UNIT 3: Hamlet, a complete study

3.1. Hamlet: Historical and Literary Contexts

3.1.1 Date
Evidence suggests that Hamlet was written around 1601. The enquiry
into the date of composition of plays uncovers the fact that they are
intimately connected with the political, social and religious issues of
their time. There are many different editions and variants of the plays
as the concept of authorship during the Renaissance was not the same
as nowadays.

Textual traces within the play can also help date it. Metatheatrical
allusions appear in many of Shakespeare’s plays, the audience is always
aware that what they are watching is an illusion and the actors
constantly allude to their nature as mere performers. The allusion to Brutus’s murder of Caesar is
anticipating Hamlet’s murder of Polonius, the actors in both plays were the same and they remind
the audience of this.

Another dialogue, this time between Hamlet and Rosencratz refers to “inhibition” which means
“prohibition” which is referring to theatrical circumstances in London at the time. This “inhibition”
could refer to to the law passed in 1600 which only allowed performances in two theatres by just
two companies, the plague in 1603 which caused the closing of the theatres or the political disorder
resulting from Essex’s rebellion in February 1601. There was a strong connection between political
matters and the stage, plays were sometimes used for political purposes. There are also references
to “the war of theatres” during 1601 in London, referring to the new fashion and great success of
the children’s acting companies.

3.1.2 Main Sources of Hamlet

Saxo and Belleforest

The story of Hamlet is based on the 12th century story of Amleth told by the Dane Saxo Grammaticus
in his Historiae Danicae which was first printed in 1514 and translated into Danish in 1575. The Latin
text was translated into English by Oliver Eston in 1894.

The Amleth saga belongs to a series of stories about revenge in which the hero pretends to be mad
or stupid in order to save his life and devise a stratagem against his enemies. There are numerous
elements in common with Shakespeare’s play such as fratricide, incestuous marriage, pretended
insanity and delayed action and revenge as well as very specific scenes that find parallels in the play.

Shakespeare probably had access to Amleth’s story through Francois Belleforest’s French version of
Saxo’s narration as the third story of the fifth volume of Histoires Tragiques in 1570. Certain elements
differentiate Belleforest’s narration from that of Saxo and these are reflected in Hamlet.

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The Ur-Hamlet

Certain critics consider that “there is no evidence to suggest that Shakespeare had read about
Hamlet in Saxo, and only a remote possibility that he was familiar with Belleforest”. If this is true,
then the basic source of Shakespeare’s play would be a lost, and apparently never printed,
Elizabethan play known as Ur-Hamlet.

There are three pieces of textual evidence for the existence of this play:

- “To the Gentlemen Students of Both Universities” by Thomas Nashe. This text has been used as
evidence that Thomas Kyd wrote Ur-Hamlet.

- Philip Henslowe’s theatrical records in 1594.

- “Wits Miserie and the World’s Madness” by Tomas Lodge. He describes one who “walks for the
most part in black under cover of gravity, and looks as pale as the vizard of the ghost who cried so
miserably at the Theatre like an oyster-wife, Hamlet, revenge!”

Topicality of a play on Hamlet at the time – Bullough

In 1585 a Danish embassy arrived in Edinburgh requesting the return to Danish rule of the Scottish
isles of Orkney and Shetland and proposing a marriage between James VI of Scotland, later James I
of England, and Anne of Denmark. This proposal was initially opposed but they got married in 1589.

There are many other possible connections between certain political events in Denmark, Scotland
and England and Hamlet’s story. The rivalry between brothers could be related to events that took
place after Anne’s father’s death in 1588. His brother Duke John tried to get the crown even though
the heir was his oldest son Christian IV. The idea of a son’s revenge could also have reminded the
audience of the fact that in 1587 James VI was encouraged by many Scottish nobles to revenge his
mother’s (Mary Queen of Scots) murder by Queen Elizabeth.

Connections between Thomas Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy and Shakespeare’s Hamlet include the
presence of the revenge and delay themes in both plays, the presence of the play-within-the-play,
the issue of madness, the protagonism of the Ghost or the presence of two revengeful plot lines in
both plays. The moral and psychological depth of Shakespeare’s characters contrasts with the
classical rhetoric and the flat characterization of Kyd’s.

3.2. Critical Approaches to Hamlet

Hamlet has traditionally been defined as a “problem play” since it presents life as a complex
experience whose difficulties, in most cases, are not solved by satisfactory resolutions. The reasons
of Hamlet’s delay are central in many of the analyses examined.

3.2.1 Some critical approaches from the 18th to the first half of the 20th
century
Samuel Johnson admires the variety of the play with its abundant events and mixture of variety and
grandeur and the different characters with their own types of speech and ways of life. He considers
Hamlet’s madness as a mere cause of merriment and does not understand why he pretends to be
insane as “he does nothing which he might not have done with the reputation of sanity”. From his
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point of view, Hamlet is a mere instrument and not an agent in the play, the king’s death is due to
his actions and he fails to carry out the Ghost’s command. He considers Hamlet’s attitude towards
Ophelia as rudeness and points out the absence of poetical justice in the play.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge brings up the theme of incongruity of Hamlet’s conduct and character. He
considers that his mental process can be compared to the functioning of the human mind and that
is the cause of the general fascination all over the world. Coleridge’s contemplative faculty considers
that a healthy mind must have a balance between the mental contact with external objects and
mental introspection. Hamlet does not have the contact with external objects, so this balance does
not exist. This explains why he is incapable of acting and is reflected in his soliloquies where we can
see his obsession with his inner world.

A.C. Bradley, in Shakespearean Tragedy, begins his analysis of Hamlet by opposing some previous
critical ideas on Hamlet’s delay to revenge his father’s death, one of the central problems of the play.
He rejects theories that claim he does not act because of external difficulties such as the presence
of courtiers or bodyguards or the difficulty to prove his uncle’s criminal acts. He also disagrees that
Hamlet’s reason for not acting is based on moral scruple or conscience and does not accept the
sentimental view of Hamlet. Lastly, he sets against the Schlegel-Coleridge theory that views Hamlet
as a tragedy of thought, of reflection. Bradley believes that the reason is the hero’s melancholy.

During the Renaissance period, melancholy was classified as a disease. It was considered that mental
and physical health depended on the perfect equilibrium between the four humours: yellow bile,
black bile, phlegm and blood. The preponderance of black bile resulted in melancholy which, in turn,
was considered a consequence of genius. He based his theories on Timothy Bright’s Treatise of
Melancholy which described the symptoms of this disease in detail.

Bradley applies psychological realism to the study of Hamlet and analyses his personality as if he
were offering a psychological diagnosis of a real human being. He observes certain traits in Hamlet
that, under stress, could develop into melancholy:

- a clear melancholic temperament that results in nervous fluctuations and quick and extreme mood
changes.

- a moral sensibility and an enjoyment and belief in everything pleasant and beautiful in nature and
in man. The negative side is that a man with this sensibility would suffer greatly after a great shock.

- his intellectual genius, following the Schlegel-Coleridge theory. After a psychological trauma this
imaginative habit of mind would sink him into a complete gloomy meditative attitude.

Bradley considers that the real shock comes from the knowledge of his mother’s adultery rather than
from his father’s death or the loss of the crown.

In his analysis, Bradley follows the humanist belief in a transcendental, universal and common
essence in all human beings. This position is later rejected by post-structuralist literary approaches.

He makes clear that melancholy is not synonymous with madness. He never shows signs of insanity
when he is alone of with Horatio and his melancholy is reflected in his bad temper, self-absorption,
insensibility to other’s fates and to his loved one’s feelings, etc. As a result, his indifference translates

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itself into inaction which is increased by his constant reflection on the task he has to carry out and
his reasons for procrastinating. Bradley indicates that Hamlet seems to forget about his task in the
play from the Ghost’s appearance to the events in the second act. The Ghost’s last words are
“Remember me” and when he reappears are “Do not forget”.

As a conclusion to his analysis, Bradley states that from a psychological point of view, Hamlet’s
melancholy “is the centre of the tragedy, and to omit it from consideration or to underrate its
intensity is to make Shakespeare’s story unintelligible”. From a tragic point of view, he considers that
this melancholy would have aroused little interest if he had not presented the intellectual genius
that the Schlegel-Coleridge theory stressed.

T.S. Eliot wrote a brief essay on Hamlet in which he considered that “far from being Shakespeare’s
masterpiece, the play is most certainly an artistic failure”. He believes that the main dramatic flaw is
that Hamlet’s emotions do not find an “objective correlative”. Hamlet cannot understand his feelings,
cannot express them and consequently cannot take any action. His essay also has a psychological
touch as he judges that the fact that the play shows an incapacity to express in words and actions
what Hamlet feels reflects Shakespeare’s inner conflicts.

George Wilson Knight’s essay “The Embassy of Death” was one of the most important examinations
of Hamlet in the first half of the 20th century. He believes that, although Hamlet’s grief results from
various causes, his extreme suffering lies in what Polonius calls “neglected love”.

Knight declares that death is the central theme of the play and that it is present in physical terms
but that it is mainly in Hamlet’s mind and spirit. He emphasises the fact that the atmosphere of the
whole play is not so depressing as the main theme. There are moments in which we can observe a
positive attitude in Hamlet. He considers that Denmark is a happy and healthy realm but against this
blissful state is the figure of Hamlet, whom Knight calls “the ambassador of death walking amid life”.

The most striking element in Knight’s analysis is the fact that he considers Claudius as one of the
positive elements of Denmark. He considers him to be a good, confident and efficient king and a
good uncle to Hamlet, to whom he gives advice that is product of common sense and sincere
affection. It is Hamlet who is “an element of evil in the state of Denmark” and he considers the Ghost
as a demon which possesses Hamlet. This sets the main problem of the play, that is, the question of
who represents spiritual good and who represents evil. Despite these claims he accepts that it is
Hamlet who is right. He has discovered the truth of humanity which makes him the only conflicting
element of the play, the only obstacle to happiness in Denmark. Knight’s analysis was not generally
accepted.

Dover Wilson’s What Happens in Hamlet? offers a careful analysis of all the dramatic elements of
the play and a detailed exposition of the background of certain Elizabethan beliefs necessary to
understand some aspects of the play. He rejects the ideas of those critics that had applied
psychological realism and indicated that critics should focus on the text rather than the character.
Hamlet should be analysed as a character in a play rather than as a real human being.

Wilson also considers that Hamlet never goes completely mad and that Ophelia’s real madness is
presented on stage so that it can be compared with Hamlet’s. One of the devices used by

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Shakespeare is his “antic disposition” which blurs the line that separates feigned madness from real
insanity.

He also alludes to the question of melancholy and acknowledges that Shakespeare read Timothy
Bright’s A Treatise of Melancholy but concludes that Hamlet is Shakespeare’s dramatic creation and
does not merely represent psychological conceptions of the time.

He has a curious theory that links Hamlet’s nature with the personality of the Earl of Essex. This
theory explains the mystery surrounding the image of the prince in Hamlet, Essex was also an enigma
and his personality was widely debated. Wilson acknowledges that his theory merely offers the
historical origin of the mystery since its real nature is dramatically constructed. Hamlet is a tragedy
and not historical fact.

3.2.2. Contemporary Critical Approaches to Hamlet: Catherine Belsey,

Leonard Tennenhouse and Elaine Showalter
Catherine Belsey and Leonard Tennenhouse: Political Approaches to Hamlet
Both Catherine Belsey and Leonard Tennenhouse analyse the play taking into consideration the
political, historical and social circumstances of the period. For both critics Hamlet presents current
political debates, the Shakespearean stage is viewed as having an essential role in the political life
of Renaissance England. In the case of Besley’s cultural materialist analysis, Hamlet is a play in which,
though political orthodoxy dominates the play, there are elements that point to new emergent
discourses. Tennenhouse’s new historicist analysis centres mainly on the was the play reinforces the
dominant ideas about the monarch’s body as both natural and politic.

Catherine Belsey in The Subject of Tragedy: Identity and Difference in Renaissance Drama , dedicates
a section to what she calls “The limits of sovereignty”. She analyses the theme of revenge in Hamlet
not just as a moral dilemma but as a political question. As an introduction to this analysis she offers
a set of ideas about the theory of absolutism and the relationship between the monarch and the
subjects. She highlights the fact that, despite the monarch’s absolute power, challenges to authority
existed during the age in different forms. If the king’s order was against divine precepts the subject
was not obliged to obey it. For the Puritans, this was a way of highlighting the freedom of the
individual conscience. The Anglicans did not accept disobedience, but they considered that the
monarch had to follow human and divine rules. She uses the example of Charles I’s execution to
point out that limits to the monarch’s authority were established.

Lily B. Campbell offers a variety of religious, philosophical, literary and ethical writings that showed
a general opposition to revenge. Only God has the power to take revenge. Many texts rejected
private revenge, but others provide evidence that revenge was accepted on some occasions.
Vengeance was admitted in some cases, for example murder or rape, when the king or judge was
not there or when there was no law to regulate the punishment of a certain offence. The document
known as Bond of Association allowed people to take revenge on those plotting against the Queen
and her successors.

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Revenge is a central theme in many plays of the period. Seneca’s tragedies and the Italian “novelles”
are a clear example of the centrality of revenge and The Spanish Tragedy inaugurated the new
theatrical genre in England, the revenge tragedy.

Belsey points out that in many of the revenge plays of the period, the ruler is not capable of
administering justice or it is the head of state who is the offender. In these cases, the avenger must
break the law to find his own justice.

The discourse of revenge is linked to horror and violence as proved in Claudius’s remark that
“Revenge should have no bounds”. In Hamlet, revenge is both a political and a moral question,
Claudius has murdered Hamlet’s father but also his king and is, therefore, considered as a political
usurper. The sense of ambiguity about the validity of revenge is apparent throughout the whole
play. The binary opposition between right and wrong and good and evil is deconstructed in various
occasions, as well as the blurring of boundaries.

The confusion about the nature of the Ghost, common in these plays, could be compared to the
confusion about the nature of revenge. For Belsey, Hamlet is a clear example of a play that deals
with the political debate about the legitimacy of vengeful acts at the time. While the revenge play
could be seen as a reinforcement of royal power, it also opened up the possibility for the subject to
challenge this authority. The stage gave voice to new and emergent discourses which opposed the
dominant ones.

Leonard Tennenhouse also examines Hamlet from a political point of view in his book Power on
Display: The Politics of Shakespeare’s Genres. His main purpose is to show how ideas about political
power are embedded within the play and portrays Hamlet as a play that shows a state “torn between
two competitors”. He considers that neither Hamlet or Claudius are legitimate successors as they
both attack the aristocratic body.

Hamlet would be the rightful successor to the throne if a patrilineal system of descent is taken into
consideration and he is also the favourite of the people. However, if a matrilineal system of descent
is taken into consideration, the rightful successor is Claudius, but he achieved this position through
force. Tennenhouse establishes a continuous comparison between Hamlet and the history plays as,
in his opinion, they are linked through the political theme. The difference is that the illegitimacy of
Claudius’s power is not masked through rites of power like in the history plays.

Tennenhouse analyses the play-within-the-play as “part of the official rituals of state”. When Hamlet
stages the play, he is not acting as an avenger, but as a future sovereign trying to uncover the truth.
To establish his authority as a monarch, Hamlet must turn the performance into a spectacle of
punishment. Hamlet fails to do this for two reasons; first, because it is not really an official ritual and
therefore truth turns into a mere conjecture and secondly, because Hamlet does not show the truth
through political action but through “the purely symbolic plane of thought and art”. This reinforces
Hamlet’s inability to rule and take action.

But above all, he argues that the staging does not really reflect the murderous death of Hamlet’s
father. He believes that Shakespeare is comparing the nature of Hamlet’s revenge with Claudius’s
crime in order to identify the illegitimacy of both characters.

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For Tennenhouse, the similitude between both genres lies in the fact that, in both, Shakespeare uses
the image of the queen’s two bodies: the natural and the political by highlighting the fact that an
assault on the monarch’s body is an attack on the whole state.

Elaine Showalter: Feminist Approach to Hamlet

Elaine Showalter begins her study by offering a revision of feminist analyses of Ophelia in her essay
“Representing Ophelia: Woman, Madness and the Responsibilities of Feminist Criticism”.

French feminist criticism points out the fact that “nothing” in Elizabethan slang referred to the female
sexual organs. According to Luce Irigaray, for men women’s sexual organs “represent the horror of
having nothing to see”. Showalter remarks that “Ophelia’s story becomes the Story of 0 – the zero,
the empty circle of mystery of feminine difference, the cipher of female sexuality to be deciphered
by feminist interpretation” and that by turning Ophelia into a symbol of absence this type of analysis
demonstrates women’s marginality. Other critics consider Ophelia’s story as a reflection of the
repressed feelings of Hamlet. Showalter considers that this downgrades Ophelia as a mere image of
male experience.

Some feminist critics consider that feminist critics must speak for Ophelia while others state that it
is difficult to reconstruct her story from the text as Hamlet’s story can be imagined without Ophelia,
but that Ophelia’s story does not exist without Hamlet. Showalter also opposes this position as she
considers that she, as a feminist critic, can tell the history of Ophelia’s representation. There is a clear
paradox in Ophelia’s invisibility and subordination to Hamlet in many texts as she has constantly
been made visible in literature, popular culture or painting.

In her essay Showalter analyses “English and French painting, photography, psychiatry and literature,
as well as, theatrical production” and shows how these cultural representations present a link
between female madness and female sexuality, the multiple parallelisms between Ophelia’s different
types of representation and the evolution of psychiatric theory, the relevant influence of the different
ways actresses have played Ophelia on feminist criticism and the differences between a male and a
female representation of her. This study blends French feminism concepts and theories related to
the female body and language and the more historical and critical approach of the American feminist
criticism.

Ophelia has traditionally been analysed in visual terms always related to her femininity. Her madness
is as a result of her female nature whereas Hamlet’s was metaphysical and cultural. Her white dress
implies her virginal nature and contrasts with Hamlet’s black attire. The flowers on her head suggest
the double image of female sexuality as both innocent and blooming and the act of her giving
flowers away could be a symbol for her sexual deflowering. Her disarranged hair could mean that
she was mad or had been sexually violated and denotes sensuality. The bawdy songs and
extravagant language she used signal female challenge to the patriarchal norm and drowning has
traditionally been a symbol of female death, of the returning to the female element. Woman is a
symbol of fluidity and man one of aridity.

During the Elizabethan period a woman showing Ophelia’s symptoms would have been diagnosed
with female love melancholy which was biological and emotional in contrast to male melancholy
which was related to intellectual brilliancy. From 1660, the most acclaimed actresses to represent

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Ophelia were those though to have had love disappointments. During the 18 th century, violence in
the mad scene was omitted on stage, the emphasis on female sexuality was diminished and female
love melancholy was sentimentalised and more decorously represented. Sometimes Ophelia’s part
was censored due to her bawdy language and was, on occasions, played by a singer instead of by
an actress.

During the romantic period, Ophelia is a woman who “drowns in feeling” and the madwoman was
linked to issues such as sexual victimisation, affliction and extreme stirring feelings. For the
Romantics, Ophelia had to be looked at as a piece of art.

Showalter also examines the way Ophelia was represented by Victorian feminist revisions. To
challenge her traditional invisibility, many actresses stressed her power on stage by wearing black,
Hamlet’s colour.

At the beginning of the 20th century, a new discourse about Ophelia emerged, the female one as
opposed to the male one. Some readers felt a kind of personal irritation against Ophelia for not
having been a heroine while others gave a new image of her as a strong and intelligent woman.

Some Freudian views consider that she was “very aware of her body” while others consider that
incest is central in both Hamlet and Ophelia, with their mother and father, respectively. Since the
1960s her insanity has been treated from a medical and biochemical perspective and has been
compared to schizophrenia. Since the 1970s feminism considers her madness as synonymous with
resistance against the familiar and social orders and gives her a voice that speaks a different
language from the patriarchal one.

Showalter concludes her essay nu underlining the fact that the different interpretations of Ophelia
over the centuries have been the result of different ideological stances. As a result, there is no ‘true’
Ophelia for whom feminist criticism must unambiguously speak but multiple perspectives.

3.3. Textual Analysis

3.3.1. Hamlet and Metatheatricality
Hamlet is a play that is constantly referring to itself as a theatrical artefact. There are numerous
references to essential elements relating to the Elizabethan stage as well as to current social and
political affairs.

In Hamlet’s view, man is an actor that can perform a certain role by dressing in the right clothes and
by showing the right feelings. In the conversation between him and his mother about his acceptance
of his father’s death we can observe a clear rejection of pretence and concealment which,
paradoxically, changes after his encounter with the Ghost where he decides that the only way to
carry out his revenge is by playing “actions that a man might play”. He metaphorically plays the role
of an actor in the play.

Hamlet considers that actors are “the abstracts and brief chronicles of the time”. He changes these
chronicles by taking on the role of an actor and also of a playwright, he also changes Claudius’s plot
regarding Rosencrantz and Guildenstern’s fate and writes some lines for the actors to include in their
play, he also instructs the players about how they have to interpret these lines.

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Shakespeare integrates his play within the theatrical debates of its time and reflects in Hamlet’s
words his own theatrical concerns. Hamlet makes references to common Renaissance ideas about
the theatre which was adopted from the classics.

Hamlet appears as an actor and playwright, but also as a sharer in a company of players. When The
Mousetrap is interrupted and Claudius leaves the room, Hamlet considers that the performance has
been a success as it has finally caught “the conscience of the king”. In the conversation held after
with Horatio, Hamlet says that due to the play’s success and if things go wrong in his life, he could
at least become a sharer in a company of players. In his imagination, the theatrical company is
transformed into the Danish court and his tole in “setting it right” makes him worthy of the
“fellowship” he aspires to.

References to the Globe Theatre itself can also be found in the play. When the Ghost orders Hamlet
to remember him the prince answers: “Ay thou poor ghost, whiles memory holds a seat / In this
distracted globe. Remember thee?”. It is probable that this reference is a triple pun and refers to:
Hamlet’s mental situation, the fact that Hamlet’s mind is a microcosm of the whole world in disorder
or “out of joint” that Hamlet has to repair and is also a clear metatheatrical allusion to the theatre
itself. This last reference is confirmed when Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are telling Hamlet about
the war of theatres and the competition between children’s and men’s companies when Rosencrantz
mentions Hercules, the emblem of the Globe Theatre.

Metatheatrical allusions are always interconnected with the main motifs of the play. It is the First
Player’s performance that makes Hamlet abandon, at least momentarily, his passivity and his
soliloquy “O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I!” shows us how drama acquires different
connotations for someone like Hamlet, who can relate what he is seeing on stage with his own
personal situation.

3.3.2. The Ghost

The main literary source of the ghost in an Elizabethan revenge play is the Seneca ghost. The main
dramatic purpose of this character was to serve as prologue of chorus and make the audience aware
of the circumstances that determine the main action of the play. The ghost prepared the atmosphere
of revenge and horror and on most occasions had pagan traits since it was believed to come from
Hades, the mythological realm of the dead.

For Bradley, the ghost is a “messenger of divine justice” but for Wilson Knight he is a demon who
possesses Hamlet. The ghost’s identity is presented as a problematic issue and different theories are
offered regarding their origin and purposes. This reflects one of the social debates at the time. There
were three main theses about the existence and origin of ghosts in England:

- The first referred to the Catholic doctrine of Purgatory and corresponds to Marcellus and
Barnardo’s view. Ghosts were considered as spirits of the dead that came back to ask a pious
soul to solve a problem so that the ghosts could find eternal rest.
- A second vision about ghosts is the Protestant one, they believed that ghosts could be angels
but that, most of the time, they were devils who took the shape of dead friends or relatives.

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 This view corresponds to that of Horatio, although he experiences a change of attitude
regarding the nature of the Ghost before and after he sees it.
- The third view which corresponds to Hamlet’s was promulgated by Reginald Scot in
Discoverie of Witchcraft. He believed in the existence of spirits but considered that they do
not take any kind of visual form, they are mere hallucinations of melancholy minds.

Hamlet’s original certainty about the Ghost’s nature turns into a hesitancy that does not allow him
to carry out his revenge. It could be the devil in disguise, as he cannot be sure about the Ghost’s real
intentions, he has to verify what the Ghost has told him by setting up the play. It is presented as an
essential element within the dramatic structure of the play. The nature of the Ghost is again called
into question when Gertrude cannot see him, he is only visible to Hamlet which alludes to the belief
that melancholy men were liable to see hallucinations. The nature of the Ghost is so variable that
every single playgoer would recognise his or her own idea about the existence of ghosts at some
point during the performance.

The apparition of the Ghost is also linked to Denmark’s political disorder. As Marcellus claims
“something is rotten in the state of Denmark”. Barnardo considers that the presence of the Ghost is
due to Fortinbras’s intention to attack Denmark in order to recover his father’s lands.

The Ghost’s description of King Hamlet’s death highlights the comparison between the king’s body
and the body of the state. For some critics, his words to Hamlet about Claudius’s sexual relationship
with Gertrude are the first textual reference that points to Gertrude’s relationship with Claudius
before her husband’s death. Hamlet never accuses his mother directly of adultery but if it is true
Gertrude is portrayed as a hypocrite which explains Hamlet’s later reaction towards Ophelia.

Other critics consider that Hamlet’s aggressive attitude against his mother is due to the fact that her
“passion” for Claudius keeps him from the throne and that those supporting the theory that she
committed adultery is due to their inability to see her for the strong-minded and sensible woman
that she is.

The Ghost reinforces the discordance between reality and appearance and the fact that everybody
in Denmark, except Horatio, seems to be playing a role.

3.3.3. Ophelia and Hamlet

The nature of the relationship between Hamlet and Ophelia has always been one of the mysteries
of the play.

Laertes, Polonius and Ophelia (Act 1 Scene 3)

This is the first time we see Ophelia. Her brother, Laertes, is warning his sister about Hamlet by
pointing out the political implications of the relationship and that her social status does not make
her suitable for him. Laertes establishes a clear link between marriage and politics, Hamlet’s personal
decisions will affect the state’s political situation.

This scene highlights that the health of the body politic depends on the lawfulness of its head.
Claudius is guilty of fratricide and incest, the illegitimate bond between him and Gertrude provokes

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disorder in Denmark. Laertes believes that Hamlet and Ophelia’s bond would not re-establish this
order either.

The centrality of the image of a healthy state makes this scene an essential component of the play
which makes use of many terms referring to diseases, rottenness and corruption. The image of
decayed nature is also central in this scene, Laertes compares his sister with a bud that can easily be
corrupted and destroyed and Hamlet’s love is compared to the ephemeral nature of a violet. These
images reinforce central themes such as fleetingness, the inevitability of time and the fact that even
the most beautiful and innocent thing can be corrupted and, at the same time, strengthen Hamlet’s
vision of Denmark as “an unweeded garden”.

Polonius takes a different perspective of their relationship. He believes that Hamlet does not love
her, that he only desires her sexually. He considers their encounters as a simple commercial
transaction and many of the terms used have a multiplicity of meanings and are used by Polonius in
a financial sense. In a way, Ophelia turns into a prostitute, as she is later treated by Hamlet. The
relationship between reality and appearances is again referred to as Ophelia’s father believes that
Hamlet is only pretending to love his daughter when what he wants is just a sexual encounter.

Hamlet and Ophelia – The closet-scene (Act 2 Scene 1)

This encounter between Hamlet and Ophelia has been widely analysed by critics. Polonius, thanks
to Ophelia’s description of Hamlet, deduces that his reaction is due to “the very extasy of love” and
to Ophelia’s rejection of his letters. However, it is not clear whether Hamlet is just putting “an antic
disposition on” or whether his reaction is a true demonstration of love-madness.

Based on mythological references, Jenkins gives an interesting explanation by identifying Ophelia’s

description of Hamlet’ parting as a possible allusion to Ovid’s description in the Metamorphoses.
According to Jenkins, this scene represents “Hamlet’s despairing farewell to Ophelia, and
emblematically his hopes of love and marriage”. A great number of Elizabethan playgoers would
have recognised these types of allusions.

The nunnery-scene (Act 3 Scene 1)

The reasons behind Hamlet’s treatment of Ophelia as a prostitute in “the nunnery-scene” have
constituted another source of critical debate. Wilson considers that Hamlet knows that Claudius and
Polonius are watching the encounter. Other critics have rejected this thesis, but its value lies in the
fact that it gives us an explanation based on the actual performance of the play and on the essential
role of the stage directions. The reading of the play is not the same as seeing it performed on stage.

Hamlet enters immediately after this conversation and it is the first time we witness his “antic
disposition”, he plays the traditional role of the Fool, under whose apparent nonsense truth is hidden.
He calls Polonius “fishmonger” which could be referring to the smell of corruption on the stage or
to the fact that this expression was used to name those men “whose daughter had more than
ordinary propensity to breed”, in this case, the sexual connotations are clear. Sexual references can
also be found in “carrion” and “contraception”.

If Hamlet did overhear Polonius and Claudius’s conversation and is aware of their presence, he can
control and give shape to their conclusions about the reasons for his madness. If he did not overhear,
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the scene presents a series of themes that strengthen central aspects of the play, which makes
Hamlet’s treatment of Ophelia a bit more comprehensible. Hamlet’s assertation that honesty is
incompatible with beauty and his conclusion that “now the time gives if proof” could allude both to
Ophelia’s complicity in Polonius’s plans and to Gertrude’s adultery. Hamlet’s treatment of Ophelia
in this scene is a reflection of his attitude to women in general after his mother’s marriage to
Claudius.

On a deeper level of signification, this scene also points to other important issues that refer to central
aspects of the play. “Honest” also means “chaste” which has as a central theme Hamlet’s rejection of
marriage, sexuality and reproduction. In his conversation with Ophelia he is not referring to women’s
sins but to the sinful nature of all humankind and so, he believes that Ophelia’s only chance to
escape from corruption is to go to a nunnery to avoid sexual temptation. If marriage is discarded,
the end of sexual relations will bring the end of sinful humankind.

Shakespeare offers different levels of signification in this scene. First, if Wilson’s theory is correct, we
observe the ironic sense of Hamlets comments. Second, the sexual undertones are obvious,
especially if we take the second meaning of “nunnery” at the time as a “house of ill fame” or “brothel”.
Third, his desolation after his mother marries Claudius presents him with a negative view of woman
which causes his rejection of Ophelia. Lastly, the ironic and sexual tones of this scene are also
mingled with Hamlet’s disheartening view of the tones of human beings, which constitutes a central
aspect of the play.

Ophelia’s madness (Act 4 Scene 5): Songs and flowers

Hamlet’s madness has a “method”, it is calculated and has an obvious purpose whereas Ophelia’s
madness is real. The contrast between the two is set on stage to highlight their dissimilarities and to
reinforce the complexity of Hamlet’s behaviour. Ophelia’s madness incorporates a new world within
the play which is simple, rural and pastoral as opposed to the political and corrupted world of
Elsinore. Her language is mainly musical, and her songs tell use the reasons for her madness, death
and love. Madness and music liberate Ophelia from any rational control and offer us her real desires
and feelings.

The first song “How should I your true love know” is about a women who looks for her departed
lover and the song turns into a funeral elegy when she finally considers him as dead. The song is
addressed to Gertrude and the implications are obvious, Gertrude has failed to mourn her dead
husband by marrying her brother-in-law. The second song, “Tomorrow is Saint Valentine’s day”,
deals with disappointed love and seduction and is addressed to Claudius. This is the idea that has
been impressed on her by her brother and father and has several sexual references. The third song
“They bore him bare-faced on the bier” and the fifth one “And will a not come again?” are mainly
referring to Polonius’s death but also to love. Ophelia’s songs express her feelings of desolation after
her father’s death and Hamlet’s rejection and also her fantasies with sex. Hamlet identifies sex with
sin, death and extinction and Ophelia’s songs make the same links.

Death is also closely related to nature and flowers. Apart from her singing, Ophelia communicates
with the rest of the world by giving out flowers. The stage directions would have indicated which
flowers were given to who but by considering the emblematic meanings of the flowers at the time

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we can deduce that the rosemary, symbol of remembrance, and the pansies, symbol of thought,
were given to Laertes. In her madness she could be mistaking Laertes for Hamlet, highlighting the
similarities between both characters. The fennel was associated with flattery and concealment, some
consider that it was given to Claudius and some that Gertrude was the receiver. Columbines were
associated with adultery and infidelity and would have been given to Gertrude. Rue symbolised guilt,
repentance and sadness and would have been given to Claudius. Horatio received the violets as they
were the symbol of faithfulness. Ophelia probably kept the daisy, symbol of love or forsaken love.
The emblematic meaning of the flowers and their recipients give us a summary of the main themes
of the play.

Nature and flowers are central in Ophelia’s characterization till her death when she dies drowned in
a brook. She dies surrounded by “crow-flowers, nettles, daisies and long purples”. “Crow-flowers”
are identified with dejection, “nettles” with pain, poison and betrayal and “daisies” with forsaken
love. The reference to “long purples” is sexual. These images summarise Ophelia’s love story. When
Hamlet sees her dead he exclaims “I loved Ophelia” which restores her image as a loving being. She
is no longer the sexual object he has made of her up to this point in the play.

3.3.4. Hamlet’s World

In his analysis of Hamlet in The Invention of the Human (1999) Harold Bloom states that
Shakespeare’s previous tragedies only partly foreshadow it, and his later works, though they echo it,
are very different from Hamlet, in spirit and in tonality. No other single character in the plays, not
even Falstaff or Cleopatra, matches Hamlet’s infinite reverberations”. Critical opinions like these are
mainly based on the constant reflections that the play offers on the nature of man, of the world he
lives in and of death. Bloom defines Hamlet as “theatre of the world”.

Hamlet presents us with images of an ulcerous country in need of healing. The disease imagery is
closely linked to images related to withering plants and spreading weeds, metaphors that indicate
personal and political decadence and corruption. By using witty rhetoric, Hamlet rejects political
disorder and corruption in certain scenes where references to the king’s usurpation of power acquire
a comic nature.

Hamlet does not consider Claudius as the legitimate king, “the king is a thing of nothing”, which
makes it easier for him to kill his uncle as it would not be considered a crime against the state.
Claudius opposes his words in a later scene where, after being threatened by Laertes, he considers
that his divine role as king protects him from any danger.

These words sound ironic in a play in which the idea that kings and beggars all share the fame fate
is recurrent. Hamlet reflects on death as the negation of social hierarchies and on the fragility of
human nature.

Hamlet’s reflections on the nature of human beings combine divergent ideas about men expressed
by different writers and philosophers at the time, such as Pico della Mirandola or Montaigne.
Shakespeare replaces Pico della Mirandola’s more optimistic view with the more pessimistic view of
Montaigne about humanity.

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It was a classical Renaissance thought to describe the magnificence of the universe in contrast with
the pettiness of human beings. Montaigne’s majestic description of the universe is transformed in
Hamlet’s mind and his father’s murder and his mother’s sexual alliance with his murderer make him
see the world around him as contagious and contaminated as it is rules by the “canker of our nature”.

Hamlet’s descriptions of his father and uncle exemplify two different views of the nature of the
human being as a god and as a beast, who respectively rule two different types of world; one
ordered, the other infected. This opposition introduced the theme of the complexity of defining
human nature into the play. Hamlet considers his father as a symbol of divine perfection. Man’s
actions can turn him into a beast, Claudius is identified with a beast in the play but so is Hamlet
himself due to his passivity.

Hamlet’s knowledge of Fortinbras’s warlike and courageous nature makes him reflect, once more,
on the reasons for his delay. Reason is considered as a godlike trait and when man is deprived of it,
he turns into a beast. Reason makes man “look before and after”, that is, connect past and future
events and reflect upon the reasons and consequences of their actions. Hamlet’s reflections depict
a human being that shares both divine and brutal qualities. Pico della Mirandola had already
portrayed human nature in this way.

Montaigne, on the contrary, believes that “of all creatures man is the most miserable and fraile, and
therewithall the proudest and disdainfullest”. To Hamlet, human beings can become inferior to
beasts which points to Montaigne’s description of human nature as sometimes lower than that of
animals.

Hamlet’s description of his father as a god and Claudius as a beast draws the picture of a world in
which the bestial part of human nature has defeated the godlike one by creating a world pervaded
by “carnal, bloody, and unnatural acts”. A possible escape from such a world is death. In his most
famous soliloquy, “To be, or not to be, that is the question”, he develops such an idea. Jenkins offers
us a summary of the multiple interpretations that this soliloquy has received. The text could be
referring to Hamlet’s own suicide, to suicide in general terms, to the advantages and disadvantages
of human existence, to whether Hamlet should kill the king or not, or to whether he should go on
with his plans to make the king confess. As with many other issues in the play, this text is open to
multiple interpretations but what is certain is that it is a philosophical reflection about death and
suicide. The only way to escape “the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune” is by committing
suicide.

Consequently, death is out of man’s control, the only right attitude towards death is to be ready to
die. God, and not man, is entitled to end one’s life.

Shakespeare presents opposing ideas about human nature which adds dramatic richness to a play
in which complexity is an essential ingredient. The intricate nature of man is exemplified in Hamlet’s
characterisation. Hamlet is presented as a madman, a philosopher, a lover, a son, an avenger, a
clown, an actor, a playwright, a prince but we cannot really define his nature, since he, as the nature
of human beings, is multiple and resists labels.

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