Hamlet Radio Response - This Shakespearean Life

A little less than ten years ago, the radio program This American Life did an episode about a performance of Hamlet in a prison. Not a production in which the script was based in a prison, but one in which the actors were in prison. This brings out some interesting overtones in the play, of tension and hierarchies and criminality. Yet even more than that, it shows the value of a different perspective of this time-honored play. Sure, the play brings literacy and productivity and self-worth, and these traits are valuable for these actors –but even more valuable is what the actors bring to the play, with their life experience of anger, vengeance, cowardice and remorse. Their analyses of the story are strikingly different from those of, say, Freud and Goethe, and more useful for it. The disparity is deeper than one between, say, an American and a British production, or an ancient and a modern one. These actors understand Hamlet in a very different way than the actors of the Royal Shakespeare Company would. When students can learn from both, their understanding of the play is broadened – which is really all their teacher can ask for.

So, I think our class should take a field trip to a prison! No, not really. Still, we should keep our own perspective in mind when reading, as this radio program reminds us. This is far from a new idea, but it is one worth repeating. We should make every effort to examine literature from different perspectives, in order to learn more from what we study.

Hamlet Essay Response #3 - The Intense Feeling

 As a teenager, it generally annoys me when people make sweeping generalizations about teenagers, which hardly seems strange. It doesn't help, either, that usually such stereotypes are negative ones, regarding laziness, or rebellion, or some other such nonsense. Reading about Hamlet, however, has prompted a discovery of one writer who makes very interesting observations about teenagers: T. S. Eliot.

I know, I know, this was supposed to be about Shakespeare, but I'm getting to that part in a bit. In an essay titled Hamlet, and published in 1919, Eliot describes an "intense feeling, ecstatic or terrible, without an object or exceeding its object, [which] is something which every person of sensibility has known" and "often occurs in adolescence". The intense feeling! Those intense excessive feelings! Have you not felt them? Have you not known them, in all their intensity? Hopefully they have not driven you partway to madness, to the fate of Hamlet. Hopefully you have dealt with them, one way or another -- and in doing so, classified yourself as "ordinary" or as an "artist" because, as Eliot writes, they present a simple dichotomy. "The ordinary person puts these feelings to sleep, or trims down his feelings to fit the business world; the artist keeps them alive by his ability to intensify the world to his emotions". Eliot does not rank one above the other, though as a writer he hardly has to; all the world knows the writer's choice, and surely he would not have chosen the inferior path? In Eliot's mind, then, the artist is superior -- ha! As if ranking were ever so simple as one choice cleanly above the other.

There is a third choice, though, in this dichotomy of emotions, and that is quite simple: to still be choosing. Of course, by living as a metaphorical (or literal, who knows?) adolescent, one runs the risk of ending up like Hamlet, seeking emotional relief through madness just to express that intense feeling. Though, as Eliot points out, Hamlet is not an adolescent, and "he has not that explanation and excuse" though I'm not sure I agree that only people between certain ages have license to act with intensity. Hamlet, instead, is an adult who was unable to choose a path, and yet cannot remain undecided, on consequence of possible madness and conflict and yes, death. Yikes. Maybe he should have chosen, but which would he have picked? Ignore his desire and supernatural imperative for revenge, or commit the murder at his first opportunity, with all his righteous rage, and ignore the consequences? Would either option really be that much more sane?
Which is better?
Well?
Come on, Hamlet, what do you want to be when you grow up?
And don't say happy, I've learned people don't accept that one.

Hamlet Essay Response #2 - This is Madness. This is Hamlet.

In our class discussions of Hamlet, a common theme is that of seeming versus being, that is, how the characters in Hamlet often have appearances or apparent actions that differ from their supposed intent. Of course, with so much of the play as solely dialogue, opinions are based less on inferences than they are in fact, but we have still been able to see a clear disconnect between Hamlet's thoughts and actions.

George Santayana, writing about Hamlet in 1908, also addressed this inner conflict in Hamlet's character, arguing that it is a sign of irrationality but not madness. In Santayana's words, Hamlet "acts without reflection, as he reflects without acting" which is "unreason... not madness". This conclusion does not seem unreasonable to me -- though in a perfect world thought and action would always go hand in hand, their separation is not indicative of insanity, but a rather common folly. Hamlet's perpetual inability to both think and act, however, also conveys his inner turmoil. His inner conflict is the subject of many of the critical essays I have read, and arguably the entire play, and Santayana's analysis of it is one of the more reasonable. Hamlet's intellect and mind are sound and fairly healthy; the fault is only with his will, with "a passionate weakness and indirection in his will" born of a lack of direction and hope. There can be no doubt that Hamlet lacks direction, as the nearly the entire play is just anticipation of his uncle's murder, and it's Shakespeare's longest play. He dedicates entire monologues to plans to uncover his uncle's guilt, to murder him, and the right way to do so, further demonstrating his clouded will. When he actually does commit the murder, however, he does so with barely any thought, knowing that he is about to die himself and so forced into immediate action.

Though Hamlet knows the task he has been set, and has a desire to accomplish it, his will and his thoughts are so disconnected that he has a great difficulty completing his uncle's murder. He seems determined to kill Claudius, yet inside he is deeply reluctant to do so -- and above even his outward murderous intent, he plays a harmless crazy for the royals. The layers of Hamlet's character build up around his inner conflict, his affected madness covering for the thoughts of his clear mind, which in turn hide his weak will. He seems to be many things, while analysts inside the play and out try to uncover who he truly is.

Hamlet Essay Response #1 - Did Freud Get it Right?

In his 1900 book The Interpretation of Dreams, Sigmund Freud analyzes Hamlet, but focuses his analysis not on Hamlet or his father, or even Shakespeare himself; instead, Freud studies Hamlet's relationship with his late father and his surrogate one. This relationship is hugely significant to the action of the play, as Hamlet's conflict with Claudius is the basis for the majority of death in the play. Hamlet first makes an attempt to murder his step-father, but is thwarted by himself. According to Freud, Hamlet initially cannot take revenge on Claudius because he is "the man who did away with his father and took that father's place with his mother, the man who shows him the repressed wishes of his own childhood realized." Even when commanded to act by the ghost of his own father, Hamlet is too committed to Claudius as his new father to carry out his planned murder– if we are to believe Freud.

In truth, though, Hamlet has given readers ample evidence of his hatred for Claudius, and his murder of the late king Hamlet, and his marriage to Gertrude. Everything that Freud holds up as evidence of Hamlet's attachment to Claudius, Hamlet has repeatedly denounced as the very reasons for his determination to ruin Claudius! Hamlet's devotion to his father is far from misplaced, as his reaction to his father's ghost – with love, obedience, and rapt attention – shows his devotion clearly. What is more, Hamlet remembers everything his father's ghost told him, including his suffering for lack of last rites, and has taken this so much to heart that he remembers it even as he prepares to end Claudius' life, and stops. His self-restraint is caused only out of love for his father, and out of determination for his revenge to be whole, as his father's ghost wished it to be. When he does get his opportunity for revenge, he shows that he is committed fully to his task, killing Claudius once with a lethal wound and twice again with poison. As questionable as his actions, and his sanity, may be, no one could doubt his motives. No one could doubt his loyalty to his true father – no one, it seems, except Freud.

Freud imagines himself the unimaginably smart, all-seeing psychologist of Hamlet, admitting that anything related to his interpretation of Hamlet's character would have "remain[ed] unconscious in Hamlet's mind" and therefore has no proof or any definitive basis in Shakespeare's actual work – essentially admitting that his argument is merely his own fancy, regardless of Shakespeare's intent. He does imagine Shakespeare's intent, as well, noting that the play was written shortly after the author's own father died, and that Shakespeare named an infant son of his Hamnet, which is undeniably similar to the name of the play and its eponymous hero. Still, he goes no farther than to comment on Shakespeare's likely "bereavement" at his father's death; Freud only implies that Shakespeare had a misplaced affection for his father, and confusion as to which father-figure to obey, never attempting to propose such a reality outright. Indeed, such a suggestion is equally preposterous when applied to the author as it is to the character. Though Freud may have concocted a brilliant interpretation, there is too much evidence opposing him for it to be easily accepted.