Hamlet Centuries of debate T. S. Eliot: “Certainly an artistic failure”

What is Hamlet about?
Centuries of debate
T. S. Eliot: “Certainly an artistic failure”
Hamlet
 Good play for anyone having trouble figuring things out.
 Good play for anyone who isn’t having trouble figuring
things out--yet.
Renaissance version
 It’s about a man called on to exact revenge for the
murder of his father.
 Problems:
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
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The murderer is a king.
The source of the information is a ghost.
The revenge must be honorable.
There are spies everywhere.
What Shakespeare Adds
 Ophelia’s madness.
 Hamlet’s questions, triggered by events
5 Acts
 1. Beginning: Ghost orders revenge
 2. Rising action: Hamlet acts mad
 3. Climax: Hamlet does things (puts on a play,
berates his mother, kills Polonius)
 4. Counterstroke: Events conspire against
Hamlet while he sails to England (Fortinbras,
Ophelia, Laertes)
 5. Resolution: Hamlet apologizes, kills king,
dies.
Hamlet’s doubts
 Why should his mother remarry such an
unattractive man?
 What does the appearance of his father’s
ghost mean?
 Why has he lost his mirth?
 Did his uncle kill his father?
 Why doesn’t he kill his uncle right away?
 Why do women behave the way they do?
Oh, that this too too sullied
flesh would melt (1.2.129)
 Upset by his mother’s remarriage to his nasty uncle,
Hamlet contemplates suicide and sees the world as an
“unweeded garden.”
How noble in reason, how
infinite in faculties (2.2.304)
 Hamlet tells R & G that he is melancholy
(depressed), does not exercise, the world seems
diseased, however noble seem the heavens.
 “Man delights not me--no, nor woman neither, though
by your smiling you seem to say so”
 The audience is not privileged in this play, where soliloquies merge
with speeches.
Oh, what a rogue and
peasant slave am I! (2.2.55)
Hamlet berates himself for doing nothing, even when
motivated by a ghost, in comparison to the player
whose emotions run away with him due to nothing but
a fiction.
So he plans the Mousetrap.
as I pronounced it, trippingly
on the tongue (3.2.1)
 Hamlet instructs the actors
 Relevant to theme of play (words, appearances,
exposure of Claudius) but not to Hamlet’s state of
mind (not a soliloquy)
‘Tis now the very witching
time of night (3.2.387)
 Hamlet is in the mood for murder (having exposed
Claudius’s guilt) when on the way to his mother.
How all occasions do inform
against me (4.4.33)
 Just as he was moved by the player to berate himself,
Hamlet is moved by Fortinbras to take action, even for
nothing.
 Yet he meditates on the difference between men and
beasts (unsaid: sense of right and wrong, which makes
the play so powerful)
To what base uses we may return, Horatio!
Why may not imagination trace the noble
dusty of Alexander (5.1.204)
 Hamlet raises issue that too much thinking is bad for
anyone.
 Hamlet, like the play, strangely finds consolation in
the grave-yard, not more melancholy.
fall of a sparrow. If it be now, ‘tis not to
come . . . The readiness is all
(5.2.217)
 Beautiful, but ironic, since Hamlet seems very
unready to face the king’s threat.
 As philosophy, this sounds consoling but fatalistic. A
dangerous combination.
 Hamlet’s tragedy: he tries to accept the world, and it
kills him.
19th Century Romantic
Version
 It’s about a man who lacks the opportunity to be great.
 Problems:
 Elsinore is a pit.
 How can anyone measure up to Napoleon?
 Reason cannot stir the spirit, only depress it.
A. C. Bradley, Shakespearean
Tragedy
 Hamlet is melancholic, incapable of acting not because
he is depressed, but because he is disgusted and does
not care.
 Counter-argument:
 Hamlet also has extraordinary energy at times.
 How does this differ from the “speculative genius” of
Schlegel and Coleridge?
G. Wilson Knight, The Wheel
of Fire
 Uses William James’ Variety of Religious
Experience to explore why life seems to have
lost its significance to Hamlet.
 His soul is sicker than events allow; his actions are
cruel.
 He is bereft of intuitive faith, or love, or purpose, by
which we must live if we are to remain sane,so he
dwells on foul appearances of sex, decay of flesh,
deceit of beauty.
Saxo Grammaticus (c. 1200),
Historical Danica, book 3
 Story of a hero who assumes madness or stupidity for
purpose of revenge. His father kills King of Norway in
single combat. His enemies send a courtesan to
seduce him, but he rapes her (the ur-Ophelia). He goes
to England, wins the king’s daughter there, returns and
kills usurper in a sword exchange. Saxo has fratricide,
incest, king’s love of drink. Tone is more brutal: Amleth
boils the Polonius figure and feeds him to the pigs. He
is vigorous (burns down the palace) but somewhat
melancholic.
Classical Tragedy
 It’s about a man whose admirable intelligence leads
him through a sequence of decisive, moral actions that,
due to circumstances he cannot control or reasonably
foresee, unfortunately kill him.
 Counter-argument:
 Most of his actions are mean.
Olivier Version
 The play is about a man who cannot make up his mind.
 Problem:
 Oedipal longing for mother and jealousy of the man
married to her.
 Emotion clouds reason.
Feminist Hamlet
 This is a play about a woman who has no
control over her life, goes mad, and kills
herself.
 Her problems:
 Overbearing father, jerk for a boyfriend,hothouse
existence, no female companionship or
understanding, ignorance about the facts of life.
 Modern versions make her angry
 p. 631 for Helena Bonham Carter in Mel Gibson
version
Post-Modern Theory
 This is a play about the inability of language to
tell a coherent story.
 Problem:
 Words are just marks on a page or vibrations in the
air, referring only to other words, because there is no
other reality.
 “What’s the matter, mother?” (pun on mater/matter, mother)
 “A little more than kin, and less than kind.”
 Gertrude describes Ophelia’s watery death, but no
one saw it.
Professor Ross’s view
 This is a play about not knowing, or being
certain, how to behave.
 Customs seem to determine what is right and wrong,
not the other way around.
 Hamlet wonders about Purgatory, mourning, dating,
fencing, remarriage, succession, action, acting,
drinking, custom itself, believing a ghost.
 See Rosencranz and Guildenstern Are Dead for film
approach to these issues.
Zeffirelli Theory
 This is a play about a man who reminds one of Mel
Gibson’s “mad max.”
 Problem:
 How can a man remain a hero in a world of random
violence?
Zeffirelli alterations
 Zeffirelli (Mel Gibson version) and Olivier leave out
Fortinbras, reducing the political dimension of the play,
and leave out the long speeches.
 Branagh, whose version uses the complete text, adds
scenes to maintain interest in the long speeches by the
ambassador and the player (on Priam’s death)
Almereyda version
 A play about a man whose intentions are thwarted by
impersonal forces like an uncurious mother, and a
ruthless uncle, and corporate capitalism (symbolized by
New York high rise money):
How Other Characters View
Hamlet
 Polonius: Hamlet has gone mad from frustrated
love.
 Claudius: Either his father’s death upsets him,
or Hamlet is cunning and stirs up trouble.
 Laertes: Hamlet has insulted his family and
deserves to die.
 Horatio: Friend Ophelia: Model courtier/man
 Fortinbras: Hamlet was a good soldier.
Disease and death imagery
 Francisco: “Tis bitter cold, and I am sick at
heart” (1.1.10)
 Horatio: “I’ll cross it, though it blast me”
(1.1.130)
 Horatio: “It is a mote to trouble the mind’s
eye” (1.1.116: the war preparations and ghost)
 Gertrude: “All that lives must die, / Passing
through nature to eternity” (1.2.72)
Disease imagery
 Hamlet: The world
. . . is an unweeded garden
That grows to seed. Things rank and gross in nature
Possess it merely” (1.2.133)
Disease imagery
 Laertes (advising Ophelia not to yield to
Hamlet’s “unmastered importunity”):
The canker galls the infants of the spring
Too often before their buttons be disclosed,
And in the morn and liquid dew of youth
Contagious blastments are most imminent”
(1.3.42)
Disease
imagery
So, oft it chances in particular men,
That for some vicious mole of nature in them,
As, in their birth--wherein they are not guilty,
Since nature cannot choose his origin-By the o'ergrowth of some complexion,
Oft breaking down the pales and forts of reason,
Or by some habit that too much o'er-leavens
The form of plausive manners, that these men,
Carrying, I say, the stamp of one defect,
Being nature's livery, or fortune's star,-Their virtues else--be they as pure as grace,
Disease imagery
 Ghost (believing Hamlet will be interested in his tale of
Purgatory):
And duller shouldst thou be than the fat weed
That roots itself in ease on Lethe wharf,
Wouldst thou not stir in this. (1.5.33)
Disease imagery
 Upon my secure hour thy uncle stole,
 With juice of cursed hebona in a vial,
 And in the porches of my ear did pour
 The leprous distillment, whose effect
 Holds such an enmity with blood of man
 That swift as quicksilver it courses through
 The natural gates and alleys of the body,
 And with a sudden vigor it doth posset
Disease imagery
Hamlet (after the ghost charges him to murder):
The time is out of joint. Oh, cursed spite,
That ever I was born to set it right!
(1.5.197)
Disease imagery
 According to Polonius, after Ophelia was
forbidden to see Hamlet, he
Fell into a sadness, then into a fast,
Thence to a watch, thence into a weakness,
Thence to a lightness, and by this declension
Into the madness wherein now he raves,
And we all mourn for. (2.2.147)
Disease imagery
 Hamlet mocking Polonius (2.2.184)
Hamlet: For if the sun breed maggots in a dead
dog, being a good kissing carrion--Have you a
daughter?
Polonius.: I have, my lord.
Hamlet: Let her not walk in the sun. Conception is
a blessing, but as your daughter may conceive,
friend, look to it.
Disease imagery
 The “words, words, words” (cf. Dracula) that Hamlet
tells Polonius he is reading (2.2.197):
Slanders, sir; for the satirical rogue says here that old
men have gray beards, that their faces are wrinkled, their
eyes purging thick amber and plum-tree gum, and that
they have a plentiful lack of wit, together with most weak
hams.
Disease imagery
 Hamlet, perhaps toying with Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern (2.2.296):
I have of late--but wherefore I know not--lost all my
mirth, forgone all custom of exercises; and indeed it
goes so heavily with my disposition that this goodly
frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory; this
most excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave
o’erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with
golden fire, why, it appeareth nothing to me but a foul
and pestilent congregation of vapors.
Disease imagery
 Claudius, during one of several attacks of conscience
that tells us the ghost was correct (3.3.37)
Oh,my offense is rank! It smells to heaven.
Disease imagery
 Hamlet berates his mother for remarrying
3.4.65-72):
Here is your husband, like a mildewed ear,
Blasting his wholesome brother. Have you eyes?
Could you on this fair mountain leave to feed
And batten on this moor? Ha, have you eyes?
You cannot call it love, for at your age
The heyday in the blood is tame, it’s humble,
And waits upon the judgment, and what judgment
Would step from this to this?
Disease imagery
King Claudius blames himself that Hamlet killed
Polonius (4.1.18):
It will be laid to us, whose providence
Should have kept short, restrained, and out of haunt
This mad young man. But so much was our love,
We would not understand what was most fit,
But, like the owner of a foul disease,
To keep it from divulging, let it feed
Even on the pith of life? Where is he gone?
Disease imagery
 Claudius decides to send Hamlet to England, since he
can’t execute him at home, as Hamlet is too popular:
Diseases desperate grown / By desperate appliance are
relieved, / Or not at all (4.3.10).
John Barton, Playing
Shakespeare, pp. 106-127
 How to play long speeches, called “soliloquies” when
the actor addresses the audience?
 Anwer:
 Don’t play emotion or talk to yourself.
 Tell a story.
 Persuade the audience of something