“O, that this too too solid flesh would melt,
Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew!
Or that the Everlasting had not fixt
His canon ‘gainst self-slaughter! O G-d! G-d!
How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable
seem to me all the uses of this world!”

Greatest play ever written? In the top ten of greatest works of literature ever written? The answers to these questions fall beyond the scope of my meager capabilities.  Hamlet is not so much a drama of action, but rather a drama of inaction. In Hamlet, we have one of the first true psychological dramas where what the characters are thinking propels the play more than what they do.

Claudius, Hamlet’s uncle, ascends to the throne of Denmark and marries Gertrude, Hamlet’s mother, after having killed Hamlet’s father. These turn of events depress the crap out of Hamlet, only to grow worse. After visiting the ghost of his father and learning all the sordid details, Hamlet plans to avenge his father’s murder, but he instead spends most of his time deliberating whether he can trust the spirit or not, getting sidetracked with anger towards his mother, and feigning madness to throw everybody off their game.

People have analyzed Hamlet to death that I can’t think of anything new to say. Hamlet’s fatal flaw is he spends too much time deliberating, but then has quick paroxysms of action like when he murders Polonius. Hamlet commits the same sin his uncle bears guilt for, murdering an innocent man, Laertes and Ophelia’s father, losing any sense of heroic innocence. Laertes is his foil as a character, whereas Hamlet deliberates too much when he should act, Laertes is a brash hot-head. Hamlet also ponders questions about the afterlife throughout the play, reconsidering his religious and philosophical world view multiple times through the play, even at some points expressing relativist sentiments about meaning and purpose in the world.

Shakespeare’s strength lies in his ability to unfold multiple dimensions to his characters. For example, the wonderful scene after the play-with-a-play when Claudius repents his sin of murdering his own brother, but still shows his power-hungry nature when he claims he wouldn’t undo the crime if it meant losing power and Gertrude, thus in many ways annulling his repentance as he lacks true sincerity. The play offers a myriad of ways to read the various characters. Does Claudius actually love Gertrude? Does he merely desire political power? A combination? Does he actually want to raise Hamlet as his son in the beginning out of sentiment to his new wife and as repentance for his crimes or is this merely shrewd political maneuver? Does Hamlet inability to act due to his philosophical uncertainty or fear of failure? Is Hamlet really insane and thinks he’s just pretending or just pretending to be insane? Did Ophelia and Hamlet have a sexual relationship? When we remember that these parts were meant to be played by an actor on stage, we also must consider that the answer to those question also depends partially on an actor’s interpretation of the part. For this reason, I suspect Hamlet can never get boring because the characters and their motivations constantly shift with every reading.

Hamlet is a more complex and difficult play than Titus Andronicus (the last Shakespeare work I read and responded to on this blog). The language confounded me much more in this play, especially once Hamlet feigns madness. Hamlet’s mad ramblings often prove impenetrable and undecipherable, while at other times bursting with wisdom. It is hard to figure out when his words contain those gems of wisdom and when they’re mere ramblings meant to confound. The language of this play in general forces the reader to work harder than in Shakespeare’s earlier works. The metaphors become more complicated and I must admit there were times I found myself frustrated, even skipping past a few lines that I couldn’t comprehend. All of this can easily be forgiven for the wonderfully beautiful moments, mostly as part of Hamlet’s soliloquies, found in the play that makes almost every other writer I have ever read look amateurish.  I suspect Hamlet will be one of those works that I will come to again and again in my life for its difficulty, its deep characters, and the sheer beauty of its language.

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