It is a surprising but perhaps not unusual fact that criticism of Hamlet has hardly dealt at all with the question of Hamlet’s precise nature as an educated man in the midst of a Christian court. However, the prince’s identity as a Christian intellectual within the courtly milieu colors the entire play. It is this new element which distinguishes Shakespeare’s version of the tale from its predecessors and, ultimately, its pre-Christian source material. Critics trot out innumerable theories to explain Hamlet’s inaction and waffling but their answers remain unsatisfactory, because they have missed that the essential cause of Hamlet’s tortuous passivity is the conflict between his instinctive, emotional, and culturally-conditioned desire for revenge (on Claudius, on Gertrude, perhaps also on his father) on the one hand and his educated—and thus sophisticated and theological—religious consciousness and conscience on the other. These contraries create the iconically neurotic, fretting figure of the prince in black, and it is this tension which has so long evaded the eyes of the critics.
As the first foray into a basically new critical direction, this essay has a limited but definite agenda. Four particular topics call for reexamination in this initial attempt: Hamlet’s status and self-identification as a theologically educated intellectual, the nature and role of his father’s ghost, his self-appointed role as avenger and scourge, and his reflection on the nature of humanity. No doubt there are other topics worthy of consideration, but they have, at least for the moment, eluded my attention or exceeded my capacity for critical insight.
I. Hamlet’s Christian Intellect
One of the commonly noted, but little pondered, features of the play is the apparent inconsistency in temporal and cultural context. At one moment, it appears that the presumed time and the cultural setting of the play are one and the same—namely, the high medieval period of Roman Catholic Christendom. Certainly, Shakespeare’s predecessors set their works in this period. However, Shakespeare—as he does elsewhere (cf. Kent’s anti-papal fling about “eat[ing] no fish” in King Lear)—periodically introduces obviously Protestant, and hence, post-Renaissance and post-Reformation elements. This has proved puzzling to many commentators, although others are, naturally enough, content to accept such occurrences as conscious anachronisms and cede them to the artistic license of the playwright. I am inclined to affirm this latter interpretation, but with the caveat that Shakespeare is not merely pandering to his (presumably Anglican-Reformed, though, admittedly, also Anglo-Catholic) audience. To be sure, this is probably one reason why he does so, as it almost certainly is in Lear. However, it also serves a thematic purpose: it introduces the quality of Hamlet as a young and reform-minded intellectual.
This is not exclusively related to his religious thought—it also comes to the surface, for instance, in his criticism of the Danish tradition of carousing, wherein he bitterly refers to Claudius’s drinking of “Rhenish” (wine from the Rhine Valley) and his wild dancing in procession through the castle—but it does include it. He and Horatio are specifically said to study together at the university at Wittenberg, the school of Luther and the site of the first tremors of the Reformation. The reference would not be lost on Shakespeare’s audience: it establishes the pair as rising academics of a new, Protestant generation, a religious type of Young Turks. Then, too, since the ambiguous or doubled timeline (seemingly at once high medieval and post-Renaissance) applies, Denmark can be at once a Catholic nation and a Lutheran. Hamlet, the sober, introspective Protestant serves as a counterpoint to the impulsive, extroverted Claudius, the standard-bearer of old Catholic culture.
But this suggestion of Hamlet’s nature as a theologically conscious thinker is not based solely on setting and biography. There are three chief episodes—not by any means an exhaustive list, but some of the more memorable and important happenings in the play—during which Hamlet openly and obviously engages in theological reflection. For one, his discovery of Claudius, alone and unprotected: Hamlet happens upon the king and debates with himself whether to take the chance to kill him or not. He ultimately decides against it and justifies his decision (for I do not believe the reason he gives is the real reason, as I will outline later) by reflecting that he has caught Claudius at his prayers, when there is danger that the old usurper will repent and be forgiven. Here we see something of a Catholic view—that redemption can be gained and subsequently lost—but it is nonetheless an instance of theological reflection.
For another, we have Hamlet’s famed soliloquy on the attractiveness of suicide. Hamlet—akin as he is to the Stoic, Horatio—longs for peace and release from the Sturm und Drang of his daily life. He can, in fact, see no earthly reason to go on living. Why then, does he not in fact end his own life? Hamlet provides the answer twice, on two different occasions: because “the Everlasting had… fix’d his canon ‘gainst self-slaughter,” and because “what dreams may come” in the sleep of death “must give us pause.” The apparent appeal of the old pagan philosophy is forestalled by Christian theological considerations. If this is not recognized as the activity of a theological, religious mind, it must be tempting if not inevitable to view this sequence as a mere authorial device to at once establish Hamlet’s deep malaise and yet prevent his suicide.
And finally we have perhaps the example par excellence of Hamlet’s theological meditation, his threefold response to the existence of the ghost. On learning of the apparition’s existence, Hamlet offers three distinct explanations for it: it may be a genuine and benign spirit (either his father’s actual ghost or a ministering angel, a “spirit of health”); it may be hallucinatory, though this is dismissed as unlikely due to the witness of the others, Horatio, Bernardo, and Marcellus; and it may be, as Hamlet opines in a statement which many commentators have overlooked, a tempting devil, a “goblin damn’d” sent to seduce the prince into sin. This is obviously the thought process of a man who has thought (or been taught) about spiritual entities. Pre-Christian literary figures did not doubt the identity of apparitions, or not in the same way. Though the gods might take human shape, as do Athena, Apollo, and Poseidon in the Iliad, ghosts or shades are presumed trustworthy. When the slain Patroklos appears to Akhilleus (I follow here Robert Fitzgerald’s transliteration of the names), Akhilleus does not doubt the nature of the appearance. Likewise, in the Odyssey, the titular hero is sure of whom he addresses in Hades. In prior adaptations of the Hamlet source material, the hero does not consider the possibility that he is being tempted. (Indeed, it is only the proposed Ur-Hamlet which even contains a ghost, and it is highly doubtful that this source, if it even exists at all, introduces doubt as to the ghost’s nature.) And this fact leads us to the next area of inquiry, the nature of the apparition.
II. The Ghost
Hardly any critics have spent significant time on the exact character of the specter of the dead Hamlet, and those who have generally argue that it is precisely what it appears to be. Typically, however, the arguments on this side tend toward circularity: the ghost is a good spirit because a good spirit would have the right to do what the ghost does. Obviously, this is not a satisfactory justification. Likewise, the possibility of hallucination is more or less untenable, as it would be absurdly anachronistic to impute to Shakespeare some kind of theory of shared hallucinations. Marcellus and Bernardo are, by themselves, perhaps not sufficient witnesses to establish their claim, but the addition of the skeptical Horatio and the prince himself all but destroys the possibility that the ghost is illusory. We are left, then, with the last possibility, that the ghost is a tempting devil. Of course, the process of elimination is hardly strong ground on which to establish an argument. We need some positive evidence, and thus, we will lay it out.
To begin with, there is the fact that the circumstances of the spirit’s appearances are alarming and suggestive of evil. The spirit walks about at midnight, a time associated with witchcraft and unwholesome spirits. It is evidently of such awful and fearsome presence as to prompt Marcellus’s famed “Something is rotten in the state of Denmark" (of course, this is a layered and even prophetic utterance, which is not applicable solely to the presence of the ghost in itself, but it nevertheless does include the presence of the ghost). And it vanishes with the crowing of the cock, an event endowed by popular medieval thought with the power to banish evil spirits—the characters themselves even refer to this, and skeptical Horatio even admits, “I do, in part, believe it.”
Secondly, the ghost’s interaction with Hamlet is suspiciously well tailored to Hamlet’s own psychological state. Prior to encountering the spirit, Hamlet laments the situation in which he finds himself, bitterly complaining of his uncle (whom he does not yet know has killed his father) and depreciating him in comparison to his deceased brother (the dead king, he says, was as “Hyperion to a satyr” when compared with Claudius), praising the elder Hamlet, and expressing resentment (though tinged with affection) toward his mother. The ghost’s conversation with Hamlet corresponds quite precisely to each of these movements of thought. Of course, the spirit excoriates Claudius for the murder—but he also makes pointed remarks regarding the natural inferiority of the usurper (“a wretch whose natural gifts were poor to those of mine”), as Hamlet had beforehand, and abhors what he considers the incestuous relationship between his brother and his widow (again, one of Hamlet’s concerns). The ghost goes on to demand retribution on Claudius but, strikingly, insists that Gertrude be left untouched. Almost as an afterthought, he suggests that her bad conscience will be punishment enough. This neatly mirrors Hamlet’s own disappointment in but lingering love for his mother.
The next claim I make is likely to be unpopular amongst Christian readers of Hamlet, who tend to be offended by the persistent claim of Oedipal themes in the play. Though I share with such readers a dislike of the dogmatic Freudianism of many critics, I find myself unable to deny the existence of such undercurrents. As such, I interpret Hamlet’s effusive praise of his father (prior, that is, to his first encounter with the ghost) as an attempt to salve his tender conscience, as an effort to atone for the subconscious hostility he had borne toward his father. Thus also his anger at his mother, combined with his evident tenderness toward her: it is an expression of his self-conscious filial piety toward his father (he is offended on the dead king’s behalf by the faithlessness of his widow) and also of his un-or-half-conscious feelings of possessive love for her. It is difficult, too, to explain away the rather uncomfortable tendency of the prince to dwell on the marital bed of his parents (and, of course, that of his stepfather and uncle).
Such Oedipal subtext is quite in keeping with the behavior of the ghost. It, too, dwells with overt disgust (but seeming fascination, as well) on the marital relations of Claudius and Gertrude. It, too, disparages Claudius in relation to the elder Hamlet. It, too, is inclined to be gentle with Gertrude. And, assuming for a moment that the ghost is in fact, a devil, it is entirely probable that such a tempter would appear to Hamlet in the guise of his father, toward whom he is conscious (or sub-conscious) of guilt, and to whom he is therefore anxious to prove his loyalty.
The ghost, then, appears to and deals with Hamlet in such a way as to exacerbate the tendencies which are already present in his mind. Indeed, Hamlet as much as admits this when, having been told that Claudius has murdered his brother, he says to himself, “Oh, my prophetic soul! Mine uncle!” That is as good as to say, “I knew it!” It is also, incidentally, another instance of Hamlet’s casting of himself in a religious light (i.e., as a prophet).
Additionally, there are marked red flags in the explanations and behavior of the ghost. First of all, the ghost claims to be suffering purgatorial pains. This, in itself, would represent a difficulty for Shakespeare’s audience—of whom at least a large portion would be Protestants, and thus regard the Catholic doctrine of Purgatory with suspicion and hostility—and for Hamlet himself, as a product of a Protestant education. There is also a possible self-contradiction within the ghost’s presentation of this idea: he seemingly expresses self-pity and bemoans his sufferings in Purgatory, whereas, speaking in doctrinally correct terms, the soul being purged ought to be glad of it and eagerly expect and await its time of admission into heaven.
Furthermore, the ghost appears with a demand for vengeance. Speaking from a popular-level medieval viewpoint, this is to be expected. Indeed, the source material for the play is an expression of pre-Christian Europe’s ethic of revenge and familial duty. However, given both the Christian context of the play and the spirit’s claim to be a purgatorial sufferer, difficulties arise. For one, revenge has no place within the Christian ethic. Besides the well-known “turn the other cheek,” there is the prophetic declaration, “Vengeance is mine, says the LORD.” Private vengeance as a source of justice is denied to the Christian, giving way instead to the juridical rights of the state (whose rulers “do not bear the sword in vain”) and to the providential or eschatological justice of God. Hamlet himself, therefore, ought not to seek private vengeance, but this applies even more so to the ghost: souls in Purgatory are supposed to be incapable of further sin. The ghost’s self-identification is thus not consonant with its proclaimed mission of vengeance.
It is interesting to note that most critics regard the dilemma of the ghost’s identity to be solved in the same way that Hamlet himself—at least superficially—does, namely by the revelation that its claims regarding Claudius are true. On one level, this is understandable: the devil is the father of lies, and one would assume a devil to be a liar. On the other hand, the devil is clearly not bound or obligated to lie in all things. Indeed, the most famous (or infamous) account of temptation in the scriptures, the episode of Satan’s appearance to Christ in the desert, suggests the direct opposite: the devil appears with words of truth (i.e., scriptural statements) but twists them to his own ends. Likewise, it is entirely plausible, assuming for the moment that the ghost is, in fact, diabolic, that the specter would make use of a verifiable fact as the basis for his temptation. There is then no risk of Hamlet discovering a truth which unravels the whole plot. And, it is important to note, Hamlet would himself be aware of this fact, at least in an intellectual sense. To make use of psychological categories, at the very least his ego would know it, even if his id refused to accept it. Furthermore, the fact that Hamlet feels compelled to test the veracity of the spirit’s claim at all indicates his perhaps subconscious suspicion of it. It is interesting to note that most critics seem to impute a sort of theological naïveté to the prince, when it is likely that he is better trained and more able than they to “reason in divinity,” as Canterbury says of the king in Henry V.
As a last piece of evidence, the scene of Hamlet’s encounter with the ghost contains elements that cast some suspicion on its claims. Most obviously, when the ghost demands that Hamlet’s companions swear themselves to silence regarding the encounter, it speaks from beneath the stage, as though crying out from underground. The imagery is intuitively hellish: a fearsome specter crying awfully from the netherworld. But secondly, and perhaps secondarily, Hamlet’s choice of words at one point is intriguing. He refers to the spirit—in a sort of jocular bravado, as he is no doubt shaken by the encounter—as “old mole” upon hearing its voice from beneath the earth. The word “mole” is used only one other time in the play, and only shortly prior to this instance, when the prince makes reference to a “vicious mole of [human] nature” (“vicious” here taking its old meaning of “characterized by vice”). At least linguistically, then, the ghost is linked with human wickedness.
That the ghost’s character is at the very least suspect, if not outright diabolic, ought to inform our perception of Hamlet’s subsequent behavior. Indeed, it is difficult if not impossible to account for his actions otherwise. Where in previous iterations of the basic story of the play (which is derived from Saxo Grammaticus’s account of a Danish prince named Amleth), the prince feigns insanity in order to enact swift and decisive vengeance, Shakespeare’s Hamlet apparently does so only in order to gain time to think. It is fundamentally a delaying tactic, and his use of it betrays his inner uncertainty.
III. Hamlet as Avenger
Hamlet (and certainly its source material) revolves around the idea of vengeance. However, Shakespeare’s version of the revenge tale is nuanced and multi-layered. At its most basic, it is a story of filial piety and filial duty: the murdered father is avenged by the loyal son. But Hamlet’s resentments go deeper than this: he views his uncle as a usurper (though Claudius’s ascent to the throne is technically legal) and as the seducer of his mother; he is angered by his mother’s quickness in marrying his uncle, and here there is the added factor of his probable Oedipal complex; he despises his former friends, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, as puppets for his manipulative uncle; he is contemptuous of Polonius for his banality and for keeping him from Ophelia, and he is probably also jealous of Laertes for his closeness to her. In one way or another, Hamlet causes the deaths of each of these characters (of all of them, Gertrude goes most willingly and with the least help from Hamlet). Claudius, Polonius, and Laertes he kills outright—though with the latter, he seemingly makes peace before they both expire—Rosencrantz and Guildenstern he has executed, and Gertrude dies, perhaps of her own accord, as a result of becoming entangled in his quarrel with the king.
Statistically speaking, Hamlet appears to be a most successful minister of vengeance: all those he wishes dead do in fact die, even if he must go as well. But Hamlet is anything but the typical or archetypical avenger. He is angst-ridden and depressive—even suicidal—and far more pensive than active. This is true of the prince from the earliest part of the play, in which we learn of his plans to leave Elsinore for Germany, so that he can continue in his studies. (A more traditional hero, along the lines of Odysseus or Virgil’s Aeneas, would much rather fight for the kingship. Hamlet, however, is a largely antiheroic figure.)
Hamlet’s inactivity is all the more striking, however, after his encounter with the ghost. Having seen and spoken with the likeness of his dead father, having been commanded to take vengeance on a hated usurper and a despised stepfather, Hamlet continues to bide (or waste) his time. He does nothing. He bewails this himself upon seeing the passion one of the actors is able to summon, realizing that he himself has hardly behaved according to the classical ideal. And yet, even after such self-criticism, Hamlet is unable to bring himself to act. Every instance of his violence is reactionary: he stabs Polonius after discovering the latter spying on him; he has Rosencrantz and Guildenstern killed by simply turning the tables on them (or, more appropriately, hoisting them on their own petard); Laertes and Claudius he kills only after they spring their trap to kill him. This basic passivity is the chief critical issue of Hamlet.
It is the chief question, but few proposed answers to it seem satisfactory. In general, critical theories reduce to the same essential claim: that Hamlet is a character of intense introspection or introversion and is unable to overcome his innate meekness. But this explanation strains the credulity. Hamlet does not appear to be so very passive as he is often portrayed: his interaction with the ghost is actually quite bold, as he displays genuine bravery in following it away from his friends; his challenge of Laertes at Ophelia’s grave is, if anything, overbold; his orchestration of the pirate attack on his ship and his destruction of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern is decisive and dynamic; and he clearly is capable of extreme action when provoked. Besides which, someone who could be given as much motivation as Hamlet has without being impelled to some sort of decisive action for no other reason than lack of initiative or personal vitality would be already implausible.
The critics of this interpretive school fundamentally miss the importance of Hamlet’s religious nature. He is not merely an intellectual, he is an intellectual of a spiritual stripe. Many critics recognize in him a conflict between id and superego; few have recognized that it is just as much a conflict between the Christian individual (particularly his intellect and his conscience) and the still largely pre-Christian culture in which he finds himself. The court at Elsinore retains much of the trappings and ethos of paganism, though it is formally and ostensibly Christian.
A brief digression may be necessary here. First, it is important to note that Roman Catholicism in the age of Christendom was an often syncretistic force. Folk culture in much of Europe during this period (and to this day) retains much of its mythic and superstitious character from antiquity. Second, the revenge tale as a genre is most closely related to the fervently Catholic nations of Spain and Italy. The revenge tale, then, is a product of Christian-pagan syncretism. A similar hybridization is noticeable in Anglo-Germanic legends as well (cf. Beowulf’s heavy emphasis on “wergild,” the blood price of a slain kinsman). Third, both Roman and Germanic cultures (the chief influences on Europe and the chief elements in the Christian-pagan synthesis of Christendom) laid heavy emphasis on the idea sacrosanct patriarch: the Roman paterfamilias was imbued with solemn religious authority over his household; the Germanic king wielded authority through the sacred bonds of loyalty, mund, imposed on his subordinates (see Herman Dooyeweerd’s Roots of Western Culture). Denmark in the high medieval era and afterward would contain much influence from both Roman and Germanic culture. (In what is likely merely rhetorical, but is nonetheless interesting, Hamlet very frequently speaks of his father in terms of classical mythology, most notably calling him “Hyperion,” and Claudius “a satyr,” satyrs being associated with lust and rude rusticity.) Fourth, and last, Scandinavia was notoriously resistant to Christianization, even after the ascendancy of Christianity in southern and western Europe. Danish culture therefore would quite likely retain a sense of the sacred inviolability of both king and father.
This, then, is the vast weight which comprises the motivation for Hamlet to act: a deeply ingrained cultural and quasi-sacred demand for vengeance, combined with a tremendous sense of injustice and personal loss. The situation is much the same for Hamlet as it is for Malcolm in Macbeth, and both plays invoke a favorite theme of Shakespeare’s, namely the “great chain of being”—the idea that what affects a higher being on the hierarchical ladder (say, a king) affects those below it (“Something is rotten in the state of Denmark”).
But against this great impulse to action is the contrary impulse of Hamlet’s conscience, shaped by religious faith and education. Modern readers tend to forget that, in Shakespeare’s time, to be educated essentially meant to be taught theology. One might learn the philosophers in the university, but it was for the end of understanding doctrine. Hamlet would have spent much of his adult life in theological reading—and, indeed, he has a certain propensity for scriptural references (“There’s a special providence in the fall of a sparrow”; he calls Polonius a “Jephthah” for his use of Ophelia as bait) as well—and, especially given his association with the Protestant Wittenberg, he would have been keenly aware of the often sharp opposition of prevailing cultures to the contents of Christian belief. In listing his faults, he even calls himself “revengeful.”
Hamlet attempts to reconcile the opposing principles by deciding to identify himself as the scourge of God, sent to punish the sins of Claudius (and, to some extent, Gertrude). However, this idea is in itself a syncretistic one, incompatible with sincere belief in the scriptures. Indeed, the concept is most famously associated with Attila the Hun, who was no Christian himself. And Hamlet seems unable to really commit himself to it. Meeting the undefended Polonius vulnerable and unsuspecting in prayer, Hamlet—if he really sees himself as a divine avenger—should see providence at work and leap at the chance to strike. Instead, he passes on, claiming that he does so because he does not want to risk Claudius dying in a state of grace. The prince’s reasoning here has the ring of a justification: he continues to find himself unable to exact revenge, but he is unwilling to admit this to himself.
This also would seem to be the reason behind the ghost’s “visitation” to “whet [Hamlet’s] almost blunted purpose.” This is an extraordinary episode: the spirit finds it necessary to appear again to Hamlet in order to spur him on against Claudius. If Hamlet did not have a deeply ingrained reticence toward taking revenge, it seems hardly possible that multiple supernatural encounters would be needed to drive him to it. And, of course, the scene is entirely in keeping with the theory of the ghost-as-devil. He simply wants to make sure of his man.
Lest someone accuse me of overhasty moralizing, the play’s closing scene merits some examination. Structurally, it is an intricate and complex denouement, as four characters—Claudius, Gertrude, Laertes, and Hamlet—lie dead. Their deaths are precipitated by the killings of the elder Hamlet and Polonius and the suicide of Ophelia. We see at once a fratricide and a dutiful brother, and a man who is at once an avenging son and the murderer of a father. On top of this, we have the arrival of two foreign parties: the messengers of the English court, announcing the needless deaths of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, and the conquering Prince Fortinbras of Norway, arriving at the Danish capitol in time to witness the self-destruction of its royal line.
Notably, Fortinbras is himself a filial avenger in conflict with his reigning uncle: he has carried on a campaign of vengeance against the Danes because of his father’s death in battle against them, against the wishes of the dead king’s enthroned brother. We see in the end of the play the destructive results of cyclical violence, another common Shakespearean theme (cf. Romeo and Juliet, Richard II, Henry IV). It is the Stoical Horatio (by his own admission “more an antique Roman than a Dane”) who approves of Hamlet’s actions as consonant with classical—but not Christian—ideals. (As a side note, the major flaw in Kenneth Branagh’s otherwise excellent film version is his insistence on presenting Hamlet as a Christological figure, as he is borne out in a crucified position by the Norwegian soldiers.) Rather, it is Fortinbras who correctly characterizes Hamlet’s behavior as warlike, giving him a soldier’s funeral. The play itself ends with the stage direction, “Exeunt, bearing off the dead bodies; after the which a peal of ordnance is shot off.” All of which serves much more as an implicit criticism of Hamlet’s conduct than an authorial endorsement.
IV. Hamlet’s View of Humanity
Seventeenth-century English literature featured a particular tendency toward introspection and brooding, known as the “cult of melancholia,” of which Hamlet himself (“the Melancholy Dane”) is probably the most famous product. The prince is, of course, a depressed and suicidal man at the play’s beginning, and what befalls him hardly ameliorates this condition. This mood is, of course, to be expected. Even a rather simple application of psychology would readily uncover several sources of Hamlet’s alienation and melancholy: the death of his father, his removal from his studies, perceived treachery on the part of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, his mother’s rapid marriage to his hated uncle, Ophelia’s unaccustomed distantness, the failure of the Danish nobles to elect him as king (Denmark’s succession operated on a quasi-elective basis, much like the Holy Roman Empire, though it was assumed that the monarch’s eldest son would succeed him). However, this explanation, taken alone, does not account for the depth of Hamlet’s feeling and some specific choices in rhetoric.
I must note at the outset that I adopt a compromise view of a particular textual debate regarding Hamlet: I believe that Hamlet employs a pun in his soliloquy on suicide, relying on the similar sounds of the words “solid” and “sullied.” Though “solid” is found in the first folio and is the majority opinion amongst commentators, “sallied” is found in early quartos and is generally considered a misprint or variant spelling of “sullied.” Hamlet uses it thusly: “O that this too too solid [or sullied] flesh would melt, thaw and resolve itself into a dew!” As I read it, Hamlet intends a primarily visual image—the solidity of his body giving way to liquidity and dissolution—with a secondary meaning arriving via the Pauline meaning of the term “flesh” (i.e., sinfulness, human nature), punning on “sullied” (i.e., dirty, stained) for “solid.” Hamlet here connects death and unrighteousness in a very typical and appropriately theological way.
Later, in what is perhaps his most famous rhetorical flourish outside of “To be or not to be,” Hamlet bitterly renounces humankind as the “quintessence of dust.” It is easily and often recognized that the prince here makes reference to God’s pronouncement of the curse of death in Genesis (“For you are dust and to dust you will return”). It is less recognized that Hamlet is also making use of that other great thread of western thought (other, that is, than the Bible), Greek philosophy: Aristotle theorized that, besides the four earthly elements of fire, air, water, and earth, there was a fifth, celestial and divine element called "ether," which was contained beyond the moon. “Quintessence” literally means “fifth essence,” and refers to ether.
Hamlet’s use of the word in conjunction with the biblical “dust” clinches his rejection of the humanistic anthropology of the Renaissance. His prior exclamations, best delivered ironically, are typical of humanism: “What a piece of work is a man! How noble in Reason! how infinite in faculties! in form and moving how express and admirable! In action how like an Angel! in apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals!” But this opinion is untenable to Hamlet: “Man delights me not; no, nor woman neither.” In varying ways, Hamlet’s conclusion is compatible with most Protestant thinkers of the Reformation—certainly with Luther, and with certain moods of Zwingli and Calvin, though the latter two tended to counterbalance this judgment with an insistence that God’s glory is revealed in human attainment. When, however, Protestant thinking is set polemically against Renaissance humanism (though there is a kind of Protestant humanism) and Roman Catholicism, both of which build heavily on Greek foundations, it will almost assuredly sound very much like Hamlet’s speech at this moment.
Finally, Hamlet’s confrontation with Ophelia sees the prince in direct meditation on the sinfulness of human beings. “I am myself indifferent honest,” he says (“indifferent honest” meaning, roughly, “somewhat or middling virtuous”):
[B]ut yet I could accuse me of such things that it were better my mother had not borne me: I am very proud, revengeful, ambitious; with more offences at my beck than I have thoughts to put them in, imagination to give them shape, or time to act them in. What should such fellows as I do crawling between earth and heaven? We are arrant knaves, all; believe none of us. Go thy ways to a nunnery.
(It bears notice that “nunnery” was not just a term for a convent, but also a euphemism for a brothel.) Hamlet at this point has had such experiences of human beings—the revelation of his uncle’s murderousness, his realization that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are, in essence, corporate shills or puppets for “the establishment,” his disappointment in his mother’s apparent disregard for the memory of his father—as to truly bring home the traditional Christian doctrine of human sinfulness (at least, traditional in the western church, which holds to a doctrine of original sin) and the Reformation doctrines of total depravity and the spiritual death of sin. His speech recalls two important biblical texts. Its broad meaning recalls, “All our righteousnesses are as a filthy rag [more literally translated as “menstrual cloth”]” (Isaiah 64:6). The phrase “between earth and heaven” recalls, “You have made him [i.e., man] a little lower than the angels [the Hebrew may actually mean “God,” but the Septuagint translates it thusly]” (Psalm 8:5).
Hamlet’s pessimism, then, is not only experiential: it is the result both of his own misfortunes and the theoretical education he has received as a Christian scholar. It is this combination that explains the depth and intensity of the feeling, which is otherwise inadequately explained by his personal disappointments alone. Hamlet’s depression is the profound and spiritual depression of Job, not simple discontent.
Implications
If one accepts the reading of Hamlet as a story of a crisis of conscience rather than a crisis of confidence, the results are quite radical. To begin with, it solves, or at least mitigates, the difficultly of Hamlet’s reaction to the ghost. If Hamlet is assumed to believe the ghost implicitly (which even a superficial reading of the text cries out against), his failure to act on its commands strikes the reader as evidence of an implausibly effete character. If, however, one recognizes that Hamlet has very real doubts as to the veracity of the ghost’s claims and even suspicions of its diabolism, his apparent disregard for it can be contextualized within the broader conflict of Hamlet’s id and superego, or his desires and his conscience (depending on how much of a psychologist the reader is).
Second, it sets the prince up as an archetypal figure of the youthful intellectual in conflict with the aged authority. Claudius (along with the elder Hamlet) represents an old order—the Catholic world of the medieval era—where Hamlet represents the alternative, new vision of Protestantism. This has the added benefit of resolving the difficulty of the play’s setting: Shakespeare intentionally blurs two distinct time periods in order to bring them into conflict.
Third, it provides an explanatory basis for Hamlet’s odd behavior. If the play is fundamentally about his attempt to decide between his instinctive and culturally conditioned desires and his religious and moral duty, his seemingly random actions are truly stalling tactics, the prince’s effort to buy more time so that his internal battles can play out. Thus, Hamlet’s sparing of Claudius at his prayers—a crucial and interpretively difficult moment in the play—receives a clear explanation: Hamlet rationalizes his decision not to strike so as to avoid a clear conclusion one way or another. If he were to admit to himself that he does not truly think that taking his revenge is right, he would have to give up the project altogether, and his conscience will not allow him to actually end the problem by killing his uncle—hence, he comes up with a rationale for not killing Claudius while preserving the possibility of doing so later.
Fourth and finally, it results in a reading of Hamlet himself as a definite antihero. He is neither a classical hero, like Akhilleus, whose self-will and desires find glorious expression in action, nor a traditional Christian hero, like Messiah in Milton’s Paradise Regained, whose commitment to duty and right action win out over his passions and appetites. Rather, he is caught between the contrary impulses to imitate either one. His inclination toward the classical model is revealed in his reflection on the player’s story of Pyrrhus and Hecuba; his inclination toward the Christian model is revealed in his consistent failure to actually take his vengeance. We are left, then, with a man unable to master himself (in either one way or another, contrary way) and who is caught off guard by events which outpace him.
Hamlet thus resists a simplistic reduction into either a happily pagan story of filial piety and revenge or a saccharinely pietistic tale of self-denial. It presents the title character as a complex and fallible man, one with noble and laudable moral vision but subject also to powerful currents of emotional impulse and selfish aims, and it makes him a philosopher, too, that he might impart some insight with regard to these contraries. In other words, a religious reading of Hamlet preserves its complexity and its nature as a truly human piece of fiction. Hamlet is, in all, a rather ordinary, even if gifted, individual: he is, like most of us, unable to follow what he recognizes as the good.
A Final Note
I would be remiss not to mention that something rather like my understanding of Hamlet has already been proposed by the critic W. Thomas MacCary, who suggests that Hamlet is confronted by a choice between duty to family and duty to God, both high stresses within Roman Catholicism. However, in my opinion, he fails to take proper account of the Protestant elements of the play. For one thing, Protestantism does not allow for a division between “religious” and "irreligious" life, as Catholicism does in its sacramental division of the laity from clerical and monastic life. This has the effect of making the moral conflict more immediate to Hamlet. Catholicism also has a patriarchal model of authority, as the pope (derived from the Latin "papa", meaning “father” or “daddy”) embodies paternal authority, which Protestantism lacks. Protestantism's ecclesiology and its doctrine of justification also emphasize personal and individual experience of God and Christ, which ultimately lessens what is, in Catholicism, the sacred importance of family. And lastly, as a movement much less tolerant of syncretism, Protestantism undercuts and opposes the cultural demand for vengeance, which serves to make Hamlet’s instinctive desire for it a more equal foil for his theological conscience.
Additionally, I must note that, although as I have said, most critics accept the identity of the ghost at face value, there are some who concur with me. Eleanor Prosser, for instance, agrees with my perspective on the issue, though this view is still a minority one- MacCary identifies it as "extreme."
And finally, I would like to acknowledge a very interesting thought suggested to me by my father, who believes that Hamlet's reluctance to kill Claudius bears a strong resemblance to David's hesitancy to touch Saul as God's anointed king. I think he is quite probably right. This would introduce a strong notion of the divine right of kings- a common, if ambiguous, theme in Shakespeare- and quite frankly complicate my thesis. However, Anglican Protestantism was still compatible with divine right, even if more militantly Reformed groups (e.g., the Puritans) would reject it.
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