Decoding Hamlet in Three Questions Part 3 (Favorites 02: 06)

Finishing the analysis of what makes Hamlet a great story as a puzzle.

Keeping this short, as the series is now running from August to October and further on...

"Now might I do it, pat, now he is a praying..."
Eugene Delacroix 1844
image courtesy of wikipedia

Question Three: What good does revenge really do?

If thou hast nature in thee, bear it not; 

Let not the royal bed of Denmark be

A couch for luxury and damned incest.

But, howsoever thou pursuest this act,

Taint not thy mind, nor let thy soul contrive

Against thy mother aught: leave her to heaven

And to those thorns that in her bosom lodge,

To prick and sting her. Fare thee well at once!

 The Ghost to Hamlet, Act I, Scene V

If Hamlet had remained inactive, had not tried to revenge his father's death, how would things have turned out?

Polonius would be alive, so Laertes wouldn't have immolated himself in his campaign for mayor of Crazy Town and Ophelia wouldn't have exited via Artax mud bath.

It's conceivable that, less distracted by whether his nephew/step-son is trying to kill him, King Claudius may have paid more attention to Norway's false overtures of peace, and Elsinore Castle may not have been overrun.  At least he might have noticed Fortinbras's forces closing in hadn't all been playing Who Dies First with the pointy poisons in the hall.

Gertrude would have lived, Rosencrantz and Guldenstern would have lived.

Hamlet would have lived.  

And so would King Claudius, who got to be King by murdering his brother.

So we come to the same question Hamlet is struggling with for most of the play. How can he possibly love peacefully with the knowledge of his murdered father hanging over his head?

He is the rightful heir of the kingdom, and if Claudius had not married Gertrude IN ADDITION to killing the old king, Prince Hamlet would have risen to the throne, and would have had the rights of the courtiers, counselors, and soldiers of the realm at his disposal. Would the ghost have shown himself to the guards upon the wall then? What would it have disclosed? Much easier to kill a young king's uncle than to kill the king himself. 

But she did marry him, and the fortune and favor and power passed to him. Obviously the real problem for a Hamlet in the technical sense is that if be murders Claudius he will almost certainly be out to death himself, however noble his motives, for having committed treason against Denmark in assaulting the Royal Person. Many suppose this to be the essence of what he's driving at in the first part of the famous To Be soliloquy, whether to pursue regicide as a means of suicide, and escaping his trouble in both ways by those means.

And note that he finally is freed and immediately able to take violent action against his smiling dominant villain the King once he is assured by Laertes that he, Hamlet, is dying, and further that it's the King's plan that's done him in. 

A lot of evil is done by Hamlet in pursuit of the King's life; no need to revisit the body count, just see above.

So what good did he manage to do?

He established beyond a doubt, at least so far as his own understanding was concerned, that Claudius was guilty of his father's death, and the sting to the King's conscience was at least a little punishment he was able to inflict.

He rooted out and did away with two untrustworthy and opportunistic scoundrels, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern,

who betrayed their friend to the death in favor of a good place with the King and would therefore likely have sided with anyone if they thought stood to gain from it. 

He ended Polonius's life on a relative high note; his children were left with a high opinion of him, before the various ridiculous schemes he was exercising for their 'benefit' drove them to distraction and despair against him. (I may be out on a limb with extrapolating this one, but near with me). 

He did the kingdom of a ruler whose sole object in ruling was not the good of his people or loyal subjects but the satisfaction of his own desires and the protection and promotion of his own interests. Whether Fortinbras of Norway is any better an option is left unwritten. 

We never hear of it, but presumably he brought the soul of his father some peace by avenging his murder.

What good do I think Hamlet did from my own reading? That's the real puzzle here, is what each reader ultimately takes away, what face they see in the ambiguous glass of the story's framing. 

image courtesy of wikimedia commons

When I try to decide whether Hamlet did any good, I think of two other questions. (Don't be alarmed, we're getting close to the end at last).  First is, could he have done otherwise than he did, and second was touched on earlier, if he did willfully succeed in killing the King for his own reasons, is he any better than Claudius himself?

This is where our three questions about the play finally tie together and read from each other to figure it all out, or at least indicate how each person may choose to see the play in his own way by his own answers as it were. 

In my view there are three key places where Hamlet could have done otherwise than the play has him do. In each of these points of decision on his part, the question of whether he's justified in his pursuit of vengeance, that is, whether or not he's nuts, is a key deciding factor.

The first time is when he insists in following the ghost although Horatio holds him back. 

“My fate cries out!” he declares, breaking the holds Horatio and the guards have on him, and the whole dark plot of the play rises to meet him in consequence.  If he hadn’t charged off, he could have avoided everything that followed.

But at this point, if we were to ask him the first question of this analysis, he would have a definite answer, and it’s what drives him forward. Hamlet is sure that he’s not crazy, he is sure he’s justified in wanting to pursue the Ghost and hear what it has to say.  There is no doubt in his mind, he is in the right.

The second is when he wavers and decides not to kill Claudius a confession (possibly the hub, crux, and lynchpin of the entire story). 

Compare this with the first moment of indecision, following the Ghost.  Hamlet could not be less sure whether he is justified in his action or not; or rather, he is sure that killing Claudius is the right thing to do, but he appears to convince himself that it is best not to do it just then, when Claudius is vulnerable, unprotected, and caught unawares while praying after the play-within-a-play.

But rather than getting the job done, he backs away, saying he will wait for a better chance, since if Claudius is killed while his sins are forgiven, he will go straight to heaven, which he declares is no real revenge.

Unlike the first chance he had to turn back, where he plunged forward, here he has the chance to plunge forward, and instead holds back.

This limitation -- don’t kill the King if he’s praying and forgiven -- was not set on him by the Ghost, and it seems to be Hamlet simply rationalizing an easy choice in the moment.  But it does, however, reference a point that the Ghost explicitly made in his rant: that he was killed without being shriven, without his sins forgiven by the church, and is therefore laboring in Purgatory when he could be in heaven now if he had died under better circumstances.

What good is it, Hamlet asks himself, to kill Claudius if his suffering is not at least equal to those of his father once dead?

Of course we are also privy to another layer of irony in the situation: Claudius confesses to himself and to us that he is actually unable to repent in earnest, and therefore feels that he is not free from sin as Hamlet supposes at the time.

But whether he knows this or not, if Hamlet had plunged ahead, and had managed to kill Claudius just then, though he may have died at once for for regicide and treason, he could have avoided all the collateral damage to the character list that follows Polonius’ death.

So maybe it would be fair to say that Hamlet does have an answer to the question, are his actions justified, but that answer at that moment is “No.”  Or so he convinces himself, apparently to be able to get out of it.

Again, we are left to decide for ourselves whether he is in earnest; as too often happens in real life, it is likely a mixture of justified decision-making and rationalization.

Third is when he goes through with the duel with Laertes in spite of his foreboding,  and Horatio's too, that his loss and death are in it. 

Here, we see the resolved Hamlet from Act I return: he knows he may very well die in the next few hours or minutes, but declares “The readiness is all,” and goes to meet the challenge.  He is certain his actions are justified, and he acts accordingly.

So what gives?  Where is the unresolved Hamlet from the second moment of truth discussed above?  What has changed since the last time he was given the chance to seize his destiny, and shrank back?

The answer to this question leads directly into the question of whether he's any better than Claudius in his pre-planned and intended regicide. And for guidance on this point, we turn to the answers from the difference between character and behavior.

Why did Claudius kill King Hamlet?  To get King Hamlet out of the way, so he could marry Gertrude and take the throne as his own.  It was to put forward his own projects when he knew he could get away with it.  He suffers guilt over it, but he does not repent.  He did what he knew he had to do, and he got what he wanted.  He behaved in accordance with his character, then if only then, as he smiles and pretends not to be a villain the rest of the time (or at least until Laertes’s bloodlust comes along handy to his plans).

Why does Hamlet want to kill King Claudius?  To correct the wrong done by the King in killing his father, and to keep the kingdom of Denmark from a King like Claudius.  But it’s not in the nature of his character to kill someone, even when they deserve it.  The violence is a form of behavior that goes against who he is.  He may not claim to be afraid of death, or of dying, in his endless reflections on suicide as a solution for his grief and his melancholy, but it’s clear that he struggles with plans of killing and of dying, even when it’s supposed to be the right thing to do.

So what changed, that he goes with an even temper and an apparently untroubled mind to meet his fate?  Two key experiences between the second point of no return and the third.

First, he got over his dread of killing on his way to England, when he passes armies lead by Fortinbras of Norway (on the way towards Elsinore, but never worry about that) ready to die for their bloody cause, to fight over an area not large enough to serve as a graveyard for everyone who’d ready to die for it.  His own violent plans dwindle in comparison to this, and on the spot, he declares from that point on, “my thoughts be bloody or be nothing worth.”

(For any who may doubt that he’s willing to kill from that point on, consider his casually swapping his name for Rosencrantz and Guildenstern’s when he finds the papers ordering that the bearer be put to death.  They die surprised and unmourned in a foreign country, and Hamlet tosses them off with a few words later.)

Selous - Hamlet with skull (1897)
image courtesy of triggs.djvu.org

Second is that all-important scene in the graveyard.  Hamlet directly confronts the idea of death, of being dead, and all the emotional and physical transformations it entails, and comes away willing to face death if it is needed.  He resolves that everything changes, that he must die at some time, and decides to put it to the best use he can.  The readiness is all.

My purpose in bringing up the behavior vs. character question is simply this: would Claudius have been willing to die for a cause that did not satisfy his desires?  Of course not, because what benefit would he get from a plan where he winds up dead and unable to enjoy himself in the end?  Would Hamlet have been willing to kill to seek the success of only his own ambition?  Of course not, because he knows he would be unable to live with himself being no better than Claudius.

Until Hamlet's character changes by his experiences, he is unable to go through with what he must -- and even still, his ultimate vengeance is marred, debatable, and inconclusive in its motive or merit.

And this is all assuming his character has changed -- that's just the way I read it, ask me again next year, I may say something different.

It's a complicated and a simple story, wonderful and awful. There is far far far more to it than its merit as a puzzle story, you could probably study the thin for years or longer and still find new things to marvel at, new ways to consider it. 

For me the most fascinating thing about it are the way its meanings and intended lessons seem to shift and change with each reading, as I age and pass through different phases of my life, so that it's not just one story but many, I am not one reader, but many.

That and the feeling I get that a hundred other people who read it could see a hundred different stories, each just as lucid and meaningful. 

But what about you?