Backgrounds



//**Hamlet**// is familiar to many of us. Frequently taught in high school classes and in Shakespeare surveys, recently made into three major motion picture renditions (the //Hamlets// starring, respectively, Mel Gibson, Kenneth Branagh, and Ethan Hawke), and largely considered one of the chestnuts of both the Shakespeare canon and Western culture, the play generally turns out to be familiar even to first-time readers in the number of expressions from the play that have crept into everyday speech. "Something is rotten in the state of Denmark," "oh, my prophetic soul!", "the play's the thing," and "There is a method to his madness" are only a few examples.

//Hamlet//, of course, is a tragedy of revenge: that is, a tragedy that contemplates when and how it is acceptable to enact revenge, usually because the existing systems of justice cannot or will not act on the case. An ancient Greek and Roman genre, the revenge tragedy became popular in Elizabethan England in the late 1580s with Thomas Kyd's play //The Spanish Tragedy// (more on //The Spanish Tragedy// below). //Titus Andronicus//, Shakespeare's first tragedy, is another tragedy of revenge.

Earlier accounts of //Hamlet//, the Danish prince who revenges his paternal uncle's murder of his father, however, present less ambiguity about Hamlet's actions than does Shakespeare's version. A twelfth century history by Saxo Grammaticus, //Historia Danica//, which was translated from Latin into French in 1576, tells of the delay by Prince Amleth (i.e. Hamlet) in killing his father-in-law Feng, the king on whom Claudius is based, only because Feng suspected that Amleth would kill him and had his followers watching Amleth at every turn. In order to circumvent the constant surveillance, Amleth pretends to be slow in wit, and with the initially unwilling help of his mother Gerutha (of course, the character on whom Gertrude is based), Amleth succeeds in killing Feng and is declared King. In this version, the prince's delay in killing his father-in-law is only for lack of opportunity, and never does he doubt whether or not his father-in-law is actually guilty of murder.

Kyd's play //The Spanish Tragedy//, although not at all about Prince Hamlet, features a few similarities that Shakespeare would incorporate in his version of Hamlet: a ghost who cries out for revenge from the underworld; a hero who contemplates suicide and who (like Saxo's Amleth) feigns insanity; a female protagonist who goes insane; a play-within-a-play that establishes a murderer's guilt; and an ending scene in which the bodies of royalty and courtiers literally litter the stage.

In Saxo's version of Hamlet, the prince does not debate the proper time to kill his father-in-law, as Hamlet does in not wanting to kill Claudius at his prayers (apparently, wanting Claudius to "do time" in purgatory as, it appears, Hamlet's father must do because of being murdered before he could confess any unrepentant sin). In Kyd's //The Spanish Tragedy//, also, the hero does not interact with the ghost. Shakespeare's Hamlet, however, plagued with uncertainty, feels the need to double-check the ghost's veracity. From this uncertainty evolve the questions that have intrigued so many critics and fans of this play, such as the following:


 * Is Hamlet justified in his delay, and if so, on what grounds?
 * What are the costs of his delay, in terms of bloodshed and mayhem, and do the costs offset the benefits of the delay?
 * What--the introspection, perhaps the desire for revenge of both body and soul, or still something else--would you consider to be Hamlet's "tragic flaw"?
 * Or, does Hamlet's indecisiveness really mask some fundamental dysfunctionality:
 * perhaps a real insanity;
 * a form of cowardice;
 * a thwarted Oedipal desire, as Freud and his follower Ernst Jones have argued, to kill his father and marry his mother, which Claudius performed instead; or
 * a flaw in theology, as argued in 1950 by John Dover Wilson, in the Wittenburg-schooled Hamlet believing in purgatory and ghosts at all. (Wittenburg University, founded in 1502, became the seat of the Lutheran Reformation in the years following 1517.)
 * [[image:caerlaverockcastle.jpg width="276" height="247" align="center" caption="Caerlaverock Castle, northern England"]]

The play opens with the guards of the castle at Elsinore watching for signs of young Fortinbras of Norway, whom they suspect will invade Denmark. Instead, however, they encounter the ghost of Hamlet, senior, and vow to tell Prince Hamlet about the sighting. Horatio's speculation about why the ghost is appearing offers the first interpretation in the play of odd occurrences; those speculations are followed by Laertes and Polonius's speculation on the sincerity of Hamlet's love for Ophelia, who is below the station of a prince; and later, by Gertude and Polonius's speculation about why Hamlet appears to be insane: a charge that Gertrude has asked Hamlet's classmates Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern to investigate for her.

These uncertainties build to Hamlet's uncertainty about what to do about what the ghost has told him: an uncertainty that will remain with the prince not only until after he has observed Claudius's reaction to the play The Mouse-Trap, but also throughout his thwarted murder of Claudius, his mad courtship of Ophelia and troubled accusations of his mother; the aftermath of his murder of Polonius, including the thwarted attempt at Hamlet's execution in England; and the ensuing, tainted duel between Laertes and Hamlet, at which Claudius will finally die.

The play is rife with references to rotting, sickness and contagion; you will notice many as you read. Certainly, something IS rotten in Denmark, but what? You might also consider the function of surveillance in this play (how many plays-within-a-play might you argue that you are really watching?); the function of Polonius, Hamlet, Gertrude, and Laertes' relations to Ophelia; why Hamlet can see his father's ghost and Gertrude cannot; what the gravedigger scene adds to the play; what the dumbshow accomplishes that the play //The Murder of Gonzago// does not, or the point of the players' speeches that Hamlet requests in 2.2. You will bring to the play still more questions and observations.

//(Taken from Elizabeth Burow-Flak, professor at Valporaiso University)//