Studies in Drama
Dr. Schaak
Sept. 17, 2008
Coagulated Context and Absurd Ambition: the Dramatic Form
of Shakespeare's Hamlet
Reputedly, and in its most general terms, Elizabethan dramatic tragedy often features human life and society as subject to the arbitrary influences of chance and fate. Aristotle's concept of hamartia, within this tragic framework, consisting as anything from the protagonist's mistaken identity, to a pernicious incident or character foible, is acted on by the forces of evil immanent within the dramatic world. Whatever the causal element (hamartia), the subsequent fatal process leads to a terminus which grotesquely outweighs and ironically reflects the initial conflict.
Audiences have inveterately regarded Hamlet as one whose pensive assiduity and scrupulous rumination of his Father's murder, disable his initiative to avenge. For the greater part of the play, he vacillates between fervor and diffidence, audacity and pusillanimity, without ever taking action. Thus, it is generally conceded that Hamlet's plot and tragic form is oriented around the prince's idle posturing (his hamartia), which suspends Claudius' demise and enables the forces of chance and fate to exploit the fragile infrastructure inaugurated by ghost Hamlet's insidious disclosures of regicide. I believe this interpretation, however plausible, inaccurately grants the play a consistent development of character and plot, thereby failing to acknowledge its greater complexities and a more accurate reading.
As a dramatic work lacking omniscient narration or a stable figure trustworthy of interpretive guidance (e.g. a Grecian chorus), Hamlet provides audiences only with the actions, interactions, dialogue, and soliloquies of the involved characters. Thus, interpretation of both individual characters and the interrelationships which form plot, is strictly limited to one's grasp over the images of context created through the performance; and, as the reader will see, the trustworthiness of such images, in a drama whose characters evince plethoric perfidy, is less than certain.
Naturally inclined to identify with a play's protagonist, audiences may be prone to trust the protagonist's judgments and interpretations of the dramatic world. Those interpretations, however, as explained by Christopher Prendergast in "Derrida's Hamlet," are "assembled, or rather disassembled, in an overarching category that Derrida calls spectrality, the spectral nature of all our constructions" (44). He explains
that the essential point about Hamlet is not--as in the standard view--that he thinks too much, but that he thinks too well; he is unable to act not because of a contingent psychological infirmity, but because the sheer lucidity of his thinking corrodes the ground of all possible action in a world dominated by an instrumental logic of ends and means. Hamlet...sees into the nature of things...to something askew in the world itself, something radically and incorrigibly out of joint. (44,45)
Ironically, it is the "sheer lucidity of his thinking" which disables Hamlet's ability to formulate a lucid interpretation of the world. As I will soon expound, the inconsistent, conflicting, and untrustworthy development of character and plot in Hamlet, elicits a tension which borders on the absurd, for, Hamlet's lack of initiative stems from a determination to discover purpose and order in a world which indefatigably evinces entropy and protean perceptions of context.
Over the course of this paper, I will seek to confirm the "spectral," or unstable, nature of the dramatic world, and then explain how the work's uniting of protagonist and audience within a shared disposition make cohesive interpretation of that world an utter impossibility.
The initial context of the drama is cloaked by one giant pall of deception: the throne has been usurped through regicide at the hands of Hamlet's uncle, Claudius, whose hasty and incestuous marriage to Gertrude (the widowed queen) shortly followed. This odious and carnal circumstance of siblicide, regicide, incest, greed, and deception, is unknown to the state of Denmark, Hamlet, and, ostensibly, everyone other than Claudius. There is certainly "something rotten in the state of Denmark" (1:4:90), but as the drama advances and the plot complicates, "something radically and incorrigibly out of joint" emerges. Everyone is indefatigably deceiving everyone: Polonius spies on Laertes and Hamlet; Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are constantly masquerading on behalf of Claudius; Ophelia, Polonius, Gertrude, Claudius, and Laertes all play a role in the conspiracy against Hamlet; and Hamlet, who becomes aware of Claudius' regicide, surreptitiously uses the information to his advantage, deceiving nearly every other character in the play.
As these deceptive layers pile up, the audience is faced with the equally layered paradox, that character identity and a plot which is character-oriented can only be identified through the roles played within the performance. In other words, the role of Hamlet (and every other character) is multi-layered: it is both the fictitious role performed by an actor, and, within the dramatic world, the identity (fictitious or veridical) Hamlet attempts to convey to others. Therefore, the characters within the dramatic world share with the audience the abstruse task of distinguishing between perfidious masquerades (such as those mentioned above) and true expressions of identity. To some degree, all the world's a stage, and all the men and women are merely performers.
The drama evinces, therefore, a myriad of character-based images which often conflict (e.g. Hamlet doesn't apprehend context the same as Laertes, Gertrude, or Claudius). Thus, a variety of dramatic worlds, as perceived by each character, coexist simultaneously within the constructs of the drama. It seems apt, then, that Denmark is notorious for its drunkenness (1:4:10-20), for, as one heavily intoxicated, we are faced with a whirlwind of questionable images and conflicting perceptions of context.
It is the ghost who establishes, for most of the play, a semi-stable image of plot development. In compliance with (and perhaps an allusion to) the biblical maxim that two or three witnesses are necessary to establish an otherwise debatable verdict (Deuteronomy 17,19), Hamlet, Horatio, and Marcellus simultaneously witness the ghost. This anchor is only semi-stable because, as Hamlet himself says to the ghost, "be thou a spirit of health or goblin damn'd,/ Bring with thee airs from heaven or blasts from hell,/ Be thy intents wicked or charitable,/ Thou com'st in such a questionable shape" (1:4:40-44), and earlier on, Horatio had disagreed with Marcellus and Barnardo's description of the ghost (1:2:235-239). Thus, it seems, that even while the ghost is ontologically verified, there are differing opinions regarding its ontological nature. As Patrick Colm Hogan notes,
The ghost tells the story of how Claudius murdered him to gain the throne. The idea is plausible, but we are uncertain about the nature of the ghost...he claims to have departed life, neither for heaven or hell, but for purgatory. This claim does not entirely resolve the issue. Indeed, it may confuse things further. Shakespeare's Catholic audience members may have taken the ghost's assertion as perfectly reasonable. But the Protestants could have seen this as evidence that the ghost was untrustworthy, that he was lying in his reference to purgatory, a non-existent place, a Catholic fiction. (51)
Figuratively speaking, then, protagonist and audience alike, inhabit a boat which is subject to the whims of an entropic and indeterminable ocean. Stability of plot, or coagulation of an otherwise fluid context, is fatuously achieved by putting trust in an ontologically-ambiguous and morally-questionable anchor--the ghost.
Hamlet's contention that "Denmark's a prison" (2:2:243), affirms his inability to perspicuously interpret and define the world around him. He is unable to take action against Claudius because he is fettered by his unique ability to see "into the nature of things." In response to Hamlet's claims of incarceration, the discussion follows:
Ros. We think not so, my lord./ Ham. Why, then 'tis none to you; for there is nothing/ either good or bad but thinking makes it so. To me/ it is a prison./ Ros. Why, then your ambition makes it one: 'tis too narrow/ for your mind./ Ham. O God, I could be bounded in a nutshell and count/ myself a king of infinite space--were it not that I have bad dreams./ Guild. Which dreams indeed are ambition; for the very/ substance of the ambitious is merely the shadow of a dream./ Ham. A dream itself is but a shadow./ Ros. Truly, and I hold ambition of so airy and light a/ quality that it is but a shadow's shadow. (2:2:248-262)
In the context of this discussion, the ambitious first "dream," or mentally construct, what they then strive to accomplish, indicating, that their actions reflect their perceptions of the world. These perceptions, Hamlet explains, are irreducibly subjective, for "there is nothing/ either good or bad but thinking makes it so." Therefore, "A dream [a constructed perception of the world] itself is but a shadow." Thus, the very nature of the universe, as empirically perceived, is "of so airy and light a quality" that purpose and meaning are "but a shadow's shadow." The reason Hamlet seems to vacillate between fervor and diffidence, audacity and pusillanimity, in his plot against Claudius, moves beyond the question of the ghost, into a realm where interpretation of the universe per se, is in question. Hamlet's perceptive acuity "corrodes the ground of all possible action" because he is unable to discover purpose and order in an all too shadowy world.
An interesting shift takes place when Rosencrantz and Guildenstern present Hamlet with a band of players. Entreating one to perform, Hamlet is dumbfounded by the player's astonishing rendition of Hecuba, "The mobbled queen" (2:2:499). As he consequently confesses in soliloquy, "O what a rogue and peasant slave am I!/ Is it not monstrous that this player here,/ But in a fiction, in a dream of passion,/ Could force his soul to his own conceit/ That from her working all his visage wann'd,/ Tears in his eyes, distraction in his aspect,/ A broken voice, and his whole function suiting/ With forms to his conceit? And all for nothing!/ For Hecuba!" (2:2:544-552). Perplexed by the player's ability to "force his soul to his own conceit" and credulously adopt a fictional identity, Hamlet sardonically contemns his own impotence, saying, "What's Hecuba to him, or he to her,/ That he should weep for her? What would he do/ Had he the motive and the cue for passion/ That I have? He would drown the stage with tears...and amaze indeed/ The very faculties of eyes and ears./ Yet I...unpregnant of my cause...can say nothing--no, not for a king,/ Upon whose property and most dear life/ A damn'd defeat was made" (2:2:553-567). Herein, Hamlet perceives the artistic power of dramatic performance, and realizes his own ability to adopt a fictional identity and impose a false-reality on the world around him. By doing so, he may apprehend a stable context and redeem that which is "radically and incorrigibly out of joint." To be more specific, Hamlet realizes his ability to "force his soul to his own conceit" and cloak reality with fiction, thereby mollifying its indeterminacy with a perspicuous, albeit facile, semblance of the world.
Hamlet's subsequent play with a play, then, takes on a curious form; for, while the performance is redolent of Claudius' murder, there is one particularly striking difference: regicide is committed by "one Lucianus, nephew to the King" (my italics, 3:2:239). Thus, it seems plausible, that while the performance is used to "catch the conscience of the King" (2:2:601), Hamlet also uses it to dabble with the creative powers he discovered through the performance of Hecuba. In other words, Hamlet uses the dramatic performance in order to blur the distinctions between reality and fiction, thereafter instigating a real-life dramatic performance of his own. Unable to take action before this point, we subsequently see Hamlet playing the role of avenger/usurper of the throne.
From this emerges Hamlet's most profound quality: the prince is paradoxically united with the audience as a spectator of himself. As Hamlet later says to Laertes, "Was't Hamlet wrong'd Laertes? Never Hamlet./ If Hamlet from himself be ta'en away,/ And when he's not himself does wrong Laertes,/ Then Hamlet does it not, Hamlet denies it" (5:2:299-232). Thus, in acting out his own false-reality, Hamlet takes on a dual-existence: he is both the performer of his fictitious identity, and a passive spectator who "from himself be ta'en away." Thus, audience and protagonist alike, are faced with the convoluted task of distinguishing not only between the veridical Hamlet and his adopted fictitious identity, but also between the false-reality and the already indeterminable dramatic world.
The implications of this dynamic become appallingly clear upon the third appearance of the ghost. At this point in the play, both the ghost's existence and the veracity of his story, have been purportedly established through the candid confession of Claudius (3:3:40). Thus, when the ghost reappears and is unseen by Gertrude (3:4:133), the trustworthiness of Claudius' confession, is severely undermined. For, it is quite possible, that the ghost in this instance, is a manifestation of Hamlet's false-reality, a mere hallucination induced by his fictitious role. Likewise, because it too was unseen by anyone other than Hamlet and the audience, Claudius' confession is just as likely a manifestation of false-reality.
Therefore, all possibility of lucid interpretation breaks down, as Hamlet and audience meld into one. Hamlet's dual-existence and the dynamic it brings to the drama, makes for a multi-layered and enigmatic performance. Within one play exists, the real-life actors' performance of Hamlet, the undefinable identities portrayed by the characters of the dramatic world, and the question of whether those performances and portrayals actually exist. Therefore, establishing any cohesive interpretation of Hamlet, requires one to pick and choose which images are falsities, and which, if any, are legitimate. Thus, the dramatic form of Hamlet, besides exhibiting a whirlwind of questionable images, entropy, and protean perceptions of context, is one, which, because of its complexities, is entirely uninterpretable.
Works Cited
Hogan, Patrick Colm. "Narrative Universals, Heroic Tragi-Comedy, and Shakespeare's Political
Ambivalence." College Literature. Winter 2006: 34-66. MLA International Bibliography. EBSCO. Sept. 1, 2008
Prendergast, Christopher. "Derrida's Hamlet." Substance: A Review of Theory and Literary
Criticism. 2005: 44-47. MLA International Bibliography. EBSCO. Sept. 1, 2008
