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The Question of Hamlet

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21 pointspepys10 comments

I wonder why Hamlet is so sure his father (the elder Hamlet) has been murdered. We're presented with this as a fact, but it really comes down to, "I saw a ghost and it told me what to do." Even the guards who tell Hamlet about the ghost speculate that it might be some kind of Satanic ruse. We only find out at the end that Claudius really has been using poison. The way I read it, you could easily conclude that Hamlet is actually crazy, not just pretending, right up until the point where people start dying of poison on stage.

But that's only a retrospective justification and it doesn't really explain how Hamlet comes to be so fixed on revenge.

Also, speaking of predators and prey, I love the description of young Fortinabras early on:

                     Young Fortinbras,
    Of unimproved mettle, hot and full,
    Hath in the skirts of Norway, here and there,
    Shark’d up a list of lawless resolutes,
    For food and diet, to some enterprise
    That hath a stomach in’t

I've always read Hamlet as very much about the gap between internal activities and the way they are recorded or remembered. The big joke of Hamlet is that from the outside, his story would have looked like a young prince going insane and impulsively murdering his uncle; it's only the audience that gets to hear Hamlet's soliloquies, and understand him as a sensitive, indecisive, deceptive, and patient person, who's been carefully building a case and means of revenge.

That's why his last lines are all about his fear that everyone will misinterpret what has happened, and regret that he doesn't have enough time to tell Horatio the truth. "O God, Horatio, what a wounded name,/Things standing thus unknown, shall live behind me!" and "So tell him, with th' occurrents, more and less,/Which have solicited. The rest is silence." and so on. (or, for that matter, his whole speech about "I know not “seems.”")

So I think it's less that we're meant to doubt Hamlet's sanity, and more that Shakespeare deliberately set up a weird scenario so that only the audience can understand that Hamlet is sane.

That's really interesting! I love how Shakespeare usually has contradictory readings, and I'd like to propose one now: Hamlet's actions really aren't justified, and the play is there to show us how he talks himself into making such a bloody mess out of the situation.

In high school I thought Hamlet was a comedy. All the characters seemed deluded to the point of foolishness. The ending is a perfect comedy of errors. My feeling was good riddance!

I should reread it!

Comedy and Tragedy are a matter of perspective. I've seen Titus Andronicus performed as a comedy (And also as a comedy cooking show) - what seems dramatic can also seem melodramatic as a matter of portrayal. The darkest of realities can be the lightest of jokes, ever heard a dead baby joke? Likewise, most good comedy has a serious core at it's center. I have no doubt that by changing the stakes slightly, Caddyshack could be a serious statement on the human condition: Make the scholarship the make-or-break for Danny's college chances, put Spackler on the edge of feeding his kids. Comedy and Tragedy are simply how much distance we put between ourselves and the characters.

Someday I want to direct the Scooby-Doo version of Hamlet, where Horatio, as an agent of Fortinbras, dresses up as the ghost of Claudius to sow chaos in the kingdom and stir Hamlet to revenge. Later he administers the coup-de-grace to Hamlet as he whispers his final line, "Good night, sweet prince," just before Fortinbras enters the castle.

(Script here: http://faculty.cord.edu/sprunger/e315/hamlet.html)

Ha. I was using Scooby-Doo as a descriptive handle for an interpretation that's been in my head for years. I had no idea anything like this existed. Thanks for the link!

I remembered it because it's a brilliant idea. Fortinbras's final couplet (in Michael Schiffer's version) is unforgettable.

Magnificent! This is why I use the internet.

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