Death and Decay: two words that give the image of something rotting, smelling foul and going

to waste.
In Shakespeare’s play Hamlet, these two words symbolize the majority of the storyline and the entirety
of the action occurring in the play. Whether the focus is on the death of the majority of the characters,
or the decay that comes along with those deaths as well as the decay of “the state of Denmark” (1.4,
100), the theme is reoccurring. Because death and decay are so prevalent throughout Hamlet, it could
be said that Shakespeare intended for them to be a major theme.

Decay, a decomposition of an idea, object or body is a major attribute to the Ghosts soliloquy spoken to
Hamlet. The hebona poison is a deadly component that in itself leads to the decay of a body. This
soliloquy is filled with words relating to decay; some could say Shakespeare’s point was to give the
audience this image. An example of how the Ghost mentions decay is when he speaks of the “leprous
distilment” (1.5. 71), and “a most instant tetter barked about, /most lazar-like, with vile and loathsome
crust…” (78-80). In itself, the idea of a leprous distilment gives the disgusting idea of something
infectious and corrupting. When he speaks of the “tetter [that] bark[s] about, [which is] lazar-like..” he is
referring to a scab that looks like a leprous skin disease, melting away and disintegrating at his skin, or
causing his skin to scab and deteriorate. The theme of death and decay is very obvious in the Ghosts
soliloquy, and illustrates the image of decease and rot in its most important context. The passing of King
Hamlet is a strong influence on the play itself.

Throughout the play, death and decay is brought up several times. Since this theme drives the play
through, it is important of Shakespeare to allude to it several times so that the play maintains a sort of
solemn feeling. Many characters throughout the play use murder or suicide as a solution to their
problems, and the decay that follows this death is often mentioned. A valid example of this theme is
illustrated when Hamlet and the King are speaking of the location of Polonius after Hamlet has killed
him. Hamlet tells the King he is “not where he eats, but where he is eaten.” (4.3, 22). This sentence in
itself exemplifies decay: it illustrates the idea of a dead body being eaten as it rots, and Hamlet hints to
the King that his body “is not where he eats,” (perhaps some sort of dining hall), “but where he is
eaten,” (where his body is being devoured.) As he continues, he speaks of a “convocation of politic
worms,” or the Diet of Worms called upon by the city of Worms. Although Hamlet could be saying this in
a literal way, in another sense a Diet of Worms illustrates that a person feeds off of worms, that they are
on a worm diet. He later speaks of the idea that after a King dies worms will feed from his flesh and then
that same worm will be used as bait to fish with. After this, the fish will have eaten the worm and a poor
beggar will eat that fish, meaning he has also fed on the worm inside the fish. Because of this, the
peasant now has the Kings flesh in his body, forming somewhat of a full circle. What Hamlet has said
relates to the theme of death and decay because not only must a body be dead in order for it to perish,
but worms and maggots aid in the process of rotting as well as feed off from it.

What is being suggested by Hamlets conversation with the King about worms and maggots and the
location of Polonius and his dead body suggests and shows many similar and different ideas with the
Ghosts soliloquy. One parallel among them is that the Ghost of King Hamlets body is telling Hamlet to
seek revenge on his death, which in turn will result in the death of another person, this being Claudius.
The idea that one death will lead to another, whom caused the death of the first person relates to the
full circle aspect of what Hamlet said to Claudius. In both situations, one event is caused by another,
which causes another, and so on and so forth. Also, a very obvious similarity is that in each situation
death occurs, and because of this death there is decay. A difference between the two is that there are
different reasons for the killings in both situations, King Hamlet is killed for Claudius’ benefit and
Polonius is killed either by accident or because of madness. This is showing that although death causes
various events, the events that occur depend highly on the reasoning for the killing.

Death can be the result not only of disease, poison and sickness, but also of rotteness,
corruption and decay. In the first part of the play the atmosphere of corruption and decay is
presented in a more general way. Marcellus says : ‘Something is rotten in the state of Denmark’ (I,
V, 90). The imagery of decay used here foreshadows that the king’s throne (the state of Denmark)
is on shaky ground because Hamlet will shortly find out that his father was murdered and not
bitten by a snake, as it was originally thought ; it also reveals the building atmosphere of suspicion
(something is rotten).

The theme of death and decay in Hamlet ties the entirety of the play together. Not only does the play
start off with the death of King Hamlet, but because of this the whole play is filled with thoughts and
actions of suicide, murder and death. Shakespeare uses the images of death and decay regularly
throughout the play in many different ways, and each passing of a character relates to another death
before it. Decay is used in many ways throughout Hamlet, whether it be the decay of Denmark, the
decay of moral or emotions, but the majority of it relating to the decay of a dead body. Because the
decay of a body is not possible unless the body is deceased, once a character dies in the play rotting or
the eating of flesh is usually mentioned thereafter. Without death and decay occurring, there would be
no Hamlet, since every other theme and idea from the play directs to the two.

Hamlet, Shakespeare was preoccupied with the corruption of mortal flesh. From the famous first
statement of the idea in Marcellus' "Something is rotten in the state of Denmark" to Hamlet's discourse
with the Gravediggers on the lamentable condition of the bodies they disinter

Every Elizabethan citizen knew from personal observation the reek of a gangrenous wound or a
cancerous sore. Thus the fact that human flesh may well begin to rot even before death, and that the
process is accelerated and even more loathsome afterwards-witness the stench of unburied "pocky
corses"

Hamlet introduces as into a world defined as “weary, stale, flat and unprofitable”, into an “unweeded
garden” pervaded by “things rank and gross in nature”. It is a diseased world that must be cured by
abandoning corruption and upholding honesty. The play is pervaded by images of an ulcerous country in
need of healing. Occasionally, the disease imagery is closely linked to images related to withering plants
and spreading weeds, metaphors that indicate personal and also political decadence and corruption.
Denmark turned into a microcosm of the whole universe in Hamlet’s mind, turns into a mental cankered
prison to Hamlet; a prison from which he can escape only through his brilliant and ironic use of
language. Through his witty rhetoric, Hamlet rejects political disorder and corruption in certain scenes
where references to the king’s usurpation of power acquire a comic nature

Lucius Annaeus Seneca once said, Death is the wish of some, the relief of many, and the end of
all. In Hamlet, Prince Hamlet struggles to cope with his father’s death and his mother’s rash
decision to marry his uncle, King’s Hamlet brother, Claudius, less than a month after his father’s
death. After an unexpected visit from his father’s ghost, Hamlet discovers that his uncle
murdered his father. This new information sets Hamlet on a path of revenge that is highly
entwined with death. As Hamlet devotes himself to avenging his father’s death, he appears to
enter into a deep melancholy and apparent madness.

C.S. Lewis said that the thing to remember about Hamlet is that it is about a man ‘who has been given a
task by a ghost’.2 There is no ghost in Saxo Grammaticus’s version of the Hamlet story, though there is
in Belleforest’s. We do not possess the Elizabeth Hamlet which preceded Shakespeare’s, but we know
form Lodge’s reference to it that it contained a ghost. Curiously, we do possess Kyd’s inverse Hamlet—
for The Spanish Tragedy is about a father avenging his son—and there the whole action is watched by a
dead man

As time goes on, Hamlet almost becomes obsessed with death to the point where he
contemplates it from numerous perspectives. In William Shakespeare’s, Hamlet, Hamlet
evaluates death and suicide morally, religiously, and visually throughout the novel to reveal the
complexity of choosing life versus death. After a sudden death, everyone reacts and experiences
their grief differently from those around them. Less than one month after King Hamlet’s death,
Prince Hamlet mourns the loss of his father as any typical person would do. Hamlet’s depressive
state leads to an intervention from his mother and uncle. His mother, Gertrude, questions why
Hamlet seems to be sad and depressed. She states, Do not forever with thy vail lids, seek for thy
noble father in the dust. Need a custom essay on the same topic? Give us your paper
requirements, choose a writer and we’ll deliver the highest-quality essay! ORDER NOW Thou
know’st ’tis common; all that lives must die (I.2.72). She attempts to explain to Hamlet that
death is a natural part of life and at some point everyone must die. Which is why she tells Hamlet
that it would be better if he moved past his father’s death and no longer hold onto him. However,
Hamlet is unable to accept and move on after his father’s sudden death. Hamlet asserts, Seems,’
madam? Nay, it is. I know not seems’ (I.2.79). Hamlet firmly confirms that he understand that at
some point everyone must die, but at the moment he truly feels grief and wants to express it.
Hamlet’s uncle, Claudius, responds to Hamlet with not so loving advice, he states, But you must
learn your father lost a father, That father lost, lost his (I. 2. 92). Claudius tells Hamlet that yes
he lost his father, but everyone does, it truly isn’t a big deal. Claudius proclaims death is human
nature and everyone must die, thus there is no reason to mourn over them for very long. Gertrude
and Claudius both declare that while death is sad, the only thing that can be done is to move on
and live life before death comes for Hamlet to. Throughout the play, Hamlet begins to question
the religious dilemma that is connected with suicide. Early on, Hamlet states, O, that this too, too
solid flesh would melt, thaw, and resolve itself into a dew, or that the Everlasting had not fixed
his canon ‘gainst self-slaughter! (I.2.133). After his mother’s wedding, Hamlet wants nothing
more than just to die, but to commit suicide is a sin in the eyes of God. Thus, by committing
suicide he would simply be damning himself to hell, which will also cause pain and
suffering.Leading Hamlet to dismiss the thought and prolong his suffering.

The rest of Hamlet's speech, contrasting with the high sentences of the King's address to him, is flecked
with base images of decay (the world is overgrown by "things rank and gross in nature"-rank in two
senses) and of parasitism, which is often linked with decay (the Queen had clung to the elder Hamlet "As
if increase of appetite had grown/ By what it fed on").

As Hamlet begins to suffer the effects of the death and pain that surrounds him, he begins to
contemplate once again if there is any point to continue living. Within his famous soliloquy in
Act 3, scene 1, Hamlet presents the morality of choosing to end one’s own life. He proposes the
dilemma of choosing to commit suicide as an escape from life’s troubles, or to live because of
fear of the unknown. He begins with, 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 (III.1.64). Hamlet weighs the consequences of giving up or fighting the pain, struggling
to find what the right thing to do is. Hamlet is able to recognize that others who suffer also wish
for death, but doesn’t know if he should kill himself because he is unsure if death will truly bring
him peace.He concludes that the only reason people end up choosing to live is because of the
uncertainty of the afterlife. Hamlet states, Who would fardels bear, to grunt and sweat under a
weary life, But that the dread of something after death (III.1.84). Hamlet now wonders if it
would just be easier to suffer through life than it is to escape into the undiscovered country
(III.1.87). While Hamlet would rather die than to live in a world where his uncle killed his father
and married his mother, but the idea of venturing into death that holds no certainty is terrifying.
While death seems to be a peaceful release from life, the afterlife is unpredictable and no living
soul knows what occurs after death.

Hamlet identifies Polonius as a fishmonger, a term which, in addition to other appropriate aspects that
have been pointed out by the commentators, has its own od6rous value. And then he reads in his book:
"For if the sun breed maggots in a dead dog, being a god kissing carrion -Have you a daughter?" he
suddenly asks. "Let her not walk i' th' sun. Conception is a blessing, but not as your daughter may
conceive." And here we have a recurrence of the image already noted in the second scene of the play:
Claudius as the sun, and the sun as an agent of noisome corruption, which, according to the pseudo-
science of the time, resulted in turn in the breeding of new life.

. Claudius, the poisoner, kills the king, poisoning in the same time the whole country. The juice he pours
into the ear of old Hamlet is a combination of poison and disease, a ‘leperous distillment’ that curds ‘the
thin and wholesome blood’. (I, V, 64, 70).
As the play comes to a close, Hamlet ponders on the futility of death. In Act IV, scene 3, Hamlet
answers Claudius’ question, Now Hamlet, where’s Polonius? (IV. 3. 19), by saying: Not where
he eats, but where he is eaten. A certain convocation of politic worms are e’en at him. Your
worm is your only emperor for diet. We fat all creatures else to fat us, and we fat ourselves for
maggots (IV. 3.22). Hamlet illustrates with gruesome imagery of rot and decay that occurs after
death to suggest that it doesn’t matter who the person was in life, because they all end up in the
same place inside a worm. While, Polonius was a nobleman in life, in death he is just food for
the worms to allow them to survive. Symbolizing the inevitability of death, from the King to the
lowest beggar. e was constantly and repellently illustrated in the everyday life of Shakespeare's time. In
his plays generally, Shakespeare habitually uses allusions to the rotting of flesh as a vivid way of
symbolizing repugnant ideas. In Hamlet, however, he not only lays heavier emphasis than in any other
play upon bodily corruption, but stresses, to a degree found nowhere else, the revolting odors that
accompany the process

The graveyard scene offers a meditation on death, first of all by the preparations for Ophelia’s
funeral.The death of Ophelia introduces a slightly different tone, as it is associated with flower
imagery, in opposition to the other cruel deaths (king Hamlet’s, Polonius’). When she dies, she is
surrounded by ‘ crowflowers, nettles, daisies and long purples…’ (IV, VII, 168). Even when buried,
flowers are buried along with her. Gertrude strews Ophelia’s grave not with  ‘dust to dust’ but
with ‘sweets to the sweet’ (V, I, 236). Flowers symbolize innocence; they are pure and easily
destroyed, just like Ophelia.

The presence of the skull in the graveyard scene also leads to a meditation on death. Beginning
with the IV th century, the skeleton became the accepted Christian symbol of death i. The skull
reminds man not of the futility of life, but of the inevitability and the meaning of death. Hamlet’s
encounter with Yorick’s skull represents a moment of mourning. When the bones tossed up by the
gravediggers are anonymous, Hamlet is cynical; but his caustic cynicism ceases when Yorick’s skull
comes to the surface and the gravedigger names it. The thing Hamlet holds in his hand recalls the
memory from his childhood, even if what is alive in his mind seems reduced to the decayed skull:

Hamlet illustrates this concept of deterioration in the grave once more in Act 5. In his scene with
the gravediggers, Hamlet finds the skull of Yorick, the King’s jesters. While speaking to the
skull, Hamlet wonders if the skull of Alexander the Great looks similar after decay. Hamlet then
states, Alexander died, Alexander was buried, Alexander returneth to dust: the dust is earth; of
earth we make loam; and why of that loam whereto he was converted might they not stop a beer
barrel? (V. 1.216). Hamlet once again muses on the process of decaying that a body goes
through after death. In this state, he ponders what existence leads to. Hamlet discusses the no
matter what a person did during their life, even if they were absolutely amazing, in the end, they
always go back to where they came from. Hamlet recognizes that in death the mighty ruler,
Alexander the Great, is no different from a simple jester.

‘Alas, poor Yorick. I knew him, Horatio, a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy. He hath
bore me on his back a thousand times, and now-how abhorred in my imagination it is. My gorge
rises at it’. (V, I, 178-182)

There is a contradiction, a clash between what is still vital in the memory and what is dead.
Hamlet solves it by projecting the living memory onto the skull and lips onto the death’s head. He
shifts from commentary to direct address:

‘ Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know not how oft. Where be your gibes now, your
gambols, your songs, your flashes of merriment, that were wont to set the table on a roar ? Not
one now to mock your own grinning ? Quite chop-fallen ?’ (V, I, 183-186)

The Yorick Hamlet used to know, the Yorick in his mind would have mocked his own death,
because this was his profession: he was a jester. The Yorick in Hamlet’s hand is somber, ‘  grinning’
but quite  ‘chop-fallen’. The moment of direct address marks Hamlet’s position in front of death;
Hamlet becomes Yorick, the jester mocking his own grinning. Hamlet’s speech indicates that he is
resignated to death, but it is not a resignation of despair. The speech states the fact that man has
no reason to fear the death of the body, but only the death of the soul. In this graveyard scene
Hamlet confronts, recognizes and accepts the condition of being man.

He compares the fighting between Norway and Poland to a tumour that grows out of too much
prosperity. For him, the country and the people in it are like a sick body needing medicine or the
surgeon’s knife.

Claudius, in his turn, uses disease imagery about Hamlet. When he hears of the murder of
Polonius, he declares that this is the action of a man with ‘ a foul disease’ who

‘ To keep it from divulging, let it feed

Even on the pith of life’. (IV, I, 22-23)

Later, he justifies his stratagem of sending Hamlet to England by the proverbial tag:

‘ disease desperate grown

By desperate appliance are relieved,

 Or not at all’. (IV, III, 9-11)

He asks the English king for help, just like a fever patient asks for sedatives ii:

‘ For like the hectic in my blood he rages,

And thou must cure me’. (IV, III, 69-70)

Seems, madam! Nay, it is; I know not "seems."

Hamlet says this line to his mother Gertrude when she inquires why he “seems” to be so dismayed. He
corrects her word choice and points out that his sadness is an accurate re 昀氀 ection of his emotional
state after his father’s death—rather than an external performance of mourning. The difference
between the truth of interior emotions (“is”) and exterior presentations in a social context (“seems”) is a
critical theme throughout Hamlet. Many of the characters hide their true intentions in order to plot
against others, and Hamlet’s actions, in particular, are the subject of much skepticism. As he becomes
increasingly irrational and distraught, both the other characters and the audience of Shakespeare’s work
are tasked to determine whether these behaviors are appearances or realities. Hamlet has encapsulated
this central concern of the play, here, within the correction of a single verb. The passage points out that
while other characters may be more likely to attribute actions to displays of emotion, Hamlet holds a
commitment to actual sentiment. Of course, we also must be skeptical of such a line: Perhaps Hamlet’s
insistence on the “is” actually reveals just how carefully he coordinates his speeches. But regardless of
whether we trust him, it is clear that he and Shakespeare have put high stakes on linguistic precision and
the coherence between belief and act.

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

While Polonius and Claudius hide and eavesdrop, Hamlet breaks into this most famous soliloquy,
perhaps the bestknown speech in the English language. Hamlet returns to the question of suicide,
wondering if it would be preferable to end his life or not. Though Hamlet’s language has grown more
direct from its earlier references to "dew," it still speaks to his passivity in the face of desperation. He
phrases the question of death in the abstract with the in 昀椀 nitive verb forms “to be, or not to be”—
and makes it “the question” of humanity, as opposed to a personal matter. These choices imply that the
decision whether or not to exist is a constant struggle for each person, a struggle that Hamlet tries to
mediate through the metric of what is “nobler in the mind.” This phrase implies that death is evaluated
based on perceived correctness or social value, as opposed to, say, a universal ethical system. For the
two options themselves, Hamlet chooses evocative images: “To be” is put in relatively more passive
terms as a continuous process of “suffering” an onslaught of external attacks from “outrageous
fortune”—that is to say, the constant in 昀氀 ux of events that cannot be shifted in one’s destiny.
Suicide, on the other hand, is presented as an active 昀椀 ght that wages war on “a sea of troubles” and,
indeed, is successful in the endeavor. The phrase “by opposing end them” seems noble or glorious, but
what it literally means is to vanquish one’s “outrageous fortune” by ending one’s life. Thus Hamlet
presents his lack of suicide not as the result of insuf 昀椀 cient desperation, but rather his apathy from
wishing to take on such a 昀椀 ght. Life becomes, for him, a constant decision of whether he will 昀椀
nally arrive at suf 昀椀 cient motivation to shift course and end his and/or Claudius’s life

makes man “look before and after”,

that is, connect past and future events
and reflect upon the motives and
consequences of our actions. Since
beasts do not have that quality, they
are always stuck in the present
moment. That is the reason why
Hamlet wonders whether he does not
carry out his revenge out of a “bestial
oblivion”. Hamlet’s reflections depict
a human being that shares both divine
and brutal qualities. Such a
portrayal of the human nature had
already been stated by Pico della
Mirandola who considered that, since
humans were given both divine and
earthly qualities, their actions could
turn them into either gods or beasts.
Montaigne, on the contrary, considers
that it is man’s vanity what makes him
“equall himself to God, that he
ascribeth divine conditions unto
himself, that he selecteth himself from
out the ranke of other creatures”.
Hamlet’s depiction of human beings
occasionally appropriates Montaigne’s
idea that “of all creatures man is
the most miserable and fraile, and
therewithal the proudest and
disdainfullest”. To Hamlet, human
beings can
become inferior to beasts.
Hamlet’s description of his father as
god and Claudius as a beast draws the
picture of a world in which the
bestial part of human nature has
defeated the godlike one by creating a
world pervaded by “carnal, bloody,
and unnatural acts”. A possible escape
from such a world is death. In his most
famous soliloquy “To be or not
to be, that is the question” he develops
such an idea. The text could be
referring to Hamlet’s own suicide, to
suicide in general terms, to the
advantages and disadvantages of
human existence, to whether Hamlet
should
kill the king or not, or to whether he
should go on with his plans to make
the king confess. As with many
other issues in the play, this text is
open to multiple interpretations but
what is certain is that it is a
philosophical reflection about death
and suicide. The only way to escape
“the slings and arrows of outraged
fortune” is by committing suicide. The
identification between death and sleep
was also made by Montaigne.
Though Shakespeare compares death
with sleep, it is not a dreamless one.
Suicide would lead to damnation
and it would turn sleep into a
nightmare. Thus the fear of “what
dreams may come” “must give us
pause” and
“the dread of something after death”
“puzzles the will”. Consequently,
death is out of man’s control. The only
right attitude towards death is to be
ready to die. In Hamlet we find the
idea that “our thoughts are ours,
their ends none of our own” since
“there’s a divinity that shapes our
ends” God, and not man, is entitled to
end one’s life. Therefore, according to
Hamlet, the correct way to face death
is as follows: “If it be now, ‘tis not
to come. If it be not to come, it will be
now. If it be now, yet it will come.
The readiness is all”. Again
Shakespeare goes back to Montaigne’s
philosophical ideas about death.
It is interesting to observe how
Shakespeare’s mingling of opposing
ideas about human nature adds
dramatic
richness to a play in which complexity
is an essential ingredient. The intricate
nature of man is exemplified in
Hamlet’s characterisation. Hamlet is
presented as a madman, a philosopher,
a lover, a son, an avenger, a
clown, an actor, a playwright, a
prince. But we cannot really define his
nature, since he, as the nature of
human beings, is multiple and resists
labels.
The image of death is also to be encountered on an intertextual level in Hamlet, in a speech from a play
based on Virgil’s Aeneid. The speech describes Pyrrhus raging through the streets of Troy to revenge the
death of his father, until he finds and kills the aged and defenceless Priam.
 The image of death is as violent in this scene as in the Ghost’s account of the murder; Pyrrhus,
beyond all control, is covered in blood that is dried and baked on to him, so that he is  ‘impasted’
or encrusted with it (in the same way in which the poison administrated by Claudius to the king
caused his skin to become covered with  ‘a vile and loathsome crust’).

In the graveyard scene, Hamlet meditates on  ‘how long a man will lie in the earth ere he rot’. (V,
I, 158) Even when he speaks of himself he uses images of decay: he compares himself with a
whore, a drab and a scullion:

‘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 !’ (II, II, 579-583)

For Claudius,

‘ the people are muddied,

Thick and unwholesome in their thoughts and whispers’. (IV, V, 81-82)

All these images present the state of things in Denmark, comparable to a tumour poisoning the
whole body, while showing

‘no cause without

why the man dies’. (IV, IV, 28-29)

By marrying Gertrude, his brother’s wife, Claudius violated the natural order and by this
violation his state is  ‘rotten’ and evil is established. Although he was legally elected monarch,
Claudius is an usurper and he is trying to take over the body politic of Denmark. This unlawful
take-over is symbolically suggested by the incestuous taking over of the body of the Queen
Gertrude. The lustful seduction of the body of Denmark’s queen stands for the rape of the body
politic of Denmark. Hamlet uses the word ‘Denmark’ ambiguously, now referring to the body
politic, now to Claudius, now to the murdered king, and this shows the iseparable link between
the king and his state.
 The Queen herself is associated with the idea of decay. The Ghost compares Gertrude’s sin to
preying on garbage. Hamlet compares Gertrude’s second marriage to a ‘nasty sty’ (III, IV, 95) and
urges her not to ‘spread the compost on the weeds to make them ranker’ (III, IV, 153-154). He
speaks of her sin as a blister on the ‘fair forehead of an innocent love’.(III, IV, 43) The emotions are
so strong that the metaphor overflaws into the verbs and adjectives, all suggesting not only decay,
but also disease : heaven’s face, he tells her, is  ‘thought-sick’ (III, IV, 51). She has married
Claudius, so her sense must be not only ‘sickly’ but also ‘apoplex’d’ (III, IV, 73, 80).

The smell of sin and corruption is blended with the parfume of flowers continually associated
with Ophelia (the flowers she distributes in her madness, the flowers she is wearing at her death,
the flowers the Queen drops in her grave) and together they form the scent of death that ponders
over the whole play.

As they suggest violance, the images of war also point, indirectly, to the idea of death. Some of
them are suggested by the campaigns of Hamlet’s father and those of Fortinbras. Others simply
underline the martial qualities of the hero. But their main dramatic function is to emphasize that
Hamlet and Claudius are engaged in a battle to death. This is clear when Hamlet speaks of himself
and his uncle as ‘mighty opposites’. All through the play the war imagery reminds us of the
struggle. Laertes urges his sister:

‘And keep you in the rear of your affection,

Out of the shot and danger of desire’. (I, III, 34-35)

Polonius, in the same scene, exhorts her to set her

‘entreatements at a higher rate

Than a command to parley’. (I, III, 122-123)

Later, he compares the temtations of the flesh with a ‘general assault’.

Hamlet and the Revenge Tragedy Tradition

1. The contextual origins of Hamlet, however, lie far beneath Hamlet stories, deep within
the mythic archetypes of Greek tragedy (fifth century BCE), particularly the drama of
Orestes’ revenge.
Shakespeare probably never read Greek tragedy directly, but he may have come across
Erasmus’s Latin translations and he certainly knew Latin adaptations by Seneca (c. 4
BCE – 65 CE), the popular playwright Polonius invokes as a model for tragedy (“Seneca
cannot be too heavy,” 2.2. 327-28).
 The great Greek playwrights Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides variously depict
Orestes finally avenging the murder of his father Agamemnon by slaying his mother
Clytemnestra and her lover Aegisthus.
Orestes prefigures Hamlet in this general action and in many significant particulars. Beset
with the moral paradoxes of revenge, Orestes acts to fulfil the will of the gods and
Apollo’s oracle, but in so doing invites divine retribution: pursuit by the Erinyes, those
relentless winged goddesses.
2. Thomas Kyd – Spanish Tragedy – first Elizabethan revenge tragedy [c. 1582 - 1592]

Kyd taking his ideas from Roman playwright Senenca – but Seneca only reports on the
mayhem and bloodshed, whereas Kyd dramatizes it.

3. From the beginning Shakespeare exploits and subverts the classical traditions that
bequeathed to later generations a three-part revenge action consisting of (1) Atrocity,
(2) the Creation of the Revenger, and (3) Atrocity. He does not depict the initial
atrocity, the killing of king and father, in the disturbingly vivid imagery of Aeschylus’s
Agamemnon, for example, or in Seneca’s bright purples; he shrouds the murder in the
mists of the Elsinore night.
4. Like classical spirits, the ghost of King Hamlet begins the revenge action by revealing his
foul, unnatural murder and demanding vengeance. But unlike those phantasms, King
Hamlet says nothing in his first appearances (contrast this with the very vocal ghost of
Spanish Tragedy—Andrea's ghost and the spirit of Revenge are present onstage
throughout the entirety of the play and serve as chorus. At the beginning of each act,
Andrea bemoans the series of injustices that have taken place and then Revenge reassures
him that those deserving will get their comeuppance.), then refuses to reveal the secrets
of the next life, and finally sounds strangely moral, lamenting his own spiritual
unreadiniess for death: (1.5. 76-80: “cut off… most horrible.”
5. [spiritually inclined ghost] The ghost bitterly regrets missing three Catholic
sacraments—the Eucharist (“unhouseled”), Penance (“disappointed”), and Extreme
Unction (“unaneled”). He exhorts Hamlet to leave the punishment of the Queen “to
heaven”—a conditional revenge: 1.5 85-7: “taint not thy mind…”
6. This then, is a strange ghost, not one typical of revenge tragedies. As Stephen Greenblatt
has suggested, the ghost is a confusing mix of disparate elements and incompatible
theologies, classical and Christian—it is part classical shade, part demonic spirit, and part
Purgatorial ghost.
7. [strange—too Christian?—revenger]: Nor is Hamlet a typical revenger: he is simply
too doubtful. Urged to revenge, Hamlet nevertheless ponders the “questionable shape”
(1.4.43) of the ghost, “spirit of health or goblin damned” (40). Unlike classical avengers,
Hamlet wonders if the initial atrocity ever really occurred, fearing that the story might
be a trap, the ghost really a devil who abuses him only to damn him. Relocated in a
Christian context, the classical imperatives of revenge imperil the soul as well as the
body.
8. Hamlet conceives of the mousetrap play in order to confirm the ghost’s story, but this
only plunges him into deeper perplexities. For the Murder of Gonzago represents not
only the actual murder of King Hamlet but also Hamlet’s intended murder of King
Claudius. Note that the assassin in the play in not the victim’s brother, but “One
Lucianus, nephew to the king” (3.2. 229).
9. The initial atrocity thus merges disturbingly with the projected one, and the killing of
King Hamlet looks much like the anticipated killing of King Claudius. To revenge his
father, Hamlet must re-enact the initial atrocity: he must kill the king. This paradox
puzzles his will and turns awry his enterprise of great pitch and moment.
10. Beset by such doubts, Hamlet struggles to fulfil the second phase of classical revenge
action, the creation of the self as revenger.
11. The classical revenge tradition becomes, for Hamlet, a resource to turn to for inspiration.
And indeed both in adopting madness as a disguise, and in turning to a confidant
(Horatio) he imitates the Orestian model. In true humanist style, Hamlet conjures a
classical model, Pyrrhus, revenger and king-killer, as an example in self-fashioning. He
makes the players act out Aeneas’s tale to Dido and the slaughter of King Priam by the
avenging Pyrrhus (“the hellish Pyrrhus… he whose sable arms… [2.2. 370-87).
12. Trying to imitate the prototype, Hamlet later speaks the violent, sanguinary language of
revenge, threatening in Senecan fashion to disrupt the daily processes of nature: “Now
could I drink hot blood,/ And do such business as the bitter day/ Would quake to look
on…” (3.2. 362-4). But are these merely “words, words, words”?
13. He refuses to slay Claudius at prayer in 3.3, so that he may damn him later, so “that his
soul may be damned and black/As hell, whereto it goes” (94-95). In this very dark desire,
at least in this one scene, Hamlet—oddly—not only resembles the classical revenger,
but outdoes him. He puts into chilling practice Atreus’s famous dictum concerning
revenge: (“Crimes you don’t avenge, unless you outdo them” [Seneca, Thyestes].
Hamlet’s display of classical ferocity in the Prayer Scene appalled Samuel Johnson, who
considered the scene “too horrible to read or to be uttered” (The Plays of William
Shakespeare [1765].
14. HOWEVER, the very mention of damnation and hell undermines his attempt to play
the classical revenger, to outdo the crimes of his victim. These terms evoke the Judeo-
Christian moral universe that is wholly alien and inimical to such vindictive action.
In this world murder and revenge are sins, God judges and punishes sinners, and hellfire
awaits the damned.
15. [Hamlet’s inconsistencies reflected by shifting registers of language] Hamlet’s self-
creation as a classical revenger proceeds inconsistently, by fits and starts. He stabs
Polonius brutally and grapples with Laertes at Ophelia’s grave, ranting in high style. This
rhetoric of outrage, however, alternates with very different speech rhythms and registers
—witty banter, philosophical inquiry, odd snatches of verse and song, and anguished
soliloquy:
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—(3.1. 57-65)
16. Compare this to Hieronimo in Spanish Tragedy:
Vindicta mihi! (Latin for: Vengeance is mine!)
Ay, heaven will be revenged on every ill,
Nor will they suffer murder unrepaid.
Then stay, Hieronimo, attend their will,
 …
Strike, and strike home, where wrong is offered… (3.13. 1-9)
17. In Hamlet we find an acute intelligence confronting the fallen world, the “thousand
natural shocks/That flesh is heir to.” The melancholy mood leads to a death wish, to
desire for the sleep that ends all troubles. World-weary, aching for respite, Hamlet
searches for an honourable course of action, wondering whether patient endurance or
active confrontation is the better course.
18. Soliloquys such as this further distinguish Hamlet from his classical models, full of
passionate intensity. Pyrrhus’s hesitation is momentary; Hamlet’s hesitation is the
play itself.
19. It is because of this contemplative, sensitive side in him that he becomes a poor
revenger. Goethe characterised Hamlet as an oak tree planted in a costly jar that it
shatters. In other words, “A lovely, pure, noble, and most moral nature, without the
strength of nerve which forms a hero, sinks beneath a burden which it cannot bear and
must not cast away” (Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship, 1795).
20. John Quincy Adams praised Hamlet similarly as “Man in the ideal perfection of his
intellectual and moral nature, struggling with calamity beyond his power to bear”
(Letter to James H. Hackett, 1839). Whether or not one agrees with the specifically
Romantic terms of praise here (Hamlet is a good and moral man trapped in a predicament
he cannot handle), most actors and audiences have been sympathetic to Hamlet and his
plight.
21. Whatever one thinks of Hamlet the character, the action of the play ends classically in
final atrocity. Laertes and Hamlet stab each other with the poisoned sword; Gertrude
drinks from the poisoned cup; Hamlet, dying, stabs Claudius and pours the poisoned
drink down his throat:
Here, thou incestuous, damned Dane,
Drink off this potion! Is thy union here?
Follow my mother. (5.2. 299-301)
22. Hamlet, unlike Orestes, does not kill his mother. On his uncle, however, Hamlet
wreaks the bloody and furious revenge prescribed by the ghost and demanded by the
classical tradition. Or so it seems.
23. Because, UNLIKE Orestes, his descendants, and his counterparts in Saxo and
Belleforest, Hamlet does not plan the culminating atrocity; instead, Claudius and
Laertes conceive the treachery, set up the poisoned sword and cup, and disguise their
intentions. Hamlet thus assumes the role of victim as well as that of revenger.
When he does at last kill Claudius in the dying moments of Act 5, he does so suddenly,
without forethought, poisoning the King in revenge for conniving to poison him and
for accidentally poisoning Gertrude (not for killing his father) .
24. [collateral damage] This “revenge” also comes at the cost of several other lives—The
retribution he happens to exact is exacted too late, moreover, to prevent all the deaths
that need not have occurred, if only he had killed Claudius sooner. As a direct or
indirect result of his procrastination, Hamlet slays Polonius instead of Claudius; Ophelia
goes mad after her father’s murder and drowns; Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are
dispatched by Hamlet to their deaths; and in the play’s climactic duel Hamlet’s mother
drinks from the lethal cup. Laertes is killed in the duel (K. Ryan).
 25. We must also note the monastic tone Hamlet’s thoughts take in the final Act of the play.
In the concluding movement of the play Hamlet exhibits a new calm and a new trust
in Providence:
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. (5.2.
189-92).
26. Hamlet depicts God as the kindly father whose loving care extends to all creation, even to
death. The three balanced conditional clauses (“If it be… if it be… if it be”), so
hypnotically similar in sound and cadence, express Hamlet’s recognition of his mortality
and his trust that all will pass as God and God alone wills. All he need do is have faith
and wait.
27. Unlike Senecan revengers, Hamlet does not rouse himself to nefas, “crime”, but
instead aspires to “readiness”, the practice of patience and Christian submission to
divine plan. No classical avenger ever spoke like this.
28. And none ever died as Hamlet does, exchanging forgiveness with Laertes, begging a
survivor to tell his story, receiving a final benediction that anticipates heavenly reward: “
flights of angels sing thee to thy rest” (333-34)
29. At the end of the play, Shakespeare intensifies, not resolves, the conflict between
classical and Christian ethics. Instead of concluding harmony, he creates a strangely
dissonant and compelling music of the close.

Ophelia: Gender and Tragic Discourse in Hamlet

1. John Holloway assesses the function of Ophelia as reinforcing the centrality of Hamlet."* Her
critical history, much like her treatment in the play, has been from the beginning a paradoxical
one of possession and objectification: for Voltaire she is "Hamlet's mistress" and for Samuel
Johnson "the young, the beautiful, the harmless, and the pious. "^ Despite Ophelia's own sketch
of the Prince in Ill.i as courtier, soldier, scholar,^ we would be shocked to find Hamlet described
by critics in terms parallel to those shadowy abstractions often applied to Ophelia. Shakespeare
allows the language of Hamlet to particularize and individuate him indelibly.
2. For Jacques Lacan, Ophelia is essential only because "she is linked forever, for centuries, to the
figure of Hamlet'V for Elaine Showalter "Ophelia's story . . . [is] the repressed story of Hamlet"^
Both are given edicts by their fathers that rankle and invite suspicion; both fail to understand
fully how they are being worked upon by court forces; both go mad, one for antic purposes, the
other for real; both become isolated and feel betrayed, confused; both lose a father via strange
and inbred circumstances, with devastating results. As Cherrell Guilfoyle remarks, Ophelia
"opposes truth to Hamlet's feigning and feinting; ... he meditates on death, she dies."
3. much of what transpires in the world of Hamlet is based on a stereotyped judgment of women
as others, and, As Tom Stoppard has wittily revealed, the play of Hamlet can be reduced to the
paradigm of Hamlet - talking - to himself'^ Articulation, communication, and self-presentation
are fundamental to the world of Renaissance drama, yet Hamlet's deafening vocal posturing
desensitizes us to quieter and less powerful voices: the sound and sense of Ophelia's speech dim
in comparison, like the Cheshire cat, leaving only the trace of an impression. Typically, she
 echoes a statement put to her by rephrasing it into a question (but without lago's manipulative
subtext); she expresses acquiescence, uncertainty, and obeisance; she utters half-lines; she
mirrors her male interlocutors by naming their qualities ("You are as good as a chorus, my
lord"); and she degenerates finally to the mad speeches of Act IV, "things in doubt / That carry
but half sense. Her speech is nothing ..." (v.6-7).
4. One must listen for the repression of Ophelia's voice as juxtaposed against Hamlet's noisy soul-
wrenching soliloquies. Hearing Ophelia requires a new set of critical ears. As Sherry Branch has
noted, "the unsaid in a literary text is established . . . through a hermeneutic reading of a
censored style ... [to find] the clearly stated unsaid."^^
5. Hamlet's centrality more strongly: he is allowed communication by both speaking and keeping
still (for example, in puns and innuendo, in The Mousetrap and elsewhere). Ophelia's utterances
are never allowed free, natural flow; her truncated responses, her uncertain assertions, her
conflicting loyalties irrevocably tied to a self-image that tries to accommodate her closest males'
expectations - all are determined by external pressures. Hearing Ophelia, one senses continual
psycholinguistic frustration: she knows not what to think, nor how to allow language either a
cognitive or a therapeutic function. According to Adrienne Rich, "listening and watching in
art . . . for the silences, the absences, the unspoken, the encoded [are essential] - for there we
will find the true knowledge of women."'^
6. Presumably Ophelia is present in the first court scene (Q2 includes her in the s.d.), yet there she
is completely silent, most probably as a result of the politics of decorum. Hamlet, however, is
able initially to diffuse the propriety of public spectacle with his private concerns by articulating
the complexity of his self as a thing that cannot be denoted
7. Ophelia's debut is with Laertes, who bids her farewell by solidifying her role as object and by
squelching any effort on her part for mutual perspective and adult interchange. Polonius and
Laertes, father and son, both treat her like a child who lacks self-knowledge and apprehension
about the ways of the world. As Polonius speaks his truisms to Laertes, so Laertes gives his
platitudinous wisdom to Ophelia, establishing a chain of cultural dissemination and control. In
contradistinction, The tragic hero explains and justifies himself, he finds fault with himself, he
insists on himself, he struggles to be true to himself"^^ In Ophelia's discourse, these functions
are completely externalized: she finds herself explained, faulted, and struggled over by rival
authorities outside herself
8. With Laertes, her familiar, she is allowed mostly half-lines and questions that are codes of
acquiescence without the gesture of assent. They actually invite further commands: "Do you
doubt that? . . . No more but so?" (I.iii.4, 9). Her allowed discourse with Polonius is even more
frightening. First, in the course of thirteen lines she breaks her promise of secrecy to Laertes by
relating to her father the gist of their conversation. Moreover, her speeches here are marked by
phrases of self-effacing obeisance: "So please you my lord I do not know, my lord, what I should
think. . . . I shall obey, my lord
9. The prologue to her description of his madness is in her usual tentative form - "O my lord, my
lord, I have been so affrighted My lord, I do not know, / But truly I do fear it" (II.i.75, 85-86). As
she describes to Polonius what she has witnessed, she depicts herself throughout as the passive
 object of Hamlet's actions: he holds her wrist; stares at her face; shakes her arm; nods, sighs;
leaves while staring at her still.
10. According to Bamber, soliloquies and "umbrella speeches" are the means by which drama
reveals and expresses the inner life: "No such umbrella speeches shelter the consciousness of
the women characters in the tragedies. Nor do they soliloquize What is missing is the sense of
an identity discovering itself, judging and shaping itself"^^ The closest Ophelia comes to
soliloquy is her comment after the nunnery scene on the changed nature of Hamlet's mind, as
manifested in his language. Two ironies subtract from the effect of this opportunity: that
Claudius and Polonius are still observing her, and that she bemoans a false loss, voicing an
opinion based on Hamlet's feigned madness. Her lone "soliloquy" in effect becomes an umbrella
speech about Hamlet:
11. O, what a noble mind is here o'erthrown! . . . And I, of ladies most deject and wretched. That
suck'd the honey of his music vows. Now see that noble and most sovereign reason . . . Blasted
with ecstasy. O woe is me Thave seen what I have seen, see what I see. (Ill.i. 152-63)
12. When examined in a vacuum, Ophelia's lines are stunningly empty and rhetorically reflective: "I
think nothing, my lord—What is, my lord? . . . YoU are merry, my lord—What means this, my
lord? . . . Will a tell us what this show meant? . . . You are naught, you are naught—You are as
good as a chorus, my lord—You are keen, my lord, you are keen" (IILii. 116-243 passim).
13. Not having been able to reconcile her losses philosophically, she now becomes a text to be
deciphered in new ways: she yields her words with unseemly "winks and nods and gestures"
that mystify her audience. All of Act IV presents an Ophelia who desperately wants to be heard,
yet who has not been able to locate or to forge a communicable mode. Ophelia's madness is all
the more disconcerting and pathetic in its juxtaposition to Hamlet's macabre, playful madness in
the early scenes of Act rv. He objectifies the murder of Polonius as a lesson in mortality to be
applied to everyone (in addition to the center, himself); Ophelia profoundly particularizes both
the loss of her father in death and the sexual abuse implied in Polonius' and Laertes' warnings as
well as in Hamlet's treatment of her in the nunnery and play scenes. It is not surprising that her
refrain in her madness is "Pray you mark." She is listened to but still not heard.
14. Then she lapses into her final rhetorical mode, the ballad. Placing Ophelia in a dramatic context
of madwomen and their talk, the Chameys find that "Madness enables her to assert her being:
she is no longer enforced to keep silent, The lyric form and broken syntax and unbridled
imagination all show ways of breaking through unbearable social restraints."^^ a theme of the
songs is the inability to choose among a socially-circumscribed series of insufficient options. The
voice of madness is indeed louder than her earlier rhetoric, yet it fails to break through or
change the constraints
15. The ambiguity of the voices in Ophelia's songs and mad commentary is complex and fascinating.
Nearly every reference has multiple signification, For example, "He is dead and gone" is actually
the center of the play, referring to Hamlet, Sr., Polonius, and, if Claudius's order were carried
out, to Hamlet himself. Hamlet is sorry for her death but still engaged in a battle of proprietary
authority emanating from self: "/ loved Ophelia. Forty thousand brothers / Could not with all
their quantity of love / Make up my sum" (V.i.264-66; emphases mine). he is actually far more
 integrated in self, society, and language here than ever before. His sea journey has rebaptized
him, while Ophelia's watery element has ensured her solitary destruction.
16. Contrast the private drowning of Ophelia, singing snatches of her lays to the deaf ears of nature,
with the public end of Hamlet, who is allowed to give breath to his "dying voice," to speak again
As Peter Erickson remarks about Act V and the death of Hamlet, "Hamlet is freed from his verbal
isolation Having in Horatio a personal audience he can count on to carry on his linguistic future .
17. Ophelia's linguistic sequence, in contrast, describes a line of progressive interiorization. The self
that cannot be asserted, the words that cannot be uttered, turn inward in a gesture of self-
annihilating hopelessness: "Lord, we know what we are, but know not what we may be I hope
all will be well. We must be patient. But I cannot choose but weep..." (IV.v.43-44, 68-69).
Turning from one authority to another ("My brother shall know of it"), ironically damning the
conflicting claims to authority that dominated her ("And so I thank you for your good counsel"),
Ophelia fittingly leaves with a blessing for the others who might at last hear her in her madness:
"Good night, ladies, good night. Sweet ladies, good night, good night" (73-74).
18.
The procrastinating prince

1. The central problem of the play is Hamlet’s inability to act—something that subverts the
generic expectations of revenge tragedy . For centuries critics have tied themselves in
knots trying to solve the baffling problem Hamlet appears to pose. Commanded by his
father’s ghost in Act 1 to ‘Revenge his foul and most unnatural murder’ by his brother
Claudius, who has robbed him of his wife and throne as well as his life, Hamlet swears
that ‘with wings as swift / As meditation, or the thoughts of love,’ he will ‘sweep to
[his] revenge’ (1.5.25, 29–31).

2. He then spends almost the entire play spectacularly failing to keep his oath, despite the
ghost's reappearance in Act 3 to remind him: ‘Do not forget! This visitation / Is but to
whet thy almost blunted purpose’ (3.4.110–11).

3. Indeed after his departure for England, Hamlet’s obligation to avenge his father seems
all but forgotten, and on his return he shows no sign of planning to take his uncle’s life.
When he does at last kill Claudius in the dying moments of Act 5, he does so suddenly,
without forethought, poisoning the King in revenge for conniving to poison him and for
accidentally poisoning Gertrude.

4. Conflict between classical and Christian models of heroism., Is revenge ethical? Can
ghosts be trusted? Should I replicate an atrocity? Mate, it’s regicide. Intellectuals don’t
murder. I have melancholy [depression]. Let someone invent anti-depressants first. How
can I kill the mirror image of my secret Oedipal self? Awareness of the stock role

5. It’s only by chance, in other words, that Hamlet finally avenges his father’s murder,
which might otherwise have remained unavenged.

6. [collateral] The retribution he happens to exact is exacted too late, moreover, to prevent
all the deaths that need not have occurred, if only he had killed Claudius sooner. As a
direct or indirect result of his procrastination, Hamlet slays Polonius instead of Claudius;
Ophelia goes mad after her father’s murder and drowns; Rosencrantz and Guildenstern
are dispatched by Hamlet to their deaths; and in the play’s climactic duel Hamlet’s
mother drinks from the lethal cup intended for her son, who is fatally wounded by Laertes
in revenge for the deaths of his father and sister.

7. On the face of it, it’s hard to resist the conclusion most critics have drawn, which is that
the main cause of the whole tragic train of events is Hamlet’s compulsion to
postpone. And for those who assume that to be the case, all that remains is to crack the
conundrum with which the play confronts them: why does Hamlet delay?

8. [Hamlet is aware of the problem and reproaches himself for it. His own reasons for the
delay:] There’s no point asking Hamlet why, because Hamlet himself is baffled by his
 inability to act promptly. He rebukes himself bitterly in Act 2 after watching an actor
weep, convulsed with simulated sorrow for an imaginary character, who means nothing
to him. The actor’s performance ‘But in a fiction, in a dream of passion’ (2.2.552) puts
Hamlet to shame, because ‘the motive and the cue for passion’ (2.2.561) that Hamlet
has are real and compelling, yet all he can do, as he says, is mope about ‘Like John-a-
dreams, unpregnant of my cause’ (2.2.568).

9. A whole act later, Hamlet is still at a loss to explain why, ‘laps’d in time and passion’, he
still ‘lets go by / Th’ important acting’ of his father’s ‘dread command’ (3.4.107–08).

10. Deep into Act 4 he finds himself shamed yet again for dragging his heels, this time by the
sight of Fortinbras’s army marching headlong to their doom, merely ‘to gain a little
patch of ground / That hath in it no profit but the name’ (4.4.18–19). And he voices his
bewilderment at his inexplicable inertia once more in his last great soliloquy: ‘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’ (4.4.43–46).

11. [His own explanations to himself all prove inadequate] The same soliloquy makes it clear
that Hamlet finds neither of the reasons he considers for his delay convincing. [1.
thought deters action] That the cause might be ‘some craven scruple / Of thinking too
precisely on th’ event’ (4.4.40–41), as a result of which action becomes impossible,
might seem plausible. But it doesn’t square with Hamlet’s obvious ability to act
decisively when he wants to, as he does when he charges fearlessly after the ghost;
when he sets The Mousetrap ‘to catch the conscience of the king’ (2.2.605); when he
runs his sword through Polonius in the belief that he’s stabbing the king; when he foils
Claudius’s plot to have him murdered in England, consigning his treacherous friends
to the fate meant for him; and when he kills Claudius without hesitation in the heat of a
duel he has no qualms about fighting.

12. On this evidence, too, the other charge Hamlet levels at himself – that he’s guilty of [ii.]
cowardice – doesn’t hold up either.

13. Nor does the surmise that he’s secretly deterred not just from taking revenge, but from
taking another life at all, by the Christian objections of his conscience. Hamlet isn’t
troubled in the least by such objections [Ryan overstating the case? Cantor would object
to this], as he proves by his keenness to kill Claudius in a damnable state of sin rather
than the state of grace his father was denied. And for the deaths of Polonius, Rosencrantz
and Guildenstern he feels not a twinge of guilt.

14. [critical bafflement—some of their explanations]: Not that Hamlet’s failure to find a solid
reason for his quandary has stopped critics from furnishing explanations of their own, the
most common being that he’s suffering from some kind of psychological disorder. A. C.
Bradley, for example, diagnosed the prince in his influential study Shakespearean
 Tragedy as afflicted by the form of depression called melancholy in Shakespeare’s day,
taking his cue from Hamlet’s remarking ‘I have of late – but wherefore I know not – lost
all my mirth’ (2.2.295–96).

15. For Ernest Jones, on the other hand, whose classic Freudian reading of the play in
Hamlet and Oedipus has proved equally influential, the unconscious source of Hamlet’s
suicidal melancholy and pathological reluctance to avenge his father must be his
repressed desire for his mother, for by killing his mother’s lover, her new husband
Claudius, he would be killing the mirror image of his secret Oedipal self.

16. Other explanations we have heard include the Romantics’ notion of the ineffectual,
sensitive intellectual not up to the task; Paul Cantor’s notion of classical/Christian
conflict, and others.

17. What’s wrong with all these attempts to account for Hamlet’s delay – including Hamlet’s
own conjectures – is the same fundamental misconception. They all accept that the
prince has a legitimate obligation to avenge his father’s murder and thus restore the
status quo – the fact that the murderer is the sovereign himself leaves him no option but
to take the law into his own hands to achieve through revenge what Bacon called ‘a kind
of wild justice’.

18. So the tragedy of the situation is seen as Hamlet’s unfortunate possession of some
emotional, intellectual or psychological flaw, however virtuous its origin, which
prevents him from fulfilling that obligation without delay. The assumption is that if
Hamlet’s character hadn’t been marred by what he calls ‘some vicious mole of nature’
and ‘the stamp of one defect’ (1.4.24, 31), the tragic catastrophe wouldn’t have occurred
and the only corpse left at the end would have been Claudius’s.

19. Ryan sees it differently—the tragedy is not the tragedy of a procrastinating revenger too
slow to fulfil his task, but that of a revenger who thinks revenge is a vestige/rudiment of a
world that is intolerable .

20. But what if we proceed on the opposite assumption? What if Hamlet’s tormented
resistance to performing the role of revenger expresses a justified rejection of a
whole way of life, whose corruption, injustice and inhumanity he now sees clearly
and rightly finds intolerable? What if everything we see and hear in the play confirms
Hamlet’s conclusion that the world as it stands is a prison, ‘in which there are many
confines, wards, and dungeons, Denmark being one o’ th’ worst’ (2.2.245–47)?

21. [what we are VS what we could be] In that case the tragedy turns out to be something
quite different. It’s the tragedy of having to live, love and die on the soul-destroying
terms of such a world at all, despite feeling the need and the potential to dwell in a
world fit for what human beings could be – ‘the beauty of the world, the paragon of
 animals’ (2.2.307) – instead of one fit only for the scoundrels, pawns and parasites – the
‘quintessence of dust’ (2.2.308) – that societies like this force most of them to become.

22. From this standpoint, Hamlet’s retreat into the dramatic limbo of his ‘antic disposition’
(1.5.172), the cryptic quibbling of his feigned madness, isn’t a symptom of some
mysterious malaise that’s incapacitated him, but the only sane response to an insane
predicament in a society that no longer makes sense.

23. Critics who regard it as normal and necessary to comply with convention and
maintain the status quo have inevitably found Hamlet’s disinclination to do so a
source of endless puzzlement and made this tragedy ‘the most problematic play ever
written by Shakespeare or any other playwright’, as Harry Levin famously dubbed it.

24. But once one has grasped that it’s the time that’s ‘out of joint’ (1.5.188) and not Hamlet,
and that not being in tune with his time makes Hamlet a hero ahead of his time, the
problem ostensibly posed by the play disappears.

25. The fact that it doesn’t disappear as far as Hamlet’s concerned, and that a true
understanding of his tragic plight eludes him, is hardly surprising. As a Renaissance
prince, steeped in the values of his class and culture, Hamlet is naturally appalled to find
himself failing to play the prescribed royal part of righteous avenging son.

26. Acutely aware that the part is a theatrical cliché, he strives repeatedly to stick to the
stage revenger’s script, whipping himself up into a melodramatic rage whenever his
resolution flags: ‘Now could I drink hot blood, / And do such bitter business as the day /
Would quake to look on’ (3.2.390-92).

27. But every attempt to conform to the culturally approved stereotype proves futile, because
right from the start, even before the ghost’s revelation and demand for revenge, Hamlet
has ‘that within which passes show’ (1.2.85): a grief-stricken sense of disillusionment
so complete that ‘all the uses of this world’ seem ‘weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable’,
and he wishes ‘that the Everlasting had not fix’d / His canon ’gainst self-slaughter’
(1.2.132).

28. Shakespeare seems to have borrowed the basic elements of the play’s revenge plot from
the version of the tale he read in François de Belleforest’s Histoires Tragiques, a tale
Belleforest had found in Saxo Grammaticus’s collection Danorum Regum heroumque
Historiae. He was also indebted, directly or indirectly, to Thomas Kyd’s trailblazing
play The Spanish Tragedy, whose phenomenal success spawned a host of Elizabethan
and Jacobean revenge tragedies.
29. The similarities between Kyd’s plot and Shakespeare’s – a ghost, a loyal friend called
Horatio, a play within the play, a female suicide, and a brother who kills his sister’s lover
– are striking.

30. But the more conscious one becomes of how closely Shakespeare’s revenge tragedy
resembles Kyd’s prototype as well as Belleforest’s version of Saxo, the more obvious its
radical difference from them, and from all the other revenge tragedies of the period,
becomes.

31. In Hamlet Shakespeare deliberately sabotages the whole genre of revenge tragedy

by creating a tragic protagonist who refuses, for reasons he can’t fathom himself, to
play the stock role in which he’s been miscast by the world he happens to inhabit.

32. Shakespeare makes his purpose plain by juxtaposing Hamlet with Fortinbras and
especially Laertes, two conventional sons who are also determined to avenge their
fathers, but who don’t have the least scruple about doing so. He makes it plainer still
by refusing to reduce the cause of Hamlet’s tragedy to ‘the stamp of one defect’ in him,
because that would mean pinning the blame on the protagonist alone, instead of calling
into question the society that trapped him in such an impossible predicament in the first
place.

33. It’s surely not difficult, after all, to see how impossible that predicament is for a prince so
alienated from everything his rank entails and his society expects that he holds
sovereignty itself, indeed hierarchy as such, in contempt. ‘The King is a thing’, Hamlet
retorts to Rosencrantz, ‘Of nothing’ (4.2.28–30) before proceeding to prove to Claudius
‘how a king may go a progress through the guts of a beggar’ (4.3.30–31).

34. And as he watches the upper-class skulls of those who once owned and ruled Denmark
being turfed up by a common gravedigger’s spade, the symbolic significance of the scene
doesn’t escape him: ‘Here’s fine revolution’, he observes to Horatio, ‘and we had the
trick to see’t’ (5.1.90–91).

35. What would be the point of obtaining the private ‘wild justice’ of revenge for a king’s
son who realises that the entire kingdom is founded on inequality and thus inherently
unjust? Whatever personal satisfaction killing Claudius might afford him would be
purchased at the price of complicity with a ruthless society that’s bound to foster
crimes like Claudius’s. It would mean becoming a clone of Claudius, the mirror-image
of his father’s murderer, and believing like Laertes that taking revenge is enough to right
the wrong and settle the matter.
36. But taking revenge could never settle the matter for Hamlet, because the root cause
of his quandary lies deeper than his uncle’s villainy. Because ‘The time is out of
joint’, there’s no way he could ‘set it right’ (1.5.188–89) just by killing Claudius, who’s
merely a product of the barbaric era in which Hamlet finds himself stranded.

37. So with no adequate course of action open to him, paralysed by the futility of the revenge
his society demands that he seek, Hamlet wavers and stalls, playing for time until
circumstances force his hand and he kills Claudius in anger on the spur of the moment.

38. Shakespeare ensures that Hamlet does avenge his father in the end. But not before his
revolt against his role has revealed Shakespeare’s time as a time that only the ‘fine
revolution’ Hamlet glimpses in the graveyard could set right.

39.
makes man “look before and after”,
that is, connect past and future events
and reflect upon the motives and
consequences of our actions. Since
beasts do not have that quality, they
are always stuck in the present
moment. That is the reason why
Hamlet wonders whether he does not
carry out his revenge out of a “bestial
oblivion”. Hamlet’s reflections depict
a human being that shares both divine
and brutal qualities. Such a
portrayal of the human nature had
already been stated by Pico della
Mirandola who considered that, since
humans were given both divine and
earthly qualities, their actions could
turn them into either gods or beasts.
Montaigne, on the contrary, considers
that it is man’s vanity what makes him
“equall himself to God, that he
ascribeth divine conditions unto
himself, that he selecteth himself from
out the ranke of other creatures”.
Hamlet’s depiction of human beings
occasionally appropriates Montaigne’s
idea that “of all creatures man is
the most miserable and fraile, and
therewithal the proudest and
disdainfullest”. To Hamlet, human
beings can
become inferior to beasts.
Hamlet’s description of his father as
god and Claudius as a beast draws the
picture of a world in which the
bestial part of human nature has
defeated the godlike one by creating a
world pervaded by “carnal, bloody,
and unnatural acts”. A possible escape
from such a world is death. In his most
famous soliloquy “To be or not
to be, that is the question” he develops
such an idea. The text could be
referring to Hamlet’s own suicide, to
suicide in general terms, to the
advantages and disadvantages of
human existence, to whether Hamlet
should
kill the king or not, or to whether he
should go on with his plans to make
the king confess. As with many
other issues in the play, this text is
open to multiple interpretations but
what is certain is that it is a
philosophical reflection about death
and suicide. The only way to escape
“the slings and arrows of outraged
fortune” is by committing suicide. The
identification between death and sleep
was also made by Montaigne.
Though Shakespeare compares death
with sleep, it is not a dreamless one.
Suicide would lead to damnation
and it would turn sleep into a
nightmare. Thus the fear of “what
dreams may come” “must give us
pause” and
“the dread of something after death”
“puzzles the will”. Consequently,
death is out of man’s control. The only
right attitude towards death is to be
ready to die. In Hamlet we find the
idea that “our thoughts are ours,
their ends none of our own” since
“there’s a divinity that shapes our
ends” God, and not man, is entitled to
end one’s life. Therefore, according to
Hamlet, the correct way to face death
is as follows: “If it be now, ‘tis not
to come. If it be not to come, it will be
now. If it be now, yet it will come.
The readiness is all”. Again
Shakespeare goes back to Montaigne’s
philosophical ideas about death.
It is interesting to observe how
Shakespeare’s mingling of opposing
ideas about human nature adds
dramatic
richness to a play in which complexity
is an essential ingredient. The intricate
nature of man is exemplified in
Hamlet’s characterisation. Hamlet is
presented as a madman, a philosopher,
a lover, a son, an avenger, a
clown, an actor, a playwright, a
prince. But we cannot really define his
nature, since he, as the nature of
human beings, is multiple and resists
label
i
Prosser, Eleanor. (1967) Hamlet and Revenge, California: Stanford University Press
ii
Spurgeon, Caroline. Op.cit., p.50