Essential "Hamlet"

Author(s): Jay L. Halio

Source: College Literature, Vol. 1, No. 2 (Spring, 1974), pp. 83-99
Published by: College Literature
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25111020
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 83

ESSENTIALHAMLET

Jay L. Halio

Recent studies of Shakespeare have turned away from thematic in

terpretation to find new kinds of criticism that can provide accurate and
perceptive analyses of dramatic action as it is actually experienced. Them
atic criticism, the argument runs, is too reductive and in that sense both
distorts and falsifies the real experience of a play, which very often in
volves our consciousness in conflicting attitudes, emotions, sensations,
as well as ideas.1 As
Stephen Booth points out, the very first scene of
Hamlet is a veritable
complex of contradictory perceptions which, in
his view, sets up the basic problem of that most fascinating but most
difficult of all plays.2 Virgil Whitaker has also argued that any analysis
of the play that seeks to find a consistent or coherent pattern of thought
and action is doomed to frustration and failure.3 Nevertheless?and for
these same reasons, paradoxically?Ham let remains the most absorbing
work in Shakespeare's canon.

Several of these criticisms of past criticism are influenced, in part, by

the growing rapprochement in academic circles between literary crit
icism and theater research. As we come to Shakespeare's now more
plays
as and not as texts, certain aspects of our hither
plays merely experience,
to either ignored or slighted, become enlightened and enriched. Yet there
is one respect in which a performance of Hamlet or any other play may
be as reductive in its way as the rationalizing tendencies of thematic
criticism may be in theirs. Indeed, this result, as Daniel Seltzer has said,
is unavoidable insofar as any performance necessarily implies a certain
point of view.4 Repeatedly, then, in the theater or out of it, we are thrown
back upon interpretation as a decisive factor of our experience.5

To be sure, the history of Hamlet from the beginning points in this

direction. From the first performance onwards (to disregard vexed ques
tions of an Ur-Hamlet) Shakespeare's play underwent various changes
so that we do not know, and probably can never know, what particular
version of Hamlet held the stage at any one time during its author's life
time or for years afterwards. The Second Quarto (1604), printed from
Shakespeare's manuscript, or foul papers, gives us the fullest text; but
the Folio text (1623), derived from a theater promptbook, not only short
ens several scenes but adds passages, too, and those of unquestioned
authorial composition. Whatever we may think of the First, or Bad, Quarto
(1603), and whatever its provenance or authority, it presents yet a third
form of the play, much shorter than the others and much more direct
in plot development, possibly reflecting a version that was taken on tour.
 84 COLLEGE LITERATURE

The instability of the text of Hamlet, certainly as regards playhouse per

formance, has remained ever since. As the Smock Alley promptbooks
show, the play was cut, sometimes drastically, for performance in the
late seventeenth century. Many "Players Quartos," from the Restoration
on, place inverted commas or quotation marks around passages which
were often deleted on stage. Meanwhile, all of our modern textbook
editions print the play in a conflated text that, while preserving most
of what Shakespeare wrote, actually distorts what he must have seen,
or what his successors saw?and see!

The matter, avowedly, is of much more than historical importance.

Hamlet continues to hold the stage and, as if to intensify the problem,
several films have been made that are now easily and cheaply available
for showing in schools and colleges. Unprepared as most students are
for the divergences between the studied text and a presented or per
formed one, confusion inevitably follows. Why does Olivier omit the roles
of Reynaldo, Guildenstern, Rosencrantz, Fortinbras? Why are scenes
transposed or shortened in both Olivier's film and Tony Richardson's (with
Nicoll Williamson as the Prince)? When Richard Chamberlain surprised
us all by playing Hamlet in a special television production, why did John
Barton, the adapter, delete many speeches or even scenes and not others,
and (to put another dimension to the question) why was that production
set in the early nineteenth century? I choose these examples not only
because they may be more familiar, but because they also indicate the
same sorts of questions that can arise from a "live" performance in the
theater. (It is no part of my present purpose to examine differences be
tween stage and film production.)

From all evidence, we know that there is not one Hamlet but many
Hamlets. Just as we recognize that no two actors will give us the same
interpretation of the leading role, so too we must recognize that, as part
of their interpretations, the text may be suitably altered. But is there no
way through this subjectivism of "interpretation"? Is the ideal of "Shake
speare's" Hamlet?as David Williams calls it ?utterly unrealizable?
Are there no guides built into the structure of the play that can help us
to preserve its essential form, whatever we may do with the rest? I be
lieve that there are, and whether we emphasize a thematic or a theatrical
approach, an irreducible essence does become clear.

In what follows I shall repeatedly (if implicitly) be asking the same

question, which I have found to be an excellent teaching technique: what
happens to Hamlet if this or that speech, scene, character is omitted from
ESSENTIAL HAMLET 85

the play? Granted that the text is too long for performance?as the King's
Men themselves saw?what should be cut, and why? What important
effect will any cut have on the overall shape, or form, of the play, and
therefore on what the play is? If meaning?or resistance to meaning?is
essential, what is dispensable and what is not? Here it will be of the ut
most importance not to permit our rationalizing tendencies to influence
actual perceptions; for in both its stage and literary history, Hamlet has
suffered most from the impositions of the rationalizing intellect ? from
the attempts, that is, of critics or producers to "discover" or to provide
a coherence, a unity, in plot or theme where none may exist.
development
If the play seeks, above all, to question the ability of the rational intellect
to come to terms with experience, what greater travesty is there than to
let that very intellect triumph over the play?

Consider the first scene. What happens toHamlet if, as in some recent
productions,7 it is entirely omitted? Does it contain any pertinent infor
mation not provided elsewhere in Act I? The Ghost appears but says
nothing, and from this Horatio very strangely concludes that he and the
others should go?not to the King?but to the Prince and tell him what
they have seen. The warlike preparation, ostensibly because of young
Fortinbras' threatened invasion, turns out to be a red herring. Horatio's
lines describing the morn "in russet mantle clad" are quite lovely, but
what dramatic purpose do they serve? These and other considerations
seem to argue for deletion, and in fact much of the scene is usually short
ened, though rarely completely omitted. The sense of mystery occasioned
by the Ghost's first, silent appearance, the fears of the simple guards on
watch, their complaints against the "bitter cold" and whatever it is that
makes Francisco "sick at heart," all provide a fitting introduction to a
play that will remain focused on mystery and heart-chilling events. But
the rhythm and structure of Act I are also radically altered by the omission
of the scene. As J. C. Maxwell has shown, the first act develops the move
ment by father and son of groping towards each other across the abyss
of the unknown.8 The culmination in scene five cannot be as effective
without the first scene as with it.

I. i generates suspense, then, and a good deal besides, especially the

strong feeling of disorder?in nature (ghosts walking abroad); in the state
(nervous sentries; "post-haste and romage in the land"); in the younger
generation (Fortinbras's wild, revengeful purpose); and in the play (the
confused skein of aroused and oddly dissatisfied expectations). In the
next scene, as Booth shows (pp. 147-149), our longing for clarity and
coherence is superficially assuaged by Claudius' apparent control of
what unfolds as a complex and potentially explosive situation. Claudius'
smooth rhetoric, however, reveals deep fissures undermining his position,
 86 COLLEGE LITERATURE

and our confidence is accordingly weakened. "With mirth in funeral, and

9
with dirge in marriage," he says, he has taken his sister-in-law, Queen
Gertrude, to wife. To an Elizabethan audience, or a properly informed
and attentive modern one, this would appear most strange, for Claudius
here proclaims what is an incestuous union. But, stranger still, no one
demurs. Claudius is also on the throne. To an audience more familiar
with the laws of primogeniture than Danish elective monarchy,11 this
must also seem peculiar, since the son of old Hamlet is alive and capable,
despite his brooding, withdrawn stance in the court. Yet, again, no one
demurs. As we learn in his first soliloquy, Hamlet alone among the Danes
seems at all concerned with the moral consequences of Claudius' actions
and Gertrude's. The point is important, for by their approval of Claudius'
behavior (lines 14-16), the court becomes implicated in it, and the dire
results are dramatized in what becomes of Polonius and his family. The
amenities attended to, Claudius begins a sequence of speeches centering
in turn upon the three noble youths of the play: Fortinbras, Laertes, and
Hamlet.

Structurally as well as thematically, the functions of these young men

are interrelated, and any decision to omit Fortinbras' role, for example,
would destroy the parallels and contrasts Shakespeare clearly intended
us to see. However Voltimand and Cornelius may be disposed of, it is
essential that we grasp Fortinbras' developing character and attitude,
from a hotheaded young rebel to a "delicate and tender prince" (IV. iv.
48) motivated by a new and corrected sense of honor. The tenor of Horatio's
remarks earlier (Li. 95-104) conveys Fortinbras' initial temperament more

vividly than Claudius' speech, but judicious cutting can avoid unnecessary
duplication without damage to the overall design. Claudius' dialogue
with Laertes, while brief, spotlights the only close relationship in the play
between a son and his still living father. That relationship is further de
(and in the next scene and in II. i; but as a step in
veloped qualified)
Claudius' approach to Hamlet, whom he proclaims as his son, its place
ment is significant. The friction that follows between Claudius and Ham
let, and between Hamlet and his mother, is something that Claudius
tries to gloss over before the court, apparently to his and everyone else's
satisfaction?except Hamlet's. Though defeated, Hamlet is far from sub
dued.

Impotence in the face of outrageous behavior by his uncle and his mother
is the theme of Hamlet's soliloquy, but the speech serves another, struc
tural function as well. It conveys Hamlet's deepest feelings and his aware
ness of Claudius' moral corruption before he ever hears of the Ghost.
It also indicates at this stage Hamlet's sensitivity to Christian teaching,
suicide, although the context suggests a broader
specifically regarding
ESSENTIAL HAMLET 87
moral and religious relevance. When, therefore, Hamlet hears the story
of the murder from the Ghost in I. v, we recognize that he now has ad
ditional incitements to action. The Ghost's story and his charge complicate
Hamlet's situation unbearably, but they do not place him in a fundamen
tally new position. The moral imperatives against Claudius are already
urgent. Horatio's tidings, exciting as they are, feed directly into Hamlet's
distrust and misgivings. Insofar as the dialogue repeats what we have
witnessed in I. i, it may be foreshortened, provided that some of Hamlet's
nervous cross-examination is preserved along with his closing presentiment
of foul play.

In the next scene Hamlet's of the King is paralleled

distrust by Laertes'
mistrust of the Prince; for Polonius'
the basis theory of Hamlet's mel
ancholy?disappointed love?begins here. Ironically, Laertes' description
of Hamlet's character hardly fits; it seems an unconscious self-portrait
instead. In any case, his arguments to his sister amount to another red

herring, although Polonius acts on them to forbid Ophelia's further as

sociation with Hamlet. In Claudius' Denmark an apparently healthy and
happy family, such as this scene presents, has already begun to suffer
the earliest stages of infection. Hence the scene, notwithstanding that
some shortening is possible, serves as more than a bridge between Ham
let's meeting with Horatio and their appearance on the ramparts a few
hours later.

Scenes four and five are really one, since the action is continuous. While
Hamlet's stepfather, the King, carouses, the Prince impatiently waits
for the Ghost of his father, the old king, to appear. To fill up the time
(and to divert the audience's attention so as to make the Ghost's reap
pearance more startling), Hamlet is made to begin a very interesting
but dramatically inessential disquisition on drinking, which ends with
some cogent implications for tragic theory. In a film version, such as Grig
ori Kozintsev's (1964), most of the dialogue can be replaced by visual
equivalents or substitutes to convey the sense of heightened expectation
and mystery, and even on stage Hamlet's famous lines on the "vicious
mole of nature" (pp. 23-28) can be omitted with no serious injury to the
rhythm or pattern of the dramatic action. Far more important are his
perplexed response to the nature and intent of the Ghost when it appears
and his struggles to break free of his friends and follow it off alone.

When he finally does break loose and hears the Ghost's story, Hamlet's
immediate reaction is: "O my prophetic soul!" (I. v. 40). So much for
his later doubts about the Ghost's which serve more to rationa
veracity,
lize than to explain his inactivity for two months following this meeting.
But what is it, exactly, that the Ghost commands Hamlet to do? The gen
 88 COLLEGE LITERATURE
eral call for revenge is repeated (I. v. 7, 25), but the specific charge puzzles
the will:

Let not the royal bed of Denmark be

A couch for luxury and damned incest.
But howsomever thou pursues this act,
Taint not thy mind, nor let thy soul contrive
Leave her to heaven ....
Against thy mother aught. (82-86)

While "revenge" invokes lex talionis, especially

the as regards a father
murdered and his son still living, the Ghost nowhere specifies "Kill Claud
ius!" On the contrary, he leaves vague the means whereby the one posi
tive injunction should be carried out, but immediately follows up with
two negative injunctions: "Taint not thy mind, nor let thy soul contrive/
thy mother aught." Revenge, as Elizabethans were fully aware,
Against
was exhorted against by both civil and religious officials.13 Personal ven
geance?a kind of "wild justice" as Bacon called it?was thoroughly de
plored. Shakespeare's source, the story as told by Belleforest, questions
the moral justification of blood revenge but leaves ambiguous how a son
should act when his father's murder remains unpunished. Many Elizabeth
an revenge tragedies, such as Chettle's Hoffman or Marston's Antonio's
Revenge, treat the situation much more straightforwardly; but it seems
that in Shakespeare's Hamlet (whatever XJr-Hamlet may have been like)
motives and actions of revenge are all being called into serious question
u
and with them, ultimately, all rationally motivated action. The only
clear certainty we see is what we already saw before the Ghost tells his
story to Hamlet, and what the Ghost here specifically spells out for the
Prince: "Let not the royal bed of Denmark be/A couch for luxury and
damned incest." The problem remains what it always was: how to break
the incestuous union and purge the realm at the source.
up of corruption
To this the Ghost adds a call to Hamlet for revenge against his father's
murderer (1) without becoming morally tainted, and (2) without abusing
Gertrude. Before Act III is over, Hamlet will violate both warnings.

To make the action plainer, many modern productions of Hamlet simplify

matters and remove all or part of the Ghost's specific charge. But in so
doing, they sacrifice much essential complexity. Curiously, the same pro
ductions retain the "antic disposition" that Hamlet tells his fellow ghost
watchers he may put on, although it never becomes certain why he does
put it on, or even when he does. The sources in Saxo Grammaticus and
Belleforest are clear: so long as Amleth appears insane, Fengon cannot
kill him. But what is Shakespeare's Hamlet protecting himself against?
Claudius has no murderous designs against him until provoked much
later. Perhaps, as Booth argues (p. 160), the lines about the antic dis
?
position (I. v. 168-180) "act as a much needed explanation after the
ESSENTIAL HAMLET 89

fact of the audience's discomfort" caused by Hamlet's behavior during

the "cellarage" business. This business functions as another part of a
complex scene in which Hamlet's (and our) attitudes double back upon
themselves; and any certainty about the Ghost's nature and veracity is
considerably and, it would seem, deliberately undermined. In such a
situation, the play seems to ask, is any rational plan of action feasible,
16
or even conceivable?
II

Act I ends the first, questioning movement of the play; Act II begins
a second movement, in Granville-Barker's schema, that extends to Ham
let's departure for England in IV. iv.17 Appropriately, the action of Il.i
through Ill.i, in Polonius' words, is "by indirections [to] find directions
out" (II.i.63), as he says to Reynaldo. The old man's suspicions of his son
run as deep as his doubts about his daughter, who soon comes running
in to tell him what has been the result of following his instructions. She
is evidently terrified by Hamlet's behavior (II.i.74-96), but her father
for all his regret sees an opportunity to serve his master and goes at once
to the King. There Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are being commissioned
in a manner not unlike Reynaldo. (The parallel, though significant, may
be superfluous; but not all of the dialogue between Polonius and Reynaldo,
which deliberately slows the tempo and drops the emotional intensity
after I.v, can be safely curtailed.)18 Polonius' important news, however,
gives precedence to the ambassadors from Norway, who report that For
tinbras' threatened invasion has been prevented (Il.i. 60-80). Claudius
treats the incident lightly, now that it is over; thus its importance is easily
underestimated. It relates how through direct confrontation reason has
prevailed between old Norway and his rebellious nephew, who have
come to an amicable settlement of their differences. The contrast is to
what later happens, or rather does not happen, within the main uncle
nephew relationship in the play. Passing on to Polonius' news, Claudius
appears interested, if somewhat skeptical about the theory?a skepticism
Hamlet later confirms (Ill.i. 162-167). Preoccupied by suspicion of Ham
let's political ambition, Claudius nevertheless misconstrues in another
way (until after the Play Scene) the real basis for his nephew's melancholy.

It is in Acts II and III that the order of events in the First Quarto dif
fers substantially from that in the Second (or Good) Quarto and the Folio.
Yet some producers have been tempted to follow Q l here rather than
the more authoritative versions, and Tony Richardson's film shows what
yielding to the temptation may do. By moving up the Nunnery Scene
and thus reversing the order of the two long soliloquies, "O, what a rogue
and peasant slave am I!" (II.ii. 550-605) and "To be, or not to be" (Ill.i.
55-89), Qi radically alters the structure and rhythm of the central episodes
 90 COLLEGE LITERATURE
of the play. The oscillating pattern of Hamlet's decision and doubt is
damaged and a simpler pattern emerges in which Hamlet moves more
directly from indecision to conviction to action. But whatever appeal
this pattern might have to provincial Elizabethan or modern audiences,
or whatever its origin in an Ur-Hamlet, the pattern of action in Q2 and
the Folio is obviously what Shakespeare saw as the less simplistic render
ing of Hamlet's experience.

The length of Act II, however, still presents difficulties. The slack move
ment after the closing scenes of Act I relaxes tensions (so that new ones
may be generated) and suggests the vague, slow movement of time in
which Hamlet has done nothing. But the long dialogue between Hamlet
and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, supplemented in modern editions
from portions unique to the Folio, bear cutting back again. The lines
on "Denmark's a prison" and "ambition" (Il.ii. 239-269) help give away
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern's alliance with Claudius and their true
motive in coming to Elsinore; but the passage on the "little eyases" (337
362) is digressive and unnecessary to the main shape of the action.20 More
problematical are the First Player's Scene and Aeneas' tale to Dido. The
profound psychological and dramatic parallels and contrasts in the speech
that Hamlet begins and the First Player continues (450-518) ?which
introduces another son, Pyrrhus?cannot rightly be over
yet revenging
looked or dismissed anymore than The Murder of Gonzago can be in
the next act. The archaic (but not identical) verse of both episodes sets
off these playlets from the verse of the main play, distancing them prop
erly. Of course, both episodes then tend to make a mockery of that much
beloved passage, Hamlet's advice to the players (IILii. 1-45); but the same
logic that argues for deletion of the "vicious mole of nature" passage op
erates there as well. The Pyrrhus episode is much richer dramatically:
it holds a mirror up to Hamlet as he will do to the King and to his mother;
it emphasizes the many points of contact between reality and appearance,
being and acting, longing and revulsion; it ironically forecasts the Prayer
Scene; and it motivates Hamlet's next soliloquy and the one piece of pre
meditated action that Hamlet accomplishes in the play.

The soliloquy that ends this scene releases Hamlet's pent up feelings
of frustration and concludes with his plan to stage Gonzago. He suspects
that showing something like the murder of his father may move Claudius
to confess his crime; but even if the King merely blenches, Hamlet will
henceforth know his course. So he says, in the ardor of the moment. But
less than sixty lines later, after Polonius and Claudius have decoyed Ophelia
and placed themselves behind the arras, Hamlet enters pondering whether
sufferance or action is the nobler course to pursue, and his soliloquy ends
in an attitude that despairs of effecting any enterprise of "great pitch
ESSENTIAL HAMLET 91

and moment" (Ill.i. 85). Swiftly is his resolution?pronounced at the

end of his previous soliloquy?"sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought."
The ensuing dialogue with Ophelia whips him to a frenzy again and he
utters very thinly veiled threats against Claudius' life; then he abruptly
leaves, while Ophelia sobs, "O, what a noble mind is here o'erthrown!"
(150-161). When next we see Hamlet, he is calm once more. This is the
basic rhythmic movement at the play's center. Meanwhile, Ophelia's
speech reveals her own mind beginning to crack as she laments the over
throw of Hamlet's wits.

Ill

Hamlet's praise of Horatio (III. ii. 54-74) is important not only for what
it says, but where it is said. Coming immediately before the play-within
the-play, inwhich Hamlet expects to get confirming evidence of the Ghost's
story, it indicates again his divided attitude toward taking revenge. Ham
let describes Horatio "As one in suff'ring all that suffers nothing" (66),
or as one of those "blessed" persons "Whose blood and judgment are
so well co-meddled,/That they are not a pipe for Fortune's finger/To
sound what stop she please" (69-71). It is precisely this balance that Ham
let lacks, as we see in the climactic scenes that follow. In a hurry to reach
the first climax?Claudius' discomfiture, his call for "light" (III. ii. 269) ?
many productions delete either the dumb show or the verse play as re
dundant; Ql shortens both, and in Kozintsev's film the two are cleverly
combined. How much is retained must depend upon how much strain
Claudius can be shown to endure before he flinches before the image of
his crime?or Hamlet's identification of himself with the murderer, "one
Lucianus, nephew to the king" (III. ii. 244; italics added). Tension may
build rapidly or slowly, but the breaking point inexorably comes. And
with it comes Hamlet's exultation in his "victory" (despite Horatio's efforts
to calm him down) and his more open hostility to Rosencrantz and Guild
enstern. But by the time he intrudes upon Claudius at prayers, he has
already cooled off sufficiently to make a prologue to his brains and question
taking revenge then. Minutes later, in the Closet Scene, startled by his
mother's cries and others coming from behind the arras, he plunges his
rapier through the curtain and kills Polonius. Again, the basic rhythmic
pattern is emphatic and indicates one way of looking at Hamlet's tragic
predicament or flawed nature.

The Prayer Scene suggests another way of looking at it. Rosencrantz

and Guildenstern's speeches on "the cess of majesty" (III. iii. 8-23) ar
ticulate (with unintended irony against Claudius) the tragic consequences
for the populace in the killing of a king. But the more personal tragedies
involving Claudius and Hamlet are focused separately after the others
 92 COLLEGE LITERATURE

leave and the King tries to repent of his sins. This is an honest villain
who knows well what he has done and what he must pay for absolution?
nothing less than surrendering everything that his crimes have brought
him: "My crown, mine own ambition, and my queen" (55). Sincere in
his wish to repent, he forces his knees to bend and calls upon angels to
help. But instead of any ministering angel to assist him, Hamlet enters,
seeking his death.

Or rather, like any other diabolical avenger, seeking his damnation.

Violating all Christian precepts to eschew vengeance and return good
for evil, Hamlet sheathes his sword only because he fears that killing
Claudius now will send him to heaven, not hell. Much more than in the
Play Scene, where Claudius learns how much Hamlet knows and may
be planning, the action pivots on this event. In lusting after his uncle's
spiritual destruction, Hamlet mortally sins. This is his interior peripety,
as Sister Miriam Joseph has shown.21 In the next scene, the exterior peri
pety follows when Hamlet kills Polonius, mistaking him for the King.
The revenging son thus becomes himself the object for a revenging son,
and other ironies and paradoxes multiply apace.

Hamlet arrives in his mother's room determined to take the offensive,

to speak daggers, but use none. On the way there, in thirsting after Claud
ius' damnation, he violates the Ghost's first negative injunction ("Taint
not thy mind"). As he proceeds to bring Gertrude to remorse, he violates
the second one ("Leave her to heaven"). While at first he dismisses the
death of the intruding Polonius with contempt and concentrates upon
holding a mirror up to his mother's sinful nature, he later recognizes the
full import of his deed:
For this same lord,
I do repent; but heaven hath pleas'd it so
To punish me with this, and this with me,
That I must be their scourge and minister. (172-175)

Polonius' death, in other words, is Hamlet's punishment for his sinful

transgression. If up to now he has resisted the role assigned to him, he
here recognizes that he must be both scourge and minister. It is a dread
ful task; but ironically Polonius' death begins Hamlet's acceptance. Had
he killed Claudius while he was praying, all might have been well. Or
had he proceeded against his uncle as he does in this scene against his
mother, all might have been well.23 But either course of action, partic
ularly the second, would require the action of a saint. And whatever Ham
let is, he is not a saint.
The Closet Scene provides the best opportunity for those favoring a
Freudian interpretation of the play to emphasize Hamlet's oedipal feel
ings. His identification with Lucianus in the Play Scene, as Fergusson has
ESSENTIAL HAMLET 93
shown (p. 135), places Hamlet at least for the moment in the position of
Oedipus, the murderer of his father. But the point is easily exaggerated
(as in both the Olivier and Richardson films) and certainly is not the main
cause of tension in the play. Furthermore, Gertrude's closet is not her
bedchamber, and the large bed we have got used to seeing in it does
not belong there (see OED). The dialogue between mother and son is
passionate enough, and the danger that Hamlet earlier tried to guard
himself against ("let not ever/The soul of Nero enter this firm bosom,"
III. ii. 393-394) threatens to overwhelm him as he berates Gertrude for
her sins. Only the intervention of the Ghost stops Hamlet from being
carried away. That seems to be its major justification for appearing (here
for the last time), understood in dramatic terms. The explicit justification?
to whet Hamlet's "almost blunted purpose" (111) ?raises questions, even
though this is just how Hamlet himself interprets the visitation (106
108). But Hamlet hardly seems like someone "laps'd in time and passion,"
surely not since the middle of Act II, despite the fact that the Ghost's
"dread command" has not yet been carried out. Moreover, if the Ghost's
appearance is to whet Hamlet's purpose, how can it be said to succeed?
What effective action does Hamlet take immediately afterwards or be
fore his departure for England in IV. iv? Once more, explicit statement
and observable action, motive and deed, are at odds with each other.

After the Ghost leaves, Hamlet begins to calm down, and a long,
fugue-like dialogue resumes. The Folio cuts some seventeen lines (161
165, 167-170, 180, 202-210, besides 71-76, 78-81 earlier) but preserves
the fading, alternating rhythm of Hamlet's mood. More drastic cutting
may be desirable in a modern production, but retaining the shifting moods
is the essential consideration, as Hamlet, ends this climactic episode and
lugs Polonius's guts into the "neighbor room."

The three scenes (IV. i-iii.) continue

next the aftermath of the Closet
Scene and
the unwinding of Hamlet's spent energy in harmless if now
openly hostile sallies of wit against Claudius as well as his former school
mates. Although these scenes may be (and often are) condensed, we must
not in the process of compression lose sight of the way Claudius rapidly
hardens himself against repentance (III. iii.) and to further crime?the
death of Hamlet (IV. iii. 65). His mistaken, ironic notion that Hamlet
is his disease (IV. i. 21, IV. iii. 9, 66) is an important part of that syn
drome, which is further developed in IV. v and vii.

IV

The long second movement of the play comes to a close in IV. iv, as
Hamlet embarks for England. Many productions follow the Folio and omit
 94 COLLEGE LITERATURE
most, if not all, of the scene, which contains the last of the major solilo
quies: "How all occasions do inform against me." Except for the passages
in Act V where Hamlet confides in Horatio, this is the last opportunity
Shakespeare gives us to see into Hamlet's heart and mind. But the scene
has still greater reason for not being cut. Hamlet and Fortinbras, who
appears for the first time briefly on stage, are here directly and visibly
contrasted, moving in opposite directions in both a concrete physical sense
as well as an abstract psychological sense. Recognition of this fact is what
stirs Hamlet's contemplations, as it should ours. Fortinbras' essential
function is made clearest right here in the scene which justifies in every
way his reappearance at the end. As Hamlet's foil, he shows what the
Prince now takes to be the model of greatness properly motivated by
an honor informed by reason (53-56). But that enterprise is viewed by
the Captain and even Hamlet as in another way absurd, the "imposthume
of much wealth and peace" (27), an enormous undertaking "for an egg
shell" (53), inspired by "a fantasy and trick of fame" (61). Our sympathies
are simultaneously aroused and repulsed both by the spectacle of twenty
thousand men going to their graves like beds, and by the tone and tenor
of Hamlet's meditations, where "godlike reason" is also (and almost at
once) "some craven scruple/Of thinking too precisely on th' event" (38,
40-41). Moreover, Hamlet is patently unfair to himself?he has not "let
all sleep" by any means?although there is some point to his sense of
shame before the example of the more resolute and (we should observe)
more balanced Fortinbras.

During the next three scenes and for fifty-odd lines of V. i., Hamlet
is In the interim, we witness madness, Laertes' re
offstage. Ophelia's
bellion, new plots. We
and Claudius' also hear of Hamlet's encounter
with the pirate ship and of Ophelia's death. Ophelia and Laertes in their
different ways demonstrate the disintegration of Claudius' Denmark
which, with Hamlet gone, appears to accelerate. Hamlet's absence, how
ever, functions chiefly to prepare for a change in his attitude and out
look upon his return. In his absence, Laertes acts as another foil, a head
strong avenger willing to risk everything to be satisfied: "To hell, allegiance!
vows, to the blackest devill/Conscience and grace, to the profoundest
pit!/I dare.damnation" (IV. v. 132-134). Hence, in the space of a few
scenes we see Hamlet execute mistaken vengeance Polonius; a
against
"delicate and tender" prince, earlier reasoned out of an initial wild course,
lead an army into battle; and a third young nobleman, "in a riotous head"
(IV. v. 102), threaten to overturn the state and kill the king in revenge
against his father's death. The parallels and contrasts again bear out the
conflicting, contradictory pattern of the action, caught up and accentuated
now in a swirling movement of undisguised madness, open rebellion, and
new treachery?all leading to death.
ESSENTIAL HAMLET 95

Ophelia's derangement is another foil to Hamlet and, like Laertes,

it stirs discontent among the Danes (IV. v. 7-20). Claudius is wrong in
supposing that "it springs/All from her father's death" (75-76), for we have
already witnessed the excessive strains put on her emotional stability from
I. iii to III. ii. The motif of betrayed love and untimely death, which her
madness expresses in songs and sayings, derives as much from the diseased
condition of Claudius' Denmark as it does from the immediate cause of her
father's murder at the hands of her beloved. It is an unconscious irony,
therefore, that Claudius should refer to the poison of her deep grief (75).
Gertrude's report of her death (IV. vii. 163-183), sometimes irrelevantly
criticized as unrealistic, presents a still greater irony, coming as it does
right after Claudius and Laertes have settled their plans to kill Hamlet.
Like Polonius' death to Hamlet, it comes as both retribution and warning to
the young man?a warning that, unlike Hamlet, he does not perceive and
certainly does not act
upon.26

The reappearance of Hamlet passing through the graveyard of the

church (V. i) is of course more than a means to bring him and Laertes
into open conflict over Ophelia's death. Thematically, it shows Hamlet
under the aspect of mortality which, as we soon learn, he is prepared
now to accept for himself and for others. That is the point of his dialogue
with the First Gravedigger and his speech to Yorick's skull. Structurally,
everything up to the entrance of Ophelia's funeral cortege serves to re
lax tensions generated by the close of Act IV (Laertes' revenge, Hamlet's
suddenly announced return) and permit a fresh buildup to the concluding
conflict in the Duel Scene. But not all of this dialogue is essential, de
spite the authority of both Q2 and F (which restores 34-37). The scene
can get along without the Second Gravedigger, as it usually does, since
the question of Ophelia's suicide is later debated by Laertes and the priest,
and the joking and "equivocation" are carried on as well by Hamlet and
the First Gravedigger.

Probably the dialogue that identifies Hamlet's age (142-162) ought

also to be cut. Hamlet has aged greatly since the beginning of the play,
as the information that he is now thirty is doubtless intended to suggest;
but the resultant confusion as to his initial age as a student home from
Wittenberg (I. iii. 113) and the overall time-span of the action seems in
sufficiently, offset by a point that is clearly enough established by Hamlet's
new tone and attitude. No literal accounting in years seems required.
In the struggle with Laertes over Ophelia, Hamlet's passionate nature
reasserts itself? a throwback to his old disposition which, if nothing else,
makes for continuous identity within change and reflects the earlier rhythm
of the play. But Hamlet's air of resignation, his evident of
acceptance
his role as scourge and minister, and his stated conviction that "There's
 96 COLLEGE LITERATURE
a divinity that shapes our ends" (V.ii.10), all indicate a basic develop
ment or change in his character and outlook since his "rescue" by the
pirates and his return to Denmark. He can even speak lightly of sending
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to their deaths, "no shriving time allow'd"
(V.ii.47), apparently convinced that in so doing he was operating as the
instrument of Providence, although his alacrity in hustling them off to
their eternal destruction sounds oddly unchristian.

As Hamlet relates his adventure at sea to Horatio, Osric enters with

the invitation to a duel (V.ii.81). Hamlet teases this waterfly,29 another
example of the decadence of Claudius' court, but gone is the seeming
madness of his teasing of Polonius in Acts II and III. Except for his out
burst to Laertes, which he sincerely and publicly regrets (V.ii.75-80, 226
244), Hamlet throughout these last two scenes exercises remarkable self
control. What lingering doubt he may have about his mission peeps through
in the rhetorical question following his catalogue of Claudius' offenses;
". . . is it not perfect conscience/To quit him with this arm?" (V.ii.67-68).
Nevertheless, he remains steadfast in his purpose, although it should
be carefully noted that he has formulated no specific plan of action against
the King. He needs none. As the sea voyage has shown, heaven will pro
vide the means for revenge (and the villain himself cooperates in the
enterprise!). The moment will come at the proper time: "the readiness
is all" (222). Of this much Hamlet is sure. Earlier, he had acted precipit
ant ly, on impulse, at the wrong time, in the wrong place, killing the wrong
man. Now, he may "defy augury" (219), for he will not act quite that way
30
again.

In the Duel Scene everything at last comes together. The poisoner

once more, Claudius sees his plan this time go awry, and he kills the
wrong victim, Gertrude, the person who was his chief incentive for the
original crime (see IV.vii.11-16). Laertes, caught in his own springe, finds
his conscience too strong after all (cf. line 296) and confesses the plot
to Hamlet who, dying, now finds "will, and strength, and means" and
new cause to do the deed so long delayed. Blood and judgment finally
co-meddle in a last desperate act. In an uncharacteristic show of feeling,
Horatio tries to drink off the poisoned cup, but Hamlet stops him; on
the plea of their friendship he asks Horatio to absent himself awhile from
what is no longer "dread" (III.i.77) but "felicity." His story must be told
aright to the yet unknowing world, especially to the "unsatisfied" (340).
A warlike noise is then heard, and after receiving Hamlet's "dying voice"
in the election that will make him King of Denmark, Fortinbras enters.

Provision is immediately taken to prevent further mischance. As the

sole survivor of the three young men that received Claudius' attention
ESSENTIAL HAMLET 97

in I.ii, Fortinbras also emerges as the only one of the three to have early
and successfully mingles reason and passion. In this sense, he has earned
Hamlet's vote and claims the vantage of his "rights" not merely by de
fault. The royal house of Denmark is destroyed and has taken with it the
house of Polonius, bearing out Rosencrantz's words:

The cess of majesty

Dies not alone, but like a gulf doth draw
What's near it with it. (III.iii.15-17)

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern also are no more, as the English ambassa

dor informs the court (371). Educated by his previous experience, by
the dismal sight before him, and by the story Horatio is to tell, Fortinbras
stands out as the remaining hope for the creation of a new and just order
in Denmark. Here, but not before this, Shakespeare's play ends.

The shape of Hamlet, its dramatic form, as we have seen, may lend
itself to some alteration or shortening for purposes of staging, but in the
process of adaptation its essential, complex, even movements
contradictory
must be preserved. The play is not reducible to a simple formula, not
as Shakespeare left it in Q2 or F. Even the ending is perhaps not as sat
isfying as Imay have suggested in the paragraphs above. Were the Ghost
to reappear and view the final havoc for a moment, as an perceptive fresh
man once put it to me, many of the questions and contradictions that
persist implicitly in the outcome of its embassade would be clearer. But
we should then be no closer to establishing whether it was a "spirit of
health, or a goblin damn'd" (I.iv.40) than we were in the beginning, just
as many other would For this reason, the
questions remain?questions.
play's inner structure must be maintained, and the conflicts and con
tradictions allowed to reverberate in the mind. The heart of Hamlets
mystery is not easily plucked out, nor was it meant to be, despite the
rationalizing tendencies of modern criticism or performances.

For this reason, the play's structure must inner

be maintained, and
the conflicts and contradictions allowed to reverberate in the mind. The
heart of Hamlet's mystery is not so easily plucked out, nor was it meant
to be, despite the rationalizing tendencies of modern criticism or per
formances. Close attention to the play's basic sequence of events, its
structural as well as thematic patterns, will check these tendencies with
out necessarily fostering the opposite ones toward pedantry or "museum
Shakespeare." Indeed, careful scrutiny of both the original texts and many
subsequent acting versions should induce a healthy awareness of Hamlet
 98 COLLEGE LITERATURE
as living theater?with all its appeal to the imagination essentially intact.
Drawn into the play's inner movements and rhythms, and into the com
plex and even unsolvable conflicts it develops, we may find ourselves
torn by doubts about appearance and reality, the value of thought, the
efficacy of human action, and finally the nature and function of art. Re
sisting the urge to resolve these doubts cleverly, or to reduce existential
disarray to aesthetically satisfying coherencies, must test the measure of
our intellectual courage. For that, too, is the measure of Hamlet.

ENDNOTES
1 See, e.g. Richard Levin, "Some Second Thoughts on Central Themes," Modern Language
Review, 67 (1972), 1-10, and Norman Rabkin, "Meaning and Shakespeare," in Shakes
peare 1971: Proceedings the World
of Shakespeare Congress, ed. Clifford Leech and

J.M.R. Margeson (Toronto:

University of Toronto Press, 1972), pp. 89-106.
2 "On the Value of Hamlet," in Reinterpretations of Elizabethan Drama, ed. N. Rabkin
(New York: Columbia U. P., 1969), pp. 139-147.
3 The Mirror Up to Nature: The Technique of Shakespeare's Tragedies (San Marino:
The Huntington Library, 1965), pp. 185 ff.
4 "Shakespeare's Texts and Modern Productions," in Reinterpretations of Elizabethan
Drama, p. 89.

5 Cf. Michael Goldman, Shakespeare and the Energies of Drama (Princeton: Princeton
Princeton U.P., 1972), p. 76: "Interpretation is one of the necessary questions of Ham
let; to an important extent it is something the play is 'about.' Like its chief character,
Hamlet draws our attention to varieties of action and to the questions of interpretation
of Hamlet in the theater is primarily an attempt to follow
they raise. Our experience
an action so various, intricate, and proliferating that it cries out for interpretation at

every turn. The 'problems' of the play point, finally, to the subtle means it employs for

manipulating one of our most fundamental theatrical appetites: the desire for action
that makes sense, especially for action that seems complete and resolved."
6 "Hamlet in the Theatre," in Hamlet, Stratford-upon-Avon Studies 5, ed. J. R. Brown
and Russell Harris (London: Edward Arnold, 1963), p. 29.
7 E.g., Jonathan Miller's stage version by the Oxford-Cambridge Players in 1970-71. The
Russian language film by Grigori Kozinstev (1964) substitutes other matter for Shake

speare's opening scene.

8 The Middle in The Age A Guide to English
"Shakespeare: Plays," of Shakespeare:
Literature, Vol. II, ed. Boris Ford (Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1955), p. 213.
9 I.ii.12. All quotations are from The Riverside Shakespeare, ed. G. B. Evans et al (Boston:

Houghton-Mifflin, 1974).
10 In the marriage service, "they two [man and wife] shall be one flesh" was taken literally;
therefore a sister-in-law was a sister. See IV.iii.49-52.
11 referred to by Hamlet very late in the play, V.ii.65. Cf. J. Dover Wilson,
Specifically
What Happens in Hamlet, 3rd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge U.P., 1951; rpt. 1961),
pp. 26-38.
12 Lines 17-38 are missing in both F and Ql. See W. W. Greg, The Shakespeare First

Folio Note G. Greg that the cut was

(Oxford: ClarendonPress, 1955), p. 332, suspects
made the play was produced.
before
13 See Lily B. Cambell, "Theories of Revenge in Renaissance England," MP, 28 (1931),

281-296; Fredson Bowers, Elizabethan Revenge Tragedy, 1587-1642 (Princeton: Prince

ton U. P., 1940), pp. 12-61; Eleanor Prosser, Hamlet and Revenge, 2nd ed. (Stanford:
Stanford U. P., 1971), pp. 3-73; and cf. Booth, pp. 152-154.
ESSENTIAL HAMLET 99
14 Cf. Goldman, p. 82: "Reason and action are notopposed in Hamlet, but for most of
the play they fail to coalesce as either we or the characters would like them to. With
out intelligible meaning, action is unsatisfying or disturbing, a fact exploited from the
opening scene."
15 Note Kenneth Muir's in Shakespeare:
rationalization Hamlet (Great Neck, N.Y.: Bar
ron's Educational Series, 1963), p. 57: "Realizing that his possession of Claudius's guilty
secret makes it impossible for him to behave normally, he puts on an antic disposition. . ."
16 Cf. Norman Rabkin, Shakespeare and the Common Understanding (New York: The
Free Press, 1967), p. 7: "Because the play presents a universe in which we must decide
at every moment which way to choose, yet which tells us simultaneously that no choice
is possible, we are frequently surprised to discover that what seem like thoroughly plaus
ible and convincing statements of truth and value are undercut by the play taken as
a whole."
17 Prefaces to Shakespeare (Princeton-. Princeton U.P., 1946), I, 46. Cf. Francis Fergusson's
more detailed diagram according to Aristotelian notions of "analogous actions" in The
Idea of a Theater (Princeton: Princeton U.P., 1949: rpt. Anchor Books, 1953), pp. 114
128. References are to the reprint.
18 The tradition of cutting the entire Reynaldo business goes back at least to the Players
Quartos of 1676. See also G. Winchester Stone, "Garrick's Long Lost Alteration of Ham
let" PMLA, 49 (1934), 903, for a chart of all major cuts in eighteenth century pro
ductions.
19 An Old Vic production in 1957-58, directed by Michael Benthall with John Neville
as Hamlet, also showed this (see Kenneth Tynan, "New Vies for Old," The New Yorker,
27 Dec. 1958, pp. 54-55.) In his film Richardson goes further than Ql and transposes
the Prayer Scene to a later place in Act IV.
20 Both passages may have stood in the original ms. but were deleted for political reasons,
F later restoring them. See J. Dover Wilson, The Manuscript of Shakespeare's "Hamlet"
and the Problems of Its Transmission (Cambridge: Cambridge U.P., 1934), I, 96-98,
and cf. Greg, p. 312.
21 liHamlet: A Christian SP, 59 (1962),
Tragedy," 129-133.
22 See Fredson Bowers, as Scourge
"Hamlet and Minister," PMLA, 70 (1955), 744 ff.
23 See J. Halio, "Hamlet's Alternatives," TSLL, 8 (1966), 177-186.
24 At first Hamlet believes that she is an accomplice in her husband's murder, but her
astonishment at the accusation seems to show him that she is not. See Wilson, What
Happens in Hamlet, pp. 248, 251-253.
25 According to Wilson (ibid., pp. 253-255), Gertrude cannot see the Ghost because of
her guiltiness in adultery.
26 F cuts IV.viiby 28 lines (68-81, 100-102, 114-123) and further shortening is possible,
through Claudius' careful conning of Laertes is important. Cf. Granville-Barker, pp.
129-133.
27 But see Granville-Barker, pp. 134-135.
28 The age reference inQ2 and F ismade awkwardly? twenty lines after Hamlet's question.
Ql mentions only that it is twelve years since Yorick was buried and identifies that
date, not Hamlet's birth, with Old Hamlet's victory over Old Fortinbras. This would
make Hamlet a teenager, as we rightly perceive him initially. But cf. J. Dover Wilson,
ed., New Cambridge Shakespeare, Hamlet, 2nd ed. (1936), pp. xlvii, 236-237.
29 F cuts 105-135, 155-156 from this dialogue as well as 195-208
138-143, (dialogue with
the Lord). None of this is essential, and more cuts are possible, e.g. 185-194. F restores
68-80, however, missing in Q2.
30 See Bertram Joseph, Conscience and the King (London: Chatto & Windus, 1953), pp.
138 ff., for a detailed explanation of this passage and its context. See also Maynard
Mack, "The World of Hamlet," Yale Review, 41 (1952), 520-523, for change in Ham
let in Act V.