Hamlet

Chapter 13
A Casebook on Hamlet:
Murder and Madness
Students who have never read a Shakespeare play and who cannot name the titles of more than one or two have almost always heard of Hamlet, and many of those who have read some Shakespeare before will have read Hamlet. As a result, many of your students will come to this play with preconceptions based on either hearsay or personal experience. Whether those preconceptions are positive or negative, they provide a good opening into the play. Either the day before you begin discussing the play or on the day when the discussion begins, you may, in fact, simply want to elicit as many of those preconceptions as possible, listing them on the board and using them as touchstones to which you can return during future discussions. Among the responses you are likely to get are the following:
Hamlet is supposed to be Shakespeare’s greatest play.
Nothing ever happens in this play; it’s all talk.
This play (like all of Shakespeare’s plays) is archaic and old-fashioned, absolutely irrelevant to modern life. So who cares about Hamlet’s problems?
The play is too hard. By the time you read through all the footnotes and try to translate the language, you’ve completely lost the thread of the plot and interest in what happens.
Hamlet is just spoiled and egocentric.
Each of these responses, and many of the others you will get, provides a wonderful opening into the play. The trick is to encourage students to discuss them without being self-conscious about whether you are going to respond negatively.
In giving responses like the ones above, some students will simply be parroting back what they have heard others say, so you will probably want to ask for clarification. You will probably want from the beginning simply to acknowledge sympathetically that the language is difficult and that you will be working through it as a class. You may also want to remind students that many of our difficulties are the difficulties of centuries’ worth of linguistic distance and that even the less educated in Shakespeare’s time would not have had the same difficulty with the literal meanings that we do (though they may not have understood the richer metaphorical and thematic meanings). Such sympathy obviously doesn’t solve students’ problems, but it does acknowledge and even validate their responses. You might even want briefly to tell them something about your first experiences with Shakespeare (many of us teaching Shakespeare once felt the same confusion and frustration that some of our students do) and perhaps say something about when you first began to understand just why others have claimed Shakespeare is so great. (We confess to having come to that full realization only when we took semester-long courses on Shakespeare. Having to immerse ourselves in Shakespeare’s language and plays to the point of becoming comfortable with both brought an appreciation and understanding that we had not fully had until that point.) Finally, you may want early on to show one of the films of Hamlet or to ask students to translate into modern English and act out a particularly emotional scene (one of Hamlet’s confrontations with his mother, for instance, or one of his conversations with Ophelia). If your students are like ours, once they get past the difficulty of the language (and that happens relatively quickly when they are watching a good filmed version of the play), they will become more involved in the dilemmas Hamlet faces.
The apparent criticisms of the play—that nothing happens in it and that Hamlet is just spoiled and self-indulgent—also invite interesting discussions. After all, such responses are in many ways right on target, and they are part of the point of the play. Rather than leave the complaints unanswered, and rather than respond defensively that lots happens in the play, then, you can ask students to think about the whole question of action and inaction. What should Hamlet have done when faced with his uncle’s treachery and his mother’s betrayal? How should he have responded to Ophelia’s rebuffs? (Students often need to be reminded that Ophelia has returned Hamlet’s love tokens to him and that she, not he, has broken off the romance.) Once the discussion is underway, you can ask students to think about what Hamlet does do: He deliberately searches out the ghost, he kills Polonius, he confronts his mother with accusations about her too-quick marriage, he discovers the plot against his life and has Rosencrantz and Guildenstern killed, he (offstage) boards a pirate ship, and so forth. Hamlet’s inaction concerns a single point: his hesitation to kill his uncle. Does that inaction spring from doubts about the ghost’s truthfulness? Cowardice? A desire to make sure his uncle goes to hell? In short, the discussion can lead to a rich examination of the critical commonplace that Hamlet’s flaw is inaction. Once students have to examine the truism that nothing happens in the play and that Hamlet doesn’t do anything, they may discover that the truism isn’t true after all.
Finally, if some of your students claim that Hamlet is “irrelevant” to modern life, particularly modern American life, insofar as its main character is a Danish prince who lives in a society very different from our own, you may want to ask them to explain why the play’s themes seem outdated. We have tried in the introduction to the casebook to invite comparisons between Hamlet’s predicament and that of many in today’s society, but those comparisons may not be enough. It helps sometimes to ask students to think about the influence Hamlet has had not only on the literary tradition but on popular culture. Many will be familiar with an episode of The Simpsons in which Bart plays Hamlet and Homer plays Hamlet’s father. Fans of Monty Python’s Flying Circus may remember Hamlet’s conversations with several psychiatrists, and diehard movie buffs may know Strange Brew, a movie that tells the story of a man named Claude who runs the Elsinore Brewery, which his dead brother once owned. Clearly, the writers and artists involved in these projects had a comic irreverence for Shakespeare’s play, but at the same time they must have considered it a cultural icon so important that they could draw upon it in entertainment meant for a wide-ranging audience. What is it, you might ask your students, that gives Hamlet life in the imaginations of us all?
Suggested Further Reading
Blessing, Lee. Fortinbras. New York: Dramatists Play Service, 1992.
A sequel to Hamlet, Blessing’s comic play shows us what happens after the bodies are cleared from the stage and Fortinbras takes over. In attempting to solidify his shaky claim to the Danish throne and join Denmark and Norway, Fortinbras is beset by the ghosts of those who died in Hamlet, finding himself seduced by Ophelia and adopting some of Hamlet’s behaviors and introspection.
Stoppard, Tom. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. New York: Grove, 1991.
In Stoppard’s comic drama Hamlet’s two friends take center stage. The drama thus retells Shakespeare, asking us to look at how the minor characters function amid the intrigues of the Danish royal court.
Updike, John. Gertrude and Claudius. New York: Ballantine, 2001.
A prequel to Hamlet, the novel tells the story of Gertrude’s childhood, her arranged marriage to Hamlet’s father, and her affair with Claudius, Hamlet’s uncle and, later, his stepfather. As the title indicates, the focus is on the emotions and predicament of the royal couple rather than on the disaffection of the young prince.
Suggested Films
Instructors have a wealth of very good films to choose from. In addition to showing one of the films from start to finish, you may also want to show several filmed versions of a key scene. Doing so helps students understand how a director’s decisions advance a particular interpretation of a play.
What follows is a selection of the most easily accessible Hamlet films, films that many instructors have chosen to show. If you want to do a longer unit on Hamlet on film, a quick web search (or a glance at the web sites for Amazon and Barnes and Noble) will provide you with a list of more films.
Hamlet. Dir. Kenneth Branagh. Perf. Kenneth Branagh, Derek Jacobi, Julie Christie, and Kate Winslet. Castle Rock, 1996.
The only filmed version of Shakespeare’s entire play, Branagh’s Hamlet is over four hours long. It is beautifully filmed in a lush 19th century setting that emphasizes the resplendence of the court that Hamlet believes he should govern. Branagh’s Hamlet is dark and powerful, and perhaps more sinister and self-serving than are some other Hamlets. Through his use of mirrors and other doubling techniques, Branagh emphasizes the themes of identity and self in the play. (For a more complete discussion of Branagh’s Hamlet, see appendix 1 of the Instructor’s Manual).
Hamlet. Dir. Franco Zeffirelli. Perf. Mel Gibson, Alan Bates, Glenn Close, and Helena Bonham Carter. Warner Studios, 1991.
A two-hour version of Shakespeare’s play. Gibson is popular and energetic enough to appeal to many who don’t normally like Shakespeare (or who think they don’t).
Hamlet. Dir. Michael Almereyda. Perf. Ethan Hawke, Kyle MacLachlan, Diane Verona, and Julie Styles. Miramax, 2000.
Set in modern-day New York City, Almereyda’s Hamlet has an immediacy, edginess, and humor that many students will be surprised to see in Hamlet. (For a more complete discussion of Almereyda’s Hamlet, see appendix 1 of the Instructor’s Manual).
Hamlet. Dir. Laurence Olivier. Perf. Laurence Olivier, Basil Sydney, Eileen Herlie, and Jean Simmons. MGM, 1948.
Students sometimes respond negatively to Olivier’s acting, seeing him as melodramatic or wooden. But you may nevertheless want to show at least a small portion of this film, especially the conversations between Hamlet and Gertrude, in which Olivier’s interpretation of the relationship as an Oedipal one is evident.
William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Prince of Denmark (1215-1316)
Possible Responses to Questions for Discussion and Reading (1316-17)
It is clear throughout that Hamlet loved and admired his father. Thinking of him as a Hyperion, a Jove, a Mars, and a Mercury (3.4.52-64), Hamlet grieves over his father’s recent death with such depth that there can be no doubt that the bond was a strong one. As a result, we respond with particular abhorrence to Claudius’s and Gertrude’s admonitions to Hamlet that he put off his mourning (1.2.68-73). Students often overlook the fact that each of the father-son pairs in the play is defined in part by the son’s desire to avenge his father’s death and that a web of vengeance lies over the entire play. The young Hamlet is, of course, explicitly told by the ghost to avenge the elder Hamlet’s murder, and once we (and Hamlet) credit the ghost’s veracity, that vengeance seems a son’s duty of honor and love. Laertes, too, seeks to avenge a father’s death; he returns to court to find Polonius’s murderer and take his revenge. Indeed, Hamlet recognizes the justice of Laertes’s cause when the two meet in Act 5; to Horatio he expresses regret over having treated Laertes badly at Ophelia’s funeral:
But I am very sorry, good Horatio,
That to Laertes I forgot myself;
For, by the image of my cause, I see
The portraiture of his[.] (5.2.75-78)
We thus see in Laertes and Polonius a kinship of honor and filial loyalty. It seems clear that one bond between a father and son is this bond of honor that binds a son to protect his father’s person and name and to avenge his death. To see that this bond is more complicated than this, however, we need only look at the function of Fortinbras in the play. So little a part does Fortinbras have, and so often is even that minor part removed or de-emphasized in productions of the play, that students are likely to overlook its importance. But Fortinbras, too, is a son out to avenge his father’s death. The elder Fortinbras having been killed by the elder Hamlet, Fortinbras begins the play planning to wage war against the Danes. What is significant here is that he is willing to take his vengeance publicly and in the role of a solder, not through any behind-the-scenes subterfuge; he is apparently turned from his rash purpose, and the rift between Norway and Denmark is patched. However much we may sympathize with Hamlet and Laertes, it is Fortinbras who restores order in the end. Perhaps a son’s loyalty to his father must finally take a second seat to the public good. (It should be noted that some read Fortinbras as a more sinister and malevolent character. Those who have seen Branagh’s film, for instance, will know that Branagh sees Fortinbras as untrustworthy and aggressive; the march of Fortinbras through Denmark is a threat to Denmark as much as to Poland, and Fortinbras’s men act like storm troopers when they come to the Danish palace at the end of the play.)
Father-child relationships are defined as well by obedience. If the ghost is truly the ghost of his dead father, then, Hamlet is bound by obedience to obey his wishes, just as Ophelia is bound to obey Polonius’s instruction that she disavow her relationship with Hamlet and participate in the subterfuge designed to discover the source of his madness. Both Ophelia and Laertes behave as dutiful children throughout, listening with apparent affection and patience to Polonius’s long-winded lectures on proper behavior, for instance. Perhaps their obedience and quiet acceptance of Polonius’s authority make Hamlet’s open contempt for his mother all the more striking. (See 3.4, where Hamlet focuses not only on his mother’s betrayal of his father but on her lust, and where he wishes he could deny their mother-son bond.)
Parents’ attitudes toward their children are equally noteworthy. Readers often respond with some ambivalence to Polonius’s open willingness to send others to spy on his son and even to call into question Laertes’s reputation while Laertes is abroad. Are these the actions of a loving father intent on keeping his son’s reckless behavior in check or the actions of a man who needs to stage-manage others’ lives? It is, after all, Polonius’s stage managing that is partly responsible for Ophelia’s madness and his own death. Had he not commanded her to return Hamlet’s love tokens and engineered the scenes in which he and Claudius spy on the two lovers and in which Hamlet confronts Gertrude, he might have lived. Polonius is a meddler, and he meddles in and ruins his own children’s lives as well as those of others.
Finally, there is Gertrude. The relationship between Hamlet and Gertrude has led to much critical debate. The Oedipal interpretations of Hamlet often focus on two facts: Hamlet seems more willing than most sons to speak of his mother’s sexuality, and Claudius is jealous of the love Gertrude bears Hamlet (see 4.7.11-16). In a play that speaks so much about incest (referring in particular to the incestuous relationship between Claudius and his brother’s wife), it is no wonder that many critics argue that Hamlet’s problem is an Oedipal one: His step-father has supplanted him in his mother’s affections.
Responses will overlap somewhat with those to #1, above. Of particular importance is Act 3, scene 4, where Hamlet directly confronts his mother with her betrayal of his father and her unbecoming lust. Many readers believe that it is not only Hamlet’s vengeance and his Oedipal desires that govern his actions, however. He believes that he has also been denied his place as the rightful heir to the throne. Although Claudius recognizes Hamlet as his successor (1.2.108-109), Hamlet believes that he, not Claudius, was the elder Hamlet’s rightful heir and that Claudius deserves death because he has killed Hamlet’s father, “whored” his mother, and stolen the throne from Hamlet (5.2.63-70). At one point Hamlet remarks, “I lack advancement” (3.2.294); the desire for advancement, as well as his desire for revenge, motivates Hamlet to act.
Responses will vary. Some students will agree with the critical commonplace that Hamlet is too self-absorbed and too slow to act to make a good king. As evidence, they may point to his inability to seize the moment and kill Claudius, to his thoughts of suicide, and to what they see as his too-extreme and self-indulgent responses to grief, to the loss of his love, to his mother’s remarriage, and to his friends’ betrayals. Others may defend Hamlet, arguing that he is slow to act because he cannot rashly assume that the Ghost is telling the truth, that he wants not only to kill the King but also to send him to hell, which he cannot do if the King is in prayer, and that he proves himself brave and quick to act on a number of occasions: when he confronts the Ghost without knowing his full intentions, when he boards the pirates’ ship, when he has Rosencrantz and Guildenstern killed, when he kills Polonius, and when he fights with Laertes at Ophelia’s grave. You may, in fact, want to encourage a debate on Hamlet’s character, in part to provide an antidote to the once widely-accepted critical belief that Hamlet’s “tragic flaw” is that he is too passive. There is considerably more complexity to Hamlet’s character than the applications of such easy labels can acknowledge, and students who are asked to debate Hamlet’s activity or passivity, his self-indulgence or his depth of character, will often soon come to recognize that complexity.
The first scene obviously sets the play in motion and acquaints the audience with the situational background of the play. It also hints at several important themes of the play. In doubting the Ghost’s existence, Horatio asks us to consider how much one should trust what one sees and hears and, at the same time, to think about the relationship of the insubstantial world to the substantial one. Is the Ghost benevolent or diabolical? Does it prompt Hamlet to appropriate or inappropriate action? However we answer those questions, the Ghost’s role as a catalyst to action requires that we think about the complexity of Hamlet’s (and our own) actions. How do we know whether something that seems true is true? How do we know whether actions taken in the service of justice are themselves just?
With the references to the war and agreement between the elder Fortinbras and the elder Hamlet, the first scene prepares us for another thread as well. We learn not only about the elder Fortinbras’s death but also about the contract and aftermath that brought to the victorious Hamlet some of Fortinbras’s lands and reserved some of the lands for the young Fortinbras. The first scene thus prepares us for an examination of questions of inheritance and of vengeance vs. lawful redress. Give the reference to Fortinbras’s “unimproved mettle hot and full” (1.1.96), the first scene also lays the foundation for an examination of Hamlet’s character.
Finally, you may want to alert students to the fact that the first scene often introduces not only situations and themes but characters who may later prove significant. The introduction of Fortinbras in the first scene prepares us for his return in the last; the introduction of Horatio prepares us for his role as Hamlet’s friend and confidant.
In fact, once they have completed the play, you might ask students to return to the opening scene, for they will see there hints and allusions whose significance they could not have grasped their first time through the play. For example, when Marcellus says that he and his comrades are “liegeman to the Dane,” we may wonder which Dane he has in mind: Claudius, the elder Hamlet, or Hamlet himself? After all, each would have a claim on the soldiers’ loyalty. When Horatio accuses the Ghost of usurping the night (1.1.46), we are reminded of how important usurpation is to the plot and themes of the play. And when Horatio remarks upon the disorder of the heavens (1.1.112 ff.), we know that in common Shakespearean fashion, bad weather portends disorder in the commonwealth.
A number of events contribute to Ophelia’s madness. Her father lays the seeds when he warns her that Hamlet is probably trifling with her and requires her to return his love tokens. In asking her to doubt Hamlet’s love for her, Polonius asks Ophelia to deny or ignore her own love and to believe her father’s suspicions over the evidence of her own heart and eyes. She moves further along the path to madness when Hamlet receives her returned tokens with the statement that he never gave her any such tokens, prompting Ophelia either to doubt his veracity, his sanity, or her own understanding of events and his intentions. When in the same scene (3.1), Hamlet follows his “I did love you once” (112-13) with “I loved you not” (116), Ophelia must feel as if she has lost all sense of where she stands with Hamlet, a feeling that must be intensified in the next scene when a seemingly giddy Hamlet plays with sexual innuendo and asks to lie on Ophelia’s lap (3.2.91). The biggest blow to Ophelia’s sanity must, however, come with the murder of her father at Hamlet’s hands. Almost all that she has loved is lost, and Ophelia has nothing to keep her sane.
Hamlet’s feigned madness springs from similar causes. While Ophelia may think that she has lost Hamlet’s love, Hamlet feels that he has lost Ophelia’s. He, too, has had a father murdered, and perhaps he wonders whether his mother has had a part in that murder. (The play does not make explicit Gertrude’s guilt in the murder, only her guilt for a “o’erhasty marriage” (2.2.58) and for what Hamlet sees as her lust.) Hamlet, too, is forced to doubt the foundation on which he has lived his life. His world is turned upside down when his mother prefers his treacherous uncle to his heroic father and when his friends betray him. For Hamlet, too, madness, even a feigned madness, comes from a loss of the emotional and psychological underpinnings that have given him his identity and sense of his place in the world.
Images of Insubstantiality: Students will probably first point to the presence of the ghost and to questions about his reality and his veracity. The play hinges on the belief that the Ghost, despite his lack of physical substance, has a reality that cannot be ignored. Among the other passages students should be able to point to are Hamlet’s soliloquies in 1.2 (129-59) and 3.1 (56-89). In wishing that his flesh could melt and in debating whether it is better “to be or not to be,” Hamlet questions the reality and efficacy of substance. It is the same concern that informs his claim that “there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so” (2.2.237-38) and that underlies his statement that “O God, I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams” (2.2.241-42). When he goes on to say that that those dreams are themselves but shadows (245) and that man is the “quintessence of dust” (2.2.281), the picture is complete: Substance and insubstantiality blur into one another; the world and the people who inhabit it are neither substantial nor grounded. This thought extends as well to the kingship; inherent in Hamlet’s statement that “The body is with the king, but the king is not with the body” (4.2.22) is the doctrine of the king’s two bodies; the corporeal body of the king is distinct from the body politic. In short, Hamlet lives in a world in which the corporeal and the actual are not the same, and as he attempts to navigate their differences, the world slips away from him. (You might ask your students to find some of the play’s mirror images as well, since they further support the idea that what we see may be only a reflection of what is real.)
Use of Flowers: The most important uses of flower images come toward the end of the play, with Ophelia’s madness and death. Ophelia makes explicit the symbolic importance of flowers in 4.5.172-76, when she offers to those present flowers and herbs meant to upbraid them. Ophelia is bestrewn with flowers as she falls into the river and floats downstream. Laertes further wishes that violets may spring from Ophelia’s grave (5.1.188-90), and Gertrude scatters flowers on Ophelia’s grave. Flowers seem in Ophelia’s case to betoken a natural (both mad and innocent) state.
Hamlet uses a different kind of gardening metaphor when, echoing a common Shakespearean theme, he speaks of the world as an untended garden allowed to go rank and uncontrolled (1.2.135-37).
Military References: Students often don’t realize just how much Hamlet is a military play. To drive home that fact, you might want to show at least a few scenes from Branagh’s Hamlet, since Branagh emphasizes the military backdrop to the play. The question in Retellings is designed largely to alert students to the fact that Claudius is preoccupied throughout the play not only with the intrigues of the court and Hamlet’s madness but with Fortinbras’s recent threats to his kingdom and with the uneasy peace that has been negotiated. You might also want to ask your students to think about the extent to which Hamlet and the other characters behave like soldiers. The play begins with soldiers on watch, but even those who are not soldiers apparently carry weapons: Hamlet has a weapon at hand when he kills Polonius, for example. Both Laertes and Hamlet are, furthermore, expert fencers. Despite its reputation for “talkiness,” Hamlet is a play that threatens to erupt in violence at any moment.
Responses will vary somewhat, but most will concern the debt of obedience and fealty Hamlet owes his father, Ophelia’s duty of obedience to her father, and Horatio’s duty of loyalty to Hamlet, who is both his friend and his prince. The play conveys the importance of such obligations but also makes it clear that difficulties arise when one has conflicting obligations. How can Hamlet be loyal to his father and to his mother? How can he be loyal to the code of vengeance and to the Christian code under which he also seems to operate? How can Ophelia be loyal to her beloved and still obedient to her father? What of Gertrude’s conflicting loyalties not only to her past and present husbands but also to her present husband and her son? We might sympathize with even Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, who are loyal subjects at the same time that they are treacherous friends. (You might ask your students to think about whether Shakespeare asks us to see these paradoxes or largely to accept Hamlet’s more one-sided point of view.)
Even if some find Hamlet weak and indecisive, most readers sympathize more with Hamlet than with any other character in the play. They find Claudius villainous and ambitious in his theft of the throne and unnatural in his murder of his brother. Many will also find his relationship with Gertrude unnatural. (Critics have sometimes reminded readers that the marriage between a man and his dead brother’s wife was perfectly acceptable in some societies, particularly when the marriage served a clear political end. At the same time, Hamlet speaks of the relationship as “incestuous” more than once.) Readers usually find Gertrude weak at best and lustful and conniving at worst. Still, there are moments when Hamlet’s behavior needs to be examined, and readers need at the very least to acknowledge that it may be problematic. For example, students sometimes think that Hamlet spares Claudius when Claudius is praying out of a reverence for the sanctity of prayer. But Hamlet says otherwise. He acknowledges that he refrains from killing Claudius at that moment because he wants to put Claudius in the same position that the elder Hamlet was in when he was killed: He wants Claudius to go to his death without having confessed (and without having been forgiven for) his sins. In short, he wants to make it more likely that Claudius will go to hell.
Hamlet’s treatment of Ophelia also bears examination. It is true that Ophelia rejects Hamlet before he rejects her, but readers might nevertheless be made uncomfortable by his profession and then immediate recanting of his love and by his “get thee to a nunnery speech” (3.1.118-24). (You may need to remind students that “nunnery” can refer both to a convent and to a house of prostitution.) His trifling with Ophelia as they prepare to watch the players’ dumb show (3.2.91-111) is equally troubling to many readers. Again, you might show parts of Branagh’s film. In his portrayal of Hamlet’s relationship with Ophelia, Branagh shows a Hamlet who is violent and cruel in his rebuffs, and you might ask your students to compare his depiction of Hamlet’s behavior with the one they had imagined.
Last, you might ask your students to consider Hamlet’s behavior after he has killed Polonius. Certainly, Hamlet is overwrought by the discovery of his step-father’s treachery and by suspicions about his mother’s lustful complicity, and certainly he is surprised to have found Polunius behind the curtain. (He had clearly expected to find Claudius.) But while Polonius lies dead on the stage, Hamlet continues his accusations against his mother with little regard for the man he has just killed, and at the end of the scene he decides to “lug the guts” (3.4.213) and make linguistic sport of the “grave” counselor who was “a foolish prating knave” (3.4.215-16). How much can we sympathize with Hamlet at that point?
Responses will vary depending on how students define “being true to one’s self.” Certainly it could be said that Laertes and Horatio remain true to themselves and their principles throughout even when, as in Laertes’s case, subterfuge is involved. It could also be argued that Hamlet is mostly true to himself insofar as he never wavers from his purpose, even when he hesitates; he does, however, falsify his emotions when he rebuffs Ophelia and claims he does not love her. It could be argued as well that Claudius is true to himself. Although we may not approve of his ambition, he does not deny either himself or his purpose. The other characters are more problematic. Did Gertrude love the elder Hamlet? If so, has she betrayed him and herself in marrying Claudius? If Ophelia loves Hamlet, has she been false to herself in denying that love?
The fact that the advice comes from Polonius has caused some readers to question its wisdom. Polonius is, after all, long-winded, and he is a bit of a fool. Some critics have argued that the words he speaks are themselves such clichéd truisms that both Laertes and the audience would be likely to roll their eyes in amusement at Polonius’s pomposity. Whatever we think of the speaker, though, we are probably meant to accept the truth behind his words. Even a silly man can speak words of wisdom, and the importance in Hamlet of self, honesty, loyalty to others, and principle cannot be denied.
Claudius is usually played as a consummate villain consumed with ambition and lust. There are, however, moments when a more sympathetic portrayal is possible. For instance, in his early conversations with Hamlet about the elder Hamlet’s death (1.2.66-128), one could argued that Claudius is sincerely concerned about what he sees as Hamlet’s too-extreme and unnatural grief. In Act 3, scene 1, he speaks of the heavy burden of a guilty conscience (49-54), though in the context of the words Polonius has just spoken even that acknowledgement seems somewhat hollow; Polonius has just advised Ophelia to make a show of devotion so that Hamlet may be fooled into openness by her pious demeanor:
We are oft to blame in this,—
’Tis too much prov’d—that with devotion’s visage
And pious action we do sugar o’er
The devil himself. (46-49)
Given the context, it may be hard to see Claudius as anything other than “the devil himself.” Finally, as evidence that Claudius is not a complete villain, readers sometimes point to 3.3, when Claudius recognizes the horror of his sin and kneels down to pray:
O, my offence is rank, it smells to heaven;
It hath the primal eldest curse upon’t,
A brother’s murder. (36-38)
Even here, though, you may want to remind students that they need to read on. Although Claudius recognizes his guilt and although he kneels down to pray, he exclaims, “Pray I can not.” Although Hamlet believes that he sees his uncle in prayer, and so decides against killing him, Claudius makes it clear that he is incapable of real prayer because he is incapable of true contrition. He is willing to acknowledge his sin but not atone for it, in part because he is unwilling to dispossess himself of “My crown, mine own ambition and my queen” (55). Claudius remains a villain to the end.
Still, in some sense we can imagine a play in which Claudius is more sympathetic. If we can put aside for a moment his murder of his brother and his marriage to his brother’s wife (admittedly large actions to put aside!), we can sympathize with Claudius’s predicament. He is faced with a stepson who dislikes him and behaves as if he is mad, he knows that his people speak highly of his dead brother and his brooding nephew, and he is forced to give free passage across his territories to a former enemy. For Claudius, the reins of power must be more difficult to wield than he had expected.
See #1, above. Hamlet is less rash and less militaristic than Fortinbras; though both men set out to avenge their fathers’ deaths, Fortinbras pursues his goals more openly and with greater speed, a man of action more than a man of the intellect. However, the two are perhaps less different than they are sometimes said to be. At the play’s end Fortinbras says that Hamlet would have made a good king, and, by commanding that Hamlet’s body be lifted aloft and carried like a soldier’s, Fortinbras honors him above Claudius, Laertes, and Gertrude. (It should be noted that Fortinbras is himself reported to be more moderate as the play moves along; he tames his militaristic vengeance to the conditions of the contract that Norway and Denmark have signed.)
In comparison to Laertes, too, Hamlet seems inactive and perhaps overly intellectual. Laertes is social and fun-loving enough to have caused his father to worry about whether he is spending his time at school wisely or only drinking, gaming, and whoring. We hear no such present concerns about Hamlet and get no sense that Hamlet was any more the profligate in his past. Laertes, too, has much in common with Hamlet, though. Again, both sons have fathers’ deaths to avenge; both are skilled in the delicate art of fencing (you may need to explain to students that fencing combines a militaristic skill with the epée with controlled movement and thoughtful strategy); and both love Ophelia with enough depth that they fight at her funeral over who has the stronger love. Like Fortinbras, Laertes clearly respects Hamlet. In recognition of the common values they share, the dying Laertes asks the dying Hamlet to “exchange forgiveness” (292-94), bringing an end to the cycle of revenge.
Love, sex, and death are entangled from the first moments of the play; the elder’s Hamlet’s death was the consequence not only of Claudius’s ambition but of Claudius’s and Gertrude’s love and incestuous passion. These three primal acts and emotions are, then, the catalysts for all other actions in the play. Probably the most famous of the specific juxtapositions of love, sex, and death comes in the first scene of Act 3. Brooding over his predicament and contemplating suicide, Hamlet soliloquizes on the advantages of a decision “to be or not to be” (56). That soliloquy is immediately followed by an exchange with Ophelia that focuses on the couple’s present and past love and, then, on Hamlet’s command that Ophelia “get thee to a nunnery” (118, 124), which could refer to a place of prostitution as well as a convent. Hamlet’s love for his mother is similarly entangled with sex. Whether one sees his emotions as Oedipal or not, there is no escaping the fact that Hamlet has deeply loved his mother and felt wronged by her and that some of his most powerful speeches focus on his mother’s sexuality. (See, in particular, 1.2.143-59 and the exchange between Hamlet and Gertrude in 3.4.).
In Hamlet, love and sex are a fatal combination. You may want to say something to your students about the common Renaissance pun on “die” as referring to both the end of life and the sexual act (the belief being that the expenditure of passion in the sex act brought one closer to death). Lest they think this a quaint belief of an earlier time, you might also point out that modern psychologists have seen similar connections. Death and the contemplation of it are often tied up with love and sex, partly because love and sex help the individual and the society ward off fears of death and imagine the self perpetuated eternally into future generations. There is in Hamlet some sense that love and sex (particularly woman’s sexuality) bring death, but there is also a sense that failing to love and be loved, Hamlet can expect no other end than death.
Readers will differ in the extent to which they think Hamlet fails to act and in their sense of what they think Hamlet should have done when learning of his uncle’s treachery. As we said in response to #1, above, though Hamlet upbraids himself (and thinks his father’s ghost upbraids him) for being too slow too act, his hesitation can be defended on the grounds that he needs to be certain that the ghost is truthful and benevolent. It should be noted as well that Hamlet is not always slow to act. He responds quickly and courageously to the news that a ghost is abroad, he reacts swiftly to the discovery of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern’s treachery, he boards the pirate ship and fights with the pirates (4.6.11-22), he is passionate and impetuous when he grapples with Laertes at Ophelia’s grave, and he willingly takes on the challenge of a fencing match with Laertes.
Responses will vary. Students may want to look at how the other characters in the play react to Hamlet’s apparent madness, particularly at how Ophelia (especially in 3.1) and Gertrude (in 3.2) react to it.
There is much stage-directing and play-acting in Hamlet. In addition to those instances mentioned in the question, you might want to remind students of Polonius’s instructions that Ophelia take on the role of lonely woman reading a book so that she might encourage Hamlet to reveal the source of his madness (3.1.43-49) while he and Claudius listen from the sidelines and of Polonius’s maneuverings that cause him to hide behind the arras in Gertrude’s room and get himself killed. So inept are Polonius’s plottings that one might conclude that the play is a criticism of such directorial maneuvering. At the same time, though, the play clearly recognizes the psychological power of the drama. Hamlet scolds himself, for instance, for being “a rogue and peasant slave” (2.2.475) who feels less passion in life than the actor describing the slaughter of Priam feels over Hecuba’s loss. Although this could be seen simply as a critique of Hamlet’s inability to act and react, it is also a commentary on the power of drama. We may think that real life should evoke more real emotion than the artificial world of the drama can, but we recognize at the same time the power of drama to arouse feeling and motivate us to action. That power is especially evident in the acting out of The Murder of Gonzago, which not only mirrors Claudius’s actions and his evil but also serves as catalyst for what follows. “The play’s the thing / Wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the king,” Hamlet says at the end of Act 2. The drama performed before the court does just that, but it also does more. Once the play has been performed, Hamlet is certain of Claudius’s guilt and Claudius is certain of Hamlet’s sanity. The artificial medium of the drama brings a knowledge that can not be ignored or avoided.
Kenneth Branagh, Hamlet (movie still and scenes from screenplay) (1318-27)
Possible Responses to Question for Discussion and Writing: Movie Still (1318)
Branagh achieves the effect of doubling through a number of techniques. By dressing Laertes and Hamlet in almost identical fencing costumes (they are traditional fencing costumes) and by placing them so firmly in the foreground, he invites a comparison between the two just as the play does. The two men and their crossed epées frame the scene, making it clear that the contest of skill and wills is the central action but at the same time drawing our eyes inward to the court scene, where Gertrude and Claudius are similarly doubled. The King and Queen strike similar poses, and they are attended by courtiers who mirror each other in dress and attitude, if not in gender. Looking about the scene, we may see Gertrude and Claudius as confederates who are similar in disposition and motivation, as doubles of a kind. Here, too, Branagh has textual support. Although the elder Hamlet warns his son not to “let thy soul contrive / Against thy mother aught” (1.5.85-86), it is clear that Hamlet sees his mother as almost as culpable and lustful as Claudius. Finally, although it is less clear in the black-and-white picture above than in the colored original, the tiles on the floor alternate between black and white titles, reflecting a theme of good vs. evil and, again, guiding our eyes inward from the two fencers and toward the King and Queen. Whatever their faults, Laertes and Hamlet are both generally good men, motivated by loyalty to their fathers. Claudius and Gertrude, on the other hand, are motivated by lust and ambition.
Possible Responses to Questions for Discussion and Writing: Branagh’s Hamlet, 1.2.42-159 (1323)
The court responds with affection to Laertes. He is handsome and noble, but nervous before the king, and he clearly wants to leave the court and Denmark as soon as possible so that he may return to France and the freer lifestyle he has there. Laertes is still young and, at least for the time, the court is willing to indulge him. The good humor and affection that surround Laertes contrast sharply with the firmer tone that Claudius takes with Hamlet and with Hamlet’s more somber mood.
Branagh accomplishes the shift in mood by having the camera pan slowly across the good-humored and celebratory crowd and then stop on the still and somber figure of Hamlet. The abrupt cuts to the King and then back to Hamlet undercut the earlier sense of easy good humor, giving the scene a more staccato feel. Claudius deals with Hamlet with a much sterner, more peremptory tone; his indulgence towards Laertes’s wildness is replaced by an impatient firmness at Hamlet’s black mood.
Branagh also invites us to compare the two young men’s demeanors. Laertes is nervous and deferential before his “dread lord” (Branagh line 9; 1.2.50), asking the King for permission to leave the court. Although he stands apart from the others, Hamlet is far more comfortable in the court and far less deferential. We may be surprised, for instance, that he sits down in the King’s presence, and without the King’s permission, and that he raises his voice to the Queen. Clearly Hamlet is more of a threat to Claudius and the smooth running of his court than Laertes is.
Responses will vary. As students discuss their reactions to the scene, you may want to ask them to think about the lines that separate the public and private spheres. If one imagines the quarrel as a family quarrel, then there is obvious embarrassment in having it take place in public. Hamlet may want to use that embarrassment to his advantage: He has much to gain by making Claudius seem less than kingly. Claudius, too, may want to make this apparently private quarrel (or at least its conclusion) very public. By showing his ability to control his truculent and popular stepson, he implies that he has the power to control the court and the people. This early in his reign, the new King seizes the opportunity to make public all shows of power. He does not have the luxury of behaving “only” like a father; if he is to solidify his reign, he must behave like a king.
Branagh makes manifest the struggle between Claudius and Hamlet in the abrupt cuts from one man to the other and the differences in their moods and demeanors. Hamlet remains largely immobile and passive during the scene, subservient to Claudius’s power and will. Indeed, the victory in the scene belongs to Claudius, as does the figurative and literal point of view. We watch with Claudius as Hamlet approaches the throne and, because Hamlet is causing a scene at what should be a happy occasion, we may sympathize with Claudius when he take control of the situation and even drags Hamlet to the dais. By forcing us to identify with Claudius, Branagh accomplishes two things: He makes Claudius seem more than a cardboard villain who is easy to hate, and he forces us to see ourselves, even if only temporarily, in the villain’s role. As a result, he forces us to see that our own motivations and behaviors are more tainted than we would sometimes admit.
At the end of the scene, though, the point of view shifts. Left with only Hamlet on stage and moving with him as he walks down the hall, we cannot help but identify with him and feel his grief. Claudius is the political center of the play, but the emotional center has already shifted.
Branagh reminds us that Gertrude and Claudius are newlyweds who are celebrating not only his rise to power but also their marriage. We, like the courtiers, are meant to “share their obvious intoxication with each other” (1322), though Hamlet’s ill humor and his studied isolation may cause us some discomfort. Hamlet’s dress (he is in black), his demeanor, and his isolation all point to his disapproval of the marriage. Audiences new to the story may think Hamlet misanthropic and petulant; those who know the essential situation (and that situation is laid out by the Ghost in the opening scene in the play) are more likely to share Hamlet’s point of view, though perhaps reluctantly.
Possible Responses to Questions for Discussion and Writing: Branagh’s Hamlet, 3.1.90-184 (1323)
Hamlet and Ophelia have loved each other thoroughly and deeply, to the point of intimacy. Of late there has been a distance between them, caused by Hamlet’s familial and political troubles. She has been hurt by his inattention and distraction, and he is hurt in turn by the formality of her speech and demeanor and by her returning of his love letters. He has trusted her completely, thinking her true and honest and good. When he realizes that she has allowed herself to be used as an accomplice in entrapping him, he sees her actions as a betrayal of the love they had and explodes with abusive language and violent action. Branagh creates a picture of lovers who have loved and honored each other so well that the loss of that love cannot help but lead to abuse.
“Nunnery” sometimes has a bawdy meaning in Renaissance English as a house of prostitution. Readers often argue that Hamlet has been so disturbed by his mother’s infidelity to his father and by her apparent lustfulness that he now assumes that all women, even the good Ophelia, are equally licentious. Some also argue (as Branagh himself does) that Hamlet has been disturbed to violence by his discovery that Ophelia has betrayed him. In that case, the sexual meaning of “get thee to a nunnery” might be seen as consonant with the physical abuse that follows in Branagh’s direction of the scene.
Responses will vary. In our experience, most viewers have been surprised by Hamlet’s violence, especially since it is a violence directed against someone so vulnerable as Ophelia. Some argue that Hamlet reveals a disturbing misogyny here. Others argue that he is under such emotional and political pressure that it is not surprising that he loses control at a moment when he feels betrayed by the woman whom he has loved and trusted.
By reminding us of Polonius and Claudius’s presence, Branagh emphasizes the fact that Hamlet has been caught in a trap and perhaps thereby increases our sense that Hamlet has been wronged and Ophelia has been guilty of helping to wrong him. He also makes us into virtual accomplices, since we have known all along that a trap is being laid. Finally, by contrasting Hamlet’s violence with the distant passivity of Polonius and Claudius, Branagh increases our sense of the two older men’s willingness to manipulate and deceive others. Claudius probably seems even more sinister as a result of his furtiveness, and Polonius seems more like a king-pleaser than a loving father.
Mark Thornton Burnett, “The ‘Very Cunning of the Scene’: Kenneth Branagh’s Hamlet” (1328-33)
Possible Responses to Questions for Discussion and Writing (1333-34)
Responses will vary. Many directors cut the Fortinbras scenes because they don’t explicitly advance the Hamlet-Claudius plot and because they seem to distract audiences from the court intrigue. Nevertheless, you may want to point out to students that they help us to understand that Claudius has serious military concerns as well as serious familial and political ones. With the backdrop of possible military action, we may understand more easily Claudius’s desire to solidify his power and to rid himself of the nuisance of Hamlet.
The use of mirrors and other doubling techniques emphasizes the play’s themes about the duality of human nature; it also reminds us that Shakespeare includes several doublings and retellings within Hamlet and those pairings are meant to help us understand Hamlet’s situation ad motivation more fully. When we understand that Hamlet, Laertes, and Fortinbras all find themselves with a duty to avenge their fathers’ murders, for instance, we recognize the need to compare the men so as to understand better what such vengeance does and should entail. The use of mirrors also reminds us of Hamlet’s admonitions to the players that they “hold, as ‘twere, the mirror up to nature” (3.2.15-16) and his remarks to Gertrude that “You go not till I set you up a glass / Where you may see the inmost part of you” (3.4.19-20). Like the play within the play, Branagh’s Hamlet sets up mirrors upon mirrors by which characters and audience alike may see their true selves reflected.
Both the chapel scenes and the demon imagery set up a primal contest between good and evil, but they also remind us that the distinctions between the two are more blurred than we are wont to believe. A king in prayer looks like an innocent king, but he is not. He looks like a king confessing his sins and asking for forgiveness, but he is not. A Ghost that tells of past horrors may be an agent of truth or a demon. Much of the play is spent stripping away the facades so that characters may see the truth behind the image of good or evil.
Responses will vary. In our experience, students sometimes respond appreciatively to the casting of well-known popular actors in Shakespeare plays. Such casting makes Shakespeare seem less esoteric and more immediate. Critics have not always responded as kindly. Some have argued that Billy Crystal, for instance, simply isn’t up to the role of the gravedigger and that he was cast more as a matter of gimmickry than as a matter of talent. How better to bring in the masses than to pander to them, such critics argue. Students will have their own thoughts about the reasons for such casting and the effectiveness of it. The ensuing discussion can profitably focus on how and why directors make the casting decisions they do and about what casting decisions students themselves would make.
Many of our students, particularly first-year students, have difficulty with ambiguity and irony, so some may find the relative lack of ambiguity in Branagh’s production appealing. At the same time, you will probably want to point out that ambiguity and irony are not just clever artistic overlays; they are at the heart of Shakespeare’s play and at the heart of life. If we see Hamlet only as a victim, for instance, we cannot imagine that he would make a very good king. If we recognize only that Ophelia has betrayed Hamlet, we cannot recognize that she has been obedient to her father and, perhaps, to her own fears about Hamlet’s true intentions. There is irony in Hamlet’s using intrigue to kill the friends who would kill him, and to miss that irony is perhaps to ignore the complexity of Hamlet’s character and of the play’s reflection of reality.
Responses will vary.
Margaret Atwood, “Gertrude Talks Back” (1334-35)
Possible Response to Questions for Discussion and Writing (1335)
Gertrude is down-to-earth and intent on fulfilling her own desires, interested more in the things of the earth and of the flesh than in philosophy, the intellect, and abstract principles. She dismisses Hamlet’s brooding and his sense of superiority and wants him just to be an average guy, someone who sleeps around, drinks, and has a little fun. She wants for him the same life that she wanted for herself and that she thinks she did not have with Hamlet’s priggish father. If your students have read Arnold’s “Dover Beach” and Hecht’s “The Dover Bitch,” you might ask them to compare Hecht’s Arnold and Atwood’s elder Hamlet on the one hand and Hecht’s Bitch and Atwood’s Gertrude on the other hand. Gertrude is more impatient with the philosophizing and perhaps more conniving than is the Bitch, but the two women have in common an intense earthiness.
It is difficult to compare Atwood’s Gertrude with Shakespeare’s since we get little sense of Gertrude’s point of view in Shakespeare’s play. Atwood’s Gertrude sometimes does seem very modern in comparison to Shakespeare’s, though—for instance, in her concerns about Hamlet’s name and Claudius’s “weight problem.” Her defense against Hamlet’s attacks on her “lust” also seems very modern: Perhaps a middle-aged woman has a right to and desire for sexual pleasure that the younger generation does not find valid or credible. (At the same time, even a Renaissance audience might have found Hamlet’s inability to accept his mother’s sexuality judgmental and sanctimonious. An audience during the time of Queen Elizabeth, the Virgin Queen, might have expected a queen to keep her sexual life private, but they wouldn’t necessarily have expected sexual pleasure to die with age. Renaissance plays are filled with bawdy old women.)
Atwood’s Gertrude sees Hamlet as out of touch, nasty, and unable to take care of himself, and she worries that he isn’t capable of fun or real sexual passion. Atwood takes her hints from Shakespeare’s play insofar as Shakespeare’s Hamlet, too, finds it difficult to act and, perhaps, to commit himself to Ophelia. Shakespeare’s Hamlet is sometimes ironic but almost never funny, and most readers would have difficulty imagining him having fun at anything. He soliloquizes so much and so often berates himself or others or contemplates his sins or the futility of his life that, like Atwood’s Hamlet, he seems not fully able to live an everyday existence.
Gertrude kills the elder Hamlet because he is no fun: He is not only uninterested in sex but contemptuous of her for wanting it, and he doesn’t drink or enjoy his food. In fact, he doesn’t seem to enjoy much of anything, including Gertrude. Gertrude’s tone may make it difficult for some to sympathize with her—she is too matter-of-fact and conniving; and readers may forgive her more for disliking her husband than for disliking her son, though that son would probably annoy most of us as well. But readers who imagine the pale life that Gertrude says she has led will probably feel some sympathy for her and find a shocking humor in the story’s ending. Atwood’s Gertrude may not be “good,” but she is certainly more interesting and more fun to be around than either her first husband or her son must be.
Louis MacNeice, “Rites of War” (1335)
Possible Responses to Questions for Discussion and Writing (1336)
In Shakespeare’s play, Fortinbras is horrified by the massacre and gore on stage and by the loss of the young prince. “Such a sight as this / “Becomes the field, but here shows much amiss,” Shakespeare’s Fortinbras says in the final speech of the play. However, he also gives voice to the justice of Hamlet’s cause, commanding that Hamlet be honored with the “soldiers’ music and the rites of war” (see Hamlet 5.2.362). At the same time, as MacNeice says, Fortinbras must have seen “far more of gore without this pomp.” Aside from the difference in settings of the massacres at the court and on the field, there is another crucial difference: The massacre at court is memorialized in lofty verse and, as Horatio implies, there are angels nearby to sing the souls, particularly Hamlet’s, to rest; the soldiers in Fortinbras’s and others’ wars aren’t so lucky. No one stops to think if they have souls, and no one pauses over their tragedies. Perhaps that, too, is a waste.
Whereas Horatio asks that “flights of angels sing [Hamlet] to [his] rest” (5.2.323), the ever soldierly Fortinbras commands that Hamlet be borne like a solider and then turns his thoughts to the men in the field: “Go, bid the soldiers shoot” (5.2.366). Perhaps MacNeice wants us to think that the moment of grief and introspection is too quickly over, cut short by war and its rites.
For most readers, Fortinbras and the war being waged fade into the background of Hamlet, so much so that many directors cut the Fortinbras scenes as relatively unimportant. MacNeice brings the war plot center stage, reminding us both that a war is being fought and that its carnage is more extreme than that on stage. We don’t see the war outside the court as the chaotic reality it must be, and the tragedy that has befallen Hamlet seems more important and immediate. For those of us who recognize that soldiers do have souls and that war brings a long list of dead, there is irony in the attention to the death of one man while others die in large numbers almost unnoticed. In Shakespeare’s play, Fortinbras and his men will restore order after the play’s moments of chaos, but it is an order wrung from the deaths not only of Hamlet and his fellows but also of the soldiers on the field.
John Ciardi, “Hamlet in the Wings” (1336-38)
Possible Responses to Questions for Discussion and Writing (1338)
Ciardi draws upon the use of the play within the play and the play acting metaphors in Hamlet to create a soliloquy in which the “real” Hamlet is imagining himself acting out his own life. The speaker is, then, not simply an actor playing the part of Hamlet but rather Hamlet himself. Finally, though, the distinction is insignificant. Hamlet sees himself as an actor playing a part thrust upon him. He knows the end as much as we do and, though he would avoid that end if he could, he cannot.
The tone is conversational, realistic, and perhaps a bit bitter. Wishing that he could escape the tragedies to come, and wishing that he didn’t have to think so much (line 8), Hamlet attempts through his words to bring the bigger-than-life characters and their tragedies down to a more manageable size. So Ophelia becomes “my girl” or “my chick,” the senior Hamlet and Poloniuis become “daddies,” the Ghost becomes a “spook” in the “cellarage” (Shakespeare’s Ghost probably entered from a trap door on the stage), and the incestuous marriage that so torments Shakespeare’s Hamlet becomes a roll “in the hay” (29).
The painful humor of the poem may actually serve to make the events of the poem seem particularly traumatic and immediate to many readers, especially to those readers unfamiliar or uncomfortable with Shakespeare’s language. Hamlet so clearly knows what has happened and is about to happen and so desperately wants to escape the current situation and the role assigned to him that most readers will respond with sympathy to his predicament.
Hamlet cannot “live” because he must play out the role assigned to him. He has no choices to make but those presented to him, and he can come onto the stage only when directed to do so and only to speak the lines others have given him; when he is “in the wings” he can do little more than muse upon what has happened or is about to happen. He thus participates in his life but doesn’t live it.
Insofar as readers extrapolate from Hamlet’s experiences to their own, the poem asks us to think about the extent to which for all of us life is circumscribed by the roles we are given. In our experience, students often resist the notion that for each of us choices may be somehow limited by factors outside our control (the family, country, or culture of our birth, race or gender, physical attributes, age, the time in which we live). You might ask students to think about whether Hamlet would have lived the same life he lived had he not been born a prince or had he been a woman or, even, had he not been a student.
Hamlet would choose to be the “smallest yolk of all” (37). He would choose to live the life of a common man, not a prince. He’d choose to be an actor playing and being Hamlet rather than be Hamlet himself. In such a role there would be less pain and more freedom. He could walk away from being Hamlet when the play was over. He wouldn’t, of course, then be Hamlet, because Hamlet is defined in part by his inability to escape the Danish court and his own body and mind. The pseudo-Hamlet he imagines himself becoming might lead a more pleasant, less public, and more mundane life, but he wouldn’t be Hamlet.
Louis Simpson, “Laertes in Paris” (1338-40)
Possible Responses to Questions for Discussion and Writing (1340-41)
For the outlines of Laertes’s character, Simpson is drawing upon Shakespeare. Shakespeare’s Polonius is concerned enough about Laertes’s wildness abroad that he spends spies to observe Laertes and even to sully Laertes’s reputation so the truth about Laertes’s behavior might be discovered. Simpson’s Laertes spends his time enjoying the women, wine, sights, and crowds that Paris has to offer and that the more dour Denmark does not. Though he has gone to Paris ostensibly to study, he doesn’t attend classes, preferring rather to live the active life. Laertes may be a disgrace to his family insofar as he doesn’t study and he lives a wild life, but the poem asks us to sympathize with him. He has clearly chosen life and love over the brooding melancholy and slow death of Denmark.
The first five stanzas emphasize the pleasures of Paris, though there is an undercurrent of the “disgrace” of such a life. In stanza 5, the comparison between Paris and Denmark becomes explicit. In stanza 6, the tone shifts dramatically with the delivery of a letter from the court. From that point on we cannot escape the fact that “Each man has his Hamlet”; Laertes may think that either he or Hamlet can survive the confrontation, but we know otherwise. The return to Denmark means death.
Laertes is perhaps a bit more impatient with Polonius in Simpson’s poem than in Shakespeare’s play, but the relationships between the father and son in the two works is similar. Polonius is apparently concerned that Laertes isn’t using his time in Paris wisely, and Laertes expects mostly “words / Of good advice” from his father rather than the more useful signature on a check that will help him buy new swords. Simpson’s Laertes, like Shakespeare’s, returns to Denmark to avenge his father’s death, but we may get the sense that he returns more out of a sense of pure duty and a need to put the past behind him than out of grief and affection for the father he has lost.
Although Laertes is more fun-loving and less brooding than Hamlet, both are finally motivated by the code of honor that requires them to avenge their fathers’ deaths. Even in Paris, Laertes cannot ignore “that dark other / Self” that requires him to fulfill his duty. One gets the sense that if Laertes were in Hamlet’s shoes, perhaps his behavior would not be as different from Hamlet’s as we might have thought.
The Association of the Bar of the City of New York, Excerpts from The Elsinore Appeal (1341-47)
Possible Responses to Questions for Discussion and Writing (1347-48)
Responses will vary. You may want to point out to students that the attorney for the appellee (the attorney who is opposing Hamlet’s claims) provides more in the way of textual evidence from Hamlet. At the same time, the appellant’s attorney (the attorney representing Hamlet) rebuts many of the claims, arguing that the textual evidence is insufficient to prove Hamlet sane. The discussion thus provides a good opportunity for you to go back to Hamlet, look at the quotations, and discuss with students the importance of context in any interpretation. You may also want to consider the extent to which the attorneys bring in conjectures that do not have clear textual support. What are we to make of the accusations against Fortinbras, for instance? The references to UFO’s and crowd hallucinations? Finally, the debate between the attorneys may also help students focus on the play’s tensions between thought and emotion, law and justice, tensions that are relevant to our understanding of why and when Hamlet chooses to kill.
The trial is itself based on clear distinctions between the law of Hamlet’s time and place and the law of our own. Hamlet (and Laertes and Fortinbras) is tied to the codes of his own time and place, codes that make revenge not only a right but a duty. Shakespeare seems finally to reject that notion of justice—Fortinbras, who restores order at the play’s end, has himself apparently rejected it—but he does not necessarily find Hamlet culpable for having adhered to the code. Nor do most audiences. As Hamlet’s attorney notes, popular opinion would have it that Hamlet was in the right when he killed Claudius. A modern court would undoubtedly be wary of upholding public opinion over the law and seeming to promote vigilante justice, but most audiences end the play with a sense of Hamlet’s tragedy, not of his guilt.
Particular defenses have their roots more in modern American law than in the law of either Hamlet’s time or Shakespeare’s. Insanity and emotional duress would be obvious defenses for Hamlet, though (as the appellee’s attorney points out), Hamlet’s age (he is over thirty; see 5.1.111-12 and 123-24) might work against the defense.
Laura Bohannan, “Shakespeare in the Bush” (1348-55)
Possible Responses to Questions for Discussion and Writing (1355-56)
The most important change comes at the beginning of Bohannan’s telling, when the tribes people reject the play’s assumption that Claudius was wrong to marry his brother’s widow and that Hamlet has a duty to avenge his father’s death. The rejection of that central fact from Hamlet makes it difficult for the tribes people to see Claudius as a villain rather than a good leader attempting to solidify his position, care for his people, and see to his sister’s-in-law and nephew’s safety. That early characterization of Claudius, the assumption that the Ghost cannot be either real or truthful, and the belief that Ophelia had to have been killed by witchcraft make it difficult as well for the tribes people to see that Hamlet is in part a play about what constitutes moral action and about how one recognizes and avoids diabolical influences. Such assumptions also make it difficult for the tribes people to understand the inner turmoil that besets both Hamlet and Ophelia; if their madness is explained by way of witchcraft, it cannot then be explained by the distress that results from the loss of their love, the loss of their fathers, and the loss of each other’s trust. Finally, the inability to see Gertrude as Shakespeare’s Hamlet sees her—as an unfaithful wife and a woman who gives in to lust—makes impossible an understanding of what some see as Hamlet’s Oedipal obsession with his mother and his unhealthy obsession with women’s sexuality. Finally, for the tribes people, Hamlet behaves badly in that he fails to seek the aid of his father’s age mates and he speaks disrespectfully to his mother.
The Tiv people also believe that stories and values are universal. In both cases the belief that others automatically share their beliefs leads to a kind of narrative impasse. By the end of Bohannan’s telling, Hamlet is not the same story for the tribes people that it is for her. Bohannan sees it as a tale of diabolical influence, of lust, incest, and murder. She sees it as a tale about Hamlet’s attempt to put his world to rights. The Tiv people see it as a tale of murder as well, but they see no incest and no diabolical influence. They also see Hamlet as less a victim than a fool; his problem is not that he acts too slowly but that he takes it upon himself to act at all. Hamlet’s and Laertes’s love for Ophelia and their loyalties to their dead fathers take a backseat to witchcraft, which is the dominant force of the Tiv’s rendering. Tragedy gives way to magic.
Responses will vary. You may want to prompt the discussion by asking students to practice with a less complex story. How might they retell a Western fairy tale or cowboy story to an African, Middle Eastern, or Eastern audience? How might they retell a child’s fairy tale to a group of adults or a story meant for adults to an audience of children? (If you have had your students read McMullan’s retelling for children of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde [1417-18] or the various adult versions of Little Red Riding Hood [624-54], they may serve as models.)
In our experience, students will first point to the changes in language that they would want to make, so you might begin by asking them to translate into modern English one or two passages and explain what they have gained and lost in the translation. You may also want to ask students to think about what seems alien to them in the situation of the play. How would they translate the Ghost into something that would have the same impact on a modern audience that a ghost would have had on a Renaissance audience, some of whom would have believed in ghosts as real, not simply metaphorical or artistic creations?
How might a modern retelling convey Hamlet’s relationship with his mother and his distrust of women’s sexuality? By modern standards Hamlet may seem a sexist play—the men (Hamlet, Laertes, and perhaps even Claudius) are given more sexual license than the women (Ophelia and Gertrude) are. Can a modern rendering of the play modernize the relationship between men and women in the play without diminishing Hamlet’s emotional distress or losing sight of some of Hamlet’s motivation for revenge?
Finally, a modern Hamlet might simply go to the police, sell his story to the tabloids, ignore the Ghost’s injunctions, or leave the court against his mother’s and step-father’s wishes. To do so would, though, make too public a private grief and defy the hierarchy that makes a son subservient to his parents. Are there codes of conduct that would govern a son in today’s society on which a modern retelling might draw?
Adrienne Miller and Andrew Goldblatt, “Defining the Hamlet Syndrome” (1356)
Possible Responses to Questions for Discussion and Writing (1357)
Miller and Goldblatt tell us explicitly that “To Hamlet, the heart represents principle, conscience, consideration for others . . . ; the dollar represents wealth, power and inclusion in the mainstream. …” Beyond that, though, they are mute, at least in the excerpt given here. What do Hamlet’s principles and his conscience direct him to do, after all? Do they direct him to obey his father’s ghost and kill his uncle? Do they, in other words, direct him to murder? Couldn’t one argue that a principled conscience-stricken man would not murder? In short, perhaps it is not simply a matter of the heart vs. the dollar but a matter of the conflicts within the heart itself?
And what of Hamlet’s interest in the dollar? Do Miller and Goldblatt want us to think of Hamlet’s desire for the throne and for personal advancement? Would a Renaissance author and audience have seen such a desire as a matter of personal ambition or of the acceptance of one’s rightful election to the throne?
Responses will vary. The list is long enough to characterize many people and so some of the traits may be associated with Hamlet. You may want to point out to your students that Shakespeare wrote before the concept of a free market economy was developed and that we don’t know enough of Hamlet’s past to know whether Hamlet has been defeated and humiliated in competition, though we do know that he has become more skilled in fencing since Laertes went to France and we may assume that he has become more skilled so that he can defeat a man who has defeated him in the past. Few readers would probably agree that Shakespeare’s Hamlet has “little patience for details or knotty problems”; the usual complaint is that he thinks too much and that he gets too engrossed in the details. Nor is there any evidence that he hates work. That leaves the two character traits with which Hamlet is usually flogged: He procrastinates, and he sees himself “a victim of forces beyond control.” Both are open to some question. Does Hamlet procrastinate? He accuses himself of doing so, but some have argued that he delays so that he may verify the truth of the Ghost’s statements and so that he may find the most opportune moment for killing the king. How much time, after all, has passed between Hamlet’s first conversation with the Ghost and the end of the play? Is Hamlet passive? He does pursue conversation with the Ghost, board a pirate ship, arrange for his treacherous friends’ deaths, direct the players to help him “catch the conscience of the King” (2.2.533), confront his mother, kill Polonius, and accept Laertes’s challenge. Finally, does Hamlet just “[count] himself a victim of forces beyond his control” or is he, in fact, such a victim?
Readers will respond differently to the claims that Hamlet should have acted more quickly. If he did so without testing the Ghost’s veracity, some would find him foolish and rash, interested more in defeating his uncle and achieving his own advancement than in pursuing justice. Some readers argue, though, that had Hamlet acted more quickly, the stage would have been littered with far fewer corpses at play’s end.
Mary Pipher, From Reviving Ophelia (1357)
Possible Responses to Questions for Discussion and Writing (1357-58)
We know too little of Ophelia’s past to be certain that Pipher has textual support for her claims. It is true that Ophelia is torn between her love for Hamlet and her love for, and obedience to, her father. And it is true that she is shaken by Hamlet’s response to her apparent betrayal. At the same time, not all readers will agree that Ophelia goes mad simply because Hamlet spurns her. Perhaps it is her father’s death, particularly her father’s death at Hamlet’s hands, that sends her into madness.
Some readers will agree with Pipher. This is certainly how Branagh interprets the end of Hamlet’s and Ophelia’s relationship, for instance. Other readers are less certain that Hamlet is aware of Ophelia’s treachery. They argue that Hamlet spurns Ophelia because Ophelia has spurned him and that he is wholly unaware of Ophelia’s complicity in Polonius’s and Claudius’s subterfuge.
Responses will vary. Readers, particularly female readers, tend to agree with Pipher’s assessment of female adolescents. Many argue, however, that male adolescents go through a similar period of internal chaos. The question is relevant to Hamlet insofar as some of the claims made about Ophelia might conceivably be made about Hamlet as well. (In fact, Miller and Goldblatt make some of these same claims in the excerpt from The Hamlet Syndrome [1356], though they don’t argue that the character traits identified are essentially adolescent characteristics.) You might ask your students how old they think Ophelia is. We know that Hamlet is over thirty; is Ophelia an adolescent?
Ernest Jones, “Tragedy and the Mind of the Infant” (1358-63)
Possible Responses to Questions for Discussion and Writing (1363)
As a Freudian, Jones rests his interpretation on the foundation of the Oedipal desire that Freud believed all infant boys feel. Readers who accept the Freudian theory are of course more likely to accept Jones’s interpretation of Hamlet than are those who reject Freud. There can be no doubt that Hamlet speaks more openly than most sons of his mother’s sexuality, and there can be no doubt that Claudius is jealous of or impatient with the favor that Gertrude shows Hamlet. This evidence is clearly consonant with Jones’s interpretation but is not necessarily decisive. To say that Hamlet is disturbed by his mother’s lust isn’t to say that Hamlet lusts after his mother; to say that Gertrude dotes on her son isn’t to say that she feels sexually attracted to him—or that he responds in kind.
One could argue that both Ophelia and Gertrude are defined by their gender and sexuality rather than by their behaviors or inner beings. Although he obviously feels some passion for her, Hamlet sees Ophelia as pure and chaste; he sees his mother as incestuous and lustful. His need to see Ophelia as innocent and fully trustworthy is fostered by his having seen his mother as sinful and treacherous. It is for that reason that at the first hint of Ophelia’s disloyalty, Hamlet explodes with anger and verbal abuse. A woman is either pure or sinful; there is nothing in between. If Ophelia isn’t the paragon of innocence he thought her to be, he apparently reasons, she must be more like his mother than he had thought.
Responses will overlap with those to #1, above. You might ask your students to think about why Jones is relatively silent about the relationship between Hamlet and his biological father. Do we sense from Hamlet’s characterization of his father that he would have wanted to supplant him on the throne or in his mother’s bed?
According to Jones, Hamlet and Claudius share a passion that makes them both want to lie with Gertrude and to murder their rivals. The evidence is in part in the two men’s actions and words. Though Hamlet doesn’t sleep with his mother, he imagines vividly the sexual acts in which she engages, perhaps verbally fulfilling an erotic fantasy. And he does, of course, kill Gertrude’s husband. Much of Jones’s argument depends, though, on our accepting his assumptions about unconscious desire. Since unconscious desire is by its very nature unconscious and hidden, it is difficult to find direct evidence in the play. You might, though, ask your students to discuss Jones’s claim that Hamlet not only wants to emulate his uncle but also wants to kill himself by killing his uncle. To what extent does Hamlet desire and choose death throughout the play? (In his “to be or not to be” soliloquy, he may contemplate suicide but he chooses life; at the end of the play, he seems surprised that his wound is a mortal one.)
Carolyn Heilbrun, “The Character of Hamlet’s Mother” (1364-69)
Possible Responses to Questions for Discussion and Writing (1369-70)
Earlier critics see Gertrude as silly and malleable, even stupid. They see her as Claudius’s pawn, too passive and lazy to act or think on her own. Some also de-emphasize the essential fact of her sensuality and sexuality. Heilbrun, on the other hand, argues that Gertrude is smart enough to be brief, to find the right words for the occasion, to recognize the danger in Hamlet’s passion, and to hide from Claudius facts that would cause him to act swiftly against Hamlet. She may be “passion’s slave” (1369), but she is not silly, malleable, or stupid. She may even be, Heilbrun argues, well-meaning and essentially good, though not all readers will find convincing the too-quick comparison to the admirable Horatio, which Heilbrun grounds in the single piece of evidence that both use the word “sweet” in describing the play’s dead lovers (1369).
Some readers will find Heilbrun’s argument more convincing than will others. Although Gertrude does speak concisely, some argue that it less because she is wise and intelligent than because she is finally not a major player in the action. Some argue as well that Heilbrun spends too little time on the crucial confrontation between Hamlet and Gertrude in 3.4. While Heilbrun finds intelligence in Gertrude’s early assessment that Hamlet’s troubled mind springs from “His father’s death and our o’erhasty marriage” (2.2.58), she glosses over the contradiction in Gertrude’s later question, “What have I done, that thou dar’st wag thy tongue / In noise so rude against me?” (3.4.40-41). If in Act 2 Gertrude seems to have understood that she is part of the reason for Hamlet’s wild behavior, why has she lost that understanding in Act 3? Finally, readers might want to hear more about Gertrude’s relationship with the elder Hamlet. When Hamlet forces his mother to listen to his comparison of his father and his uncle (3.4.54-89), Gertrude responds, Heilbrun tells us, with a characteristic “ability to see reality clearly, and to express it” (1368). But where was that ability when she fell in love with Claudius to begin with?
Heilbrun would undoubtedly respond that that ability was clouded over by Gertrude’s lust, but she seems to believe that lust is separate somehow from Gertrude’s intelligence. Some readers will have difficulty agreeing. If Gertrude is driven by lust, they argue, that lust drives out her principles and her intelligence.
It is probably inevitable that any analysis of a character other than Hamlet or, perhaps, Claudius, will make that character seem more prominent than he or she is in the play. At the same time, Heilbrun might have given us a more complete picture of Gertrude by moving beyond what she says to an analysis of what others say about her as well. We do not need to accept Hamlet’s point of view about his mother’s fallen nature, but we do need to consider it. And we need as well to think about how both Claudius and the Ghost speak of Gertrude. Both men clearly love her: The elder Hamlet admonishes Hamlet not to touch his mother but rather to leave her punishment to her conscience and to heaven (1.5.85-88); when in prayer, Claudius cannot repent partly because he is unwilling to give up Gertrude (3.3.36-72, 97-98). Perhaps Gertrude can be defined both by whom she chooses to love and by those who love her.