Hamlet – litograph
Left behind alone at the end of the long opening audience, our Prince can finally speak his mind. (Master Kosintzev makes Hamlet move through the crowd of courtiers while we hear the words of the soliloquy as a voice-over – about as efficient a way to illustrate his isolation as showing him alone in his room, except that I think that Hamlet would want to be alone with his thoughts after his exchange with Gertrude and Claudius about sons, fathers, and proper mourning duties.) It is this first soliloquy of his that is in no small part responsible for three frequent interpretative approaches to the play: first, for Hamlet as a reluctant suicide more than a reluctant avenger, secondly, for the idea of a Freudian relationship between him and Gertrude, and thirdly, for the precise grounds and the degree of the moral reprehensability of Gertrude's conduct. I fundamentally disagree with the first two of these ideas and at least in part with the third – so let's look at what I think the Prince is really telling us, and what to make of all his grievances.
O that this too too solid flesh would melt,
Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew!
Sure, it starts gloomily enough. And if our Hamlet had his way, Nature would even take care of the matter all by herself – no human action involved, just a natural process ... but, note, not one of decay; rather, a transformation – a purifying renewal, highlighted by not one but two symbolisms embodying both the purifying nature of water and water as a harbinger of change and a new beginning: "thaw" (as in: "spring time") and "dew" (as in: "new day"). Also the first of the soliloquy's several allusions to Greek mythology, where gods and demigods, in particular, did not die but rather were transformed into a natural phenomenon: a spring, a star, a tree or a flower, an animal, etc. – Ovid wrote a whole book compiling nothing but these "Metamorphoses," which was, in fact, a favourite source of Shakespeare's.
Or that the Everlasting had not fix'd
His canon 'gainst self-slaughter! O God! God!
How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable
Seem to me all the uses of this world!
No doubt, our Prince is profoundly in pain. And yet, he will not commit suicide, and for the sole reason that it goes against God's will; at least, according to Catholic doctrine: the first of several references to the Catholic Church's condemnation of suicide as barring a person – including a nobleman or -woman, like Ophelia, were it proven beyond doubt that she committed suicide – from burial in sacred ground. Along with the concept of Purgatory and the play's approach to the women's roles, this is one of the most obvious instances of concepts rooting the play, as explained elsewhere, in the pre-Elizabethan rather than the Elizabethan world. – In any event: Hamlet concludes that he won't be the one to further upset the natural order of things, however precious little purpose he might see in going on living.
Fie on't! ah, fie! 'Tis an unweeded garden
That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature
Possess it merely.
As a matter of fact, the world is not merely a useless place now; it has turned downright foul.
That it should come to this!
But two months dead! Nay, not so much, not two.
And very, very foul indeed – moreover, within no time at all since the former King's, Hamlet's father's death. Now, we – the audience – know, of course, having witnessed the Ghost's appearance in Scene 1, that there is something indeed profoundly rotten in the state of Denmark, and that it seems to have a lot to do with the death of Hamlet's father. The Prince, however, has not seen what we have seen – and yet, he already connects the death of his father and the world's "growing to seed," too. And why does he do so? He'll tell us instantly – but in fact, based on that exchange between him, Claudius and Gertrude over the proper expression of mourning and grief, we already have a pretty good idea.
So excellent a King, that was to this
Hyperion to a satyr;
Hyperion: The eldest of the Titans, i.e. the deities preceding the Olympic gods – Zeus and his progeny – who in turn were the Titans' immediate descendants. Hyperion was the sun god; the father of Helios, Selene, and Eos (the deities of sun, moon, and dawn) in the generation of the Olympic gods. By comparing his father to Hyperion, Hamlet thus characterises him as a powerful being of light and warmth; a great force for good, implicitly also reminding us that Apollo, in his incarnation as Phoebus, the driver of the sun chariot, was a sun god as well.
A satyr: a mythological wood-dweller with a human torso but with the pointed ears, horns, and hooves of a goat, and with a marked tendency towards lechery, debauchery, sensuality, and eroticism. Satyrs were the habitual companions of the reveller god Dionysos. Hamlet doesn't really need to spell out with whom he associates the image of a satyr; to whom "this" actually refers ...
so loving to my mother
That he might not beteem the winds of heaven
Visit her face too roughly.
... but he does so nevertheless, because now we're really getting to the heart of his pain. There Gertrude is, married to the best, most loving husband a woman could ask for ... (or so her son sees her first husband, his own father: I actually suspect that the former King's duties of state didn't leave him all that much time for his wife, which is precisely why she was so vulnerable to Claudius's pursuit of her favours. But in any event ...)
Heaven and earth!
Must I remember? Why, she would hang on him
As if increase of appetite had grown
By what it fed on; and yet, within a month –
Let me not think on't!
There the woman is – and the mere thought is painful to our Prince – insatiably clinging to her husband, thirsting for attention (no wonder, I might add, neglected as she probably is most of the time while he's gone) ... and a mere month after the man is dead, he is already forgotten. (But is he really?)
Frailty, thy name is woman! –
As Gertrude might respond: O, speak to me no more! These words like daggers enter in mine ears. No more, sweet Hamlet! – Words like a rapier's blade indeed, cutting straight to the heart of the matter: Ever since the Bard first put pen to paper to set them down, the male all-purpose battlecry against real or even just perceived female infidelity; against any and every sin ever laid on the shoulders of Eve and her daughters over the course of history. For look at her: There she is ... and It's All Her Fault:
Vile phrases, if I ever heard any ...
Never mind, then, that Claudius is the primary actor in this piece of depravity and sin. Never mind that, while they are ultimately no excuse, Gertrude may actually have had at least a few halfway understandable reasons for marrying the man so quickly after her first husband's death; such as her persistent abandonment by the latter, and the hope to quickly restore stability in a country upset by its former King's unexpected passing and beset by the threat of invasion. (See her character page for a more detailed discussion of these considerations.) Never mind that, as Gertrude might very well have reminded her son,
Indeed, even on The Fall itself, one might just as well have concluded (and with papal toleration, too!) that
And never mind, finally, that Hamlet's damning words about Gertrude aren't even those of a husband but those of a son, which of course is also the source of the Oedipean concept interpreted into the Prince's relationship with his mother ever since Ernest Jones, John Barrymore and Sir Laurence Olivier first brought Freud and Shakespeare together in the interpretation of this play. But as likewise outlined in connection with Gertrude's character, I just don't buy into that idea; not least because of the way I in turn see Hamlet's relationship with his father. Thus, it seems more likely to me that Hamlet's profound disgust with his mother's quick second marriage, which so thoroughly offends propriety, custom, and common decency even as it stands, is primarily an indication of his acute (and of course quite correct) feeling that something is very, very wrong indeed, even though he cannot yet put a finger onto what exactly that is. In other words, Shakespeare uses Hamlet's misgivings over his mother's quick remarriage as the fastest and most proximate way to put him on the same page as us, the audience, without having to have him go through a similar experience as the one we had in the play's very first scene; and also in order to lay the groundwork for Horatio's and the Sentinels' account of the Ghost's appearance immediately following this soliloquy.
A little month,
But boy, Hamlet sure can't let it go. You'd think that "Frailty, thy name is woman" would have made a great conclusion – and indeed, Franco Zeffirelli does use it in that way – but our Prince is just too hung up on the brevity of the time frame between his father's death and his mother's remarriage. He has already mentioned it twice before, but the third time's really the charm here ... pointedly placed at the beginning of the soliloquy's second part, and even garnished with the word "little," it really is impossible to miss the Prince's meaning now, even if it should have escaped anyone before.
or ere those shoes were old
With which she followed my poor father's body
Remember that we're moving in a time when many people didn't have more than a single pair of shoes to begin with (if that), and even nobilty tended to wear their shoes until they quite literally fell apart.
Like Niobe, all tears
Another reference not only to Greek mythology as such but specifically to Apollo and his sister Artemis (or Diana, in Roman mythology), the goddess of hunting. Niobe was the queen of Thebes and the proud mother of fourteen (or according to some versions of the story, twelve) children – seven (six) sons and seven (six) daughters. She foolishly and arrogantly compared herself to Leto (Latona), Apollo's and Artemis's mother, who had only these two children ... and her comments so offended the goddess that she sent her obedient and very willing kids to kill Niobe's entire offspring in a matter of minutes; in addition to which, Niobe's husband either committed suicide out of grief over his children's death, or, again according to some versions of the story, was struck down by Apollo when he attempted to defend his sons. Profoundly shocked, Niobe turned into the very image of perpetual grief. She ultimately fled to Asia Minor, where Zeus then turned her into a stone: there is an image on Mount Sipylus which allegedly represents her, and which to this day, due to the porous nature of the rock into which it is carved, can be seen weeping after a rain shower.
(Note for future reference: Picking a fight with a deity is not a good idea. And if you must needs do it, go after someone other than the mother of the god of archery and the goddess of hunting; they really, really know what a bow and quiver full of arrows are made for. Besides, they have inherited their mother's vindictiveness, which should be reason enough not to ever want to cross them anyway. Maybe someone should have warned Ophelia about this before she permitted Hamlet's attentions ...)
– why she, even she
(O God! a beast that wants discourse of reason
Would have mourn'd longer) married with my uncle;
My father's brother, but no more like my father
Than I to Hercules.
Aha. Finally we're getting to the other (main!) culprit in the matter. First, there's that reference to animal behaviour – the wild, uncivilised, instinct-driven – not without another put-down of Gertrude's and Claudius's quick marriage as so inappropriate that even a creature devoid of any capacity to reason at all would have felt the need for a longer mourning period. Then this is directly connected with Claudius's person, who is thus implicitly characterised accordingly; followed by a first specific comparison between Claudius and his brother, which of course can only turn out to Claudius's disadvantage – although compared to the imagery Hamlet will be using later, when confronting Gertrude after the "play within the play," this is actually downright tame. ("Here is your husband, like a mildew'd ear blasting his wholesome brother," "A murtherer and a villain! A slave that is not twentieth part the tithe of your precedent lord; a vice of Kings; a cutpurse of the empire and the rule, that from a shelf the precious diadem stole and put it in his pocket,," "A King of shreds and patches!") No wonder Gertrude's plea echoes Hamlet's own earlier allusion to the daggers of his tongue: "O, speak to me no more! These words like daggers enter in mine ears. No more, sweet Hamlet!" And it speaks volumes to me with regard to the murdered King's estimation of his wife's and his brother's respective culpability that he decides to step in at this very point ... in order to remind Hamlet that his true duty is not to chastise his mother but to kill his uncle, and in order to specifically encourage his son to "step between [Gertrude] and her fighting soul" and to "speak to her."
"No more like my father than I to Hercules," together with the fact that Hamlet is a student, as well as his friendship with the scholarly Horatio, is often also used as the basis of an interpretation seeing the Prince as primarily a bookish type, a man of big ideas but no actions – but there again, I have my doubts. Sure, this passage sounds like a flight of weakness; and of course Hamlet does continue to harbour profound doubts over the right course of action, even after having learned from the Ghost what has really happened while he was away in Wittenberg. And, yes, Hamlet also very much prides himself on his intellectual prowess. But on the other hand, he has grown up at court and has been instructed in all the prevalent martial arts: we not only see him fighting a rather valiant duel against Laertes, himself an expert swordsman, in the final scene; even before that, Claudius uses a story about Hamlet's (alleged) desire to measure his skills with the rapier against Laertes in order to draw Polonius's son into his conspiracy, and considering how well Hamlet and Laertes must know each other (they conceivably even grew up together), this kind of ploy would never have worked if it had sounded out of character for the Prince in Laertes's ears. Moreover, even students from the ranks of the commoners in those days were routinely accorded the special privilege to bear arms, because universities were still few and far between and students had to travel considerable distances to reach their places of learned instruction (Hamlet, for example, doesn't even pursue his studies in his native Denmark but in Wittenberg, Germany), and they were liable to encounter considerable dangers on the road. Thus, it actually took no small amount of guts to embark on a course of scholarly instruction at the time. Finally, while, as the soliloquy's beginning shows, our Prince is certainly in a pretty gloomy mood overall, that mood is over and suddenly replaced by a most grim resolve the instant he hears about the apparition of his father's Ghost. Thus, what we're essentially dealing with here, I think, is an expression of Hamlet's extreme dismay at the person of his new stepfather, followed in due course by a first display of the Prince's tendency to quickly go from one emotional extreme to another, as soon as he hears Horatio's and the Sentinels' news. But before we get to that point ...
Within a month,
Ere yet the salt of most unrighteous tears
Had left the flushing in her galled eyes,
She married.
Alright, class, so how much time passed between the death of Hamlet's father and the second marriage of his mother? One month, that's right. (Or more precisely, "a little month.") And oh, all that language of bitterness ... he really could have just said, "before even her tears were dry," but no, we have to have "salt" and "gall," too, with "most unrighteous tears" to top it all off!
O, most wicked speed, to post
With such dexterity to incestuous sheets!
It is not, nor it cannot come to good.
The soliloquy's concluding thesis, and the reason why there is a point in going on after "Frailty, thy name is woman" after all; summing up the reasons why Gertrude's and Claudius's fast marriage so troubles the Prince: to him it is an indication of evil, and of greater evil to come; the clearest example yet of the rotten state of affairs brought about by the former King's death, and if such a grievous contravention of propriety and decorum could occur this quickly, there is just no telling what else may happen next.
But break my heart, for I must hold my tongue!
And yet, all our poor Hamlet has so far is an unspecified feeling. No concrete evidence of anything, nothing to discuss with anybody of his confidence (assuming such a person still exists in the first place) ... just a very, very great sickness to his stomach – and to his heart. Now, if Horatio were in Elsinore ... but he's in Wittenberg, right? And besides, bright though he is, he really is just a poor scholar – so even if he were here, what could he possibly do? No no no. Our Prince is all alone in this. Oh, the agony ...
Copyright 2002 – 2009: Ulrike Böhm, all rights reserved.
