‘ most retrograde to our desire
And we beseech you, bend you to remain
Here in the cheer and comfort of our eye
Our cheifest courtier, cousin and our song.’
A similar request is made by Leartes to return to France is met with an entirely different reaction and wishes are granted.
Hamlets position of grief is not met with any sympathy, just comforting words from his cold hearted mother, ‘thou know’st tis common, all that lives must die passing through nature to eternity’, Claudius adds, ‘we pray you to throw to earth this unprevailng woe, and think of it of us as a father’.
Both Gertrude and Claudius show complete lack of feeling and understanding. Hamlets position within the court is made even more unbearable as he remembers his father who he sees as a god like figure, comparing him to Hyperion a titan In classical mythology
‘so excellent a king, that was to this
Hyperion to a satyr, so loving to my mother,
That he might not beteem the winds of heaven
Visit her face too roughly; heaven and earth,
Must I remember?
Claudius presides over a corrupt society and Hamlet is disgusted by his drunken and lustful behavior. He finds revelry unacceptable especially the drinking and sensual dancing. His reaction to hearing the merriment enjoyed by the king and the rest of the court as he waits for the ghost on the castle wall is obvious as he tells Horatio,
‘This heavy-headed revel east and west
makes us traduc’d, and taxed of other nations;
they clepe us drunkards, and with swinish phrase
soil our addiction; indeed it takes
from our achievements, thugh performed at height
with pith and marrow of our attribute.”
Despite the fact that he knows it is duty to correct the wrong that has fallen on his country, Hamlet, like the rest of the cortiers is obedient to the king and respects both his mothers’ wishes.
Hamlets skills as a soldier are rarely witnessed. Following the death of his father, he is too reflective, analytical and moral. Leartes and Fortinbras provide a contrast with Hamlets character as they are shown to be more heroic.
At the beginning of the play (act 1 sc1), the audience learn that Fortinbras, the son of the king of Norway who was killed by Hamlets father, has assembled a group of lawless soldiers and he hopes to recover land lost by his father , to Denmark when he was defeated. After a complaint by Claudius, Fortinbras is sent to advance on Poland and it is here that Hamlet comes across one of Fortinbras’s captians. He is humiliated by his lack of action especially when he learns that Fortinbras had successfully persuaded his army of 2,000 men to fight over a worthless piece of land as the captain explains to Hamlet, ‘ we go to gain a little patch of ground, that hath in it no profit but the name’.
This encounter finally motivates Hamlet into action as he recognizes his father is dead and his mother ‘stained’. He vows
‘o from this time forth
my thoughts be bloody, or nothing worth’
Despite Hamlets inability to take any action for most of the play, he is in fact capable of ruthless acts. His impulsive cold blooded murder of Polonius and annihilation of Rozencrantz and Gildenstern when he willingly sings a paper, sending them to their deaths, which shows his ability to act in a merciless way.
Following the deaths of Leartes, Gertrude, Claudius and Hamlet himself, the play finally comes to a close. At the end Hamlet is finally recognized by Fortinbras as a heroic warrior as he is buried with full rites.
‘Let four captains
bear Hamlet like a soldier to the stage.
For he was likely, had he been put on,
To have proved most royal. And for his passage
The soldiers’ music and rites of war
Speak lordly for him’.
There is plenty of evidence of his scholastic qualities. As a student of Wittenberg, he is clearly educated which is demonstrated through his use of language. He cleverly uses puns and word play. In response to Claudius addressing Hamlet as ‘my son’, Hamlet replies ‘A little more kin, and less kind!’.
This cryptic pun implies that as Claudius’s nephew, he is little more than a cousin but that a father and son.
Hamlet is a deep thinker. He is unsure whether to trust the ghost as he realizes evil could visit him in the guise to tempt him to do wrong. His soliloquies give him an insight into his troubled mind. The to be or not to be speech is a philosophical consideration of whether life is worth living. He contemplates the alternatives of taking no action or to attack the king and inevitably expose the gradual process of his belief in the authenticity of the ghost. His educated mind knows the difference between right and wrong. He realizes the consequences of killing Claudius whilst at prayer and his arguments are subtle and logical,
‘now might I do it pat, now ‘is a-praying
and how I’ll do it. And so’ a goes to heaven’
Hamlet is aware of Claudius’s guilt but he cannot take his revenge.
His plan to stage a play within a play to ‘catch the conscience of the king’, shows Hamlets knowledge of literature. He greets the first player as an ‘old friend’, and he offers advice to the players on the importance of a naturalistic acting style,
‘suit the action to the word, the
word to the action, with this special
Observance, that
you o’erstep not the modesty of nature’
His familiarity with revenge plays is demonstrated by his ability to remorse quotes from his favourite plays.
He recites, Aeneas speech to Dido,
‘the rugged Pyrrhus, did the night resemble’
In his intellectual way, Hamlet rationalizes life, and accepts nothing without carefully analyzing it first but, this constant procrastinating results in Hamlet thinking to much about what action he should be taking and at the same time, failing to achieve any results.
In the play of Hamlet, Ophelia explains Hamlet to be a ‘courtier, soldier, scholar’. Hamlets intellect generally makes him a better a better scholar, than a soldier or courtier. Although he is obedient to the king. The way Hamlet manages his soldierly skills are irresponsible and ruthless, which is evident in the way he kills Polonius mistaking him for Claudius. As hamlet is well educated he is able to fool everyone into thinking he is mad, he hosts the play with in a play to catch out Claudius and is generally very knowledgeable throughout the play.
