Oh Hamlet, Hamlet. Sometimes you do make me want to despair, you know. Let's just forget the three months you've already wasted in the fulfillment of your all-important commission (and let me not even think about the number of other opportunities you must have let pass during that time). Let me even grant you that your sudden flight of doubt before the "play within the play" was not just a bad case of cold feet, and that you actually did have reason to feel that you needed more conclusive evidence – with all that's hanging in the balance (Claudius's life, the salvation of your own soul, and your country's fate), I can't really blame you for having wanted to make extra sure. Fine. But now, after the end of the "play within the play," can you really have any lingering doubt about Claudius's guilt and the certain damnation of his soul? And don't you dare tell me that you don't buy into that old-testamentary notion of "an eye for an eye;" that you're at heart a 20th century man whose idea of justice couldn't be further from such severe concepts; that you'd rather have Claudius put to public trial, and if found guilty beyond reasonable doubt, sentenced to a penalty determined pursuant to such criteria as the nature and gravity of his offence (uh, yes, like regicide, fratricide, incest, and turning your country into hell on earth), the offender's motives (greed, power, and lust, to name but a few), his general character (in the man's own words, "bosom black as death") and his previous criminal record (no specifics are known, but the general outlook is dismal), the need to prevent a repetition of his crime (or its ongoing commission, like that unholy marriage for example), a potential guilty plea (alright, scratch that), his general social circumstances (he's the King), and the victim's interests (as in, "If thou didst ever thy dear father love ... revenge his foul and most unnatural murther"). And don't you also dare tell me that you don't believe in the death penalty as a matter of principle, because you hold it to be cruel and unusual punishment. Let's just leave all that aside and focus on this very moment, alright? And I just gotta ask you ...
What the hell do you think you're doing??
There he is, alone, unarmed, and not even noticing your presence. Nobody else is even near his room. You have all the advantages on your side. You know that killing him is the only way to save your country, seek retribution for your father's murder, and end his marriage to your mother. And yet, on the spur of the moment, despite everything you know – despite everything you and Horatio have witnessed during the "play within the play" – you spare him because that little voice whispering into your ear suddenly tells you he might go to Heaven if you kill him now?! Excuse me??
Now might I do it pat, now he is praying;
And now I'll do't.
And that although you're starting off so nicely. See, this is the moment where you have me going, "whoowhoowhoo," sort of like Eliza Doolittle at Ascot, or Julia Roberts during that polo match in "Pretty Woman." (And I'll even twirl a scarf, a handkerchief, a little purse, or whatever else is handy, if that's what it takes to spur you on.) I watch you pull out your dagger and start into his room ...
And so he goes to heaven,
And so am I reveng'd. That would be scann'd.
A villain kills my father; and for that,
I, his sole son, do this same villain send
To heaven.
... and then, out of the blue – stop action, stop camera, stop recording. Because you seriously believe this guy still has any hope of redemption in him? Just because he looks like he's praying? Who do you think you're kidding here, huh?
Why, this is hire and salary, not revenge!
Oh, is it. And I think this is ... but nay, let me stop right here; my upbringing forbids me to use that word in public.
He took my father grossly, full of bread,
With all his crimes broad blown, as flush as May;
And how his audit stands, who knows save heaven?
But in our circumstance and course of thought,
'Tis heavy with him;
Exactly my point. He didn't give your father so much as a shot at redemption; and it doesn't even require recourse to the surrealistic imagery of Hieronymus Bosch to understand why that alone, in your world, is probably the most aggravating circumstance imaginable to crimes already occupying the top three or four spots on the list of things to do if you want to make absolutely sure you're damning your soul for good, without any hope of salvation whatsoever. And yet you hesitate? You, the only person who could conceivably do anything to set right this time so profoundly out of joint? You, who vowed that the thought of revenge would henceforth be the only thing to occupy the book and volume of [your] brain, unmix'd with baser matter? Oh Hamlet. Really ...
and am I then reveng'd,
To take him in the purging of his soul,
When he is fit and seasoned for his passage?
Phoey. The only thing this guy is fit and seasoned for is to be cast into that "into the lake of fire and brimstone" of the Book of Revelation, or to be "hurled headlong flaming down ... to bottomless perdition," as John Milton no less colourfully phrases it in "Paradise Lost." "Purging of his soul"? Him?? Please ...
No.
Yes!!!
Up, sword, and know thou a more horrid hent.
When he is drunk asleep; or in his rage;
Or in th' incestuous pleasure of his bed;
At gaming, swearing, or about some act
That has no relish of salvation in't –
Then trip him, that his heels may kick at heaven,
And that his soul may be as damn'd and black
As hell, whereto it goes.
So "bosom black as death" doesn't qualify as another way to describe a "damn'd and black" soul?! And I'll even concede you didn't actually hear him say that. But did you seriously have to?
My mother stays.
This physic but prolongs thy sickly days.
And for how long exactly are you planning to prolong his "sickly days"? Oh Hamlet, Hamlet ...
Copyright 2002 – 2009: Ulrike Böhm, all rights reserved.
