Hamlet: An Introduction to Interpretations

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Hamlet An Introduction to Interpretations
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Grand Poetical Puzzle

• Play best reflects the universality of
  Shakespeares genius, yet most enigmatic
• Hamlet has caused more discussion than any other
  character in fiction, dramatic or non-dramatic

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Two Hamlets in the play

• I. Sweet Prince
• Sensitive young intellectual and idealist
• Expresses himself in unforgettable poetry
• Dedicated to the truth

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Two Hamlets, cont.

• II. Barbaric Hamlet
• Treats Ophelia cruelly
• Slays Polonius then speaks of lugging guts into
  another room
• Callously reports sending Rosencrantz and
  Guildenstern to their deaths
• Did Shakespeare transmute an old play without
  reconstructing it?

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Critics dont accept the idea that Shakespeare
was not careful

• Audiences and readers find themselves sympathetic
  to Hamlet
• Try to find the key to his character through
  intensive study of Renaissance thought

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H. N. Hudson, Shakespearean critic

• It is easy to invent with plausibility almost
  any theory respecting Hamlet, but very hard to
  make any theory comprehend the whole subject.
• From his Introduction to Hamlet, 1870

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Tragic Hero

• Must start with the assumption that the tragic
  hero has a clear and sacred obligation to kill
  Claudius and to do so without delay
• Basic question Why does so much time elapse
  before the young Prince sweeps to his revenge?
• It is argued that if he had acted quickly in
  killing Claudius, that everyone, including
  Hamlet, would still be alive at the end of the
  play

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Six InterpretationsI. Hamlet, the Victim of
External Difficulties

• Simple answer
• Hamlet faces external difficulties which make
  immediate, positive action impossible
• Claudius too powerful only once placed himself
  in a defenseless position.
• If H. acted, how could he have convinced the
  people that he justifiably had executed revenge?

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II. Hamlet, the Sentimental Dreamer

• Romantic critics of the late 18th and early 19th
  centuries saw H. as gifted but incapable of
  positive action.
• Goethe first pointed out a sentimental
  interpretation Hamlet is a young man of
  lovely, pure, and moral nature, without the
  strength of nerve which forms a hero.

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II. Sentimental Dreamer, cont .

• Goethes Prince is an impractical dreamer
• A.W. Schleger Hamlet has no firm belief either
  in himself or in anything else in the
  resolutions which he so often em- braces and
  always leaves unexecuted, his weakness is too
  apparent his far-fetched scruples are often
  mere pretexts to cover his want of determination
• - Dramatic Art Literature, 1810

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Sentimental Dreamer, cont.

• Coleridge Hamlet suffers from an over-balance
  of the contemplative faculty and thereby
  becomes the creature of mere meditation and loses
  his power to action
• - Notes Lectures on Shakespeare, 1808
• William Hazlitt At other times , when he is
  most bound to act, he remains puzzled, undecided,
  and sceptical sic, dallies with his purposes,
  till the occasion is lost
• - Characters in Shakespeares Plays, 1818

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III. The Victim of Excessive Melancholy

• Theory comes from 18th century
• Hamlets grief is pathological.
• It is a destructive thing which causes him to
  procrastinate and leads to his death.
• Melancholy called the Elizabethan malady
• Was recognized as a disease
• Treatises written on it

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Excessive Melancholy, cont.

• Melancholy characters of one kind or another
  appeared often in elizabethan and Jacobean plays
• Hamlet has been classified as the intellectual
  melancholy type
• Disease that afflicts him is most destructive
  kind, melancholy adust
• When his mood shifts from deep depression to
  elation, he is following the pattern of behavior
  peculiar to the melancholic described by Bright
  in his A Treatise of Melancholie, 1586

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IV. The Victim of the Oedipus Complex

• Freudian, or neo-Freudian, interpretation of
  Hamlet that appeals to people today
• Dr. Ernest Jones, disciple and biographer of
  Sigmund Freud, wrote Hamlet Oedipus in 1910
• Hamlet suffered from an undue and unhealthy
  attachment of a son for his mother which is apt
  to be morbidly suppressed and cause great mental
  distress

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Oedipus Complex, cont.

• Harry Levin rejects the theory
• This theory motivates Hamlets 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

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V. Motivated by Ambition

• Play seen as one of the Elizabethan ambition
  plays
• The reason for Hamlets desire to kill his uncle
  is not to avenge his fathers 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.

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VI. Misled by the Ghost

• Not all critics agree that the ghost is an honest
  ghost or that Hamlet has a solemn duty to slay
  Claudius
• This denies the assumption that Hamlet is the
  instrument of divine vengeance public justice
  and is instead a sinner must suffer for his
  sins
• Hamlet is a tragic hero who should not take
  vengeance into his own hands

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Misled by the Ghost, cont.

• Renaissance theories of revenge will help us
  understand Hs dilemma
• The test of the Ghosts honesty is not to
  establish Claudiuss guilt, but to establish the
  nature of the Ghosts injunction
• If Ghost is not honest, the Prince is called upon
  to execute private vengeance, an eye for an eye,
  a tooth for a tooth, which is contrary to
  Christian teaching
• Hs problem a man who believes in heaven and
  hell and whose reason tells him that the man who
  defies divine ordinance ultimately must face
  judgment

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Misled by the Ghost, cont.

• Shakespeare, then, portrays a tragic hero who
  should not take vengeance into his own hands and
  a Ghost that is a spirit damnd.
• This is Eleanor Prossers theory Hamlet and
  Revenge, 1967
• Instead of seeing H as one whose propensity for
  thought prevents him from performing the
  necessary action, Prosser finds him to be one
  whose conscience, which operates with reason,
  restrains him for some time from acting
  impulsively in response to instinct.

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Conclusions

• Shakespeares tragedy is a work of surpassing
  interest and genius, and the tragic hero is
  universally attractive and fascinating.
• Only the naïve will start with the assumption
  that there is one obvious interpretation of the
  play and that critics, not Shakespeare, have
  introduced complexities into it.