To be? Or not to be? All of the above? None of the above?

More online musing on the online Hamlet course I'm taking…

In the upcoming week's class there is a major focus on Hamlet as a negative character as well as looking at the "To be or not to be" soliloquy. The best performances I've seen of that scene is when the actor makes it clear that Hamlet has contemplated suicide before…this isn't off-the-cuff musing but questions he has been asking all along. So what does he choose? To be? Or not to be?

He continues 'to be,' but is that really his choice? I'd frame it more along the lines that he chooses not "not to be," which is a very different spin. That decision means that he is "to be" but it doesn't mean that's what he specifically chose. And that's what provides some of the many paradoxes we run across in Hamlet. Hamlet is an actor within the play for a large part of it. You could say we see the 'true' Hamlet in his first scene, where he tells his mother that he doesn't seem to be displaying the nighted colors she describes but he argues he *is* exactly as she says. Most of the rest of the play, though, he's an actor, introducing one of the many paradoxes of the play. In order to be an actor, he has to suppress who he is in order to play the role. Yet he must draw on his own feelings and experiences to sell the role. So we're seeing something much more complicated.

Which begs the question of when the role of the actor ends and we see the 'real' Hamlet again, assuming such a thing exists by this point. The simplest answer would be during Hamlet's last soliloquy, when he sees Fortinbras march on Poland and resolves to act instead of just thinking. But you're never quite sure with Hamlet because this is where action replaces thinking. Or is that part of the role, too?

Back to the "To be or not to be" soliloquy…who is he addressing? Is it inward musing? Or as some stagings have done it, aimed at Opehlia? Or is it meant for anyone listening in, Ophelia as well as (most likely, to him) Claudius and Polonius, to overhear as part of his act? Or a direct address to the audience? All of the above? A combination? This one I find much harder to answer with any degree of certainty, but I love that it can be performed in several ways which would seem valid.

The last point on this rambling post… The "To be or not to be" soliloquy seems like a direct confrontation to religion by saying we don't know what awaits us when we die. Backing up a step, though, are we supposed to judge Hamlet's speech by the prevailing religion of his time or by Shakespeare's day? If of Hamlet's time, it's a direct affront to the Catholic Church since it had plenty of doctrine on Purgatory and what to expect. If of Shakespeare's day, things become murky: Martin Luther (teaching at Wittenberg, where Hamlet was studying) rejected Purgatory. The Church of England didn't have an agreed-upon afterlife cosmology for several decades, until well after the play was written. Is Hamlet saying the church doesn't, and can't possibly know what awaits us (following in part Luther's rejection)? Is he following the confusion of the Church of England of the day? Ah, so many questions from just a few lines, without definite answers, but fun to go over regardless.

The problem with Gertrude

A few notes on the online Hamlet course I'm taking…

The Argumentative Old Git had a good post on the three different versions of Hamlet. We took a closer look at the First Quarto (Q1) and despite all its deficiencies the order of its scenes resolve some issues raised in the Second Quarto and First Folio. But I wanted to focus on a scene in Q1 that isn't in the other two versions. Horatio informs the Queen that Hamlet has returned safe from his English voyage. A copy of Q1 is available online, although this excerpt updates the spelling:

Enter Horatio and the Queen.

HORATIO
Madam, your son is safe arrived in Denmark.
This letter I even now received of him,
Whereas he writes how he escaped the danger
And subtle treason that the King had plotted.
Being crossed by the contention of the winds,
He found the packet sent to the King of England,
Wherein he saw himself betrayed to death,
As, at his next convers’ion with your grace,
He will relate the circumstance at full.

QUEEN
Then I perceive there’s treason in his looks
That seemed to sugar o’er his villany.
But I will soothe and please him for a time,
For murderous minds are always jealous.
But know not you, Horatio, where he is?

HORATIO
Yes, madam, and he hath appointed me
To meet him on the east side of the city
Tomorrow morning.

QUEEN
Oh, fail not, good Horatio, and withal commend me
A mother’s care to him. Bid him awhile
Be wary of his presence, lest that he
Fail in that he goes about.

HORATIO
Madam, never make doubt of that.
I think by this the news be come to court:
He is arrived. Observe the King, and you shall
Quickly find, Hamlet being here,
Things fell not to his mind.

QUEEN
But what become of Gilderstone and Rossencraft?

HORATIO
He being set ashore, they went for England,
And in the packet there writ down that doom
To be performed on them ‘pointed for him.
And by great chance he had his father’s seal,
So all was done without discovery.

QUEEN
Thanks be to heaven for blessing of the Prince!
Horatio, once again I take my leave,
With thousand mother’s blessings to my son.

HORATIO
Madam, adieu. [Exeunt.]

A question we had to address—if we were staging Hamlet would we include this scene? Many students wanted to include it because they believed it adds to Gertrude's characterization, demonstrating mettle in dealing with Claudius and showing concern for her son. I'm not convinced it paints her completely in a positive light, especially where she thanks heaven when hearing of G & R's death sentence.

So would you include it?
To me it depends on how you plan on portraying Gertrude. Is she weak-willed, easily pushed around, overwhelmed by the death of her husband and the seeming madness of her son? Or is she a strong character, doing what she wants regardless of what others think (and maybe having an affair with her brother-in-law)? Or somewhere in between. I prefer a strong Gertrude who's focusing mostly on herself (even if the text doesn't always support that reading) and the scene doesn't really fit for me if you go in that direction. But then that's my preference.
What's yours?

Hamlet and Robert Burton: melancholy and madness

Some out-loud musing on this week's topic in the online course on Hamlet: melancholy and madness…

For such a major component of the play (not to mention a topic that has been examined so often), I didn't realize 'melancholy' was only used twice in the play. Although it was published about two decades after Hamlet was first performed, I thought Robert Burton's The Anatomy of Melancholy would provide some additional insight on the thinking of the ailment at the time. Burton discusses the defining cause, an excess of the black bile humour, but also looks at additional causes. Some of the additional causes that are relevant to the play are solitude, death of a close friend or relative, anguish, or supernatural events. Underlying any cause of melancholy, though, is sorrow,

"the mother and daughter of melancholy, her epitome, symptom, and chief cause"; as Hippocrates hath it, they beget one another, and tread in a ring, for sorrow is both cause and symptom of the disease. (259)

But what is the relationship between melancholy and madness? In the play Hamlet's pretend madness consumes him the longer he acts that way. If not driven to the state of madness by the end of the play he certainly seems to be in the same zip code. Burton investigates how melancholy intertwines with madness, defining the latter as follows:

Madness is therefore defined to be a vehement dotage, or raving without a fever, far more violent than melancholy, full of anger and clamour, horrible looks, actions, gestures, troubling the patients with far greater vehemency both of body and mind, without all fear and sorrow, with such impetuous force and boldness that sometimes three or four men cannot hold them. Differing only in this from frenzy, that it is without a fever, and their memory is most part better. (140)

If violence was seen as the bridge between melancholy and madness, does this become another reason Hamlet hesitates to revenge his father? Horatio's warning that following the ghost will lead to Hamlet's madness takes on additional meaning in this context beyond the superficial meaning of "follow." Does Hamlet hesitate, in part, because he believes violence will transform his melancholy into madness? Does this understanding of madness provide one reason Polonius suspects there is some method behind Hamlet's actions since the prince hasn't been violent? If this relationship was generally accepted in Shakespeare's time, then Hamlet's shift to action in the final scene confirms that he really is mad. I don't recall any specific mentions of this relationship in the play, but it will be something I'll look for during the next re-reading.


Note: All page numbers refer to the following edition:
Burton, R., & Jackson, H. (2001). The Anatomy of Melancholy. New York: New York Review of Books.