Hamlet is arguably Shakespeare’s most philosophical and renowned play. Its exploration of the intricacies of the human condition has confirmed its position amongst the highest calibre of script writings. Although values and ideals fluctuate with time, the basic human need to answer the abstruse questions of life, death and morality has not. Audiences are able to respond to the messages within Hamlet and its diverse array of interpretations through its universal characters and themes situated beyond the realm of context.This essay will establish a unique stance on this landmark play through an evaluation of Hamlet’s struggle between revenge and morality, inherent in the text.
In particular, it is the themes of revenge, lust and suicide that act as vessels into the very philosophical core of humanity, canonising Hamlet as a metaphysical play which connects with audiences from any socio-historical context.Although Shakespeare’s Hamlet is recognised as part of the revenge tragedy genre, Hamlet’s situation between a rational upbringing and emotional burden of revenge gives rise to a radical variant prescribed with thought more so than action.The character foil of Hamlet, Laertes and Fortinbras as sons whom have lost their fathers, encourages contemporary audiences to contrast an instinctual need to avenge death undertaken through differing means. Whereas Laertes would “cut [Hamlet’s] throat i’ th’ church” (4.
7. 27) and Fortinbras “hath not failed to pester [Denmark] with message importing the surrender of those lands lost by his father” (1. 2. 22-24), Hamlet suffers the indulgences of the Renaissance mind in thought and meditation as “pigeon-livered and lacking gall to make oppression bitter” (2. 2. 554-555).
The theatricality of Shakespeare’s self-coined insults would have stirred traditional theatre-goers into confronting the nature of Renaissance scepticism trough a rejection of the widely accepted participation in revenge.However, Shakespeare adds a significant supernatural weight to Hamlet’s burden through the apparition of the Ghost, “revenge his foul and most unnatural murder”, though a normal occurrence in Elizabethan drama, differentiates him from the otherwise linear revenge seeking characters, such as Laertes and Fortinbras and suggests the chasm separating conscious action and stoic reaction is worldly perception. Further, Hamlet’s procrastination dissociates him from “the rotten state of Denmark”, and through the allegory of a “raven” in “leave thy damnable faces, and begin.Come, ‘the croaking raven doth bellow..
. ” Shakespeare’s Hamlet is a microcosm for the paradoxical state of Elizabethan England, concerned with clouding the chasm separating medieval Christian faith and secular modern achievement, furthered through ominous connotations from the play’s initiation, “who’s there? ”. In addition to revolutionising the revenge tragedy genre, Hamlet also ‘breaches’ moral convention of both past and present by the arguably lustful relationship of Gertrude and Hamlet. His melancholic and brash attitude towards his mother is epitomised during their climatic confrontation in Act III, Scene IV, whereby Hamlet “amazes thy mother” with words “like daggers”.Hamlet’s accusations of his mother, indeed fuelled by rage and disgust, also hint a sexual tension which reveals a reluctant hero overwhelmed by the traditional ‘God-given’ laws and the Renaissance search-for-self and mind as emphasised by the pathetic fallacy and his weak tone in “my sinews, grow not instant old, but bear me stiffly up”.
It is not surprising that Freud, within this context, argued that Hamlet is evidence that advancement in state has also lead to social repression in relation to emotions and primitive drives, such as the Oedipus complex.Hamlet’s derogative and vivid description of Gertrude living “in the rank sweat of an enseamed bed, stewed in corruption, honeying and making love over the nasty sty” (3. 4. 92-95), finds truth in Freud’s ‘neurotic complex’ by symbolising Gertrude’s marriage to a “satyr” . This idea is heavily present in the Laurence Olivier’s adaptation of Hamlet (1948), where we view an intimate and physical connection between Gertrude and Olivier’s Hamlet, particularly emphasising the promiscuity of Gertrude, via lengthy extreme close up camera angles and melodramatic intensity of characterisation.
Further, Hamlet’s first aside “a little more than kin and less than kind” dissociates Hamlet, as a character trapped between Renaissance reasoning and ancient pagan superstitions is further intensified through his suicidal mindset. He is the unwilling tragic hero, the revenge hero who seeks death rather than valiantly inflicts it upon those deserving as “fate cries out”. Through Shakespeare’s departure from Aristotle’s poetic laws via the soliloquy, audiences across all ages acquire a wealth of insight from the mind of a character immersed in universal and moral philosophy.In Hamlet’s first soliloquy: “O that this too, too sullied flesh would melt..
. ”, there is an emphasis on intense feeling and extreme state of mind through repetitive exclamations that include “o God, o God”, “fie on’t, ah fie”, “oh most wicked speed”; which when coupled with his suicidal behaviour, there is an unexpected lack of direction from what should be a loyal son avenging his father.In the true essence of melodrama, Shakespeare repeats the poetic religious refrains perhaps as a means to voice the Elizabethan struggle to take hold of destiny in a post-reformation, yet still heavily Christian era. By contemplating suicide, Hamlet is essentially subverting the teachings of the traditional Catholic Church as well as the Humanist celebration of the earthly world and human achievement, exacerbated in his casual attitude towards death, “compounded with dust, whereto ‘tis kin”.As such, audiences witness a modern, individual thinker sewn into a traditional, convention-adhering environment; meaning contemporary audiences, much like the Elizabethan’s, are confined to question their own sense of place in their respective contexts. Hence, in light of the textual evidence provided, we see that Hamlet presents audiences across all ages with philosophically challenging questions concerning the enigmatic aspects of life through its thematic concerns and characters.
The transience of the play is primarily attributed to the unwilling hero, Hamlet, who is identifiable as both the modern rebel as well as the Renaissance thinker – reacting against tradition and convention through “words, words, words” as opposed to the “rapier”. His is the ultimate personality, the ultimate contradiction and he therefore becomes the ultimate tragic hero. Nevertheless, Hamlet’s interpretations are not limited by the ‘norm’ of certain contexts, as those of Freud, Olivier and Kiernan; rather we are able to study and adore the intrigue of Shakespeare’s poetic tale of revenge.
