Tragedy is great suffering. The tragic hero, a man or woman of noble lineage or otherwise high social standing and moral integrity, engages in a lofty purpose but misses the mark because of some error in judgment. The tragic attitude is extraordinary courage in the face of inevitable defeat—a determination to endure with no reward other than personal dignity and reputation. Freedom in tragedy seems largely an illusion, tragedy’s outcome determined by fate. Though the tragic hero is responsible for his/her misjudgment, there is a sense of inevitability in the unfortunate collision of circumstances with the hero’s peculiar ethos or character. S/he does what s/he does because of who s/he is, not the other way around. Othello’s jealousy, Romeo’s and Juliet’s mutual ardor, Lear’s insatiable need to be loved, Macbeth’s murderous ambition: these are attributes seemingly hardwired into these characters’ DNA.
Hamlet is a tragedy, to be
sure. But like 1 Henry IV, it is a play impossible
to reduce to some single generic formula. The titular character, for example, is
an odd sort of tragic hero. His misjudgment—if we can call it that—is repeatedly
to neglect his lofty purpose: to avenge the murder of his father, the
dishonoring of his mother, and the usurpation of a kingdom rightfully his. What,
exactly, is the peculiar feature of Hamlet’s ethos that prevents him from
following through?
Before exploring a question that four-hundred years of
critical reflection has been unable finally to answer, it is worth pausing to
examine the play, with its several plot elements and characters, as an object—a
structure with identifiable parts. The chart below organizes plots and
characters according to a set of parallel relations among them. It includes the
characters from the original source of the Hamlet story, the twelfth-century Gesta Danorum or History of
the Danes by Saxo Grammaticus (column 1). All other characters (columns
2-4) are either in or mentioned in Hamlet. The
labels on the left indicate certain character types:
Looking at column 1, pertaining to the Gesta story on which Hamlet is based: a Danish son, Amleth, feigns madness in order to
avenge his father’s (Horwendil’s) murder. The murderer, called Feng, is Amleth’s
uncle and Horwendil’s brother. The brothers had been appointed joint governor of
Jutland by the King of Denmark, Roderic. By killing the King of Norway in single
combat, Horwendil had won the right to marry King Roderic’s daughter, Gerutha.
This arouses Feng’s jealousy, which in turn leads to the fratricide. Through
cunning and guile, Amleth succeeds in killing Feng and assumes the throne.
Much of this summary of Saxo’s story can be applied
across columns 2-4. We learn the background of plot 4 from Horatio early in Hamlet (1.1.82ff.)— though on the periphery of the
play, this plot has much in common with the central action. Sometime in the
past, Fortinbras Sr. engaged in hand-to-hand combat with Hamlet Sr., each
combatant wagering both his life and the possession of his lands as prize.
Hamlet Sr. won this contest and Norway thus fell to Danish possession. The son
of Fortinbras (called simply Fortinbras in the play) is now stirring to avenge
his father’s dishonor and to recover “those foresaid lands / So by his
father lost” (1.1.105-106).
Young Fortinbras, then, is similar in circumstance to Hamlet, just as Fortinbras Sr. plays a role similar to that of Hamlet’s father. Notice that whereas in plot 2 Hamlet Sr. is the victim of the original crime, in plot 4 he is the perpetrator. Young Fortinbras’ uncle, called simply Norway in the play, is included in the perpetrator row not because he had anything to do with the injury done Fortinbras’ father, but because, like Claudius to Hamlet, he is an uncle standing in the way of the young man reclaiming what was lost (see 2.2.61-71): his father’s honor and, more directly, the lands named in the wager.
More central to the play is plot 3 in which Laertes is to Hamlet as Polonius is to Hamlet Sr. Or, to turn the analogy on its side, Polonius is to Laertes as Hamlet Sr. is to Hamlet—and so on. Notice again that whereas in plot 2 Hamlet is the avenging hero, in plot 3 he is the perpetrator of the original crime. Thus, at the very moment that a second revenge action begins (when Hamlet accidentally kills Polonius in 3.4), the play’s central character steps into a role similar in function to that of his victim, Claudius—and does so without abandoning his former role. Indeed, as is discussed below, Hamlet fulfills the avenger’s role in one plot only when he has fulfilled that of the victim in another.
The parallel between Gerutha and Gertrude is straightforward, but the inclusion here of Ophelia and Norway is not so obvious. Like Gertrude and Gerutha, the country of Norway is that which was taken by the perpetrator, in this case Hamlet Sr. Similarly, Hamlet has taken Ophelia in the sense of having won her heart, rejected her, and thereby caused her insanity and subsequent suicide. In this sense she is as much a victim as Polonius. And just as Hamlet’s grief stems as much from his mother’s tainted honor as from his father’s murder, so does Laertes seek justice for the terrible harm done his sister as much as for his father’s murder.
These multiple iterations of the same basic plot allow us to see it from different points of view. Hamlet shares in these multiple viewpoints, being both the avenging hero and its victim. The multiplicity also suggests the ubiquity of the plot elements and themes. Adultery, incest, murder, and revenge; honor, dishonor, and pride; covetousness and jealousy; madness and suicidal despair: these fundamental human proclivities permeate a play that, depending on one’s perspective, is either highly entertaining or an ordeal to be endured—or (hopefully) both.
Hamlet has all the makings of a revenge tragedy, a form
very popular during the period just prior to the play’s probable date of
composition (around 1600). These often gruesome plays typically have the
following features:
Shakespeare was no stranger to the revenge-tragedy
formula. An early play, Titus Andronicus, is so
dreadfully violent that some critics have doubted Shakespeare actually wrote it
(though all the evidence suggests he did). The avenging hero, Titus, torments
his victim, Tamora, by murdering her sons, pulverizing their bodies—flesh,
blood, and bone—and baking it all in a great pie. This he feeds to Tamora at an
apparently friendly dinner; for desert, tells her what he has done; exults in
her distress at having just eaten her offspring; and finally murders her.
Elizabethan audiences apparently liked this sort of thing—though Shakespeare
never repeated the formula.
Indeed, Hamlet is no
revenge tragedy—at least not in this crude sense or anything remotely similar.
Yes, the protagonist has good reason to kill his victim. Yes, he longs for
vengeance. He is also very cunning and calculated: he pretends to be insane;
evades his uncle’s spies (Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, Polonius, and even
Ophelia); stages a play (The Mousetrap or Murder of Gonzago) in order to confirm Claudius’
guilt; and escapes certain death near the end, returning to Denmark to carry out
the fateful deed. But there is no public humiliation in the final scene.
Moreover, when Hamlet finally kills Claudius, no one—with the exception of
Hamlet, Claudius, Horatio, and perhaps Gertrude—knows why. Furthermore, the act
of revenge seems almost accidental, committed in the heat of the moment rather
than in any premeditated sense. Hamlet goes into that final scene resigned to
let Providence take its course. For the first time in the play he seems quiet,
at peace, no longer obsessed with anything at all. Prepared to die, he says
simply, “The readiness is all. Since no man has aught of what he leaves,
what is’t to leave betimes?” (5.2.192-93). Are these the thoughts of a
blood-thirsty avenging hero?
Such haunting words are typical of Hamlet, by far the most talkative of Shakespeare’s tragic characters. We know him primarily through his words—lengthy soliloquies that seem to reveal his inmost soul, the essence of his true being. No one in the play hears these ruminations—with the possible exception of Ophelia, present on the stage (though withdrawn) during the “To be or not to be” soliloquy (3.1.57ff.). As the audience, we have a privileged point-of-view. We follow Hamlet through the play, watching him interact with the other characters, and seeing it all as if through his eyes. Because of our knowledge of Hamlet’s character revealed in the soliloquies, we understand that most of his interaction with others is a performance, what early on he calls an “antic disposition” or feigned madness (1.5.179). It is as if in the soliloquies he occasionally exits the play in order to comment on his performance of the action to which he is called—in the Ghost’s words, “Revenge [my] foul and most unnatural murder” and “Remember me” (1.5.25, 91). Whereas memory is a psychological function, revenge is a bodily action. To remember his father, the Ghost implies, is for Hamlet to play the role of the avenging hero. The one is not possible without the other.
This notion of life as performance is something of which Hamlet seems keenly to be aware, evident, for example, near the close of Act 2 (2.2.357ff.). Hamlet there asks one of the visiting players to offer a sample of his art, an excerpt from an episode in the Trojan War. The scene is Troy on the night it is besieged by the Greek army, which has been smuggled into the city by way of the Trojan horse. One of the Greek soldiers is Pyrrhus, son of Achilles, who had been slain by Paris, son of the Trojan king, Priam. The episode Hamlet has chosen, then, is of a son come to avenge the murder of his father, an ironic echo of Hamlet’s own circumstances. Hamlet is moved by the Player’s performance. He is also aghast at his own failure to muster the same emotional fervor and determination to carry through with a very real rather than fictitious quest for justice. “Is it not monstrous,” he asks, “that this player here, / But in a fiction, in a dream of passion” could display such authentic outrage? “What would he do / Had he the motive and the cue for passion / That I have? He would drown the stage with tears …” (2.2.472-83). Hamlet goes on to chastise himself for failing to Act in the real sense of take action, rather than to keep doing what he always seems to do: “unpack my heart with words” (2.2.506). The irony here is that this is precisely what he is doing even as he criticizes himself for doing it!
In this Hamlet possesses that most celebrated quality of Shakespearean character: the illusion of interiority. He is capable not only of thinking, but also of thinking about his thinking. Part of the illusion, in other words, is that Hamlet seems able to step outside of and examine himself. He becomes his own audience watching himself perform. Now, in reality Hamlet is no more than a role for an actor, the contents of a script. However, even when read (as opposed to heard in the theater), Hamlet’s words delude us into thinking that he is conscious, a sentient being with an inward life that goes beyond his words and actions. Indeed, his first prolonged utterance in the play is an assertion of this inner being. Responding to Gertrude’s concern that Hamlet’s grief seems excessive (1.2.75), he responds that what seems and what is are two different phenomena. All the outward forms, moods, and shows of grief Hamlet displays fail adequately to convey the truth of who he is:
Here Hamlet insists on a distinction between performance—“the actions that a man might play”—and what truly is—the inner psyche, “that within which passeth show.” This is perfectly consistent with his derogatory assessment of the Player’s fictional performance: a mere “dream of passion” (2.2.473). And dreams, after all, are not real—are they? Yet Hamlet cannot help but admit that the Player’s performance is more convincing than has been his own—so much so that it stirs him to action. But what action? That of staging a play in order to confirm Claudius’ guilt. For though Hamlet learned of the murder directly from the Ghost, it is possible that the spirit he has seen “May be the devil” and “Abuses me to damn me”—that is, the Ghost may not be whom he claims to be. “The play’s the thing / Wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the King,” says Hamlet (2.2.520-26). Through the illusion of the theater he will determine for certain whether Claudius is responsible for Hamlet Sr.’s death.
Wonderfully, Hamlet is inspired by one performance (the
Player’s Pyrrhus) to stage another, The Murder of
Gonzago (2.2.458-59) or, as Hamlet later calls it, The Mousetrap (3.2.223). Far from disdaining
performance as a mere “dream of passion,” he has come to appreciate
not only its power over the human imagination but also, perhaps, that it is
indistinguishable from “acting” in the “real” world.
Indeed, the action he would undertake in pursuit of what the Ghost later will
call his “almost blunted purpose” (3.4.112) is to stage a play.
Hamlet has come a long way from 1.2 where he distrusts outward appearances and
actions as merely those that a man might play. The Player’s performance, a dream
of passion, like dreams in general, might have substance after all. As Hippolyta
reminds Theseus in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, mere
“fancy’s images” might cohere into “something of great
constancy,” however “strange and admirable” they seem
(5.1.23-27).
Having become open to the possibility that outward action—performance—is more important than any inward sense of self (“that within which passeth show”), Hamlet now begins to doubt the significance of his very existence. The question “To be or not to be,” posed in the very next scene, is the ultimate question of whether or not life is worth living. But this most famous of suicidal meditations also explores the relative value of inward versus external being. For immediately upon uttering those famous opening words, Hamlet rephrases the question:
Is it better to suffer silently and to find solace in the conviction that one’s inner world is integral, unassailable, and a constant certainty, however painful? Or is authentic existence a matter of being-in-the-world, doing, acting? When, a few lines later, Hamlet avers that “conscience does make cowards of us all” (3.1.84), he is commenting on the Christian belief that suicide is an unpardonable sin (and darkly suggesting that to subscribe to such belief is cowardly). But conscience here is a pun, a word with multiple ironic meanings. In this case it might very well mean consciousness itself, what Hamlet goes on to call “the pale cast of thought” that causes important purposes—“enterprises of great pith and moment”—to “lose the name of action” (3.1.86-89). Hamlet’s dilemma perhaps is to have discovered both that his cherished inner self, with its abundance of “words, words, words” (2.2.190), may in the end amount to precious little; and that nevertheless he is incapable of living any other way. Whether or not he continues to be in the psychological sense, not to be in the existential sense seems Hamlet’s perpetual condition, his fate.
Yet by Act 5 something has changed in Hamlet and it would seem again to have everything to do with the idea of performance. Ophelia’s brother, Laertes, becomes for Hamlet a foil character at the moment Hamlet accidentally kills Polonius, Laertes’ father (3.4.22). Here begins the play’s second revenge action, only now Laertes is the avenging hero and Hamlet is the victim. Just as the Player’s Pyrrhus exemplified for Hamlet the true spirit of the avenging son, so does Laertes become that which Hamlet deeply wishes he could, but cannot, be. For unlike Hamlet, Laertes wastes no time in seeking revenge. Laertes does not stop to think, has no moral qualms about his duty to address the dishonor done his family. “I dare damnation,” he tells Claudius (4.5.133); later, asked what he would do to Hamlet to show himself his “father’s son in deed / More than in words,” he responds that he “would cut his [Hamlet’s] throat i’th church” (4.7.123-25). This uncompromising attitude inspires Hamlet in 5.2 to see in Laertes a model of proper conduct, a man with identical circumstances, but whose response is decidedly other than Hamlet’s agonized procrastination.
When Hamlet confronts Laertes later in this final scene, he says something astonishing though easily missed in its brevity. “I’ll be your foil,” he tells Laertes just prior to their fatal fencing match (5.2.223). The central character in the play, the one for whom it is named, concludes his performance by yielding the spotlight to a minor character. Is it not the other way around? Is not Laertes rather Hamlet’s foil? It is as though Hamlet realizes that he has been cast in the role of an avenging hero and that in failing adequately to play the part he is destroying the play. To save it, he formally abdicates and hands the role to someone more temperamentally suited to fulfilling its demands. Laertes in response ironically expresses our own disbelief: “You mock me, sir” (5.2.225). Indeed, one must wonder whether Hamlet means what he says. If he truly believes that Laertes and Pyrrhus got it right—that to be a true hero is “greatly to find quarrel in a straw / When honour’s at the stake” (4.4.56-57)—then would he not simply walk over to Claudius and slit his throat? But no. It is only when his great foil Laertes has fulfilled his avenger’s duty (by striking Hamlet with the poisoned sword) that Hamlet is able to fulfill his own purpose.
And yet this final act—Hamlet’s one true act—seems anticlimactic, a mere plot detail and no substitute for the magnificent “words, words, words” whose halting presence surpasses in interest the play’s otherwise stirring action:
This diabolical fantasy, a manifestation of Hamlet’s restless yearning to do something of significance, some task of “great pitch and moment” (3.1.87), is far more satisfying in contemplation than in fulfillment. Hamlet’s words are everything. “The rest,” as he says, “is silence” (5.2.332).