‘O cursed spite that ever I was born to set it right’ (Hamlet, Act 1 Scene 5). Suggests that he is a reluctant avenger, sworn to be their ‘scourge and minister’ out of duty to his father.
Shakespeare places Claudius at the centre of the corruption and deceit in the play as he is the King, and law maker. He use the situation to his advantage: ‘Though yet(1) of our dear brother’s death the memory be green, and that it us befitted to bear our hearts in grief, and our whole kingdom to be contracted in one brow of woe……therefore our sometime sister, now our Queen(2)……with mirth in funeral and dirge in marriage(3), in equal scale weighing delight with dole, taken to wife……Now follows that you know young Fortinbras, holding a weak supposal of our worth, or thinking by our late dear brother’s death our state to be disjoint and out of frame……this greeting to old Norway, giving to you no further personal power to business with the King more than the scope of these dilated articles allow(4).’ (Act 1 Scene 2). There are five techniques exemplified here of how Shakespeare has signalled to the audience to be suspicious about Claudius’ speech. The suspicions that the audience pick up on are (1) a rhetorical style; Shakespeare gave Claudius the art of speech, though his speech is flawed as is seen by ‘though yet’ in which he says just to impress. (2) The incest; Claudius himself tells us that Gertrude was his sister, and is now his wife and Queen. (3) Oxymoron; the oxymoron’s themselves suggest opposites – how Claudius appears and how he is in reality. (4) Foreign policy, he is showing his power with foreign policies, remembering that he has only just become King.
Claudius is the body politic at the centre of all in Denmark ‘something is rotten in the state of Denmark.’ (Hamlet, Act 1 Scene 5), rotten is the body of the dead King, as he died as quick as his brother moved into the marriage bed with his Queen Gertrude. Hamlet is commissioned to avenge the murder of his father but must avoid corrupting himself in the process, and making his mother suffer. He must oppose Claudius’ attempts to maintain his deceit.
Claudius manipulates Rosencrantz and Guildenstern and Laertes through his deceitful infection. He manipulates them into what he wants them to do. He manipulates Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, by getting them to try and find out what is wrong with Hamlet ‘Well, we shall sift him’ (Claudius, Act 2 Scene 2) and by sending them to England with Hamlet where Hamlet is to be killed ‘the present death of Hamlet. Do it, England; for like the hectic in my blood he rages, and thou must cure me.’ Claudius manipulated them, as they did not know what was going on. Hamlet knows that they have been sent for by the King and Queen. After the play, Hamlet casts aside his role of Avenger and Fool and shows his Princely anger and power; this is how he should have confronted Claudius. ‘You would play upon me, you would seem to know my stops, you would pluck out the heart of my mystery, you would sound me from my lowest note to the top of my compass; and there is much music, excellent voice, in this little organ, yet cannot you make it speak. ’Sblood, do you think I am easier to be played on than a pipe? Call me what instrument you will, though you fret me, you cannot play upon me.’
Claudius also manipulates Laertes into fighting Hamlet, after Claudius read the letters from Hamlet to say that he is alive, and so he poses the question ‘will you be rul’d by me?’ ‘Ay, my Lord’ is the reply (Act 4 Scene 7), and so Claudius is now manipulating Laertes, as he wants revenge for the death of his father and of his sister, and Claudius uses this to his advantage. The reason for using Laertes to kill Hamlet is that Laertes is geared up for the job and wants to do it ‘to cut his throat i’th’ church’ (Act 4 Scene7); Laertes doesn’t mind breaking the Chain of Being, as he says by wanting to cut hamlets throat in a church. Laertes is angry at the news of his father’s death and swears he will revenge ‘To hell, allegiance! Vows to the blackest devil! Conscience and grace, to the profoundest pit! I dare damnation. To this point I stand, that both the worlds I give to negligence, let come what comes, I’ll be reveng’d most thoroughly for my father.’ (Laertes, Act 4 Scene 5). This speech in Act 4 is a code of the revenge hero and from line 117 to the end of this speech on line 136 is a deliberate point by point recap of the stages of Hamlet’s deliberation for the last four Acts. In the final scenes of the play Laertes speaks and behaves as an uncomplicated revenge hero, ‘to my revenge; but in my terms of honour I stand aloof, and will no reconcilement till by some elder masters of known honour I have a voice and precedent of peace to keep my name ungor’d. But till that time I do receive your offer’d love like love and will not wrong it.’ (Laertes, Act4 Scene 7) and pushes aside all the moral objections that have prevented Hamlet playing the role, Shakespeare emphasises all this with through Hamlet ‘For by the image of my cause, I see the portraiture of his’ (Hamlet, Act 5 Scene 2).
Why is there a ghost? A ghost is a spirit who lives in purgatory, as they have sins left unforgiven. The ghost in “Hamlet” is in purgatory as he was given no opportunity for absolution ‘Alas poor ghost’ (Hamlet, Act 1 Scene 5). Hamlet tries to give the ghost sympathy, but the ghost rejects it and asks for his hearing ‘pity me not, but lend thy serious hearing.’ At this stage in the play from Act 1 Scene 5, Hamlet’s life changes again ‘so art thou to revenge when thou shalt hear’…‘I am thy father’s spirit’. But the ghost is a problem for Hamlet’s moral dilemma and this is shown in Act 1, Scene 4, ‘Angels and ministers defend us!’ As Hamlet knows revenge is wrong ‘o all you host of heaven! O earth! What else? And shall I couple hell?’ (Hamlet, Act 1 Scene 2), but if the ghost is his father then he should do as his father tells, but if the ghost is not his father then he should not do as he is told. The ghost is debated from the first scene that he enters whether it is the King or a shape. Marcellus in Act 1 Scene 1 asks the question ‘is it not like the king?’ Horatio’s response to the question remarkable ‘as though art to thyself’. Shakespeare asks this significant question in what way are people like themselves. Hamlet can now ‘put on an act of antic disposition’, in the sense that no one is who they appear to be in Denmark. It is only in his classified thought of Act 5 that Hamlet puts aside such roles.
Hamlet’s first response to the ghost asking him to ‘revenge his foul and most unnatural murder,’ is ‘Haste me to know’t, that I with wings as swift……may sweep to my revenge.’ (Hamlet, Act 1 Scene 5).
The ghost could be the devil ‘I am thy father’s spirit’ (Act 1 Scene 5), yes in Christianity the spirit belongs to God, but who does the spirit belong to when the person is in purgatory?, and as the ghost ‘and for the day confin’d to fast in fires’ (Ghost, Act 1 Scene 5), fires are symbolic of hell. The devil is prince of darkness and ruler of hell, the devil could be the one who wants Hamlet to break the Chain of Being, this is why the ghost, gives away who did the murder, ‘O prophetic soul! My uncle!’ Hamlet, ‘Ay’ the response from the ghost, the ghost has told Hamlet who did the murder. Why would a ghost tell who the murderer was, for Hamlet to break the Chain of Being, and disobey the rules of God, so that he falls into the darkness! Hamlet allows his human will, his pride, to take precedence over God’s will.
Hamlet plays the Fool, and he plays a Fool of the time, where each monarch had one and the Fool could tell the monarch that truth through a joke or letter that would be read out in front of the court. As Gilbert Murray says “it is very remarkable that Shakespeare, who did such wonders in his idealized and half-mystic treatment of the real Fool”, the way that Hamlet is the real Fool. The Fool of Hamlet is largely played through the antic disposition. Hamlet tells why he will put on this act ‘to put an antic disposition on – that you, at such time seeing me, never shall, with arms encumber’d thus, or this head-shake, or by pronouncing of some doubtful phrase’ (Act 1 Scene 5). Yet Hamlet feels that even then he is not listened to as a Fool. It is at this stage of the play that we see Hamlet as a thinker; he wants to avenge his father’s death, however, he doesn’t want to simply go up to Claudius with a knife and kill him, and then find out that the ghost was lying. He first directs a play of a King being killed by his brother to try and see if Claudius did the killing, and in this play “Lucianus, nephew to the King” kills the player King in the garden with poison, which not only points to Claudius killing his brother, but Hamlet wanting to avenge his father’s death. Though the play doesn’t really prove anything as Claudius will be upset and angry whether he did kill his brother or not as he can see that Hamlet is blaming him.
Hamlet is no fool for the King, even though he tells the truth through the play within a play. Shakespeare, according to Ernest Jones in “Hamlet and Oedipus” 1949, says that Hamlet is a character suffering from psychoneurosis, and Dover Wilson described Hamlet’s plight as “that sense of frustration, futility and human inadequacy”. Freudian theory would have would have us believe that Hamlet had repressed his feelings of jealousy at his father’s place as his mother’s husband but they are released when his repressed desire for his father to be dead is fulfilled, with consequential guilt and depression. Ideas of incest and murder are too much for Hamlet; thus the delay and frustration and the “antic disposition”. Hamlet’s repression demands passionate outbursts especially against Guildenstern, Rosencrantz and Polonius, the conventional dotard whose role is to restrain the joy of the young. Hamlet’s failure to “sweep to his revenge” (Hamlet, Act 1 Scene 5) is due to his repression. Whether, as Jones would have it, it is repression of sexual jealousy, or repression of his moral understanding that human vengeance is wrong, remains a puzzle. Hamlet’s heroism is his ingenious determination to succeed. His Tragedy is the atmosphere of deceit in which he must act.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
‘Hamlet’ York Notes
“The Antic disposition” 1959 Harry Levin
“Shakespeare and Tragedy” 1981 John Bayley
“The Historical Approach to “Hamlet” Helen Gardner
“Hamlet and Oedipus” 1949 Ernest Jones, with extracts from Dover Wilson, and Freudian theory.
The Word Count is 2,646 words