Q. How does Shakespeare explore the nature of evil in the play, ‘Hamlet’? ‘Hamlet’ is a Shakespearean revenge tragedy, which was a strong, and entertaining form of drama popular in the Elizabethan era during which Shakespeare (1562-1616) lived. ‘Hamlet’, like many of Shakespeare’s plays has been inspired by another famous tragedy, in this case, ‘The Spanish Tragedy’, a revenge play written by Thomas Kyd. The great political turbulence that was taking place in England with conspiracies against the Queen and those in power could also have prompted Shakespeare to write a play like ‘Hamlet’. Though the play is made up of the stock conventions of a typical revenge tragedy – a murder, with the ghost of the murdered returning to a loved one, the delay in vengeance, mental disturbance of the avenger and finally, the avenger’s death, Shakespeare has made ‘Hamlet’ original by focusing on the psychology and tragedy of the characters and the situations. The characters in the play are like real people, and even though the play was written centuries ago, readers can still relate to their mentality, sensitivity and reactions to situations. The main character around whom the play revolves is Hamlet. He is the young Prince of Denmark, son of Gertrude and the nephew of the present King, Claudius. Hamlet finds himself in a difficult situation when his dead father’s ghost pays him a visit, calls Claudius a murderer and demands revenge. The complete court of King Claudius was corrupt and Claudius himself was the source of all evil in the play, which is why Shakespeare has chosen a name like ‘Claudius’ as it would automatically remind the Elizabethan audience of the Roman emperor, Tiberius Claudius Drusus Nero Germanicus, who had indulged in an incestuous marriage with his sister and who, according to them was the epitome of evil. In ‘Hamlet’, Shakespeare has portrayed evil as something that corrupts and deceives and upon analysis, one finds images which give the feeling of disgust and sickness, as in the Ghost’s speech in Act 1, Scene 5, where he describes the effect of the poison Claudius had poured in his ears by saying, “And curd, like eager droppings into the milk/The thin and wholesome blood. So did it mine/And a most instant tetter bark’d about/Most lazar-like with vile and loathsome crust”. Such graphic imagery is found again in Act 5, Scene 4 where Hamlet asks his mother to accept her mistake and not to use Hamlet’s madness as an excuse for his words – “Lay not that madness upon your soul/That not your trespass but my madness speaks/It will but skin and film the ulcerous place/Whiles rank corruption, mining all within/Infects unseen.” The continuous use of this sort of vivid and revolting imagery gives a feeling that the world is sick and disgusting and the audience would therefore make the audience realise the fact that evil causes corruption and sickness in the world.
Though Hamlet intensely despised Claudius, it was his lustful relationship with the queen, which brought out the fiercest criticism from Hamlet, as we see in his conversation with the queen in Act 3, Scene 4, where he is filled with extreme disgust and scorn and strongly insults his mother by saying “In the rank sweat of an enseamed bed/ Stew’d in corruption, honeying and making love/ Over the nasty sty!” using filthy animal images to show Claudius’s sexual corruption. We also see the Ghost mention Claudius’s sexual corruption in Act 1, Scene 5, by calling him “that incestuous/ that adulterate ...
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Though Hamlet intensely despised Claudius, it was his lustful relationship with the queen, which brought out the fiercest criticism from Hamlet, as we see in his conversation with the queen in Act 3, Scene 4, where he is filled with extreme disgust and scorn and strongly insults his mother by saying “In the rank sweat of an enseamed bed/ Stew’d in corruption, honeying and making love/ Over the nasty sty!” using filthy animal images to show Claudius’s sexual corruption. We also see the Ghost mention Claudius’s sexual corruption in Act 1, Scene 5, by calling him “that incestuous/ that adulterate beast” and accuses him of seducing Queen Gertrude “With witchcraft of his wit/with traitorous gifts”. The Ghost uses short lines, separated with commas and there is extensive use of exclamation marks, all of which convey his anger and rage at the lustful act that Claudius had committed. But unlike the Ghost, Hamlet expresses more hurt and disgust at his mother’s betrayal of his father than at Claudius’s lustful act. He tells her that she has ruined the meaning of marriage with her act and has made religion mere verbal outpouring – “makes marriage vows/As false as dicers’ oaths-O, such a deed/As from the body of contraction plucks/The very soul, and sweet religion makes/A rhapsody of words.” By emphasizing on the incestuous nature of Claudius’s and Gertrude’s marriage, Shakespeare has brought into the light another fact about the nature of evil – that evil not only corrupts the wicked and sinful, but is contagious and tends to contaminate those around it. The ghost has explained this in Act 1, Scene 5, where he says, “lust, though to a radiant angel link’d/Will sate itself in a celestial bed/And prey on garbage.” Though what the ghost actually means is that evil looks for an inferior quality and cannot tempt a virtuous person, it is obvious that evil does not hesitate in tempting even the virtuous. Therefore, evil can easily attract a weak person towards itself and corrupt him/her as well. This tendency of polluting others’ minds, hearts and souls is expressed by Shakespeare in Act 2, Scene 2, where he appoints Hamlet’s childhood friends, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to spy on him. Claudius’s gift of smooth-talking is brought out here, where his speech is divided into smooth-flowing regular verses. His deception is clearly brought out where he speaks in an affectionate manner about Hamlet and pretends to show genuine concern about his welfare (“So much as from occasion you may glean/Whether aught to us unknown afflicts him thus/That, open’d lies, within our remedy.”). This concept of contaminating the pure is brought again in Act 4, Scene 7, where, after convincing Laertes of his own innocence (regarding Polonius’s death), he encourages Laertes to take revenge on Hamlet, who had killed Polonius. In this part of the play, we see Laertes becoming Claudius’s victim because of the poison that Claudius has poured in his ears, “To an exploit, now ripe in my device/Under the which he shall not choose but fall/And for his death no wind of blame shall breathe/But even his mother shall uncharge the practice/And call it an accident.” In the play, evil has been portrayed as a vice which, when desiring to destroy others, does not only that, but eventually ends up causing self-destruction as well, which has been shown in Laertes’s death in Act 5, Scene 2 when he tells Osric, “I am justly killed with mine own treachery.” From this point of view, Claudius’s death is also ironic as Hamlet earlier says that, “Let it work/For ‘tis the sport to have the enginer/Hoist with his own petard,” and it shows that he is not as stupid as others make him out to be and knows what they are planning and already has a counter plot for it. And in this we case we see how the same poison that had been devised so as to kill Hamlet with has killed Claudius. Such an end shows how, though in, Shakespearean tragedies there is no poetic justice, good always triumphs and evil is destroyed. Yet, along with it, many others also suffer. In ‘Hamlet’, for instance, we see how Polonius had first been killed in the act of spying on Hamlet. Towards the end, Claudius and Laertes had been killed after conspiring to kill Hamlet, but it was not only them who had died. Ophelia, an innocent, loving young girl suffered from insanity after hearing her father’s death and drowned to her death. The queen, who had not really conspired against anyone and later, truly felt sorry for marrying Claudius after Hamlet made her realise her deed also died after drinking the poisoned wine, originally meant for Hamlet. Hamlet, the tragic hero himself, died at the hands of Laertes. Evil has also been linked to the disruption of ‘order’ as the Elizabethans were preoccupied with the idea of order and disorder because the society at the time was turbulent and they believed that every person had his/her pre-destined place in society and to try to upset this natural order carried dire consequences. Shakespeare uses this idea in describing the disorder, which was caused when an evil, usurping king like Claudius came to the throne. In those times, a garden symbolized order and an unweeded garden implied chaos and commotion. Hamlet explains this concept in Act 1, Scene 2, when he says, “Fie on’t, ah fie, ‘tis an unweeded garden/That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature/Possess it merely.” Marcellus, a minor character, also mentions this fact, though not as directly, in Act 1, Scene 4 by saying, “Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.” This clearly explains to the audience, the extent of corruption in the country where everyone was seemingly nice to each other but conspired against one another behind their backs. Deception and spying was a common practice as Polonius sent people to spy on Laertes and Claudius also sent Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, Hamlet’s childhood friends to spy on him. Also, because of this belief in the natural order, being ambitious was, in the eyes of the Elizabethans, an evil act closely related to sinning and Claudius, by being ambitious and committing regicide just to acquire King Hamlet’s throne, has upset this order, symbolically conveyed by the way Claudius disrupts the play, another ordered whole. Relating to evil, the Elizabethans believed that evil resulted in sin and damnation and there are many biblical references to sin and horrific descriptions of the sufferings of purgatory. The Ghost of Hamlet’s father, the dead King Hamlet warns the audience about the tortures of purgatory. Though he doesn’t describe them as he is “forbid/To tell the secrets of [my] prison house”, he nevertheless says that he could narrate a story which “Would harrow up [thy] soul, freeze [thy] young blood/Make [thy] two eyes like stars start from their spheres/[Thy] knotted and combined locks to part/And each particular hair to stand an end/Like quills upon the fretful porpentine”, the hyperbole here clearly conveys the inexpressible terrors of hell, the thought and mention of which would not only frighten Hamlet tremendously but would probably also make the devout Elizabethan audience of ‘Hamlet’ cross themselves in fear. In ‘Hamlet’, like in all of Shakespeare’s tragedies, evil results in isolation and sometimes anguish and we see the villain, Claudius, deserted when his companion Polonius dies and the Queen, after listening to Hamlet’s narration of Claudius’s actions also separates from him. It was not that Claudius was not conscious of the heinous nature of his crime – he was completely aware of the atrocity of the deed that he had committed and was trapped in a horrible dilemma of his own making. He accepts all this in his soliloquy in Act 3, Scene 3, and decides to pray and ask God’s forgiveness for his sins. Shakespeare has used beautiful lines for Claudius’s attempt at repentance where he says, “What if this cursed hand/Were thicker than itself with brother’s blood/Is there not rain enough in the sweet heavens/To wash it white as snow?” reminding us of Macbeth’s tormented cries after the murder of Duncan. In this scene we realise Claudius’s regret over what he has done and his unsuccessful attempt at prayer. The many questions and exclamations in this soliloquy clearly convey his distress. However, there is almost exquisite irony in the fact that just when Hamlet thinks of killing him, he goes against his decision as he did not want Claudius to go to heaven (since he would be praying at the time of death) while his own father was suffering the torments of purgatory. It is only after Hamlet goes off stage that we realise Claudius’s inability to pray and repent. If Hamlet would have taken the ‘courageous’ step and killed Claudius, six deaths could have been avoided. But with all their pre-conceptions of evil, I still think that the Elizabethans had a somewhat ambiguous attitude towards it. The Elizabethans, being devout Roman Catholics followed Christ’s teachings of loving one’s enemies and ‘turning the other cheek’ to one’s assailants (Gospel of Luke, chapter 6). But at the same time, they were fascinated by revenge plays and this could be another reason why Shakespeare shows Hamlet torn between deciding whether to really do what the ghost had instructed him or to leave the fate of Claudius to God? In one way, he was avenging his father’s death, but hadn’t the Bible commanded him to do otherwise? Also, Hamlet’s revenge would be tougher, as not only was he going to kill, an act forbidden by the sixth commandment, but, he was going to commit regicide – an act unimaginable in the Elizabethan times. This was because of their belief in the Divine Right of Kings, which was enforced by the ruling monarchs of their time. This meant that a king or a queen was God’s representative on earth, who was protected in his function by the power of the Almighty and killing or even contradicting one was equivalent to sinning and the act would have terrible effects. Claudius mentions this in Act 4, Scene 5,“Do not fear our person/There’s such divinity doth hedge a king” The descriptions of evil in the play show perhaps, Shakespeare’s utter disgust and dislike of it. With the constant references to good and evil and the sufferings of purgatory, ‘Hamlet’ might even be called a religious tragedy, explaining the concept of revenge and why it is unethical for a human to take. It seems to me that what the greatest dramatist of all time is actually trying to reveal is how malevolent evil is and how it is the cause of all the misfortune and tragedy in the play and how disastrous the consequences of those indulging in it, and those affected by it are. This message is very apt, even in, or especially in our times where the world is gripped in the throes of vices, where weapons to eradicate the whole of mankind itself are being made and where the word ‘humanity’ has lost its true meaning. A world in which corruption is widespread and thirst is quenched, not with water, but with money and power. Maybe the Elizabethans were right in regarding ambition as a sin, because I do believe that even in the modern world, if only people were content with what the many blessings they had been given, we would not have reached the state, which we are in today. If Shakespeare has written ‘Hamlet’ with the intention of wiping out evil from this world, then his views and aims have been beautifully expressed. If only, instead of groping at each other’s throats, we’d care to learn a lesson from a play, which is so pertinent for our times and yet, has been written more than five centuries ago!