Hamlet

The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark is a tragedy by William Shakespeare and one of his most well-known and oft-quoted plays. It was written at an uncertain date between 1600 and the summer of 1602.

Hamlet as a character

Hamlet is possibly the most discussed and contentious character in the whole of world drama and indeed in the whole of Western literature. While conceding he is one of Shakespeare's greatest creations, critics are at loggerheads over the inner motivations and psyche of this character. His relationships with the various characters of the story, including his father, his uncle Claudius, his mother Gertrude and his beloved Ophelia, have all been subjected to multiple speculations, including modern psychological theories. Critics as varied as Goethe, Coleridge, Hegel, Nietzsche, Turgenev, Freud, T. S. Eliot, and Asimov have written essays on him, all with their own special insights. Besides being Shakespeare's most demanding role (with over 1,400 lines), Hamlet is also the most introspective. Actors have traditionally struggled with this role, and it can be safely said that any one performance can capture only some of the many facets of the creation.

Related Topics:
Drama - Western literature - Psyche - Psychological theories - Goethe - Coleridge - Hegel - Nietzsche - Turgenev - Freud - T. S. Eliot - Asimov

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The plot summary above presents perhaps the simplest view of Hamlet, as a person seeking truth in order to be certain that he is justified in carrying out the revenge called for by a ghost that claims to be the spirit of his father. The most standard view is that Hamlet is highly indecisive. The 1948 movie with Laurence Olivier in the title role is introduced by a voiceover: "This is a story of a man who could not make up his mind."

Related Topics:
1948 - Laurence Olivier

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Others see Hamlet as a person charged to carry out a duty that he both knows and feels is right, yet is unwilling to. In this view, all of his efforts to satisfy himself of King Claudius' guilt or his failure to act when he can are evidence of this unwillingness, and Hamlet berates himself for his inability to carry out his task. After observing a play-actor performing a scene, he notes that the actor was moved to tears in the passion of the story and compares this passion for a fictional character, Hecuba, in light of his own situation:

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:"O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I!

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:Is it not monstrous that this player here,

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:But in a fiction, in a dream of passion,

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:Could force his soul so to his own conceit

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:That from her working all his visage wan'd;

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:Tears in his eyes, distraction in's aspect,

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:A broken voice, and his whole function suiting

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:With forms to his conceit? And all for nothing!

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:For Hecuba?

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:What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba,

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:That he should weep for her?"

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And he acknowledges to himself the terrible deed he must avenge, yet responds only with words:

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:"Yet I,

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:A dull and muddy-mettled rascal, peak,

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:Like John-a-dreams, unpregnant of my cause,

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:And can say nothing; no, not for a king

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:Upon whose property and most dear life

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:A damn'd defeat was made. Am I a coward?

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:But I am pigeon-liver'd, and lack gall

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:Why, what an ass am I! This is most brave,

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:That I, the son of a dear father murder'd,

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:Prompted to my revenge by heaven and hell,

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:Must, like a whore, unpack my heart with words"

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Hamlet's verbose and painful analyses of his situation and actions encourage many others to see his struggle as something far more existential in nature, having less to do with the revenge drama than with the human condition.

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:"The time is out of joint: Oh cursed spite,

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:That ever I was born to set it right."

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Another view of Hamlet, advanced by Isaac Asimov in his Guide to Shakespeare, holds that his actions are attributable not to indecision, but to multiple motivations: his desire to avenge the wrong done to his father, coupled with his own ambition to succeed to the throne. The tragic error committed by Hamlet, in Asimov's view, is his overreaching wish to see Claudius damned, and not merely dead, which prevents him from killing Claudius at the opportune moment.

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