Ricky Abarca
In William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, one finds Polonius chastising Ophelia, pointing out that “with a larger tether may [Hamlet] walk, than may be given you” (1.3.134-135). Polonius’s wisdom lies not in identifying the length of Hamlet’s tether, but rather that he’s tethered at all. As such, Hamlet’s revenge is delayed not as a result of his own hesitations, but because of his obligations to his audience as an Everyman. Arguably his most redeeming quality, Hamlet’s consciousness, proves more a curse, as it subjects him to the wills of his fellow actors, and moreover, the will of the world.
Hamlet’s delayed revenge is brought about by two components of his personality. The first component is his inclination for acting, for performing for others. It is important to recognize that this inclination begins as empathy. Harold Bloom suggests that Hamlet is a neglected child, and as such “the prince [finds] a father and mother in Yorick, the royal jester” (4-5). The nature of a jester, of course, is to provide comedic relief and entertainment, not unusually when melancholy is the mood of the room. Hamlet himself points out how critically important Yorick is to him: “He hath bore me on his back a thousand times / … / Here hung those lips that I kissed I know not how oft” (5.1.185-189). As Hamlet is raised by a jester, he is naturally in tune with the emotions of those around him and, perhaps more importantly, more inclined to do something about them.
Hamlet is further tossed into the world of acting as a consequence of his education. As Neil Rhodes points out, during Hamlet’s time at Wittenberg, students were exposed to drama, for there is a firm belief that the school play is essential in achieving eloquence (123). Despite this, the significance lies more in that classic literature is taught to be assimilated rather than merely imitated (123). Given this, acting becomes second nature to Hamlet, allowing him to don disguises with ease: “How strange or odd some’er I bear myself / To put an antic disposition on” (1.5.170; 172). However, it is this ease of transition that causes dissonance in Hamlet, as he begins to lose not only a sense of himself, but also responsibility for his actions. For example, when apologizing to Laertes, Hamlet states, “Was’t Hamlet wronged Laertes? Never Hamlet / If Hamlet from himself be ta’en away / And when he’s not himself does wrong Laertes, / Then Hamlet does it not; Hamlet denies it” (5.2.247-249). Here, Hamlet finds there are at least two versions of himself (one who has wronged Laertes and one who has not), and it is this separation of identities that feeds into the delaying of his revenge – he cannot come to terms with who he is committing revenge as.
In Hamlet, Shakespeare’s language places considerable emphasis on the idea of roles and a character’s ability to maintain them, primarily as achieved through Hamlet. To expand, it can be argued that the entire play is borne out of Hamlet’s frustrations with those around him acting out of character – namely his mother: “why, she would hang on him / Yet within a month… / Married my uncle, my father’s brother” (1.2.150; 152; 159-160), and his uncle: “a little more than kin and less than kind” (1.2.67). However, Hamlet is not alone in suggesting that people are acting uncharacteristically, as Claudius believes Hamlet’s grief is excessive: “How is it that the clouds still hang on you? […] But to persevere / In obstinate condolement is a course / Of impious stubbornness” (1.2.68; 96-97). It is this very emphasis of roles that causes Hamlet such distress for, as Alexander Legatt points out, “he is the center of scrutiny, everyone has a reading of him” (63). Throughout the course of the play, Hamlet finds himself clashing with the expectations of those around him, for as an actor he must play the roles of prince, son, lover, and revenger. Revenge is delayed because it is never the crux of the play, for Hamlet is a “play about playing, about acting out rather than revenging” (Bloom 11). And yet, the roles that the characters of the play expect Hamlet to perform pale in comparison to the role the audience may come to expect him to play, that of the Everyman.
Now that it has been established that Hamlet sees himself as an actor, the question naturally arises: what is Hamlet acting out? The answer lies in the second component of his personality. Hamlet is overtly conscious and therefore lends himself to becoming an Everyman for the audience. In his book Hamlet vs Lear, R. A. Foakes outlines the notion of Hamletism, which in short suggests that Hamlet is transformed by his many-sidedness such that each reader and play-goer may see themselves in Hamlet. “Above all, [one feels] the universal validity, the typicalness of Hamlet…As he thought or felt, [one] has also thought and felt” (13). Hamlet’s contemplation of his own situation instead becomes generalized into “everyman confronting how to act” (14). Furthermore, E. A. G. Honigmann contends that Shakespeare gives Hamlet a “priceless gift” in the form of the “common touch” (55), an essentially human quality that causes Hamlet to become constrained by his own kingdom. As Claudius acknowledges, “He’s loved of the distracted multitude” (4.3.4). Hamlet is prevented from carrying out his revenge, or perhaps even more simply prevented from acting, because he finds himself having to resolve each role thrust upon him by those in his audience.
However, simply having the audience thrust their lives unto Hamlet is not enough to affect him; as it stands they are still very much of two separate worlds. Despite this, one still observes the clear effect Hamlet’s burden has on him; thus the fourth wall must be broken. This is accomplished in two ways. As previously mentioned, Hamlet is conscious to the point that he recognizes himself as a character, in a play, upon a stage. The second way is through direct conversations with the audience. To prove the former, one need only look to the three of Hamlet’s confessions. The first, “O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I!” (2.2.279), suggests Hamlet’s realization that he is at the mercy of everyone around him, while “To be or not to be […] tis ‘nobler in the mind to suffer […] or to take arms against a sea of troubles” (3.1.65-66; 68) can be interpreted as his recognition of the inherent futility of his situation. Regarding Hamlet’s circumstances, Catherine Belsey contends that the central problem of the play is not Hamlet’s situation but rather his character (being susceptible to portrayal as an Everyman) (129). These tendencies of speculation are what repeatedly give Hamlet pretexts for inaction. However, Hamlet’s third confession proves to be the only one necessary to reaffirm his consciousness as an actor, for he openly states in a conversation with his father’s ghost: “Remember thee? / Ay, thou poor ghost, whiles memory holds a seat / in this distracted globe” (1.5.95-97). It is in this instance that Hamlet breaks the fourth wall explicitly, reminding the audience (of the Globe Theater) that he is (perhaps unfortunately) just one of them in the grand scheme of things (Bloom 10).
In addition to seeing himself as an actor in the play, Hamlet must also communicate with the audience, and he accomplishes this through several soliloquies and asides. Rhodes notes that there are two distinct kinds of soliloquies. The first is “more of a self-absorbed speech,” such as that of Atreus in Seneca’s Thyestes; the second, the kind of which Hamlet is prone to, is a “highly theatrical speech in which a character almost steps out of [their selves] to address the audience” (127). Scholars often remark on the radical difference of Hamlet’s soliloquies, as he seems to change in maturity and philosophy with each subsequent speech. The nature of these changes lies in Hamletism, as he is a reflection of modern consciousness. According to Foakes, Hamlet’s contemplations make him “well-intentioned, but ineffectual, full of talk, but unable to achieve anything” (20). It is clear that Hamlet often resents this, as he expresses to Guildenstern, “you would play upon me, you would seem to know my stops, you would pluck out the heart of my mystery” (3.2.355). Despite this, the position and function of the audience is clear, as the nature of the play proliferates the idea of spying; Polonius spies on Laertes, Claudius on Hamlet, and so on. From the audience’s vantage point, Hamlet judges the characters, and the audience judges Hamlet’s judgement, causing him to spend much of his time observing, weighing, and thinking, as opposed to being driven to action by action (Honigmann 56).
Many scholars have offered a number of explanations for Hamlet’s inability to bring about his father’s swift revenge. For example, Michael Goldman propositions that Hamlet is incapable of the act due to the potential involvement of Gertrude in his father’s murder (213). Ultimately these explanations suffer from a narrow viewpoint, as they fail to consider the relationship Hamlet shares with the audience. At each point in which the young prince is able to act, he finds himself interrupted by the audience in the form of his own thoughts. As Bloom proposes, Hamlet is our collective consciousness (13); while things “seem” one way or another, he “hath that within which passeth show / these but the trappings and the suits of woe” (1.2.85). As such, Hamlet remains constrained until he comes to terms with the nature of this relationship: “When our deep plots do pall; and that should learn us / There’s a divinity that shapes our ends” (5.2.9-10). Hamlet is impeded when there is a presumption of control, a “defiance of augury,” and only upon removal of that presumption is he allowed to move forward.
Thus, we come full circle to Hamlet’s tether. In his pursuit of revenge for his murdered father, Hamlet’s specific purpose is distorted into the “greater purpose of life” (Bloom 17). In turn, Hamlet himself is transformed from a man into an idea, which arguably allows him to transcend the trappings of the world Shakespeare lays out for him. As Samuel Coleridge famously noted, everyone may say “I have a smack of Hamlet in me” (140).
Works Cited
Belsey, C. “The Case of Hamlet’s Conscience.” Studies in Philology, vol. 76, no. 2, 2006, pp. 127-148. JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/4174001.
Bloom, Harold. Hamlet: Poem Unlimited, Riverhead Books, 2003.
Coleridge, Samuel. Coleridge’s Writings on Shakespeare, Capricorn, 1959.
Foakes, R. A. Hamlet vs. Lear, Cambridge UP, 1993.
Goldman, Michael. Acting and Action in Shakespearean Tragedy, Princeton UP, 1985.
Honigmann, E. A. G. Shakespeare: Seven Tragedies, Macmillan, 1980.
Leggatt, Alexander. Shakespeare’s Tragedies: Violation and Identity, Cambridge UP, 2005.
Miola, Robert S., ed. Hamlet, by William Shakespeare. Norton, 2011.
Rhodes, Neil. “Hamlet and Humanism.” Early Modern English Drama: A Critical Companion, Oxford UP, 2006, pp. 120-29.