Hamlet as a Philosophical Text - Essay Example

To what extent and in what ways can Hamlet be described as a philosophical text? Hamlet is one of William Shakespeare’s greatest and most popular ofplays, a tragedy, believed to have been written between AD 1599 and 1601. The play is set in Elsinore, Denmark. Hamlet is the son of the late king who, as the plot of the play uncovers, has been recently murdered by his brother, Hamlet’s uncle, who then marries Hamlet’s mother Gertrude, the late king’s wife. The deceased king, himself called Hamlet, appears as a Ghost, informs the son in some detail how he was murdered by his brother, the latter’s uncle Claudius, and calls for revenge. Although Hamlet agrees, he is sceptical of the apparition and feigns madness as a means of averting suspicion while he embarks on a quest to check the veracity of the information vouchsafed to him. While the plot and dramatic structure of the play revolves around the unique characterization of Hamlet the protagonist, it explores themes of treachery, corruption, madness, grief, loss and their implications. It throws up a complex mix of religious, philosophical, political and psychological perspectives that critics have endlessly analysed and argued about during the last four centuries. Returning briefly to the dramatic structure of the play, it is evident that Shakespeare had not heeded Aristotle’s injunctions on the Unities and the need to focus on action rather than character. The language is formal, courtly, witty and uses rhetorical devices such as the anaphora (Words, words, words), asyndeton (to die: to sleep – to sleep, perchance to dream), and hendiadys (The expectancy and rose of the fair state). Shakespeare utilizes Hamlet’s occasional soliloquies to inform the audience of his thoughts, motives and his world-view, sometimes contradictory, all of which make him what he is. The soliloquies are mainly what prompt critics to see Hamlet as a ‘philosophical text’ although Hamlet’s occasional ‘throwaway’ lines, even when pretending to be mad, can also be regarded as philosophical musings. Unlike most other plays by Shakespeare, there is no sub-plot and no light-hearted counterpoint to the serious and tragic issues dealt with in the play. The atmosphere throughout is dark and foreboding. Hamlet’s garb throughout the play is described as ‘inky black’. Death makes its presence known from the very beginning. The king had been murdered and his ghost appears urging his son to revenge. Polonious, the old courtier is unintentionally killed by Hamlet. Ophelia, Polonius’ daughter drowns. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, Hamlet’s contemporaries used by Claudius, as tools, are deliberately sent to their deaths by Hamlet, as a result of foiling Claudius’ plot to kill him. In the final horrific scene, in full view of the spectators Laertes, Polonius’ son, Hamlet, Claudius and Gertrude all die due to the machinations of Claudius not going according to plan. Hamlet, written not long after the English Reformation, has both Catholic and Protestant religious practices as a backdrop to the action. For example, the ghost speaks of being in purgatory and dying without last rites. Ophelia’s burial draws upon Catholic ceremonial practice. However, it is relevant that the play is located in Denmark, a protestant country with the majority of the young men in the play said to have attended Wittenberg University, Martin Luther’s seat. When Hamlet speaks of ‘… a special providence in the fall of a sparrow’ (Hamlet; Act 5, Scene2, line 252), he attributes divine providence to the event, a Protestant belief in line with John Calvin’s utterances on predestination. Other quotes which support this contention are: ‘There’s a divinity that shapes our ends, Rough hew them how we will.’ (Hamlet; Act5, Scene 2, line 33). ‘There’s such divinity doth hedge a king, That treason can but peep to what it would.’ (Hamlet; Act 4, Scene 5, line 123). Although established religion informs most of the routine and customary activities and practices in the play, almost all the main characters express and act upon (or reveal themselves in inaction) on the basis of deeply held philosophical views, some of them perhaps not even overtly conscious. While Hamlet’s soliloquies may be viewed as conscious articulations of his belief system, some of the ‘throwaway’ lines could be seen as unconscious responses to immediate stimuli in his environment. Although Hamlet’s contemplation of suicide in his ‘To be, or not to be’ soliloquy could be viewed as a religious statement because of his belief in an existence after physical death, most scholars see it as an example of a relativist or existential philosophical position. It is clearly a relativist statement when he tells Rosencrantz that ‘there is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.’ (McCary, 1998). It is highly likely that Shakespeare was influenced by his contemporary, the French writer Montaigne, who in his ‘Essais’ (1590) expounded a humanistic scepticism. However, there are scholars who believe that Shakespeare may have been independently voicing his opinion according to the ‘spirit of the time’ when he lets Hamlet declare: It goes 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 appears no other thing to me but a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours. What a piece of work is a man! (Hamlet; Act 2, Scene 2, line 316). Of course, although such expressions of philosophical beliefs in isolation does not make of Hamlet, a ‘philosophical text’, there is enough evidence to support the contention that the play is built upon abstruse, but powerful ideas, and not dependent on mere plot or action. Very early in the play, Hamlet reveals the depth of his feelings and a clue to his character in the lines: ‘How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable Seem to me all the uses of this world.’ (Hamlet; Act 1 Scene 2, line 133). The oft-repeated lines addressing Horatio are the first in the play to make a direct reference to the overriding importance of philosophy in human affairs. ‘There are more things on heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy’. (Hamlet; Act 1, Scene 5, line 166). Then there are the lines: ‘There is something in this more than natural, if philosophy could find it out’ (Hamlet; Act 2, Scene 2, line 392). Relativism in Western philosophy derives from the Sophists of ancient Greece. They were cosmopolitan, travelling intellectuals who taught rhetoric. They were influenced by the diversity of laws, practices, customs and beliefs of different lands they visited and did not believe in absolutes or universal truths. Plato and Aristotle argued against relativism, and because of their pervasive influence it was not until the 16th century with Montaigne and Hume, that relativistic ideas began to surface again. Nietzsche identified the ‘will to power’ as the precursor of moral values and truth in human affairs. Relativism is nowadays associated with such diverse philosophers as Wittgenstein, Kuhn, Foucault and Rorty, the latter two alluded to as postmodernists. Hamlet takes a relativistic stance in his casual observations exemplified in the line: ‘Some craven scruple Of thinking too precisely on the event’ (Hamlet; Act 4, Scene 4, line 40). Since the late 19th century there have been attempts at psychoanalytical readings of Hamlet’s hesitation in carrying out his mission to avenge his father’s death. For example, Sigmund Freud (1900) concludes that Hamlet has an ‘Oedipal desire for his mother and the subsequent guilt (is) preventing him from murdering the man who has done what he unconsciously wanted to do’. Ernest Jones (1949) Freud’s biographer also influenced contemporary productions of the play which portrayed the ‘closet scene’ where Hamlet confronts his mother with oedipal sexual connotations. The French structuralist JacquesLacan too critiqued Hamlet in terms of oedipal theories and semantics. According to Lacan (2001), the cause of Hamlet’s indecision is his distancing from reality ‘by mourning, fantasy, narcissism and psychosis’. In an era of total male dominance, the female characters in the play, Gertrude and Ophelia were portrayed as passive instruments of masculine concerns. Today’s feminists have attempted to cast them in a new light. Heilbrun (1957) has objected to the generally held view that Gertrude was an adulteress. She had no knowledge of, and did not collude in the poisoning of her husband by Claudius. She did what was good for the kingdom by marrying Claudius. In this context it is necessary to understand in some cultures it was the accepted custom and practice to marry the brother of a deceased husband. This may have been a means of preserving the wealth and property of the extended family. Even more bizarre was the required practice in India of a widow throwing herself on the funeral pyre of her late husband (‘Suttee’), outlawed by the British rulers as recently as the 19th century. Feminists have also objected to Ophelia being portrayed as the symbol of a hapless, distraught and hysterical female completely without resources of her own. Hamlet’s view of his mother as weak and inconstant therefore, may be more a reflection of his own shortcomings than any attempt at an objective assessment. ‘Frailty thy name is woman! …O God! a beast, that wants discourse of reason, would have mourned longer.’ (Hamlet; Act1, scene 2,line 146). We hardly see Hamlet and Ophelia in a normal relationship, as a boy and girl in love. His great disappointment in his mother appears to have overshadowed all his future relationships with the opposite sex. In telling her to go to a ‘nunnery’, a euphemism at the time for a brothel, Hamlet condemns Ophelia to her untimely end, as he gives no reason (and cannot do so) for his sudden antipathy to women. This may be seen as an example of existentialist ‘bad faith’ in the sense that Jean Paul Sartre (2007) intended. Indeed, very early in the play, Hamlet expounds a typically existentialist credo in ‘How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable Seem to me all the uses of this world.’ ((Hamlet; Act 1, Scene 2, line 133). Hamlet is flawed, but he is noble, wants to do the right thing, and is not an out-an-out villain like Claudius. ‘A cut-purse of the empire and the rule, That from a shelf the precious diamond stole, And put it in his pocket! (Hamlet; Act3, Scene 4, line 99). Hamlet may look and pose as if he were other worldly and inept ‘O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I’ (Hamlet; Act 2, Scene2 line 561), ‘But I am pigeon-livered, and lack gall to make oppression bitter’. (Hamlet; Act 2, Scene 2 line 613). But, he is certainly not indecisive, as can be discerned from his despatching Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to their certain deaths. After all, Hamlet is the true and only heir to the throne, and would have ascended it, had his father died a normal death. In spite of his ‘antic disposition’ he is no mug. With a grown up son, Gertrude at the time of her second marriage would not have been of an age when she could have borne a son to Claudius. That was all the more reason for Claudius to be wary of Hamlet and seek his untimely end. Hamlet, for his part, although assigned the task of revenge, is not in a position to directly challenge Claudius. Claudius has all the aura and authority of a king. Hamlet cannot descend to the role of a common murderer. In attacking the eavesdropper Polonius, whom he mistook for Claudius, there was justification as it was an attempt at preserving his mother’s confidences and dignity. He would have felt justified in what he did, in that he was not a cold-blooded killer. Hamlet has been foiled by fate. He could not kill Claudius at prayer, which would mean doing him a favour denied his own father (‘… sent to my account With all my imperfections on my head: O, horrible! O, horrible! Most horrible! ’ (Hamlet; Act 1 Scene 5, line 74). Fatalism is therefore another strand of the philosophical underpinnings of this play. The time is out of joint; O curséd spite, That ever I was born to set it right! (Hamlet; Act 1, scene 5, line 188), ‘Lord! We know what we are, but know not what we may be’ (Hamlet; Act 4, Scene5, line72), ‘Imperious Caeser, dead and turned to clay, might stop a hole to keep the wind away.’ (Hamlet; Act 5, Scene 1, line 235), ‘I have shot mine arrow o’er the house, And hurt my brother.’ (Hamlet; Act 5, Scene 2, line 257). Although as a dramatist, Shakespeare would have planned and decided on the ending of the play, from the viewpoint of the protagonists and spectators, (notwithstanding Claudius’ hand in starting the course of events); only impersonal fate could be held responsible for the eventual catastrophe. Could parallels be drawn between Hamlet as literature and Henry James’ novella The Figure in the Carpet? The novella does not command the same stature as literature in comparison with the play. However, there are common elements. For example, there are almost as many deaths in the story as in the play, although downplayed in importance as being central to the plot. Mrs Erme, Gwendolen’s mother’s long awaited death occurs and, murder is merely hinted at. The reason for her death may have been the clearing of an obstacle to the marriage between George Corvick and Gwendolyn Erme. Here too, love is not a reason for these two getting together. Their engagement was an on-and -off affair. What really brought them together was Gwendolen’s desire to get at the secret of the novelist Hugh Vereker, the hidden purpose (the pattern) in all his works. This parallels Gertrude’s marriage to Claudius, a marriage of convenience. Other deaths in the story include Corvick’s death by accident soon after marriage and the deaths of Gwendolen and her second child (at birth). Vereker too dies abroad and his wife not long afterwards. Only the narrator and Gwendolen’s second husband Drayton Deane survive, but the central mystery around which the story revolves is not vouchsafed to the two survivors or by extension, to the reader. The protagonist, the first-person narrator is a critic and makes his living as such. He is a Hamlet-like character because he is on a mission, but is foiled at every turn. He makes friends with Gwendolyn, but it is evident that he does so purely in order to get at the mystery of Vereker, the knowledge of which perhaps would be instrumental in advancing his career. Gwendolen, herself a novelist, receives the much desired information from Corvick before he dies, but would not divulge it to the narrator. The narrator’s friendship with Gwendolen is put on hold when she marries Drayton Deane. The only way to be initiated is to marry the person who carries the secret. Gwendolyn, who is privy to the mystery, is out of reach of the narrator as she is now married to Deane. The narrator assumes that after marriage Deane is now aware of what he has been seeking all along, Vereker’s ‘figure in the carpet’. James may have been poking fun at literary critics by involving them in a pointless chase only to be disappointed, and by implication disappoint the reader as well. It is a futile task to seek esoteric meanings in literature and as present day postmodern and structuralist critics claim, there is nothing beyond the ‘text’ and every reader brings and constructs their own interpretation of the ‘signified’ from the ‘signifier’. There are no deep philosophical meanings revealed in Henry James’ story. It is rather superficial in that a quest is hypothesized, but nothing substantial materializes except the almost homoerotic sense of betrayal that both Deane and the narrator experience in common at the false denouement. Perhaps what is common to the two works is the certainty of death and the existential meaninglessness of what happens between birth and death that we call life. (2662 words) Works Cited Freud, Sigmund. The Interpretation of Dreams. (Wordsworth Classics of World Literature), Wordsworth Editions Ltd. 1900; 1997 Heilbrun, Carolyn. ‘Hamlet’s mother’, in Writing a Woman’s Life. Women’s Press Ltd. New Ed edition. 1957; 1997 James, Henry Tales of Henry James. W.W. Norton & Co. Ltd. 1989 Jones, Ernest. Hamlet and Oedipus. The Norton Library; W.W. Norton & Co. Ltd. 1949; 1976 Lacan, Jacques. Ecrits trans. A. Sheridan, Lomdon, Routledge. 2001 MacCary, W.T. Hamlet: A Guide to the Play. Greenwood Guides to Literature. Westport, CT. Greenwood Press. 1998 Montaigne Michel de & M.A. Screech. The Complete Essays. Penguin Classics, New Ed edition. 1590; 1993 Sartre, Jean Paul. Existentialism and Humanism. Methuen Publishing Ltd., New Ed edition. 2007 Shakespeare, William. Hamlet. pbk. Arden Shakespeare, 3rd Ed edition. 1601; 2005 Read More