Download The Fog of Life: Hamlet Explored

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Ryan Gutzat
Mrs. Elizabeth DiGennaro
English IV
18, April 2012
The Fog of Life: Hamlet Explored
"To be, or not to be, that is the question:- Whether 'tis nobler in the mind, to suffer the
slings and arrows of outrageous fortune; Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, and by
opposing end them?" (Shakespeare III. i. 61, 69-71). We have all heard this famous quote at least
once in our lifetimes, and will probably hear it quoted again. But what does it mean? And why is
it important? That famous question is the beginning of the famous soliloquy in William
Shakespeare's, Hamlet, in which Hamlet, the son of the late king of Denmark, debates with
himself about his course of actions, and what awaits him after death. Hamlet presents the
audience with an intricate world that revolves around three major ideas; the sorting out of
mysterious truths, the understanding of reality's very troublesome nature, and the realization of
mortality. Even today, these three themes are ever-present within our lives; life still holds
mysteries, what seems to be is still not always what is, and humankind is still very much mortal.
These three ideas are the very core of the play, and they are still (and always shall be) applicable
to human life. Hamlet's world is one of interrogation, of questions without answers; the questions
resonate throughout the play, adding to the confusion. To truly understand this bizarre Denmark
that Shakespeare has created, we have to recognize that the roles that the characters in Hamlet
have are not only designed to confuse us, but to do so in a way that we can still connect with
them.
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The entire play opens on two guards, Francisco and Bernardo, the keepers of the watch.
Francisco asks: “Who’s there?” (Shakespeare I. i. 1). And thus the play opens, with a simple
question. But Francisco’s question sets the tone for the entire play; it immediately defines the
mysteriousness that permeates Hamlet’s entirety. "We feel its [mysteriousness’] presence in the
numberless explanations that have been brought forward for Hamlet's delay, his madness, his
Ghost, his treatment of Polonius, or Ophelia, or his mother...." (Mack, "The World of Hamlet.").
When the Ghost of Hamlet’s father first appears in Act I, the audience is left wondering why the
spirit of the late king of Denmark is wandering the battlements. Even though Horatio explains
the story of Hamlet’s father, the Ghost’s reason for returning from the beyond isn’t revealed until
Act II. Even though Horatio cries “Stay! speak: speak, I charge thee, speak!” (Shakespeare I. i.
3), the Ghost stalks off without responding, and the audience is left in suspense. To add to this
layer of mysteriousness is a world of riddles. Hamlet’s feigned madness itself is mysterious;
though what he utters appears to be true madness, more often than not are also full and true. How
much of it is really feigned, and how much of it is real? “Sane or mad, Hamlet's mind plays
restlessly about his world, turning up one riddle upon another. The riddle of character, for
example, and how it is that in a man whose virtues else are ‘pure as grace,’ some vicious mole of
nature, some ‘dram of Bale,’ can ‘all the noble substance oft adulter.’” (Mack, “The World of
Hamlet”). And similarly, the first scene of the play shows the mysteriousness extremely well;
anyone who has read or watched it probably remembers just how mysterious that first scene
really is. The cold midnight, the questions lashing out at the darkness, searching for answers,
searching for identities…These very feelings never leave for an instant. Even when Horatio
explains what happened to the late King Hamlet, he remarks that “At least, the whisper goes
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so…” (Shakespeare I. i. 4, 93), indicating that he is unsure about the actual truth behind the death
of the late king.
Another layer of the mystery occurs when we consider some key words Hamlet speaks,
words which, in the Elizabethan era, have double-meanings. For example, Hamlet tells Ophelia
to “Get thee to a nunnery: why wouldst thou be a breeder of sinners?” (Shakespeare III. i. 63).
Hamlet’s statement would have been rather ironic to an Elizabethan audience, since “nunnery”
could mean either a convent of nuns, or it could be Elizabethan slang for a brothel. So his
question “why wouldst thou be a breeder of sinners?” (Shakespeare III. i. 63) becomes rather
ironic, since whores would have been sinners to begin with. Illegitimate children were generally
shunned by one parent or the other, and thus left to their own ways, which very well could
produce thieves, murderers, highwaymen, etc., all of whom were sinners. The question remains,
though; which way does Hamlet mean it? Is he being sarcastic and ironic? The audience never
really finds out; we are left guessing and making conjectures. Of course, the idea parallels real
life. Sometimes, we as humans come out of a situation with many questions, and we might not
get a complete answer to all of them; nor, indeed, will we always get an answer. But the answer
is not nearly as important as the question: “There are questions that in this play, to an extent I
think unparalleled in any other, mark the phases and even the nuances of the action, helping to
establish its peculiar baffled tone. There are other questions whose interrogations, innocent at
first glance, are subsequently seen to have reached beyond their contexts and to point towards
some pervasive inscrutability in Hamlet's world as a whole.” (Mack “The World of Hamlet.”).
A theme even bigger than the mysteriousness is the struggle to determine what is real
from what only seems real; that battle drives the plot of the play like a bus driver drives a bus.
“Things are not always as they seem” is the core idea, and probably the first thing that any
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audience, Elizabethan or modern, will pick up on. Shakespeare even took the liberty of having
Hamlet explain this particular theme: “Seems, madam! Nay, it is; I know not seems. ’T is not
alone my inky cloak, good mother, nor customary suits of solemn black, nor windy suspiration of
forc’d breath, no, nor the fruitful river in the eye, nor the dejected behavior of the visage,
together with all forms, modes, shows of grief, that can denote me truly: these, indeed, seem, for
they are actions that a man might play…” (Shakespeare, I. ii. 10). Note the use of the word
“seems.” It goes hand in hand with the idea of hidden truths, as well as two other important
words, particularly “play,” and “act.” Each of these, similar to “nunnery,” have more than one
meaning. An act might be an act in a play, or it might be a façade. A player could be one who
performs or one who tricks others. “The full extension of this theme is best evidenced in the play
within the play itself. Here…we have suddenly a situation that tends to dissolve the normal
barriers between the fictive and the real. For here on the stage before us is a play of false
appearances in which an actor called the player-king is playing. But there is also on the stage,
Claudius, another player-king, who is a spectator of this player. And there is on the stage,
besides, a prince who is a spectator of both these player-kings and who plays with great intensity
a player's role himself…And lastly there are ourselves, an audience watching all these audiences
who are also players. Where, it may suddenly occur to us to ask, does the playing end?...” (Mack,
“The World of Hamlet.”). Hamlet is an intricate web of truth and lies, each interwoven with each
other so closely that sorting out truth from lie becomes difficult.
One of the biggest forms that idea takes is that of the Ghost. Hamlet tries to decide
whether the Ghost is actually the Ghost of his father, or some devil sent to lure him to his doom,
for “The spirit that I have seen may be the devil: and the devil hath the power to assume a
pleasing shape...” (Shakespeare II. ii. 57). His uncertainty about the Ghost adds to Hamlet’s
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conflict raging inside of himself. Being a little religious, as all royalty of the Elizabethan era
were, Hamlet was worried about the consequences of potentially murdering a man who had done
nothing. “Hamlet's first response to the Ghost's command is not "Shall I help my father to
heaven?" but "[S]hall I couple hell?" (1.5.93).” (Tiffany, “Hamlet, reconciliation…”). Already,
Hamlet might be thinking about the Ghost’s true identity; since Hamlet is a Shakespearean
tragedy, the audience knows from the start that Hamlet is going to die in the end. It could be
argued, then, that the Ghost really is nothing more than a devil, telling a truth to trick Hamlet to
destruction, for “Oftentimes, to win us to our harm, the instruments of darkness tell us truths;
win us with honest trifles, to betray ‘s in deepest consequence…” (Shakespeare, “Macbeth”. I. ii.
159). Hamlet puts off killing Claudius out of fear that, should he do it, he will be damned to Hell.
“Throughout the play Hamlet shows concern that his actions be heaven-directed rather than
hellish. His "To be or not to be" speech betrays a dread of the hell that may punish a sinful
revenger who dies, as he will, in the act (3.1.55ff)…” (Tiffany, “Hamlet, reconciliation…”).
On the inside, Hamlet is introspective and irresolute, and his nature wars against his
obligation to avenge his father’s death; however, there is more to the plot than just that simple
fact. If the Ghost might only be trying to draw Hamlet to his doom, then is Claudius really the
killer of the late king of Denmark? Even Hamlet doesn’t trust the Ghost completely; he sets up a
plan to determine once and for all whether Claudius, who the audience catches on his knees in
prayer at least once, is really the murderer. “I’ll have grounds more relative than this: - the play’s
the thing, wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the king.” (Shakespeare II. ii. 57). Hamlet chooses
not to trust what seems, but rather to use his own means to discover the truth behind the veil.
When Hamlet returns after his exile to England, he returns as a changed man, as, of
course, do all characters which leave the stage for extended periods of time. This new Hamlet
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returns aware of human mortality; the first scene of his return takes place in a graveyard, artfully
designed by Shakespeare to make the point blatantly obvious. “That skull had a tongue in it, and
could sing once: how the knave jowls it to the ground, as if it were Cain’s jaw-bone, that did the
first murder! This might be the pate of a politician, which this ass now o’er-offices, one that
would circumvent God, might it not?” (Shakespeare V. i. 121). Note the compassion that this
changed Hamlet shows towards the skull of a person he doesn’t even know; after the pirate
attack at sea, he is very much aware of the fact that everyone dies, more so than when he stabbed
Polonius, who hid behind his mother’s arras. Maynard Mack puts it best: “The point is that he
[Hamlet] has now learned, and accepted, the boundaries in which human action, human
judgment, are enclosed.” (“The World of Hamlet.”). Hamlet is now completely certain of the
king-like Claudius and of the hero-like Laertes. Most certainly, Ophelia’s suicide helped bring
about this change of perspective, but something else also comes forward; Hamlet reveals that he,
in fact, did love Ophelia. During her funereal, Laertes jumps into Ophelia’s grave upon hearing
the priest pronounce that she will be denied entry into Heaven, and laments. In response, Hamlet
jumps into the grave with him, and challenges Laertes’ emotions: “I lov’d Ophelia: forty
thousand brothers could not, with all their quantity of love, make up my sum. – What wilt thou
do for her?” (Shakespeare V. i. 127-8). Through this statement, the audience learns that Hamlet
was not being truthful when he told Ophelia that he had never loved her; Hamlet would die
defending that truth, which, indeed, he does.
In conclusion, Shakespeare’s, Hamlet, presents the audience with three major and
important themes: the sorting of mysteries, determining what is real from what only seems to be,
and the realization of man’s mortality. These three themes are essential not only to the play, but
to each other; one cannot be discussed without discussing the others. All in all, Hamlet is a very
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in-depth play; I would be willing to call it one of Shakespeare’s finest tragedies, and an essential
classic.
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WORKS CITED
Johnson, Edgar. "The Dilemma of Hamlet (William Shakespeare: Hamlet)."
EXPLORING Shakespeare. Detroit: Gale, 2003. Gale Student Resources In Context. Web. 1
Mar. 2012.
Mack, Maynard. "The World of Hamlet." EXPLORING Shakespeare. Detroit: Gale,
2003. Gale Student Resources In Context. Web. 27 Feb. 2012.
Massie, Allan. "Prince of self-pity." Spectator 15 July 2006. Gale Student Resources In
Context. Web. 1 Mar. 2012.
Shakespeare, William. “Hamlet”. Great Classic Library: Shakespeare. London:
Chancellor Press, 1995. Print.
--. “Macbeth”. Great Classic Library: Shakespeare. London: Chancellor Press, 1995.
Print.
Tiffany, Grace. "Hamlet, reconciliation, and the just state." Renascence: Essays on
Values in Literature 58.2 (2005): 111+. Gale Student Resources In Context. Web. 28 Feb. 2012.