The Play: an Introduction to Interpretations

Although many students of Shakespeare believe that Hamlet, among all the plays in the
Shakespearean canon, best reflects the universality of the poet-dramatist's genius, it remains an
enigmatical work, what has been called a "grand poetical puzzle." No artist can control the use to
which his insights are put by posterity, and this dictum is especially true of Shakespeare, whose
Hamlet has caused more discussion than any other character in fiction, dramatic or non-dramatic.

Many readers have been disturbed by what has been called the "two Hamlets in the play": one,
the sensitive young intellectual and idealist, the "sweet prince" who expresses himself in
unforgettable poetry and who is dedicated to truth; the other, a barbaric Hamlet who treats
Ophelia so cruelly, who slays Polonius and then speaks of lugging the guts into another room,
and who callously reports sending Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to their deaths. It has been
argued that Shakespeare transmuted an old play without reconstructing it in response to
audiences who would not have tolerated excisions (J. M. Robertson, "Hamlet" Once More,
London, 1923).

Most commentators cannot accept this argument. For one thing, audiences and readers find
themselves very sympathetic to Hamletsome even to the extent of identifying with him. But if
there are those who create Hamlet in their own images, fortunately others have sought to find the
key to his character through intensive study of Renaissance thought. Yet no answer that satisfies
all, or even most, has been found. In the words of a competent Shakespearean critic of the last
century, H. N. Hudson, "It is easy to invent with plausibility almost any theory respecting
[Hamlet], but very hard to make any theory comprehend the whole subject" (Introduction to
Hamlet, 1870). Some familiarity with leading theories regarding the tragic hero is necessary if
the commentaries provided scene by scene in these Notes are to prove most useful.

Most interpreters of Hamlet start with the assumption that the tragic hero has a clear and sacred
obligation to kill Claudius and to do so without delay. The basic question, then, is why does so
much time elapse before the young Prince sweeps to his revenge? It is argued that, if Hamlet had
substituted prompt action for the considerable verbalism in which he repeatedly berates himself
for procrastination, Gertrude, Polonius, Ophelia, Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, Laertes, andmost
importantHamlet himself would have survived. But then Shakespeare would not have achieved
tragedy and the resulting work would have been no more than a potboiler. There must be found
some effective explanation for Hamlet's long delay.

Hamlet, the Victim of External Difficulties

Before one turns to the more elaborate and better-known theories, it is desirable to notice one
that provides a simple answer: as is true in Belleforest's prose version of the story, the Hamlet of
Shakespeare's play faces external difficulties which make immediate, positive action impossible.
Claudius was too powerful and only once before the final scene placed himself in a defenseless
position. Moreover, had the Prince been able to carry out the Ghost's injunction of immediate
revenge, he would have placed himself in an especially difficult position. How could he have
convinced the people that he justifiably had executed revenge? To be sure, this theory leaves
many questions unanswered. But, as will be true with reference to other theories, no rebuttal is
required here and now.

Hamlet, the Sentimental Dreamer

Leading Romantic critics of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries saw Hamlet as a
young man, attractive and gifted in many ways, but incapable of positive action. For them, "the
native hue of resolution/Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought," to use Hamlet's own words
(III.i.8485). One would have little difficulty in finding several passages in the play which seem
to support such an interpretation. These will be noted in the commentaries.

Goethe is to be credited with first providing in detail this basically sentimental interpretation. His
Hamlet is a young man of "lovely, pure, and moral nature, without the strength of nerve which
forms a hero." In brief, Goethe's Prince of Denmark is an impractical dreamer. Some thirty years
later, A. W. Schleger, Goethe's compatriot, arrived at the same conclusion. His Hamlet has "no
firm belief either in himself or in anything else. . . . in the resolutions which he so often embraces
and always leaves unexecuted, his weakness is too apparent. . . . his farfetched scruples are often
mere pretexts to cover his want of determination. . . . "(Dramatic Art and Literature, 1810).

Leading English Romantics arrived at the same conclusion. Coleridge's well-known remarks on
the character of Hamlet have been most influential. For him, the Prince of Denmark suffers from
an "overbalance of the contemplative faculty" and, like any man, "thereby becomes the creature
of mere meditation and loses his power to action" (Notes and Lectures on Shakespeare, 1808).
And William Hazlitt continues: "At other times, when he is most bound to act, he remains
puzzled, undecided, and sceptical, dallies with his purposes, till the occasion is lost, and finds out
some pretense to relapse into indolence and thoughtfulness again" (Characters in Shakespeare's
Plays, 1818).

That this Romantic view of Hamlet has survived into the twentieth century is only too evident.
The late Arthur Quiller-Couch stated: "Hamlet's character is the prevalence of the abstracting and
generalizing habit over the practical. . . . He is full of purpose, but void of that quality of mind
which accomplishes purpose" (Shakespeare's Workmanship, 1931).

Hamlet, the Victim of Excessive Melancholy

Traditionally, Hamlet has been called the Melancholy Dane, and quite appropriately. His first
lines in Act I, Scene ii, wherein he first appears, and certainly his first long soliloquy establish
him as grief-

stricken. Moreover, Hamlet himself refers to melancholy in a way which suggests that it is a
debilitating factor. Ordinary grief, of course, is one thing; everyone experiences it. But Hamlet's
grief, it is argued, is pathological; it is a destructive thing which causes him to procrastinate and
leads to his death. Actually, this theory dates from the eighteenth century. Among later critics
who have accepted it is A. C. Bradley, whose still widely influential Oxford lectures on
Shakespeare's tragedies were first published in 1904. In a definite way his work represents the
keystone in the arch of Romantic criticism because he treats Hamlet not as dramatis persona, not
as an artistic representation which stops just where the author chooses, but as a living human
being. Again like the early nineteenth-century Romantics, Bradley found Hamlet to be
irresolute. He makes reference to what he calls Hamlet's ''otiose thinking which hardly deserves
the name of thought, an unconscious weaving of pretexts for inaction.'' At the root of this,
Bradley finds melancholy which was "increased by deepening self-contempt."

Melancholy has been called the "Elizabethan malady." It was recognized as a disease and was
the subject of treatises published in England and on the Continent. At the time Shakespeare
wrote Hamlet, Timothy Bright's A Treatise of Melancholie, first published in 1586, was well
known. In an age when the proper study of mankind was man, it seems improbable that a writer
like Shakespeare, with his manifest intellectual curiosity and acquisitive mind, was unfamiliar
with contemporary ideas regarding the causes, symptoms, and results of melancholy. Indeed,
melancholy characters of one kind or another appeared rather often in Elizabethan and Jacobean
plays. Hamlet, inevitably, has been classified as the intellectual melancholy type. The disease
which afflicts him is the most destructive kind, namely, melancholy adust. When Hamlet speaks
of "my weakness and my melancholy" (II.ii.630), for example; when he speaks "wild and
whirling words" (I.v.133); when his mood shifts from deep depression to elation, he is following
the pattern of behavior peculiar to the melancholic as described by Bright and other writers on
the subject. So goes the argument.

Hamlet, the Victim of the Oedipus Complex

The Freudian, or neo-Freudian, interpretation of Hamlet appeals to many people today. The first
and most elaborate presentation of this theory was made by Dr. Ernest Jones, disciple and
biographer of Sigmund Freud, as early as 1910 and received full expression in Hamlet and
Oedipus (New York, 1949). Concisely stated, the Freudian interpreters fervently believe that the
Prince of Denmark

suffered from the Oedipus complexan undue and unhealthy attachment of a son for his mother
which is apt to be morbidly suppressed and cause great mental distress. To quote Mr. Harry
Levin, this ingenious theory "motivates Hamlet's delay by identifying him with Claudius,
through whom he has vicariously accomplished the Oedipal feat of murdering his father and
marrying his mother" (The Question of Hamlet, New York, p. 56). Mr. Levin rejects this theory.

Hamlet, Motivated by Ambition

A few commentators see The Tragedy of Hamlet as one of the Elizabethan ambition plays. For
them, the primary reason for Hamlet's desire to kill his uncle is not to avenge his father's "foul
and most unnatural murder," but rather to make possible his own advancement to the throne. The
delays and inner conflicts are the result of his awareness that personal ambition and pride, not
sacred duty, motivate him. Once more it is possible to cite lines from the text which, if taken out
of context, lend support to this theory.

Hamlet, Misled by the Ghost

To do full justice to the immediate subject, one should investigate in depth Renaissance theories
of revenge. For the immediate purpose, let it be noted that Hamlet has been said to have been
misled by the Ghost, the test of whose honesty is not the establishment of Claudius' guilt but
rather the nature of its injunction. It is argued that the Prince is called upon to execute private
vengeance, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, contrary to all Christian teaching. His problem,
then, is that of a man who believes in heaven and hell and whose reason tells him that the man
who defies divine ordinance ultimately must face judgment. It follows that Shakespeare portrays
a tragic hero who should not take vengeance into his own hands and a Ghost that is "a spirit
damn'd." This theory has been developed brilliantly by Miss Eleanor Prosser in her well-
documented study, Hamlet and Revenge (Stanford University Press, 1967). Certainly there are
passages in the text of the play which may be used to establish vindictiveness in Hamlet's
character. Instead of seeing Hamlet as one whose propensity for thought prevents him from
performing the necessary action, Miss Prosser finds him to be one whose conscience, which
operates with reason, restrains him for some time from acting impulsively in response to instinct.

From this survey of better-known interpretations of Hamlet, two major conclusions can be made.
First, Shakespeare's tragedy is a work of surpassing interest and genius, and the tragic hero is
universally attractive and fascinating. Second, only the naive will start with the assumption that
there is one obvious interpretation of the play and that critics, not Shakespeare, have introduced
complexities into it. It would be gratifying to be able to offer these Notes with the subtitle "The
Meaning of Hamlet" and to present a simple, direct interpretation based upon a major
generalization and to ignore passages in the play which do not fit into the argument. But such a
presentation would not do justice to a great play or help the student. Therefore, when
appropriate, passages which seem to lend support to a given theory will be called to the student's
attention. But always one must ask himself whether or not the entire play urges the acceptance of
such a theory; ultimately, major themes emerge from the entire plot, not from isolated episodes
or passages.

All textual references are made to W. A. Neilson and C. J. Hill, The Complete Plays and Poems
of William Shakespeare, The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1942