Explore the role of hatred and/or grief in any work (or works) of literature of your choice.

Authors Avatar

4) Explore the role of hatred and/or grief in any work (or works) of literature of your choice.

In their introduction of Aeschylus’ ‘The Oresteia’, Robert Fagles and W.B Stanford include E.R Dodds’ assertion that ancient mythology reflected the ‘pathology of a culture ridden by its guilt’ in the aftermath of many bloody wars and invasions.  In Fagles’ modern translation, he describes Aeschylus’ trilogy (‘Agamemnon’, ‘The Libation Bearers’ and ‘The Eumenides’) as a work in which ‘the dead pursued the living for revenge, and revenge could only breed more guilt.’  If any other literary piece could satisfy such appraisal, it is Hamlet.  

If hatred and grief are the main aspects of tragedy, Hamlet is a tragic hero with a distinctly ‘Senecan’, flavour. (Arkins)  For C. & M. Martindale, ‘Seneca was the closest Shakespeare ever got to Greek tragedy.’  Senecan translations may well have supplemented the Latin plays studied by Shakespeare at school in Stratford- indeed, Brian Arkins claims that the Greek’s influence was ‘in the Elizabethan air’, and T.S Eliot wrote that ‘No author exercised...a deeper influence upon the Elizabethan mind or...form of tragedy than did Seneca.’  Cambridge itself was deeply influenced during the period, presenting two performances of ‘The Trojan Women’ and ‘Medea’ as well as another of ‘Oedipus’ between 1551 and 1563. (Arkins)

The revenge aspect of Seneca is clearly paralleled in Hamlet, where common inclusions such as restless ghosts and a ‘self-dramatised’ (A) hero combine with the Senecan obsession with scelus.  This crime launches tragedy in the three stages detailed by C. & M Martindale: ‘the appearance of a ghost or Fury, the making of the avenger and the ritual revenge itself.’  

Aeschylus’s ‘Agamemnon’ expresses the cyclical nature of hatred and grief in the line ‘Great crimes you don’t avenge, unless you outdo them.’  Arkins’ analysis of these Greek influences on Shakespeare continues to include observation on form, where the Elizabethan playwright imitates the ‘meditative soliloquy and stichomythia’ utilised by his Greek predecessor.  

Queen                To whom do you speak this?

Hamlet        Do you see nothing there?

Queen                Nothing at all; yet all that is I see

Hamlet        Nor did you nothing hear?

Queen                No, nothing but ourselves.

Yet the ‘Senecan conventions’ detailed in Brian Arkins’ essays are altered by Shakespeare in many ways.  As Arkins acknowledges, ‘Hamlet himself is not an avenger of the Senecan type’, because of his infamous ‘wavering before committing himself to revenge.’  This modern critic considers the shocking expression of hatred and grief in Hamlet, the ‘palpable presence’ of evil, as a topic well suited to the 16th century audience, to whom horror; such as the that of the Tower and the mob; was no stranger.

Fagles’ claims that the guilt of the Greeks was ‘more than criminal…a psychological guilt that modern men have felt and tried to probe.’  For Hamlet too, guilt is strongest before he has taken the criminal action which causes the deaths of both Polonius and Claudius, and; debatably though certainly obliquely; his own mother.  For Hamlet, the concepts of hatred and grief are bound by guilt, to create a mental torture conveyed effectively by Shakespeare, and poignantly by his players.  The familial nature of the betrayals felt so keenly by the Danish Prince leads him to potent disgust at his own reluctance to fulfil his filial duty in avenging his father.  As such, both personal principles and expectations of social code are shattered for Hamlet, and both hatred and grief are catapulted into the public arena by their sheer, all-encompassing intensity.

Join now!

Othello, written shortly after Hamlet, is an exploration of partial guilt, of hamartia confounded by such nefarious interference as the hero can scarcely conceive.  Surpassing the mere expression of Othello’s own pain, this masterful play is rare in simultaneously evoking genuine grief among a contextually omniscient and consequently sympathetic audience.  Indeed, the silent, continual dialogue that occurs between Shakespeare and his audience intensifies the tragedy of the events of the final act.  These intonations allow audiences to experience some degree of prescient dread for the doomed General as early on as Iago’s first revelations of hatred; which drive and ...

This is a preview of the whole essay