Download Hamlet`s Sense of Mission – Divine or Demoniac? Lector dr. Arleen

Hamlet’s Sense of Mission – Divine or Demoniac?
Lector dr. Arleen IONESCU
Universitatea din Ploieşti
The article starts from a few critical overviews on Shakespeare’s play and focuses on the
way in which the twentieth century criticism changed the nineteenth century outlook on the play.
Therefore it analyses the possible misunderstanding of the Ghost and the mission he is given. As
Philip Edwards pointed out, “doubts about the Ghost, doubts about the ethics of revenge, doubts
about the nastiness of Claudius, and doubts about the niceness of Hamlet, are a legacy of modern
times which we need to hold fast to”.
Even though the interest in Hamlet has largely increased beyond those of literary criticism,
it seems that during the twentieth century, there has been a breakdown in sympathy for Hamlet – the
prince which is obviously in contrast with the nineteenth century criticism. There is a durable
Hamlet motif that we can talk about, neither all virtue nor all vice simplistically, being at once the
“Nemean lion” and a “muddy-mettled” and “pigeon-livered John-a-dreams”, a motif, in short, of
the three dimensional man of flesh and blood rather than of dramatis persona1.
In an extremely elaborate essay on Hamlet, Tragic Balance in Hamlet, Philip Edwards
discusses four major areas in which the twentieth century view on Hamlet differed from that of the
nineteenth century. The first refers to the authority of the Ghost (is the Ghost an authorized
emissary of heaven or the spirit of a dead king, or a false spirit from hell?), the second refers to the
morality of his request to avenge his death, the third points to the moral and material condition of
Denmark and its court under Claudius and the fourth concerns Hamlet himself and the way we
should interpret his actions.
There is one thing that we should take into account in our analysis and that is the fact that
generally speaking Elizabethan drama usually presents a double reversal of fortune – the rise and
fall in the hero’s prosperity and happiness. Nowhere else is there a tragedy like Hamlet, with no
reversal at all, as the play begins after the rise and fall of the hero have taken place; in this case we
perceive Hamlet’s despair and misfortune from the very beginning. The damage that was done (the
murder of his father) has already taken place and this damage is permanent. After promising to
remember his father, Hamlet regrets it:
The time is out of joint; O cursed spite,
That ever I was born to set it right. (I.5.188-189)
After he has met the Ghost, he has succumbed again to his anguish, which is now very
intense after the discovery of his mother’ adultery and the murder of his father. His conversation
with his friend becomes so strange that Horatio comments upon Hamlet’s words:
These are but wild and whirling words, my lord. (I.5. 133)
Later Hamlet announces his intention to feign madness. Two months later his madness has
succeeded only in arousing Claudius’ suspicion. Shortly afterwards Hamlet asks the players to play
the Murder of Gonzago and to study a speech of some dozen lines, which I would set down and
insert in’t. (II.541-542) This is supposed to be a trap for the conscience of Claudius, yet even if the
1
Lu Gu Shun, Hamlet Across Space and Time, in Stan Wells (ed.) (1983), Shakespeare Survey, no. 36- Shakespeare in
the twentieth century, Cambridge University Press, p. 53
trap convinces him of the guilt of Claudius, he bolts from the room, unable to endure for a second
time the poisoning of a sleeping king. Hamlet allows Claudius to send him to England and he is
ashamed to have forgotten his duty:
How stand I then,
That have a father kill’d, a mother stain’d
Excitements of my reason and my blood
And let all sleep […] (IV.4. 56-59) This finally leads him to the idea of revenge:
O, from this time forth,
My thoughts be bloody, or be nothing worth! (IV.4 65-66)
A.C. Bradley interprets the Shakespearean tragedy as a story of exceptional calamity leading
to the death of a man in high estate. Bradley’s definition underlines the complexity of the
Shakespearean character and of his work. Shakespeare insists on the importance of man’s power
and freedom to decide. In different moments of their lives, people are faced with a course of action
that implies choice. As long as they have not chosen, they are free. After having taken a course of
action, they are no longer free. They become the victims of their own decisions and have to submit
to the omnipotence of Fate. Their action foreruns other actions and, in case of a wrong choice, it
inevitably leads to destruction. The initial movement of choice in the tragedies brings the spiritual
inner forces of the heroes in conflict; doubts, desires, ideas and ambitions cause a great disturbance.
When instincts predominate, they generate evil, and evil generates fear associated with unkindness,
horror, vice, hate, chaos and monstrosity. The tragic hero with a flaw is Shakespeare’s great
innovation. Pride, credulity or ambition associated with power, courage and intelligence attain such
a terrible force that they explode, destroying not only the lives of the heroes, but also the order of
the family, state, cosmos.
In his essay The Embassy of Death from The Wheel of Fire Wilson Knight sees Hamlet as an
element of evil in the state of Denmark, a healthy and normal community. Claudius is an efficient
administrator who concentrates on the future, while, by contrast, Hamlet is a poison in the veins of
the community, as he has been instructed by the Ghost never to let the past forgotten. He is a sick
soul, a living death in the midst of life, inhuman – or superhuman… a creature of another world.
For this view Knight gives the following argument: a balanced judgment is forced to pronounce
ultimately in favour of life as contrasted with death, for optimism and the healthily second-rate
rather then the nihilism of the superman; for [Hamlet] is not as the plot shows, safe; and he is not
safe, primarily because he is right2.
The setting of the play which never moves from Elsinore has as boundaries in Hamlet’s
mind places with a religious connotation:
O all you host of heaven! O earth! What else?
And shall I couple hell?(1.5.92-93)
Hamlet experiences the beginning of a state of despair. He wants to die and he would take
his own life if suicide were not forbidden by the Church. He chooses not to kill himself because of
his fear of damnation. In fact Hamlet’s contemplation of suicide, his doubts as to what comes after
death comes against the humanist observance of man’s right to freedom of expression which
accounted for the absolute freedom of inspiration in the epoch.
Religious people always ask God to help them do the right thing or find their right way in
life. The same is with Hamlet. When the Ghost appears in the questionable shape of his father,
Hamlet asks him: What should we do? Hamlet needs guidance and his need is the need of the tragic
hero that the French critic Lucien Goldman depicts in his study of Racine and Pascal, The Hidden
God. His theory of tragedy is based on Pascal’s idea that man has to wager that God exists because
He is a hidden God whose presence is not really known and whose voice is not unequivocally
heard. The tragic hero longs for absolutes, for an authentic uncompromising life. Yet the God
2
Apud. Philip Edwards, Tragic Balance in Hamlet, in Stan Wells (ed.) (1983), p. 43
whom he lings to obey is hidden, His voice is distorted and not audible, His wishes are never clearly
discernible. The world in which the hero lives is a world ruled by permanent compromise and
adjustment. Hamlet expects it to be ruled by the Absolute. In this world the hero looks for the Truth,
yet his tragedy lies in his vain efforts to live according to what he perceives as his ideals of a higher
order, in a world which finds his conduct scandalous and insane.
There is tragedy in the fact that God is neither absent not obviously present. Goldman says
that tragedy could not exist if God were clearly known or if He were dead.
The special irony of the tragic hero’s position is that the difficulty of trying to live out what
God wants is compounded by the difficulty of knowing what God wants, or even whether he exists3.
The status of the Ghost is ambiguous for Hamlet in the same way God is hidden for
Goldman’s tragic hero. This ambiguity of the voice which Hamlet hears is of fundamental
importance because it establishes the alternative course of his life: whether to accept the mission of
a heaven-sent spirit and renovate the world by the act of killing Claudius, or to continue suffering
because he fears that the spirit that he has seen may be a devil.
Hamlet’s thinking is doubtful, and the doubt is neither transient nor the result of a state of
pessimism, but given by the difficult position in which he is placed. His mind turns upon the poles
of truth and he always looks for attaining ultimate knowledge. Even if at first, he somehow trusts
the Ghost and accepts the given mission, further on, in the To be or not to be soliloquy he manifests
his total distrust; he rejects the possibility of improving the world by killing one evil man. Whether
he kills the King or not, Denmark will continue to be as it is a place of suffering ruled by fortune.
The only opposition which the individual can make against the mischance of existence is to take his
life. And if there is nobleness in continuing to live, it is a nobleness of suffering, which is
praiseworthy in itself. As Monica Chesnoiu asserted, the permanent questions raised by the prince
of Denmark, the essential obscurity of his discourse, are not due to his self- alienation, or to his
being a victim of a certain type of ideology, which he tries to reject, but to his deep understanding
of the relativity of truth and the impossibility of finding any definite answers regarding the nature of
reality4.
Hamlet cannot kill Claudius because his conscience tells him that the act is good, and even
if it were good, it could not change the world. But it is the same conscience that will raise his arm
against Claudius.
Does it not think thee stand me now uponHe that hath killed my king and whored my mother,
Poppped in between th’election and my hopes,
Thrown out his angle for my proper life,
And with such cozenage – it’s not perfect conscience
To quit him with this arm? And it’s not to be damned
To let this canker of our nature come
In further evil? (5.2.63-70)
In Edward’s opinion, Hamlet’s dilemma may also have religious connotations. It is the
dilemma which Kierkegaard describes, concerning Abraham and the intended sacrifice of Isaac, in
his work Fear and Trembling. Abraham believed that he had heard God asking him to murder his
beloved son. And to prove his faith Braham was ready to murder his own son. This is again the idea
of the wager that God exists and that trusting in Him enables us to fulfill His demands although we
outgo the moral laws of the world. Isaac was not killed but Abraham was ready to sacrifice him.
Therefore he was a murderer or an obedient child of God. Kierkegaard explains this paradox which
faith is by saying that it is capable of transforming a murder into a holy act pleasing God. Yet he
3
4
Apud. Philip Edwards, op. cit., p. 46
Monica Matei Chesnoiu (1997) Knowledge and Truth, Constanta: Ed. Pontica, p. 111
asks: if the individual had misunderstood the deity – what can save him?5This is what Hamlet is
really afraid of: misunderstanding the ghost and the mission he had been assigned to perform.
Kierkegaard calls this mistaken conviction of the individual the demoniacal. The individual
can therefore be above the universally accepted ethics of society. He speaks of the Knight of faith
who in the solitude of the universe never hears any human voice but walks alone with his dreadful
responsibility6.
William Tyndale defined faith in his Doctrinal Treatises (1848): Faith is the believing of
God’s promises, and a sure trust in the goodness and truth of God; which faith justified Abraham
[…] to steal, rob and murder, are no holy works before wordly people: but unto them that have
their trust in God they are holy, when God commandeth them. Holy works of man’s imaginations
receive their reward here, as Christ testifieth7. Holy works of man’s imagination are what
Kierkegaard would call demoniac activity of those people that Tyndale calls dreamers. Tyndale’s
dreamers are the ones who deceive themselves by believing in their own fantasies. For what other
thing is their imagination, which they call faith, than a dreaming of the faith, and an opinion of
their own imagination wrought without the grace of God?8
It seems that both Horatio and Hamlet understood what Tyndale meant by imagination, as Horatio
says He waxes desperate with imagination, and Hamlet fears that if he can’t confirm the Ghost’s
story, his imaginations are as foul/ As Vulcan’s stithy.
The Renaissance man has acquired a new sense of reality, the awareness split between the
world of illusion and the everyday world of genuine reality and Hamlet’s soliloquy is a proof of
this. In recognizing a divinity that shapes our ends, Rough-hew them how we will, Hamlet
recognizes, with a clear and conscious modification of his earlier sense of his own freedom and
power, that he is subject to the control of a higher power which redirects him when his own
blunders have impeded his progress9.
Yet Hamlet is responsible for the deaths of Polonius, Ophelia and his school-fellows, and
the attempt to rid Denmark of his villain-king has left the country in a worse state than it was in the
beginning. Fortinbras, whose threat to the kingdom opens the play, takes it over at the end without
firing a single shot. Fortinbras is a success as Hamlet is a failure. Hamlet seems so weak in his
actions, because, in fact, he is so strong that he still hopes until the end, where no hope is to exist.10
Twentieth century criticism holds that we must also understand the extent of Hamlet’s
success vs failure. In order to do that we must consider again the quality of the mission itself, the
values that Hamlet tries to reimpose on Denmark and the ethics of wishing to kill Claudius.
In order to understand the values he tries to reimpose on Denmark, we must agree that there
is sin and crime at Elsinore. If there were not, Hamlet’s despair would be but an illness, or his
mission to cleanse the world would be just an obsession or a delusion. But modern critics try to
abstain from such characterizations. They somehow find excuses for Denmark’s rulers saying that
Shakespeare shows no ruthless desire to track down viciousness and that the play is a lucid
presentation of very ordinary human failings. The real crime in which all these characters are
involved is that of participating without protest in a social normality which is hostile to the most
essential needs of consciousness11.
The basic mythical presentation of this cultural dissolution can take the form of the rivalry
of brothers, or the form of the fratricidal conflict over something they cannot share – a throne, a
woman. The result of cultural dissolution is that violence can no longer be contained, and overflows
5
Apud. Philip Edwards, op. cit., p. 50
Philip Edwards, op. cit., p. 50
7
Ibid., pp. 50-51
8
Ibid., p. 53
9
Ibid., p. 47
10
Ridler A (1970) Shakespeare Criticism, London, Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, p. 121
11
Philip Edwards, op. cit., p. 48
6
in the unending cycle of revenge. What worries Hamlet is that his mother cannot distinguish
between the two brothers, between Cain and Abel:
Look here upon this picture and on this[…]
This was your husband, Look you now what follows.
Here is your husband. Have you eyes? (3.4.53, 63-64)
It is clear that Claudius seduced Gertrude in the old king’s lifetime. It is the thought that this
woman was accustomed to sleep with either of two brothers which emphasizes the idea of incest.
Gertrude’s inability or unwillingness to see the antithesis between the two brothers is precisely
where the tragedy begins. Hamlet shows the distinction in the following way:
A murderer and a villain,
A slave precedent is not twentieth part in the tithe
Of your precedent lord, a vice of kings,
A cutpurse of empire and the rule,
That from a self the precious diadem stole
And put it in his pocket. (3.4.96-101)
Hamlet assumes the mission to restore to his mother her sense of discriminating between
something good and something bad. He cannot do this unless he eliminates the man who obliterates
distinctions. Hamlet dares to claim the protection of the divinity that hedges a king, to restore to
Denmark its beauteous majesty.
Yet Hamlet’s mission is not simple. His rage to re-establish the world of distinctions cannot
be either a divine justification, or the true way of eliminating a villain from Denmark. Throughout
the play his language is teasing, riddling, punning, looking two ways at the same thing, never
directly serious or directly jesting. In almost everything he says he reveals his incapacity for a
single vision and a simple valuation. Hamlet’s commitment to killing the King wavers constantly.
Such a description gives precision to what has often been said about Hamlet from varying points of
view, a fact synthesized by J. C. Maxwell in the following way: that he stands between two worlds,
belonging fully to neither. If we are not careful, an account of this kind will dissolve both the prince
and the play into mere symbols in a broadly sketched philosophy of history. Yet that sense of
incongruity between central figure and background remains, and this is best attributed not to
Hamlet’s weakness, not to his inability to make up his mind, not to the recalcitrance of an inherited
ply, not to Shakespeare’s failure to find an objective correlative for his experience, but to the
decision to leave the framework of a revenge play standing, while raising the moral problem of
revenge only by implication, and by that very fact giving it a more universal significance than it had
before on the English stage12.
The only person who holds a simple view about punishing Claudius is the Ghost who
authorized Hamlet’s conduct. And since at the time people believed that only heaven could
authorize a murder, the ghost is the symbol of this higher authority and of the communication that
may exist between heaven and earth. The revenge the Ghost asks for is a straightforward business
demanding courage and will.
Howsoever thou pursue this act,
Taint not thy mind.
But Hamlet, as it was previously mentioned, has many doubts about the authority of the
Ghost. In spite of his doubts, his father's ghost, which he had seen, haunted his imagination, and the
sacred injunction to revenge his murder gave him no rest till it was accomplished. Every hour of
delay seemed to him a sin, and a violation of his father's commands. Yet the presence of the queen,
Hamlet's mother, who was generally with the king, was a restraint upon his purpose, which he could
not break through. Besides, the very circumstance that the usurper was his mother's husband filled
him with some remorse, and still blunted the edge of his purpose. The mere act of putting a fellow12
J. C. Maxwell, Shakespeare: The Middle Plays, in Boris Ford (ed.), (1998) The New Pelican Guide to English
Literature, vol 2. The Age of Shakespeare, London: Penguin Books, p. 309
creature to death was in itself odious and terrible to a disposition naturally so gentle as Hamlet's
was.
Hamlet failed to bring back the values of the past. In fact many of Shakespeare’s characters
who try to restore or even preserve the past, Richard II, Brutus, or Coriolanus have never succeeded
in doing so.
This indicates a grim historically realism on Shakespeare’s part. The only play which
presents openness towards both past and the future is Hamlet as the possibility of restoration is well
balanced against the futility of his attempt. And this is not just because of the extraordinary interest
of the mind which contemplates the task of bringing back the majesty of Denmark. It is also
because of the great transcendental hypothesis continuum. The sense of an order of distinction
among people which is ratified in heaven, the sense that there is a communication between heaven
and earth, the sense that there can be a cleansing act of violence are powerfully present in the play
and so is the conviction that these things may not exist.
Hamlet’s attempt to make a higher truth active in a fallen world fails hopelessly. Hamlet
vexed and troubled the world and failed to change it for the better. But he continues, or he ought to
continue to vex and trouble us with the suspicion and the fear that although he never got there, he
may have looked for something which was worth having.
In Edwards’ opinion, it is not faith we need to understand Hamlet. We need just enough
questioning to keep alive the openness of Hamlet’s question to Horatio:
Is’t not to be damned to let this canker of our nature to come in further evil?
Bibliography:
1. Chesnoiu, Monica Matei (1997) Knowledge and Truth, Ed. Pontica, Constanta
2. Edwards, Philip, Tragic Balance in Hamlet, in Stan Wells (ed.) (1983) Shakespeare Survey, no.
36- Shakespeare in the twentieth century, Cambridge University Press
3. Ford, Boris (ed.) (1998) The New Pelican Guide to English Literature, vol 2. The Age of
Shakespeare, London: Penguin Books
4. Ridler, A (1970) Shakespeare Criticism, London, Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press