Some Thoughts on Hamlet

I bring you this post merely to posit that Hamlet, despite arguably being Shakespeare most revered and famous play (alongside Romeo & Juliet and Macbeth), is severely underrated. It cannot but be underrated, because no level of praise can capture its genius; no eulogy can do it justice.

No matter how many times I interact with Hamlet, I cannot exhaust it. No matter where I turn, I am routinely offered new interpretations of the text, and yet each interpretation adds a new dimension to the work.

In Catch-22, Colonel Cathcart observes that Fortinbras is his favourite character, taking little part in the action and yet reaping all of the rewards. But this becomes even more interesting upon reading Bertold Brecht's A Short Organum for the Theatre, where the playwright provides the following analysis of Hamlet's conduct: "After at first being reluctant to answer one bloody deed by another, and even preparing to go into exile, he meets young Fortinbras at the coast as he is marching with his troops to Poland. Overcome by this warrior-like example, he turns back and in a piece of barbaric butchery slaughters his uncle, his mother and himself, leaving Denmark to the Norwegian."

Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead is an absurdist play following the two titular figures behind the play's scenes, and while the play itself isn't particularly interesting (I'm not a big fan of absurdism), it becomes indispensable to those who watch the film adaptation, which is not only immensely more entertaining but also depicts Hamlet perfectly when it wants to be serious. But again, this becomes somehow even more interesting when you add Goethe's Master Wilhelm's Apprenticeship, where the protagonist provides interesting analyses of the play as a whole, but specifically, in talking about a staging of the play and being suggested to merge the two characters into one, he responds as follows: “Heaven preserve me from shortcuts like that, which would work against both sense and effect! What these two men are and what they do, cannot be embodied in one and the same person. It is in such details that Shakespeare reveals his greatness. The creepiness, the bowing and scraping, the approving, flattering and insinuating, their adroitness and strutting, wholeness and emptiness, their utter roguery, their ineptness— how could all this be portrayed by one person? There should be at least a dozen of them, if that were feasible. For they are not just something in society, they are society, and Shakespeare was very modest and wise to give us only two such representatives.”

Concerning the question of action, so important to the play, there are both agreements and disagreements among renowned thinkers:

Samuel Johnson: "Hamlet is, through the whole play, rather an instrument than an agent." (Preface to Shakespeare)

Sigmund Freud: "The play is based upon Hamlet’s hesitation to accomplish the avenging task which has been assigned to him; the text does not avow the reasons or motives of this hesitation, nor have the numerous attempts at interpretation succeeded in giving them. According to the conception which is still current to-day, and which goes back to Goethe, Hamlet represents the type of man whose prime energy is paralysed by over-development of thought activity. ('Sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought.') According to others the poet has attempted to portray a morbid, vacillating character who is subject to neurasthenia. The plot of the story, however, teaches us that Hamlet is by no means intended to appear as a person altogether incapable of action. Twice we see him asserting himself actively, once in headlong passion, where he stabs the eavesdropper behind the arras, and on another occasion where he sends the two courtiers to the death which has been intended for himself—doing this deliberately, even craftily, and with all the lack of compunction of a prince of the Renaissance. What is it, then, that restrains him in the accomplishment of the task which his father’s ghost has set before him? Here the explanation offers itself that it is the peculiar nature of this task. Hamlet can do everything but take vengeance upon the man who has put his father out of the way, and has taken his father’s place with his mother—upon the man who shows him the realisation of his repressed childhood wishes. The loathing which ought to drive him to revenge is thus replaced in him by self-reproaches, by conscientious scruples, which represent to him that he himself is no better than the murderer whom he is to punish." (The Interpretation of Dreams)

Friedrich Nietzsche: "The Dionysian man may be said to resemble Hamlet: both have for once seen into the true nature of things, —they have perceived, but they are loath to act; for their action cannot change the eternal nature of things; they regard it as shameful or ridiculous that one should require of them to set aright the time which is out of joint. Knowledge kills action, action requires the veil of illusion—it is this lesson which Hamlet teaches, and not the cheap wisdom of John-a-Dreams who from too much reflection, as it were from a surplus of possibilities, does not arrive at action at all." (The Birth of Tragedy)

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: "‘The time is out of joint; O cursed spite! That ever I was born to set it right!’ In these words, so I believe, lies the key to Hamlet’s whole behavior; and it is clear to me what Shakespeare set out to portray: a heavy deed placed on a soul which is not adequate to cope with it. And it is in this sense that I find the whole play constructed. An oak tree planted in a precious pot which should only have held delicate flowers. The roots spread out, the vessel is shattered." (Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship)

And to this you may add the observation regarding Shakespeare's treatment of fate, as posited by John Ruskin: "Shakespeare always leans on the force of Fate, as it urges the final evil; and dwells with infinite bitterness on the power of the wicked, and the infinitude of result dependent seemingly on little things... Hamlet gets hold of the wrong foil, and the rest is silence." (Modern Painters, Volume IV)

But there's more. Watch Kurt Vonnegut talk about the shape of Hamlet's story here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GOGru_4z1Vc, read this analysis about telling between a hawk from a handsaw here: https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-meaning-of-can-tell-a-hawk-from-a-handsaw-in-Hamlet, and listen to the album Concerto Grosso by New Trolls. There are endless ways to look at this story.

One way of measuring the greatness of a work is by observing its impact on the cultural scene. The more other works interact with a piece, alluding to it, drawing from it, and mimicking it, the greater it is. And no matter the number of controversies over Hamlet's motives, no matter how many times you allude to the story, no matter how many variations of productions are created, you'll find it the gift that keeps on giving. I've seen it staged with Horatio as the bad guy, I've seen it performed with a version of the 'to be or not to be' soliloquy sung by a choir in reverse order ('be to not or be to'), and we've all watched it told as a tale of anthropomorphic lions in Africa. It is simply inexhaustible.

It is evidently true that Oscar Wilde was right when he said: "There are as many Hamlets as there are melancholies."