Joseph Marziale
Mrs. Awad
English 104
13 May 2019
Peace: Hamlet’s Timely Resolve
Ever since the philosophical developments of Plato and Aristotle, thinkers have mulled over the balance between passion and reason. Typically a debauchery of passion leads to animal behavior, while an overdose in reason removes the heart and soul of a man. One is never totally won over by either pole; rather there is an ongoing auction between them both. Consider Hamlet, the young academic and Prince of Denmark: devoted to the promise of the ghostly appearance of his father, he plots revenge against his murderer, Claudius. Yet, though he claims “That ever I was born to set it right!” (1.5.211), he still casts doubt towards the ghost, in case the devil only uses its image to take him to a hellish circumstance (2.2.629-632). Herewith, though, Hamlet has a static outlook on life. There are several main characters whose lives are shifted by the accession of either passion or reason, and Hamlet is not exempt. However, even as the play progresses, Hamlet’s questions about the role of mankind and the meaning of life remain unanswered, and like many victims of revenge-seeking, he lives with a stagnant, stuck worldview – that is, until the day of his death. Hamlet’s overwhelming depression and feelings of meaninglessness are long-lasting, caused by his wildly ardent life-goal to complete his retribution unto Claudius; however, by the end of his life, he comes to terms with the nature of life, dying without the bashing questions of purpose or fulfillment.
Even before talking to the ghost of his father, Hamlet was a character shaded with melancholy; while he did not know what caused his father’s death, he was certainly still angry about it. What made it worse was that Claudius, his father’s own brother, overtook the throne and remarried the queen incestually. This sets the tone for Hamlet’s entrance: “I am too much in the sun” (1.2.69). This is a double entendre: it is a sarcasm in that his mood is anything but shiny like the sun’s rays; it is also a play on words, stating that he is the son of his dead father, which is the cause of his grief. Here, Hamlet is already upset with Claudius and his disposition.
It is not until the end of this act, though, that Hamlet finds reason to assume full responsibility for Claudius’ death. When Hamlet encounters the ghost, it reveals to him the full story: “’Tis given out that, sleeping in my orchard, / A serpent stung me. So the whole ear of Denmark / Is by a forgèd process of my death / Rankly abused. But know, thou noble youth, / The serpent that did sting thy father’s life / Now wears his crown” (1.5.35-40). The ghost continues to explain that Claudius poisoned the king by intoxicating his ear with a deathly admixture. Hamlet, a faithful admirer of his father, tends to glorify him throughout the play. So, since Claudius has killed Hamlet’s close father, Hamlet is therefore fixated on revenge.
Shakespeare never intended Hamlet to be someone characterized by carelessness. Yet, according to Algernon Charles Swinburne, many of those who read Hamlet tend to draw this conclusion about him: “Hamlet will too surely remain to the majority of students, not less than to all actors and all editors and all critics, the standing type and embodied emblem of irresolution, half-heartedness, and doubt” (Swinburne 167). However, Swinburne argues that Hamlet is a “cool-headed and ready-witted” character whose intentions are colorfully transparent. A perfect example of this is his interactions with Polonius, the father of Hamlet’s lover, Ophelia. Hamlet is quite shameless as he boasts about possibly impregnating Ophelia (2.2.176-178). As Hamlet continues to joke about such things without conscience, Polonius absorbs his insults and actually feels bad for the damaged accusor: “He knew me not at first; he said / I was a fishmonger. He is far gone. / And truly, in my youth, / I suffered much extremity for love, very near this” (2.2.205-208). Truly, Hamlet is so “far gone” that even Polonius, one normally characterized by ignorance, is able to see Hamlet’s suicidal direction.
Hamlet himself is self-aware of his condition. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, two former friends, were adopted as agents by Claudius to seek out the cause of Hamlet’s madness. Hamlet clearly understands that they only follow him to give a report back to the king (2.2.266-270). So, to entertain their purpose, he reveals to them his existential sorrows, now a famous monologue in literature:
…Indeed it goes so heavily / with my disposition that this goodly frame, the / earth, seems to me a sterile promontory, this most / excellent canopy … why, it appears no other thing to / me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours. / What a piece of work is a man! how noble in reason! … And yet, to me, / what is this quintessence of dust? man delights not / me: no, nor woman neither, though by your smiling / you seem to say so. (2.2.293-310)
Hamlet confesses: he thinks that both the world and mankind are beautiful creations, but he doesn’t enjoy them because of his depression. Still more quoted is the infamous “To Be Or Not To Be” soliloquy, also spoken by Hamlet (3.1.57-70). Here, Hamlet questions not only the meaning of life, but the sanctity of it. He equates death with a sound, pleasing state of rest: “To die, to sleep – no more … to die, to sleep. To sleep, perchance to dream – ay, there’s the rub” (3.1.61-62, 65-66). This is truly a contemplation of one who is suicidal, glorifying the act of death, his only barrier being that he knows not what lies on the other side of it (3.1.67-70).
Though death’s uncertainty keeps him from committing altogether, he does not shy away from death’s attitude entirely. As he grows suicidal and mad, he scorns even those whom he loves, among them his beloved Ophelia. “Get thee to a nunnery,” says Hamlet, shockingly, for, “why wouldst thou be a breeder of sinners?” (3.1.124-125). In this scene he belittles the importance of his own life, while also shunning the sanctity of life after him, condemning it to a promise of sinful offspring. He also ashames Ophelia for having believed the false marks of love by Hamlet in the past. A total wreckage of relationships and traditional values, Hamlet employs a fatalistic worldview here, strongly indicating suicidal tendencies. Had he valued his own life more, surely he would not be so quick to tear it apart. Ophelia herself feels the effects of Hamlet’s sour rejection: Gertrude, Hamlet’s mother, depicts the death of Ophelia at her funeral as a passive, peaceful act (4.7.199-208), when in reality it was a sure suicide. Hamlet’s crisis is only fueled by this outcome.
As Polonius saw the matter of Hamlet, it seems as though he is “far gone” at best. Surely there seems to be no comeback for Hamlet; yet, as though he knew the hour approached, Hamlet has a major worldview shift towards the end of his life. Upon facing the skull of Yorick, the dead court jester and childhood caretaker of Hamlet, he reflects: “Alexander died, Alexander was / buried, Alexander returneth to dust, the dust is earth, of earth we make loam—and why of that / loam, whereto he was converted, might they not stop a beer barrel? / Imperious Caesar, dead and turned to clay, / Might stop a hole to keep the wind away” (5.1.214-223). In saying this Hamlet reveals a significant turning point from his old ways: stature has no bearing on eternal destination. This deeply contrasts his previous desperation to fulfill a revenge-shaped hole in his heart, a fixation that nearly leads to his suicide.
Hamlet’s changes seen in Scene 1 precede the following, more emphatic changes in Scene 2, the conclusion of Hamlet. By the final scene, Claudius proposes a duel between Hamlet and Laertes, Ophelia’s brother. (Claudius does this so that Hamlet’s death will not be on his hands; rather it will be the fate of a losing swordsman.) Consider all of the hopeless remarks by Hamlet in the past: his devotion to a revenge-seeking ghost, his dual contemplations of suicide, his shooing-away of Ophelia, et cetera. This is the same Hamlet: “Not a whit. We defy augury. / There’s a special providence in the fall of a sparrow. / If it be now, ’tis not to come. / If it be not to come, it will be now. / If it be not now, yet it will come—the readiness is all. / Since no man of aught he leaves knows, what is ’t to leave betimes? / Let be” (5.2.192-198). Hamlet’s resolve is that if providence – an active, Judeo-Christian god – wills for the “fall of a sparrow” to occur, then it is to be, and Hamlet is willing to “let be” entirely! Indeed Hamlet dies on this day, and so does Laertes. However, before they pass, both agree that they will not place the punishment of death on each other (5.2.322-328). And just before Hamlet dies, he peacefully advocates the succession of young Fortinbras, the prince of Norway: “[Fortinbras] has my dying voice” (5.2.354). Though these opponents have struggled for supremacy in the past, Hamlet passively admits the option of loss in this matter.
Having constantly struggled with the value of life beforehand, Hamlet ends with the peaceful resolution that there is a supernatural guidance which overrules his own efforts. Hamlet’s undergoing of worldview shift is a peace which surpasses understanding. Perhaps Shakespeare intends Hamlet to be an example of a sinner who yet is saved by the grace of God. In any case, Hamlet seems to accept a Christ-like peace. He submits and thus he dies to self. Fortinbras assumes power, the play ends, time continues. It is as if Someone is in control above it all.
Works Cited
“A Study of Shakespeare by Algernon Charles Swinburne.” A Study of
Shakespeare, www.gutenberg.org/files/16412/16412-h/16412-h.htm
Shakespeare, William. Hamlet. Edited by the Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington Square
Press, 2012.