hamlet’s most famous soliloquy there is nothing mentioned of his family or his revenge which establishes him as characteristically detached, moral and a thinker rather than an active person, unlike his binary, Laertes. Yet, for example Hamlet says, ‘Or to take arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing end them.’ This shows that Hamlet is overwhelmed and confused; he assumes that he has the world against him. He feels unequal to the task that has been set him. The military metaphor suggests that Hamlet is aware of the nature of society around him. In my opinion, Hamlet is presented not simply as a weak revenger but as one subject to his conscience and his emotions.
Throughout the play there are examples of Hamlet taking on roles and comparing himself to other characters, which is indicative of the insecure and anxious nature that Shakespeare presents. For example, ‘Tis now the very witching time of night, when churchyards yawn and hell itself breathes out Contagion to this world.’ Hamlet seems to adopt the persona of Lucianus and he acts the way a more conventional revenge figure may be. The semantic field of the supernatural reinforces the fright to the audience, that at this moment, he should be wreaking his revenge upon his uncle and not ‘Soft, now to my mother’. He seems a weak revenger still, as in his rage and anger he continuously delays his revenge and ignores the advice of the ghost. The irony of this is that when he finally seems to act, in a moment all the more shocking because of his previous stasis, instead of killing the King, he kills Polonius, the spymaster.
To further heighten the dramatic tension, Hamlet has the perfect opportunity to kill Claudius but stammers when he discovers him praying. His response is not violence, but reasoning, ‘And am I then reveng’d, To take him in the purging of his soul, When he is fit and season’d for his passage? No.’. Hamlet catechises himself here in order to justify his failure to act. The Elizabethans would have concluded that Hamlet rationalizes the situation because he realizes that killing a man in church is bloody murder and damnable. In my reading, Hamlet rationalizes the situation to provide justification to a ghost that is determined upon revenge, yet, I think that although he does not admit it to himself, he sees the moral aspect of killing a man. Although he wants to revenge his father’s death, he cannot kill a man. The metaphor ‘that his heels may kick at heaven’ suggests that Hamlet is secure in the fact that, even if he does not kill Claudius, he is sure he will not reach heaven. At this point Hamlet is a weak revenger as, unlike Laertes, he cannot help but rationalize a situation. Later in the play, however, we see that he is capable of acting rashly, for example, when he kills Polonius, or when he jumps in Ophelia’s grave, thus proving that he is capable of acting but is not willing to seek revenge simply from filial duty.
When Hamlet hears of Fortinbras – a son seeking revenge for a dead father and retribution for the loss of what could be seen as a usurped throne - he again considers his reasons for action and compares them with his own, as he did in Act II scene 2, making himself feel ashamed and resolving to have bloody thoughts from there on. Shakespeare gives a further insight into the tortured thinking of Hamlet and once more the tone changes quickly from self disgust to determined resolution.
Hamlet undermines himself throughout the play and also he underestimates his will power. For example, ‘Sith I have cause, and will, and strength, and means to do’t’. So far in exacting his revenge he has shown no will power. Shakespeare depicts Hamlet as believing that he has will power, because in my understanding of the play Hamlet sees himself in the other characters of the play. For example Fortinbras has will power ‘to gain a little patch of ground That hath in it no profit but the name.’ And this is the person he is vowing to be more like. I think Hamlet understands his weaknesses and is willing to turn a blind eye to the implications of mirroring the actions Fortinbras to fulfill his filial duty.
Hamlet is a weak revenger as he himself does not posses the conventional characteristics of a Revenger and in some ways he is a misfit in a politically treacherous world. He recognizes this himself when he says to the king ‘Your worm is your only emperor for diet: we fat all creatures else to fat us, and we fat ourselves for maggots. Your fat king and your lean beggar is but variable service- two dishes but to one table.’ Hamlet says that everyone is equal in death. Hamlet recognizes that although Claudius can order and rule him now, yet he is damned to a life in hell; which seems a revolutionary way of thinking in the Elizabethan era.
At the end of the play, Hamlet can be seen as a misfit in a politically treacherous world as during the play he has been subject to many plots and stratagem from Claudius, Polonius and he was also betrayed by his friends, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. For example when he gets sent to his death by Claudius, ‘By letters congruing to that effect, The present death of Hamlet.’ Claudius’ scheming mind and scheming court is no match for Hamlet, as here he gives Hamlet his own death letter to take with him.
Towards the end of the play Hamlet no longer plays victim to Claudius’ schemes, for example when he sends Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to their death, ‘Why, man, they did make love to this employment. They are not near my conscience’. In Hamlet’s narrative with Horatio he displays a new-found awareness and optimism. He dismisses Rosencrantz and Guildenstern as insignificant, indicating the change in his conscience as he no longer moralises the situation. In the dramatic resolution of the play, ultimately, Hamlet does what he sets out to do: he kills Claudius. Yet, crucially, he does it for himself and not out of a sense of loyalty or duty to his father. Claudius is the usurper, the king who has ‘pop’d in between the election and my hopes, thrown out his angle for my proper life and with such coz’nage’ The possessive pronouns show that Hamlet now acts as a result of the treachery that has been done to him, he should have been king and now he wants it for himself.
In the end Hamlet can be seen as both a weak revenger and a misfit. There is evidence to support both readings. He is a misfit in a politically treacherous world because of the corrupt court, and a weak revenger because of his self-knowledge and lack of will power. In the end Hamlet’s reconciliation and the presentation of his new sense of life and enthusiasm would have made him a good king, as he too could play the part of the politically treacherous court very well in the closing scene.
Bibliography
Harold Jenkins, Hamlet, The Arden Shakespeare, 2002
Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature by Augustus William Schlegel (1808), translated by John Black (London, 1846).
Coleridge's Shakespearean Criticism , ed. Thomas M. Raysor (London: Constable, 1930).
William Hazzlit: from Characters of Shakespeare's Plays, 1817
Newell Shakespeare Bulletin: A Journal of Performance Criticism and Scholarship 9.4 (1991 Fall): 31-33
