I saw one TV version of the play where the war theme was almost eliminated. How silly.
I know what you’re saying. “If there was a significant war theme in the play, Shakespeare would have opened with the threat of an invading bad guy and ended with the bad guy setting the crown of Denmark onto his head.” Well, dear readers, that’s just what happened.
The first scene of the first act has guards commenting on the three-shifts-a-day work on the fortifications. Cannons are being manufactured as fast as is possible, and the shipbuilders are working even on Sundays (something for which the Church would have had to give permission).
Given the enormous costs of such activity (it often took years for a nation to pay off war debts) the possibility of the Norwegians winning must have been very real, and the consequences of losing the war must have been dire.
A medieval nation that lost a war usually saw the royal family imprisoned or slaughtered. Many of the feudal Lords would have lost their castles (given to the invading forces), and taxes in general would have increased massively to pay for the armies.
Viewers ignore most of this for several reasons:
- Hamlet ignores it. He manages to step over all the construction without a single comment.
- Ghosts, love, and murder are more interesting.
- There is a perception that the war problem is solved when the ambassadors return from Norway. At this point viewers write off the threat as a thread Shakespeare abandoned for some reason.
This last perception is, however, not true. I’ll lift another section from my novel, Hamlet; The Comedy.
I read the notice again. “Looks like we’ve got peace in our time, or at least till Fortinbras dies. He’s promised to let Denmark alone.”
“Well….” Ingald said.
“Maybe…” Soldir said.
“What do you mean,” I asked. “Isn’t Fortinbras going to keep his promise?”
“No doubt,” Ingald said, “but have you looked at what he promised?”
I read it again. “Am I missing something?”
“When Claudius mentions ‘Norway’, what is he talking about?” Ingald raised his eyebrows and looked at me. Soldir sat back, and looked at the tent ceiling.
“The kingdom of Norway, or the King of Norway,” I said. “The king represents the kingdom.” throwing my hands wide to show that it was obvious.
“Of course. But how does old King Norway address our own Danish king?”
I read it again. “That is a point,” I said. “He doesn’t call him ‘Denmark,’ does he?”
“No,” said Ingald. “He addresses ‘your highness’ and says Fortinbras won’t take up arms against ‘your majesty.’ It seems a bit… particular.”
I was a bit drunk, but rubbed my face in my hands, then said, “You’re saying, if I hear you right, that Fortinbras has promised to never again take up arms against… King Claudius only. That there’s no promise of sparing the country of Denmark?”
“That,” Ingald said, ‘is what I get from this notice.” He raised his palms to head off any objection on my part. “Of course there are going to be official papers, and, heaven knows, they might say something different, and I might be wrong, but from what we’ve got here….”
Soldir sat up. “From this notice, which is all we’ve got, we’re safe as long as Claudius is alive. Not a moment longer.” He looked at the paper again. “Do you suppose Norway doesn’t really want to recognize Claudius as king of Denmark?”
“But this isn’t one of those official papers that we haven’t seen,” I protested.
Ingald nodded. “But this is the one that Claudius chose to post on every Church door in Denmark.”
Soldir spoke up. “Ingald and I suspect that Claudius has always been under suspicion of taking over the crown quickly, before it could go to Hamlet, and possibly of hastening the demise of Old King Hamlet. If other people come to the same conclusion as we have, the safety of Denmark depends on keeping Claudius himself alive. He’d like that.”
Chapter 9: Hamlet, What a Jerk!
Okay, not everybody is impressed with the Prince. Here’s a few of his less welcoming qualities.
- He could learn to ask people. Like, “mother, why did you marry Claudius? Are you happy with him?” Instead of, well, just barging into dressing rooms and yelling and complaining. He might learn something. Does he ever really care how anybody else feels?
- He could do a bit of planning. Like, if he kills Claudius, then what? Does he have anybody but Horatio on his side?
- He spends at least two months joking and being generally “antic.” During that time he must have walked over and around hundreds of workmen and women and piles of construction material. Perhaps he could have brought water and sandwiches to the guys on the scaffolds reinforcing the castle or building new boats. Or at least supervised something, just for practice at being a royal.
- He could apologize to Ophelia at some point. “Sorry I killed your father, Ophelia. Can we be friends now that there’s no one to object?” Maybe after “escaping” with help from the pirates he could have written her a letter, or at least asked Horatio to say “hi” to her.
- He could ask a priest, just in case he someday needs the Church’s help.
- He could at least pretend to be interested in the war (before it’s cancelled). Maybe get some training in how to command more than one person at a time in case his country needs him After all, during most of the time between his coming to Elsinore at the beginning of the play and the arrival of the letter from Norway a couple of months later, he’s it if Claudius dies. Commander-in-Chief of the forces of Denmark. Can you see him in charge of an army or navy, discussing battles and supplies with generals?
- He sure doesn’t impress anyone with his bravery or commitment at the beginning. Denmark is gearing up for war. What does the only Royal Prince want? He wants to go back to school in Wittenberg, a long way from any possible fighting. Then what, wait for a letter telling him who wins the war?
- He could learn some wisdom. He says, “there’s nothing good or bad, but thinking makes it so,” he says, Yeah, right. Tell that to some Danish soldier trying to get an arrow out of his leg while Hamlet’s studying music or classical Greek in Wittenberg.
- He could maybe, you know, consider the remote possibility that other people have problems, too. Ask. Listen. Is it too hard on the boy?
- He could have handed the crown to one of the Danish Lords at the end of the play. Or even to Horatio. At least he wouldn’t have given away the country to a foreigner.
- He could have simply ignored Ophelia through most of the play, instead of being needlessly cruel to her.
- There was no call to use his status to make Polonius or Osric, people who dare not contradict him, look foolish. That’s immature at best, cruel at worst. What a king he’d make!
Once I read a little story that went something like this:
A young woman is at the funeral of her grandmother. Big family; lots people come from all over.
At the funeral the young woman meets a young man she doesn’t know. They talk. She is smitten with him. They part without her learning his name. In the days afterward nobody she knows can tell her who he might be.
So she kills her sister.
The first time I read that, I was totally confused; why did she kill her sister? Turns out that means I’m not a sociopath. To a sociopath it’s perfectly obvious; the young woman killed her sister so there’d be another family funeral and she might meet the young man again.
To a sociopath (or psychopath – the terms are hard to distinguish) people who are of no use to you, or have become of no use to you, are irrelevant. They can die, if it helps you or if they get in your way. Sociopaths can be intensely loyal to those they wish to be; the rest of the world had better keep out of their way or they may be killed without regret or apology. And a prince cannot be prosecuted.
Consider; Hamlet must have known Polonius for several years. He must surely
have known his voice. Yet he kills the old man, father of a woman he said he loved, and shows not the slightest remorse at it. A bag of guts is all he is, and he can tease other people by hiding the body.
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Old friends. They probably went drinking and wenching with Hamlet throughout Denmark when they were younger. Party boys. They’re asked to spy on Hamlet, but they cheerfully admit it when asked.
Suppose your parents were worried you were into bad drugs and asked a couple of your friends to see if they could tell. You ask them if your parents sent you to spy for them. They cheerfully admit it. You’re still annoyed, so you kill them. No you don’t! You cuss them, you avoid them, you unfriend them, but, even if you can get away with it, you don’t kill them if you’re a normal person. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern certainly had no access to knowledge of Claudius’s letter to the king of England, and would likely have told Hamlet if they found out. Yet Hamlet has them killed.
Picture a person who will kill annoying people if he can get away with it, a person who can unlove a lover, who just can’t sustain any feelings for anybody but his mother (but never asks how she feels about things). If Hamlet isn’t a sociopath, he’s certainly a borderline case.
Chapter 10: And Who’s the Smartest Person in the Room?
Sun Tzu, the famous Chinese military philosopher, once said, “The general who wins one battle without fighting is greater than the general who wins a thousand battles through fighting.”
By act two, it looks as if Claudius is that general. He’s solved the problem of Fortinbras with one letter to his enemy’s uncle.
But by the end of the play, it’s obvious the smart general is really Prince Fortinbras of Norway. Without losing a man (except perhaps to Danish beer), he has the crown simply handed to him. By Hamlet, even, the last surviving member of the Danish royal family, a man who never met Fortinbras in his life.
True, Fortinbras says he has some claim to the crown, but, even if you believe him, there are probably a lot of the Danish nobility who have at least as good a claim.
Chapter 11: In Praise of Laertes
Good kid. War coming to Denmark? Laertes is off to Paris with a bag of money and some advice.
Father murdered? Dutiful kid, he is. Comes back with a gang to kill somebody (he’s not sure who) stopping only long enough to buy some deadly poison from a street vendor. Gotta love a man of action like that.
Chapter 12: An Alehouse Inquiry into The Death of Polonius
Or, It's Curtains for Polonius
Rosencrantz: You heard the whole thing? You were there?
Osric: Well, the prince was quite loud. I was concerned about the queen's safety.
Guildenstern: You were concerned about your service in the castle. There was nothing you could have done in an argument between the prince and the queen. They were arguing, were they not? Did he accuse his mother of murder?
Osric: No. Incest. Not much of an argument. He more or less called her a whore, and she cried. He told her not to go to bed with Claudius, and she cried some more. Then he had a conversation with the wall, and that upset his mother even more for some reason.
Rosencrantz: He was implying the marriage was illegal? We were there. Looked pretty legal to me.
Osric: There was some question of a woman marrying her husband's brother without a papal dispensation.
Guildenstern: [Snorts.] We're a long way from Rome, Osric. I doubt that the Pope would care.
Osric: The prince seemed to care.
Rosencrantz: Then he stabbed Polonius? Just like that? Whipped out his rapier and poked a few holes in him?
Osric: I heard the old guy start yelling for help. I guess he was worried about the queen, too. He was hidden behind an arras.
Guildenstern: What other options did Hamlet have? Other than, of course, asking, "Who said that?" Or pulling the arras aside.... Instead of "stab first, check later"?
Osric: I ran as fast as I could. I think the prince thought it was Claudius behind the arras.
Rosencrantz: [Shakes his head and mimics the King's deep voice..] Oh, they sound much…"
Guildenstern: [Guildenstern finishes, in Polonius's old squeak.] Alike. [Everyone laughs.] But why would he kill the king, even if he thought Claudius was listening in?
Osric: [Shrugs.] No idea. Royalty traditionally don't get along much, but..."
Rosencrantz: He would have known Polonius's voice. To say he thought it was the king was either a joke, or he was really demented. No remorse?
Osric: Nope.
Guildenstern: I wonder what would have happened if it had been the king behind the arras.
Osric: [Laughs.] I suppose he would have claimed he thought it was Fortinbras. Is our boy a bit impulsive?
Rosencrantz: Generally, only when he shouldn't be. But suppose he kills the king. What's he say for an excuse, "the devil made me do it?"
Osric: Princes don't often give explanations.
Guildenstern: Got a point there. I guess someone would crown him king, and he'd rule Denmark.
Osric: That would be interesting.
Rosencrantz: So we're not sure why he was mad at his mother, or why he wanted to kill his father, or what he'd have done if he had killed Claudius.
Osric: Other than that, we've figured it all out.
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern together. That was easy! [They raise mugs of ale, and drink.]
Chapter 13: Should Hamlet Have Given the Crown to Fortinbras?
This inquiry, held a week after Prince Fortinbras took power, has barely started when the Norwegian Prince himself shows up, striding into the courtroom with some guards and associates. All stand.
Inquisitor-General: [Bowing deeply] Prince. Your Majesty.
Fortinbras: [Looks around, then waves his arms.] Go!
Inquisitor-General: Pardon?
Fortinbras: Bugger off. Scram. Get out. I'm running the show, now. Anybody still here by the time I walk once around this room will find his head decorating a pikepole outside the castle gate in the morning. [The room clears rapidly.] Fortinbras turns to Osric. Maybe I'll invade Poland after all; Denmark was rather easy.
Osric: You have a talent, Your Majesty. Do you have enough ships?
Fortinbras: I have the Danish navy now. Sixty ships completed or almost completed. We'll finish them. [Laughs.] Don't worry; I've got enough on my plate for a few years. Do I have a castle on the North Sea? We need to guard that coast.
Osric: There are a couple, belonging to a couple Danish Lords, sire.
Fortinbras: Belonging to me, now. Get me one; Osric, boot the current owners out.
Osric: Of course, sire.
Chapter 14: Notes on Some of the Characters
I once saw a production of Antony and Cleopatra in Stratford, Ontario, with my high-school class. We were expecting a tragedy, but the director had made the leading characters into buffoons. There were no tragic heroes, just idiots, and losers trying to run an empire. It was quite a surprise.
I'm older now, and when I look at various governments, the interpretation seems as likely as any.
Directors generally treat Hamlet as a tragedy, but I wonder if Maybe Polonius was giving us a hint at the real nature of the play. Maybe it's nature is actually "comedy, history, pastoral, pastoral-comical, historical-pastoral, tragical-historical, tragical-comical-historical-pastoral, scene individable, or poem unlimited."
Maybe it isn't Hamlet the prince who's one of Shakespeare's more interesting characters. Maybe it's us, trying to interpret an obvious buffoon as a tragic hero.
Anyway, here's how I see some of the characters.
Hamlet: Oblivious to anything but his own needs and hangups, incapable of deep feelings if they don't involve his mother, insensitive to the suffering of others, cruel to underlings, and without a conscience with the results of his actions. Without a tragic hero, it's hard to have a tragedy. Yet I find Hamlet more insufferable than heroic.
Claudius: A canny man (why didn't anybody else think
of contacting Fortinbras's uncle to head off a war.) But, let's face it, he's a sly killer without the balls to do it out in the open. Poison, and instructions to a far-off king; tsk. Not even a decent villain; he's full of remorse. He needs some backbone.
Gertrude: And speaking of backbone, the queen needs one. She should tell her son to mind his own freakin' business.
Ophelia: I think her brother and father knew her well enough. She loved a man who didn't like anybody much, other than his dead father. )Had Hamlet loved his mother, he'd have listened to her side of the story.) Bad choice, young lady.
Laertes: Laertes, the guy who skipped town when war was about to break. See "In Praise of Laertes."
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern: Harmless party dudes. More beer than brains.
Polonius: Sure, Hamlet. Sure, Willie. Make fun of senile old guys. Big of ya.
Fortinbras: A born liar and manipulator. Anyone who believes anything he says is nuts.
Horatio: Ah, the faithful friend. Not a long-time friend )Hamlet is unsure of his name at the opening of the play). Yet a good, one. He probably just nods politely when Hamlet tells him he killed Polonius and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. The friend that some people need; faithful and uncritical. Or maybe the friend some people insist on. "You killed Polonius? Well, okay." "You had Rosencrantz and Guildenstern put to death? Sure. Whatever, I guess."
Osric: One of the few transparent characters. He's at the court to suck up to whichever king is running the country, and make money out of it. Honesty has its merits.
Chapter 15: Hamlet analysis as a professor would have it
I have received comments that my analyses are not in the style used by university professors. I consider the chances of professors reading the analyses small, but, just in case, I here include three, done in a more scholarly style.
Please note that these three analyses are intended to be parodies written in an academic style. They are baffleglab; if there is any real meaning in them, it is purely by accident. The notes go nowhere and reference no one I know.
Did Hamlet Love Ophelia?
One question that needs to be asked, then, is whether there was on ontological rather than differentiational transformation in the progress of the relationship during the play. Professor Jirgeson’s1 failure to tackle, or at least synthesize, a Brakkensian “coagulation” from Shakespeare's treatment of lover in earlier works, provides an analytical negligence of his treatment of Hamlet, from a critical point of view, that must surely haunt any questions he raises about the Hamlet/Ophelia relationship. Further, both Jirgeson and his acolyte, Bella Houser2, make no attempt to differentiate between the various folklorist sexual/romantic affectations which J. Saul3 has shown exist throughout Shakespeare's tragedies, and the anarchist-wildness convention preeminent in his tragicomedies (as I demonstrated in my book The Later Tragicomedies: Shakespeare and World-Myth4), propelling their conclusions, however intriguing, more into the world of contemporary metaphysics than into the universe of myth/Christianity/paganism that so many others have believe they have found in Hamlet.