Atlas Statue, Newbury Street, Boston, Massachusetts, USA (photo (c) Ulrike Boehm; all rights reserved)
Just as the Players' arrival externally precipitates the tragedy to its dramatic core, just as it instantly introduces an additional symbolic level in the Pyrrhus and Hecuba monologue, so, too, in Hamlet's soliloquies – in other words, in our awareness of his internal life and thought processes – we now reach a new level of intensity, in that the First Player's (or Player King's) passionate rendition of the last part of "Pyrrhus and Hecuba" is followed in almost instant succession by this monologue, by the play's single most famous soliloquy – "To be, or not to be" –, and by Hamlet's subsequent confrontation with Ophelia ("Get thee to a nunnery"); although the latter two are set on the next day, the day of the play proper. And frankly I can't understand for anything in the world why Sir Laurence Olivier, of all people, would choose to leave out not only "Pyrrhus and Hecuba" but also this present monologue in its entirely. For nothing – nothing – in this play so epitomises the very Hamlet that Sir Laurence expressly refers to in the introduction of his movie: "a man who cannot make up his mind" ... a man wrecked by indecision bred from Freudian guilt, as Sir Laurence and, of course, Ernest Jones, on whose theories Olivier's interpretation was grounded, would have it. (And Olivier's directorial approach is even more surprising in light of the fact that Jones does indeed frequently reference this present soliloquy.) – But even if you don't buy into that Freudian reading, there is no doubt that we're looking at a profoundly conflicted Prince here.
What we have learned in the second act so far is that – since Claudius is quite obivously still alive – despite Hamlet's passionate vows of revenge immediately after his encounter with his father's Ghost, something has nevertheless prevented him from complying with his father's charge. We don't know how long it has been since that encounter (only before the "play within the play" will we learn that it's a full three months), but we can at the very least assume that it is quite a while. So what's keeping our Prince? Has he, as the Ghost warned him not to do, drunk from Lethe's waters and become forgetful after all? Would he rather die himself than commit the deed he has been charged with? Is he uncertain he is doing the right thing? Or paralysed by the enormity of his charge? Has an opportunity failed to present itself so far? Is it all of the above – or none? In the present monologue, Hamlet's response to Pyrrhus and Hecuba, we get the first part of our answer; in "To be, or not to be," the second part.
O what a rogue and peasant slave am I!
Whatever is driving our Prince, self-loathing clearly is a big part of it. And just as he speaks "daggers" to others, he doesn't spare himself a single thing, either.
Is it not monstrous that this player here,
But in a fiction, in a dream of passion,
Could force his soul so to his own conceit
That, from her working, all his visage wann'd,
Tears in his eyes, distraction in's aspect,
A broken voice, and his whole function suiting
With forms to his conceit?
Fiction and reality, in facts and feelings – the power of imagination and make-believe, and its comparative virtue as opposed to emotion grounded in real events, so that's what's on Hamlet's mind now. Much as he adores the theatre, he is also shocked by the First Player's ability so to submerge himself in a merely assumed state of mind that it is reflected in every aspect of his appearance.
And all for nothing!
For Hecuba!
What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba,
That he should weep for her?
And all for ... Hecuba, who was so all-important only a short while ago; Hecuba, the 'mobled queen,' she of the powerful lament, the role model in whose presence Gertrude falls so woefully short. And yet, Hecuba, who only exists on that symbolic level, not in real life. Hecuba, who is merely a figment of imagination, less real even than the Ghost of Hamlet's father (or is she?), unable to at any time elicit true emotion in anyone. Hecuba, whose fate is a dramatic tale, no more, and to whom nobody – not Hamlet, nor the Player King, not Gertrude, not Polonius (who was so taken with the First Player's rendition, too) – owes any debt of pity or obedience at all.
What would he do,
Had he the motive and the cue for passion
That I have? He would drown the stage with tears
And cleave the general ear with horrid speech;
Make mad the guilty and appal the free,
Confound the ignorant, and amaze indeed
The very faculties of eyes and ears.
But oh, if the Player King could produce so much passion to express merely imagined woes, how much more passion would real woes elicit from him? Yet again – it still would not be his own woes. He still would only be expressing that which Hamlet should be feeling. He would be the image of what Hamlet should be, just as Hecuba is the image of what Gertrude should be. And the very thought torments Hamlet – not only the thought that someone, without even truly having his motivation, could nevertheless express it in his, the Prince's stead but also that he could do it in such a powerful fashion.
Yet I,
A dull and muddy-mettled rascal, peak
Like John-a-dreams, unpregnant of my cause,
And can say nothing!
Because for all his "madness" act, Hamlet finds itself unable to express his true feelings. But what expression could they possibly find? Given that he has to conceal what he is truly thinking – which in itself is maddening enough indeed – there is only one way to show them; only one way to prove his unwaivering commitment to his father's cause: to comply with his charge. And yet ...
No, not for a King,
Upon whose property and most dear life
A damn'd defeat was made.
Not for a father, not for a King who was killed by his brother and lost his Queen to that very brother's hand in marriage – not for a kingly father who suffered regicide, fratricide and incest in one single act – has Hamlet, in all the time since he learned this cruel truth from that same royal father, been able to get himself to act in accordance with his vows of revenge.
Am I a coward?
Who calls me villain? breaks my pate across?
Plucks off my beard and blows it in my face?
Tweaks me by th' nose? gives me the lie i' th' throat
As deep as to the lungs? Who does me this, ha?
So what's wrong with him? Is it really all cowardice? Should he take mockery and abuse, should he be called a liar? – Note how yet again, a major monologue of Hamlet's denotes the internal paralysis seemingly so in conjunction with his outward inaction. And still, although he deeply deplores his own inability to give expression to his feelings, there is no way you can imagine him speaking these words with an even voice. Whether dejected, desolate, or (as I hear them) with increasing fury, there are clearly powerful emotions at work ...
'Swounds, I should take it! for it cannot be
But I am pigeon-liver'd and lack gall
To make oppression bitter, or ere this
I should have fatted all the region kites
With this slave's offal. Bloody bawdy villain!
Remorseless, treacherous, lecherous, kindless villain!
... and they turn on Hamlet himself as much as they turn on Claudius. Can loathing possibly be expressed in stronger terms?
O, vengeance!
Finally, the one word expressing the core and crux of Hamlet's dilemma, placed even structurally at the soliloquy's very heart. But is it a renewal of his vow? A cry of despair? An outcry of fury? – I think how you read this one word here depends entirely on your interpretation of Hamlet's character. To me, it is the unburdening of a soul deeply torn between what he has so far strongly believed he must do – not only because it is his father's express charge but because he knows it is the only way to save his entire country from certain ruin – and his growing realisation of the impossibly high stakes he faces, because I think at this point he has seen enough of Claudius's style of government and overall behaviour to have developed a very clear sense of the evil and powerful antagonist that he is up against. And I think it is followed by an outburst of even more powerful emotions, totally belying Hamlet's earlier self-reproach of not being able to "say" anything, and unequivocally showing that the true cause of his inner torment is his seeming inability to act.
Why, what an ass am I! This is most brave,
That I, the son of a dear father murther'd,
Prompted to my revenge by heaven and hell,
Must (like a whore) unpack my heart with words
And fall a-cursing like a very drab,
A scullion!
Fie upon't! foh! About, my brain!
This, to me, then also explains the Prince's renewed outburst of self-loathing: Just because he has so far been so convinced that what his father has charged him with really is the only way to set right the times so profoundly out of joint, his own paralysis is becoming ever harder to bear for him. – Yet, compare this particular soliloquy with Hamlet's reaction upon coming across Fortinbras's army: While in both instances the Prince deplores his own inaction, this present one, set in Act 2, Scene 2, is all about emotion; indeed, Hamlet is frustrated about his apparent paralysis just because he realises the strength of his own emotional compulsion to act. His reflections after the encounter with Fortinbras's army, on the other hand (Act 4, Scene 4) are those of the intellectual he so wants to be; they are the thoughts of a man who rationalises his experience. And as explained in greater detail in connection with that later soliloquy, I believe it is precisely that move from a man primarily driven by emotions to one controlled by his mind that ultimately enables him to act (and would have enabled him even if Claudius had not fatally precipitated the tragedy's end).
Hum, I have heard
That guilty creatures, sitting at a play,
Have by the very cunning of the scene
Been struck so to the soul that presently
They have proclaim'd their malefactions;
For murther, though it have no tongue, will speak
With most miraculous organ.
Now, of course Hamlet does seem to find a way to get to Claudius in this scene here, too; which is announced by a sudden, total change in tone. And what an ingenious shortcut it seems to be: for wouldn't it be nice indeed if Claudius could just be brought to confess his guilt all on his own? Surely then the rest of the court would see who and what they are dealing with, and Hamlet would no longer stand alone ... then there would have to be a general outcry for justice, wouldn't there? And we've already seen once how powerful and involving these Players' gifts of make-believe are. They don't even have to know that they are Hamlet's secret allies in this ...
I'll have these Players
Play something like the murther of my father
Before mine uncle. I'll observe his looks;
I'll tent him to the quick. If he but blench,
I know my course.
Domenico Feti: The Parable of the Bad Servant – detail (ca. 1620, Nationalgalerie, Dresden, Germany)
... just let them do what they do best, and the rest will fall into place. – Err, yes, my Prince. The only problem with shortcuts is that they don't always work out as planned ...
[I can sense uneasiness rising in a group of seats a few rows back somewhere to my left. It's been humming there for a while already, as if coming from a miniature beehive submerged below the floor, but now the buzzing gets louder.] "But what's this passage all about then anyway," someone finally asks. "Why would Hamlet need any further confirmation in the first place? At least if he is so totally convinced that what he has heard from the Ghost is the absolute gospel truth anyway. Now, if he wasn't so sure ..."
I nod. Branagh again, of course. "But think about it," I respond:
Have you never been in a situation where you needed to do something very, very important, and until a few minutes before that moment you had been absolutely certain you were about to do the right thing ... and then suddenly you remembered the consequences of what you were about to do – not just the consequences of inaction, which had been before your mind's eye all along – and the full weight of your proposed course of action just came crashing down on you? See, I think that's what Hamlet is going through here. His belief in his father's words has never been tested – yet, not only a human life (that of Claudius) depends on the correctness of that belief, but also his entire country's fate and critically, also the salvation of Hamlet's own soul, particularly if Claudius should be innocent after all. So in essence, Hamlet is getting some last-minute cold feet, and rather than truly prove a coward and just chicken out entirely, he is looking for some extra confirmation, as I believe many of us would do in such a case.
The spirit that I have seen
May be a devil; and the devil hath power
T' assume a pleasing shape; yea, and perhaps
Out of my weakness and my melancholy,
As he is very potent with such spirits,
Abuses me to damn me.
And also like many of us, he is quick to find a reason why such further confirmation is required; and who better to blame than the source of all the troubling information? Conveniently forgetting of course that he's had misgivings of his own long before the Ghost ever spoke to him ...
I'll have grounds
More relative than this. The play's the thing
Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the King.
Thus, we finally do get to a resolution after all; even if it is not yet one for the ultimate act. But like so many of Hamlet's decisions until his departure from Denmark in Act 4 Scene 4, it will turn out absolutely disastrously. As I said: that's the problem with shortcuts ...
Copyright 2002 – 2009: Ulrike Böhm, all rights reserved.
