world is the world of a prince, a place where no-one would ever make a remark about you
to your face or to anyone that may have the ability to let you know about it, a world with
servants and sycophants where your wish is everyone else’s command, a world where the
most emotionally distressing thing you are likely to encounter is that maybe your best
tunic has not been properly pressed for you by your legion of servants. You can already
see even before his discovery of his mothers marriage to his uncle and the appearance of
his fathers ghost, that, for a person so uninformed of real emotional issues as Hamlet, that
this would lay waste to all his current feelings and desires, leaving him with nothing on
which to cling to support him through this time of hardship and solitude.
This is why Hamlet is the perfect lead for Shakespeare’s tragedy, here he is saying “what
if?” what if someone so unprepared as hamlet was to have to face something like this?
Would the fibres of his whole human existence hold up to what he is about to face?
He is forcing a collision between two different ends a scale, not even the same scale, he is
submitting a characters (albeit fictional) mind and emotions to the whim of his most
unimaginably ill fated predicament.
You can understand that when he makes his first appearance speaking to Claudius and his
mother, he has a tangible sense of bitterness towards them, especially when they speak to
him in such a way that you would think it not uncommon for a woman to marry her
deceased husbands brother within only two months of him passing. They enquire why he
still is in his mourning dress, and think it inappropriate for him to still be actively
grieving as death is “common.” They do not seem able to accept that they have
had time to mourn, and that to him his fathers memory is fresh in his mind and that he is
still besotted with grief not only about the death of his father, but even more so about
their marriage. Claudius denounces him as showing lack of respect to their
marriage and that “’tis unmanly grief” (act I scene II line 94 pg 13 OUP) he also lets
Hamlet know that it is “most retrograde of their desire” for him to return to university at
Wittenburg. For young Hamlet of course the memory is still green, and he has the
added emotional trauma of seeing his mother wedded to his dead uncles brother and we
get a strong tone of insensitivity from both of them, especially Claudius, you can imagine
that hamlet, after just finding out about their marriage would be in a very fragile
emotional state and their lack of consideration of his feelings can only be making him
question him trust for anyone and pushing him further away from them, and driving his
grief deeper inside him causing him to suppress his anger after not being able to
relate this to them.
This comes out in his first soliloquy he utters word of suicide, “sullied flesh would melt,
thaw and resolve itself into a dew” he is resentful of the fact that God made suicide a
sin, and to say he was completely unsettled by his mothers hasty move to his incestuous
sheets would be an extreme understatement, it challenges his thoughts on women, and
love, he thought love was forever, but if this was so how could his own mother do this, he
can’t understand how, how could the woman who brought him up and clung to his father
as if the more she saw him the more she wanted him suddenly do move between to
brothers as alike as he to Hercules, Shakespeare has chosen this metaphor, and many
other like it throughout the play because he knows, everyone, even the groundlings,
would have heard some version of the story of Hercules, know for his immense strength
and physical ability, this gives them a an open window with a view straight at what he is
trying to get at. Hamlet is in such a confused state at this point that he appears
lost, but this is not to be the final blow he still has to meet the ghost.
We rejoin hamlet after he has met the ghost, found out about the true circumstances of his
fathers death and made certain of the fact that Claudius was the one responsible for his
passing, he knows what he has to do, he has to exact his revenge to honor his father.
I feel that Even some of the most humble of people would find it hard to control
themselves in a situation like this, the animal instinct to bring harm to someone because
they have done it to you first is, a (maybe undesirable) human trait, like it or not, its
found in all of us and I truly believe that for anyone to find that your uncle has killed
your father to marry your mother would stretch the boundaries of anyone’s self control, I
think this shows us as the reader / audience how truly hamlet is not a man of action by
nature, and by suppressing his instincts to hurt someone and trying to
Approach it as a philosopher would and think it through beforehand
and not confronting the problem directly it manifests itself and works against him
causing his irrational behavior.
Shakespeare has created such an interesting and unique character for this situation and
the Structure with which it is started would leave even the most uneducated of people
who may not be too concerned with any deeper meanings of the play enthralled by this
point.
I think this is what makes a great play write- to bring people out of their daily routines
and think, hang on every word, because they’re all wondering, everyone wants to
know, what is he going to do next?
Hamlets next move is to inform his mother of his fathers murder, but by this time he has
already raised Claudius’ suspicions with his erratic behavior and he is one step ahead,
sending Polonius to eavesdrop on the conversation, his attempt to take action in such a
way and venting his anger through her leaves his mother distraught and Polonius feels
that it has got too heated and shouts and tries to break cover but before he has a chance is
dispatched by hamlet believing it to be Claudius by driving his sword into the wall
hanging he was hiding behind.
This the first of Hamlets attempts to try and take action leave him in an even more
compromising situation, and by doing this has only confirmed everyone’s view that he is
mad.
We see from this that the only point at which he will take action is when this animal
instinct does get the better of him, but unfortunately for himself the thing that has upset
him the most and caused him to react is not his fathers murder, but his mothers marriage.
This leaves him no closer to avenging his father than he was in the beginning. You would
think that maybe now he has already killed his uncles favorite high courtier, that he
would be poised in such a position that the easiest way for him to clear his name would
be for him to kill Claudius and reveal his secret to the court. Rather than explain his
actions and his reasons for them he continues to act as if he has no intelligent reasoning
(and in the light of his emotional turmoil I do not think that this is very far from the
truth.)
Claudius’ fears that hamlet knows something that he is not letting on to is now only
validated further and he knows that hamlet must have thought that it was he behind the
tapestry.
Claudius decides to send hamlet to England thinking “that a change of air may help him”
but really he is sending hamlet with a letter informing the king of England to dispose of
him on his arrival. Hamlet discovers this letter though and jumps ship to return to
Denmark. the first scene he appears in on his return is of Ophelias funeral, his girlfriend
that has killed herself due to the fact that the thought of her boyfriends madness and his
killing of her father who basically controlled her life is too much to bear.
Even now hamlet knows of his uncles attempt to kill him he still makes no decisive
action and is only drawn in to a rapier fight with Laertes son of murdered Polonius and
brother of dead Ophelia, this is to be his attempt at action- revenge for the killing of his
father, just as hamlet is trying to do to Claudius. Laertes on the contrary to Hamlet is a
man of action and takes direct measures to assure his revenge. Unbeknown to Hamlet
this is to be the second attempt on his life, Claudius has teamed up with laertes in a bid to
put an end to hamlets antics once and for all, they have poisoned Laertes’ rapier and a
cup of wine which should he fail to be hit, be his end.
Hamlet must be aware that something is not right with this, and is advised by his only
true friend that he has maintained trust in throughout the whole play to not go through
with it and to back out, but Hamlet is not in a sensible state of mind and agrees to the
duel.
In the duel hamlet is struck with the poisoned rapier and then so is Laertes when they
both drop their daggers and they pick up each others, hamlets mother drinks to this- from
the poisoned cup. The queen collapses shortly after drinking and it is at this point it is
Laertes who announces Claudius as a fiend, not Hamlet, even now he has seen his mother
die before his very own eyes, Laertes and hamlet make there peace ,and with Hamlets
last breaths he eventually executes his action, he forces Claudius to drink from the
poisoned cup, and with this, his deed is done, he has avenged his father, and he now has
the weight lifted from his shoulders, but his lack of pragmatic action has left the court a
bloodbath, his inability to act without thinking has been his downfall.
Maybe if he was to have killed Claudius as soon as he confirmed he was the murderer,
then this would have been a different story, but the there would not have been a play to
be written for us to enjoy hundreds of years later.
