Hamlet 6 Essay, Research Paper

Why seems it so particular with thee?

Hamlet: Seems, madam? Nay, it is. I know not seems

Tis not alone my inky cloak, good mother,

Nor customary suits of solemn black,

Nor windy suspiration of forc d breath,

No, nor the fruitful river in the eye,

Nor the dejected haviour of the visage,

Together with all forms, moods, shapes of grief,

That can denote me truly. These indeed seem,

For they are actions that a man might play;

But I have that within which passes show,

These but the trappings and the suits of woe. (Act One, Scene Two)

Hamlet and Ghosts

Three other Shakespeare plays have ghosts as characters: Julius Caesar (Brutus is visited by the ghost of Caesar), Macbeth (Banquo s ghost interrupts

Macbeth s banquet) and Richard III (the king is haunted by the ghosts of his victims). In Hamlet, the role of the ghost, who appears as early as the first

scene, is to trigger the action by revealing Claudius crime and by demanding vengeance. For the celebrated English critic John Dover Wilson (1881-1969), the

ghost of Hamlet s father is thus both a revenge-ghost and a prologue-ghost . It is one of Shakespeare s glories , he continues, that he took the conventional

puppet, humanised it, christianised it, and made it a figure that the spectators would recognise as real, as something which might be encountered in any lonely

graveyard at midnight . . . The Ghost in Hamlet comes, not from a mythical Tartarus, but from the place of departed spirits in which post-medieval England,

despite a veneer of Protestantism, still believed at the end of the sixteenth century . What Happens in Hamlet (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,

1982), p.52.

One should note Horatio s scepticism: at first he refuses to believe spirits can assume material form. Then, disconcerted on seeing the ghost, he nonetheless

tries to communicate with it by persuading it to speak in the name of heaven . In the end he gives some credence to the ghost whom he feels to be an omen of

some strange catastrophe for the kingdom.

The Soliloquies

1. O that this too sullied flesh would melt (Act One, Scene Two)

2. O all you host of heaven (Act One, Scene Five)

3. O what a rogue and peasant slave am I! (Act Two, Scene Two)

4. To be, or not to be, that is the question (Act Three, Scene One)

5. Tis now the very witching time of night (Act Three, Scene Three)

6. And so a goes to heaven (Act Three, Scene 3)

7. How all occasions do inform against me (Act Four, Scene Four)

Hamlet gives us seven soliloquies, all centred on the most important existential themes: the emptiness of existence, suicide, death, suffering, action, a fear of

death which puts off the most momentous decisions, the fear of the beyond, the degradation of the flesh, the triumph of vice over virtue, the pride and hypocrisy

of human beings, and the difficulty of acting under the weight of a thought which makes cowards of us all . He offers us also, in the last act, some remarks

made in conversation with Horatio in the cemetery which it is suitable to place in the same context as the soliloquies because the themes of life and death in

general and his attitude when confronted by his own death have been with him constantly. Four of his seven soliloquies deserve our special attention: O that

this too sullied flesh would melt , O what a rogue and peasant slave am I! , To be, or not to be, that is the question , and How all occasions do inform

against me .

Readings of these soliloquies are varied and diverse. However, three remarks are in order:

1.The density of Hamlet s thought is extraordinary. Not a word is wasted; every syllable and each sound expresses the depth of his reflection and the

intensity of his emotion. The spectator cannot but be hypnotised.

2.The language is extremely beautiful. Shakespeare was in love with words. His soliloquies are pieces of pure poetry, written in blank verse, sustained by

a rhythm now smooth, now rugged, by a fast or a slow pace, offering us surprises in every line.

3.The soliloquies are in effect the hidden plot of the play because, if one puts them side by side, one notices that the character of Hamlet goes through a

development which, in substance, is nothing other than the history of human thinking from the Renaissance to the existentialism of the twentieth

century.

The Hamlet of the first soliloquy is an outraged man who, disgusted by his sullied flesh , can see no outcome to his disgust other than death. To free himself

from the grip of his flesh he must put an end to his life. But there is the rub: God, the Everlasting, he tells us, does not allow one to act in this way. God still

rules the universe and Hamlet must obey his strictures.

O that this too too sullied flesh would melt,

Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew;

Or that the Everlasting had not fix d

His canon gainst self-slaughter.

Hamlet s attitude is different in To be, or not to be . He asks himself about death beyond religious considerations; the nature of his dilemma has changed,

as Hamlet tells us with a lucid simplicity.

To be, or not to be, that is the question:

Whether tis nobler in the mind to suffer

The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune

Or to take arms against a sea of troubles

And by opposing end them. To die, to sleep

No more; and by a sleep to say we end

The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks

That flesh is heir to; tis a consummation

Devoutly to be wish d. To die, to sleep;

To sleep, perchance to dream ay, there s the rub:

For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,

When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,

Must give us pause there s the respect

That makes calamity of so long life.

For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,

Th oppressor s wrong, the proud man s contumely,

The pangs of despis d love, the law s delay,

The insolence of office, and the spurns

That patient merit of th unworthy takes

When he himself might his quietus make

With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,

To grunt and sweat under a weary life,

But that the dread of something after death,

The undiscover d country, from whose bourn

No traveller returns, puzzles the will,

And makes us rather bear those ills we have

Than fly to others that we know not of?

Thus conscience does make cowards of us all,

And thus the native hue of resolution

Is sicklied o er with the pale cast of thought,

And enterprises of great pitch and moment

With this regard their currents turn awry

And lose the name of action.

In the first soliloquy Hamlet submits to rules and prohibitions; in the second he imagines and rationalises and decides to remain in the world, for the moment at

least. But he goes much further. Throughout the final act he pictures the final scene. There, where another dramatist would have given the dying Hamlet a long

discourse on death, Shakespeare has Hamlet say just a few words of disconcerting simplicity, the rest is silence , precisely because Hamlet has already said

everything before:

Alas, poor Yorick! (Act Five, Scene One) And a man s life s no more than to say one . (Act Five, Scene Two)

There is special providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will

come. The readiness is all. (Act Five, Scene Two)

The other two soliloquies are memorable because they reveal all the passionate nature of Hamlet s personality. Observing young Fortinbras and his army on

their way to conquer Poland an eggshell , a wisp of straw Hamlet, on the edge of despair, asks himself why he, when he has so many reasons, cannot stir

himself to action, why he cannot carry out the necessary act of vengeance. Why? Why? The last lines of Act Four are very revealing:

How all occasions do inform against me,

And spur my dull revenge. What is a man

If his chief good and market of his time

Be but to sleep and feed? A beast, no more.

Sure he that made us with such large discourse,

Looking before and after, gave us not

That capability and godlike reason

To fust in us unus d. Now whether it be

Bestial oblivion, or some craven scruple

Of thinking too precisely on th event -

A thought which, quarter d, hath but one part wisdom

And ever three parts coward I do not know

Why yet I live to say this thing s to do,

Sith I have cause, and will, and strength, and means

To do t. Examples gross as earth exhort me,

Witness this army of such mass and charge,

Led by a delicate and tender prince,

Whose spirit, with divine ambition puff d,

Makes mouths at the invisible event,

Exposing what is mortal and unsure

To all that fortune, death, and danger dare,

Even for an eggshell. Rightly to be great

Is not to stir without great argument,

But greatly to find quarrel in a straw

When honour s at the stake. How stand I then,

That have a father kill d, a mother stain d,

Excitements of my reason and my blood,

And let all sleep, while to my shame I see

The imminent death of twenty thousand men

That, for a fantasy and trick of fame,

Go to their graves like beds, fight for a plot

Whereon the numbers cannot try the cause,

Which is not tomb enough and continent

To hide the slain? O, from this time forth

My thoughts be bloody or be nothing worth.

Some actors, including the very best, believe that the most beautiful soliloquy is that which comes at the end of Act Two, immediately after the first

discussion between Hamlet and the travelling players. Here Hamlet is enraged, furious and rude. He lays himself, we feel, totally bare. He is no fool however.

Recovering his spirits he devises a plan which will lead the king to betray himself. This is Shakespeare at the height of his theatrical prowess, stamping

Hamlet s language with relentless changes in tone, the peaks of rage inter-cut with short moments of profound depression or of incredulous questioning.

O what a rogue and peasant slave am I!

Is it not monstrous that this player here,

But in a fiction, in a dream of passion,

Could force his soul so to his own conceit

That from her working all his visage wann d,

Tears in his eyes, distractions in his aspect,

A broken voice, and his whole function suiting

With forms to his conceit? And all for nothing!

For Hecuba!

What s Hecuba to him, or he to her,

That he should weep for her? What would he do

Had he the motive and the cue for passion

That I have? He would drown the stage with tears,

And cleave the general ear with horrid speech,

Make mad the guilty and appal the free,

Confound the ignorant, and amaze indeed

The very faculties of eyes and ears.

Yet I,

A dull and muddy-mettled rascal, peak

Like John-a-dreams, unpregnant of my cause

And can say nothing no, not for a king,

Upon whose property and most dear life

A damn d defeat was made. Am I a coward?

Who calls me villain, breaks my pate across,

Plucks off my beard and blows it in my face,

Tweaks me by the nose, gives me the lie i th throat

As deep as to the lungs who does me this?

Ha!

Swounds, I should take it: for it cannot be

But I am pigeon-liver d and lack gall

To make oppression bitter, or ere this

I should ha fatted all the region kites

With this slave s offal. Bloody, bawdy villain!

Remorseless, treacherous, lecherous, kindless villain!

Why, what an ass am I! This is most brave,

That I, the son of a dear father murder d,

Prompted to my revenge by heaven and hell,

Must like a whore unpack my heart with words

And fall a-cursing like a very drab,

A scullion! Fie upon t! Foh!

About, my brains. Hum I have heard

That guilty creatures sitting at a play

Have, by the very cunning of the scene,

Been struck so to the soul that presently

They have proclaim d their malefactions.

For murder, though it have no tongue, will speak

With most miraculous organ. I ll have these players

Play something like the murder of my father

Before mine uncle. I ll observe his looks;

I ll tent him to the quick. If a do blench

I know my course. {…}

The play s the thing

Wherein I ll catch the conscience of the king.

The character of Hamlet is without doubt one of the roles most coveted by actors. However, some claim it is also one of the easiest. The text is so beautiful and

so expressive that it merely has to be spoken; it flows by itself effortlessly and it only remains for the actor to be coherent for the duration of the performance.

Yet it is here that choices have to be made. How should one approach these soliloquies? Should one treat them as pieces of music and approach them as one

would the arias of an opera? Shakespeare s language certainly lends itself to such an approach. Or should one see these speeches as Hamlet s thoughts which

he expresses aloud, and deliver them as if he were speaking to himself? Alternatively, isn t Hamlet in the act of saying something to the public through the

special and particular magic of the theatre, isn t he taking us into his confidence in an act of communion which resembles, in some aspects, an act of love?

These three approaches are possible, as well as others, of course.

Hamlet and Theatre

More than any of his other plays, Shakespeare s Hamlet is pure theatre, a theatre cascading through three or four layers, like Russian dolls.

1.Structurally Hamlet offers all the characteristics of classical tragedy. The first act gives us nearly all the elements necessary to drive the plot. The

second act accelerates the action until the formidable explosions of the third act, which can only lead to the tragic denouement of the fifth act. The play

is long and some directors don t hesitate to make drastic cuts (Rosencrantz and Guildenstern sometimes disappear totally, Ophelia s interventions are

shortened, and the cemetery scene is reduced to an absolute minimum, as are Hamlet s conversations with the travelling players).

2.There are numerous remarks about theatre itself in the play and Shakespeare obviously makes use of his principal character to make a number of

observations on the acting of the players and, by extension, on acting methods and conventions in London at the turn of the seventeenth century. Be

natural, he tells them, don t overdo it ( hold as twere a mirror up to nature ; I would have such a fellow whipped for o erdoing Termagant. It

out-Herods Herod ). To this are added some observations on the young boys who play female roles. This is Shakespeare the master speaking. He tells

us how things should be, or tries to, for it is not an easy matter, as he is about to show us in a moment. In any case, if one can judge from the sharpness

of some of his comments, the acting of some of his contemporaries was such that he would have happily sent them to be flogged! Clearly, Shakespeare

is settling a few accounts here; what is astonishing is that, to do so, he has to stop the action and suspend the plot. Only he, Shakespeare, could afford

such a thing.

3.The play within the play the theatre within theatre occupies the heart of Act Three. It does have its function within the plot, although it is not

absolutely certain that it really enables Hamlet to flush out the king, but above all it is a striking example of what theatre should not be. Being bad

actors, the players fall into all the traps Hamlet has just warned them against, and give us a piece of bad theatre. This is Shakespeare at his most

sardonic, but he may be the butt of his own irony: imagine Shakespeare s Hamlet acted as badly in front of Shakespeare whilst he admonishes his

own actors, in the same play, for acting in such a way!

4.Great theatre is therefore to be found elsewhere in his play, and in no way is Shakespeare economical with it. Let us remember that Hamlet hides

behind his antick disposition for the greater part of the play; it is therefore important to remember that he is an actor, and that he acts so well that

none of the other characters ever succeeds in reading him. But Shakespeare sprinkles other choice pieces of theatre within theatre throughout the

play, the most successful and striking being without doubt the meeting between Hamlet and Ophelia in Act Two, Scene 1. Not a word is exchanged but

many things occur. It is a mime, an almost ritualistic dance the full meaning of which we cannot be sure has not escaped us. Hamlet is a master actor,

an amateur who acts a hundred times better than the inept professionals of the mime in the third act. There it is, that is good theatre, Shakespeare tells

us. However this genius of a director goes further still: this mime does not take place on the stage; in a supreme paradox, it only exists through

language, for it is through the words of Ophelia that it is given life in the theatre of our imagination. A perfectly real illusion, it takes shape in our

minds through another illusion: the language and acting of the actor on the stage. The mise-en-abyme of the mime through language. Only

Shakespeare could risk this, and succeed.

With Hamlet Shakespeare has bequeathed us a supreme gift. It is a testament in which the creative genius of its author shines out, demonstrating his

knowledge of the human spirit, his mastery of plot, and the unbelievable wealth of his language. But there is too much theatre within theatre in this play for us

not to see that through a sustained engagement with this theme Shakespeare wanted to discover and to make known a truth rarely grasped, or even perhaps to

tell us that there is no truth, save for that truth given existence by a genius through theatrical devices, representation, illusion and art. This is what Tom Stoppard

understood very well, when, in his play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, he took the two most insignificant characters in Hamlet, turned them into

heroes, and reproduced entire passages from Shakespeare’s play. This is theatre in its purest form which self reflexively claims itself as such. That idea was

already present in Hamlet.

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