Hamlet

Hey person who might actually be reading my blog. I wrote an essay on Hamlet, I posted in on my other blog to so if you somehow happen upon it I am plagiarizing myself. Oh, and if you somehow find this and you yourself are trying to write a reliable essay, know that I am not a reliable source. Most of the proclamations I make I just made up on the spot as I wrote my essay and then I took lines almost out of context to support them. But yeah, here ya are:

Hamlet’s Descent

            During the course of William Shakespeare’s play Hamlet, Hamlet, the main character descends into undeniable madness. At which point he becomes “mad” is a point of contention. By the end of the play disasters have ravaged his mind so that little semblance of order remains. He may still be able to think logically, to a certain degree, but he no longer has room for human empathy. He has suffered too much emotionally. There are three main characters that lead to or contributed to his demise: the ghost of Hamlet senior, his father; Polonius, his lover’s father; and Claudius, his uncle and stepfather, the King.

            The play begins two months after Hamlet senior has died. A month ago his mother married Claudius, Hamlet’s uncle. Hamlet does not approve of the marriage and believes it was arranged too hastily. He feels that there is nothing he can do about it because his uncle is the King and it is treasonous to speak against him. Hamlet has his first reason to question his sanity when the ghost of his father appears. The ghost tells Hamlet that Claudius killed him by pouring poison into his ear. Other characters, namely Horatio, Hamlet’s best friend, see the ghost but it does not speak to them. All they hear it say is, “Swear.” (1.5.175) Hamlet knows that seeing the ghost doesn’t make him crazy. What he is worried about is what would happen if he believed the ghost.

            Hamlet must decide whether or not the ghost is an amiable spirit or an evil one. The ghost admits to being in purgatory, so it really could go either way. For Hamlet to even consider avenging his father’s death is treasonous. Everything about the ghost is wrong, what it suggests and its very presence. If Hamlet kills Claudius as the ghost suggests, he will go to Hell. Hamlet is conflicted about whether or not the murder would be worth Hell. This doubt in the ghost and himself guides Hamlet down a road to madness.

            Hamlet hears a player recite a monologue about Hecuba when her husband was slain by Pyrrhus. Hamlet is so moved by the monologue that he wishes he had the same power of speech and feeling that the player has. He does not know what to feel or do in his own life, and this player has rendered such emotion in a story that does not even concern him. Hamlet is jealous about the player’s control and power over emotion. “A broken voice, and his whole function suiting, with forms to his conceit—and all for nothing! For Hecuba!What’s Hecuba for him, or he to Hecuba?” (2.2.583-586)

Hamlet continues to lament how he has actual reason and drive for such emotion yet he can’t display it effectively, or at all. He would like to be able to convince the court and all of Claudius’s supporters that Claudius murdered his father. But even Hamlet is not sure if he believes it. He is still worried that the ghost is an evil fiend. Hamlet goes to see Ophelia, his lover, for comfort.

Ophelia has been speaking with her father, Polonius. Polonius tells her that Hamlet does not love her, that he is just currently infatuated but that he will move on. He also points out that Hamlet may not get to chose his bride because he is crown prince of Denmark and princes do not get to chose who they marry. Ophelia, dutiful daughter that she is, does not speak to Hamlet. After Hamlet leaves, she tells her father of his visit. Polonius instructs her to give Hamlet’s love letters back to him. Once again, Ophelia obeys.

When Hamlet realizes that Ophelia is rejecting his love, that she is choosing her father over him, he is distraught. He tells Ophelia that he no longer loves her and that he never loved her in the first place. “You should not have believed me, for virtue cannot so inoculate our old stock but we shall relish of it. I loved you not.” (3.1.127-129) He wants her to leave, to go a nunnery so that she will learn to never let men beguile her into loving them.

Polonius has robbed Hamlet of his one love. If Polonius had not told Ophelia to return the letters, Ophelia and Hamlet may have been able to rely on each other to stay sane. Instead of staying in his place Polonius plunged head first into issues without considering other angles. He tells Gertrude, Hamlet’s mother, how to treat Hamlet. “Look you lay home to him. Tell him his pranks have been too broad to bear with and that your Grace hath screened and stood between much heat and him.” (3.4.1-6) Polonius hides in the Queen’s drapes when Hamlet comes to speak to her. Hamlet hears him stir and kills him, believing Polonius to be Claudius.

Hamlet is a little thrown from killing the wrong man, but he takes it in stride and continues his conversation with his mother. This dismissive attitude toward the death of a human is the first clear sign of Hamlet’s erosion of empathy. It is marked by the reappearance of the ghost, Hamlet senior. Only Hamlet can see it. It says nothing, but it is there, at least in Hamlet’s mind. The ghost represents Hamlet’s loss of connection to human empathy and emotion; it signals that Hamlet is withdrawing into himself and is less concerned with right and wrong. When Hamlet leaves his mother’s room he drags Polonius’s dead body out saying, “This man shall set me packing. I’ll lug his guts into the neighbor room.” (3.4.234-234)

Gertrude tells her new husband, Claudius, about Hamlet’s slaughter of Polonius. Claudius decides that Hamlet is much too dangerous to remain in Denmark  so he sends him to England with Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, and a note asking the English to kill Hamlet. Claudius is the main cause of Hamlet’s madness. He murdered Hamlet senior; he married Gertrude, Hamlet’s mother; and he ordered Hamlet to be killed.

Claudius is the catalyst for Hamlet’s demise. He has no regard for the effect his actions have on other characters’ emotional stability. His chief concern is for himself. He killed the king and married the queen. He goes along with Polonius’s scheme to separate Hamlet and Ophelia, just to see if Hamlet is mad because of love. Hamlet and Claudius have no love or respect for each other. But at least Hamlet originally had reservations about killing Claudius. Claudius just does not care. Once he has written the letter asking for Hamlet’s death he says, “By letters congruing to that effect, the present death of Hamlet. Do it, England, for like the hectic in my blood he rages, and thou must cure me. Till I know ‘tis done, howe’er my haps, my joys, were ne’er begun.” (4.4.72-78).

Hamlet may be losing or have lost his ability to care, but he has not lost his ability to reason. He knows that Claudius means to have him killed. He reads the letter that has his death sentence and calmly adjusts it so that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern will meet their demise in England instead. Hamlet returns to Denmark.

It is when Hamlet first returns to Denmark that we see his last vestiges of feeling for his fellow humans. He happens upon gravediggers who are digging Ophelia’s grave. They tell him whom the skulls in the grave belong to. One of them was the court jester from when Hamlet was a boy. Hamlet recollects about the fun times he shared with the jester. He gets quite emotional, he holds the skull in front of him and speaks to it and about it, “He hath bore me on his back a thousand times, and now how abhorred in my imagination it is! My gorge rises at it. Here hung those lips I have kissed I know not how oft. Where be your gibes now? your gambols?” (5.1.191-196)

Hamlet learns of Ophelia’s death as she is being laid into the ground. Laertes, Ophelia’s brother, attacks Hamlet. Laertes has reasons enough; Hamlet killed his father, Polonius, abandoned his sister, and forgot that he had killed Polonius. Hamlet does not understand why Laertes assaults him. Hamlet feels that Laertes attacks him because of Ophelia’s death, “Hear you sir, what is the reason you use me thus? I loved you ever. But it is no matter. Let Hercules himself do what he may, the cat will mew the dog will have his day.”

Claudius fuels Laertes’s anger so that he might beat Hamlet in a duel. Claudius is still set on having Hamlet killed. Laertes, wracked by grief and propelled by Claudius’s cajoling decides to duel Hamlet. He even puts poison on the end of his blade so that if he even scratches Hamlet he will die.

The poisoned blade is ultimately Laertes’s undoing as it is Hamlet’s. They both die by the blade. As he dies, Laertes confesses his dishonorable maneuver and Hamlet acknowledges it. But he does not let Claudius off so easily. Claudius had poisoned a cup of wine so that if Hamlet drank it he would die. Instead the queen drinks it and she dies. Hamlet, in his final burst of energy before death, chokes, stabs, and forces Claudius to drink his own poison. “Here thou incestuous, murderous, damned Dane, Drink of this potion. Is thy union here?” Hamlet pours the last drops of poison into Claudius’s mouth, “Follow my mother.” (5.2.356-357) Hamlet no longer has any reservations in murder. Claudius is the fifth and last person he kills in the play.

Hamlet’s emotions were unstable at the beginning of the play. Because of the other characters’ meddling he is pushed further and further away from human compassion. The ghost starts Hamlet’s mind on the path of treachery and Polonius and Claudius just keep giving him cause to continue down the road.