Hello readers,
I must admit, I did not once choose a module on Shakespeare whilst at university. I believe that this is likely because of the less-than-ideal way that our English education system handles our Bard (frankly, I have often thought that the only thing it does is instil a deep impatience for his plays). I studied Macbeth almost to the point of murdering it myself, poured over the minutiae of every lexical choice to the detriment of enjoying the overall damned productions, and thankfully spent a far more enjoyable time at college with the oft-underappreciated Measure for Measure.
Thus in higher education, where I had far greater agency over the areas of literature that I could investigate, I found myself less than keen to retread those same Elizabethan steps once more (regardless of how much improved the quality of tuition would have been). In particular, I used that time to indulge in eras that I had not yet been introduced to, settling at last upon a proclivity towards the period coined the Long 18th Century.
So, for three years, through no fault of his own, Shakespeare lay neglected. Since graduating, however, I have once more begun to feel a gravitational pull back towards the works of England’s premiere playwright. After all, one cannot claim to be an authority on great literature, whilst lacking a comprehension of the Bard’s plays. I have returned to his productions; I have begun reading his sonnets. I have visited Stratford upon Avon, and walked the roads that he himself walked. I have visited the gift shop beside his home, in which I assume he did not himself walk. And I would like to say now, although I am still very early in my reading, that Hamlet has caught me off guard far more than I had expected it to.
Being such an well-discussed play, I was under the foolhardy impression that I knew roughly what to anticipate when approaching Hamlet for the first time. Naturally I was aware of the fame of its soliloquies, and therefore its exploration of introspection and subjectivity; yet I still expected the usual fare of a heroic but flawed hero, whose ambitions drag them unwittingly into a gruesome demise. There would be grand displays of glory, there would be secret showings of encroaching madness, and eventually, there would be terrible, inescapable comeuppance.
However, I was entirely mistaken. Prince Hamlet is not Oedipus, nor is he Macbeth. He is, frankly, unrecognisable as a classic tragic hero; which in turn makes his fate even more tragic.
It is not the situation that Hamlet finds himself in that is particularly unique in the tradition of tragedy. Indeed, it is rather common affair. In the previous two tragedies that I mentioned, which pre-and-post-date Hamlet respectively, their eponymous protagonists are approached by beings with ties to the supernatural, who deliver prophecies regarding them alone. In regards to Macbeth, it is the three witches that appear from the mists with their promises of Glamis, Cawdor and Kingship hereafter; referring to Oedipus, it is the blind prophet Tiresias who reveals to the Theban king that he is the source of his city’s ailment (though Oedipus refuses to take heed of this warning).
Both of these divinations, delivered by messengers who are something more than human, have an air of inexorability to them— it appears that Fate has already laid out their paths to damnation, and the tragic figures have no choice but to follow their trails into ruin. This is facilitated in large part by the particular hamartia of these men, or, their ‘fatal flaws’. For Oedipus, it is his stubborn impatience, which ignites into temper whenever problems aren’t been solved as quickly as he’d like them to be; this pugnaciousness is what spurred him on to beat the Sphinx’s riddle, but also caused him to kill Laius in a fit of rage, and rushed him through each terrible realisation towards his horrible, and public, humiliation. For Macbeth, it is his ‘vaulting ambition’, his all-consuming drive for power, a fuel that allowed him to succeed on the battlefield but also fall victim to both his wife’s manipulations and his own ‘black and deep desires’.
As such, the ghost of King Hamlet appearing to deliver the truth about his brother’s treachery, and also bind his son to a promise of vengeance, is hardly something out of the ordinary in such a play. Had Macbeth or Oedipus, or Othello or Pentheus, ever had the misfortune to find themselves in this situation instead, the play may have turned out very differently (and would likely have been far shorter and less satisfying).
And yet, it is how Hamlet chooses to act in light of this newfound knowledge that is so idiosyncratic. Rather than snatching at this chance for greater power, or allowing impatience to spur his hand, or letting his own rash emotions get the better of him— after all, he already loathed his mother for marrying his uncle, before he’d even been told of Claudius’ treachery— he spends most of the play in prevarication, cursing himself for his indecision and ‘pigeon-livered’ doubt, and yet unable to goad himself into decisive action.
Indeed, Hamlet is far more self-aware of the terrible march of destiny that he has suddenly been lashed astride— more so than Macbeth, who only really seems to begin to glimpse the futile ‘petty pace’ of these earthly power struggles after the death of his wife (‘Life’s but a walking shadow’, and yet we are bound to walk it) and certainly more so than Oedipus, who is literally shown the writing on the wall by Tiresias scarcely before all the audience has had time to take their seats and still turns a blind eye to it (‘You are the curse, the corruption of the land!’ to which Oedipus retorts ‘You, shameless— aren’t you appalled to start up such a story?’).
And it is precisely Hamlet’s self-awareness, his realisation of his own inexorable fate, that makes him ponder something that would cross the mind of no other tragic hero.
‘To be or not to be’ is probably Shakespeare’s most famous line, and its ubiquity has perhaps made it seem innocuous; but read within the context of Hamlet, its meaning is deathly clear. It is a moment when the young hero considers whether it is worth it to ‘suffer/The slings and arrows of [his] outrageous fortune’ or instead end them, permanently. Unlike Oedipus or Macbeth, who are too caught up in their own ambitions and tempers to realise that they are sliding towards a cliff, Hamlet is entirely aware of his peril, and in a moment of weakness wonders whether the only option left is the ultimate rebellion against the fates.
Interestingly, Hamlet in some ways is prescient of a similar question that Albert Camus posed in the 20th century, when considering whether suicide would be a sufficient solution to the meaninglessness of a godless world. And though he was speaking some 400 years earlier, Hamlet arrives at the same conclusion. Camus posits that to relinquish life would be to sidestep his problem of absurdity, or even to fall to it, instead of triumphing it; after all, there is no more meaning in death than in life, and so to claim that there is meaning in oblivion would be damning oneself to a permanent folly. Likewise, Hamlet views the endless, unknown wastes of eternity as far more terrifying than his present predicament, and although he condemns himself as once more being made a ‘coward’ by his ‘conscience’, he elects to continue dancing to the grim tune of destruction.
For this reason, Hamlet is a fascinating outlier in the tragic tradition. Whilst other tragic heroes tend not to bother with much introspection, and only realise the nature of their follies after it is too late, Hamlet is well aware of the doom that the Ghost’s demands will surely befall him. His is a play that is ahead of its time for many reasons, including its acknowledgement of an inner identity separate to outward appearance, but also because of its presentation of a character burdened by his own self-awareness, and as such, who is remarkably human.
One could write pages upon pages on this topic, so to end, I will simply say this; when approaching future plays, I will take care to not be so comfortable in my assumptions. There is a reason, after all, that the world still remains transfixed by the Bard.
Thank you for reading,
The Watchful Scribe