Hamlet, Gertrude and Ophelia: A Dramatist’s Enquiry into our Perception of Others
Hamlet, Gertrude and Ophelia: A Dramatist’s Enquiry into Our Perception of Others
Abstract
The subject of this essay is an aspect of Hamlet that is fundamental to its structure, namely a parallel between Hamlet’s relationship with Gertrude and his relationship with Ophelia. Elucidation of this parallel will show how, in this play, dramatic form explores the influence of inner experience upon our understanding of others, an influence which includes the logical interdependence between sensory perception and the object. This enquiry into the nature of drama as a form of knowledge develops an interpretation in Sensory Knowledge and Art, a book to which I will frequently refer.
Definition of the Logic of Dramatic Form
In Hamlet, a specifically moral inner conflict is presented at the beginning of the play, and explored consistently throughout the shifting events of the action. In this respect, exposure of the necessity for moral virtue – and its complexity in actual experience – is central to the portrayal of reflective life in action. This stands for a much deeper and more subtle representation than we would see in a mere display of moral virtues and vices in the characters.
Moreover, we can appreciate that this dramatization of a conflict between the necessity for moral virtue and how it may be distorted by experience invokes a transcendental perspective by revealing inner experience as it interacts with and is shaped by social relations (in this case by filial relations together with status). However the drama is driven by Shakespeare’s personal inclinations, and this is inescapable, the strictly personal is transcended by a form in which moral inner conflict in the action represents the nature of reflective life for a person. The dramatist’s exploration of the conflict and its psychological depth ensures that his passion for the form, and its insight into life, surpass all other personal inclinations. Even though the play must be given its moral and psychological substance by the author’s feelings and attitudes, the dramatic portrayal of reflective life does not simply represent them; rather they are drawn upon to inform the psychology of a character and his feelings and attitudes.
Hamlet’s relationship with his mother is interwoven with his relationship with Ophelia. In this connection, there is a powerful cohesion between the development towards his climactic encounter with Gertrude in Act 3 and a more allusive portrayal of his relationship with his lover and accomplice. The latter relationship is remarkable for its depth and subtlety in view of the lack of direct contact between the characters. Both in Act 3 scene i and the play-within-the-play Hamlet and Ophelia are also engaging in a performance, and we see no direct expression of their feelings for each other. Nonetheless, the dramatic action creates a strong sense of their attachment and how it is destroyed.
There is a tie in the logic of dramatic form between reason and feeling. This is primarily because moral intuition based on experience generates the moral judgements that determine our perception of the character’s actions and psychology. We can only think that slavery is wrong if we can imagine the experience of being enslaved – otherwise it might be justified as a pleasantly secure form of employment, because the loss of freedom could be presumed to be outweighed by something more important. In this respect, sensitivity to imaginative self-awareness in dramatic form leads us into a knowledge of human life and experience that is unlike, say, a ‘logical’ belief in the social harmony promised by the individual’s subordination of personal ends to the common good.
In Hamlet, dramatic form is a counterlogic, and its opposition to propositional logic is implied in the sensitive exploration of reflective life in action. It is not simply that the play opposes certain ideas, its form opposes a standard way of reasoning and exposes its limitations in the understanding of ourselves and the world. Specifically, this is achieved by portraying in terms of each other the values of a community and the inner experience of the individual. Thus, dramatic form penetrates the superficial logic of our ordinary moral and practical judgements and plunges us into the intricate reflective life from which they emanate. With respect to the idea that social harmony is promised by the sacrifice of self-interest to the common good, it should be acknowledged that this general truth is by no means secure. While it may seem obvious that such sacrifice is common, appears to be normally justified and is certainly preferable to a universal pursuit of self-interest at all costs, license for a sober pursuit of self-interest that is not immediately justified by appeal to the common good may be necessary to a healthy community.
For example, when a young person pursues an aim in life it is impossible to know whether the accommodations of a community will be justified. To take an extreme example, though the young Cézanne had admirers, recognition of his ability as a painter was a long time coming, especially by the art establishment from which he persistently invited attention. In the meantime, while his art was developing he was supported by his father, and a member of the Academy might have claimed that it would have been in the interests of society if the painter had followed his father’s wishes from the start and become a lawyer. Clearly, this example highlights the fact that what is justified for the individual is not always self-evident and different observers can come to opposing conclusions, even when they might all seem to be qualified to make a judgement. Furthermore, while the common good is served by the contribution of each according to his abilities it is also served by allowing the individual to discover what his or her abilities might be and what suits him best. This obviously represents a conflict in what is in the common interest, and there are different ways in which the common good can be in conflict with self-interest.
Though individuals may differ in the seriousness with which they exercise their freedom of choice in this matter, and some are cavalier or outrageous in their ambition, self-interest can be quite sober and reasonable even when the person is destined to fail. Moreover, self-interest can take the form of retreat from the challenge into a safe alternative, which may deprive the community of a genuine talent. Thus, the range of possible ways in which self-interest can be related to the common good, together with the impossibility of always knowing just how the common good will be served by a person’s actions, compromises the maxim. While there are many things to support it – a parent must frequently sacrifice self-interest for the good of its children, and we must recognize the possessions and well-being of others regardless of our own impulses and desires – a healthy community will permit some leeway to self-interest when its consequences for the common good are uncertain. Therefore, in some relevant circumstances, this freedom from the necessity to subordinate self-interest to what appears to be the common good can itself be in the interests of the common good.
This example is characteristic of the qualification that is appropriate to propositional logic as it applies to human life and experience. At first, it seems obvious that the subordination of self-interest to the common good is a moral imperative with which it is impossible to argue, but this is because we are attracted to the relation between them only from certain points of view and not from others. Because the logic of generalization about the relations between self-interest and the common good lacks the subtlety to encompass the complexity of reflective life, and its conflicting moral demands upon the individual, a proposition in the form of a reliable maxim cannot always be possible.
Sensory Intuition in the Logic of Dramatic Form
The logic of a certain kind of language, such as that of the proposition or that of dramatic form, simply refers in these remarks to how that language can make good sense. This may refer to the avoidance of irrationality and rules that are connected with it, like self-contradiction and non-sequitur; but it is more important to discover the senses in which the logic of the language is true to the nature of what it intends to illuminate. In this connection, the logic of dramatic form might superficially appear to be less precise than the language of physics. However, dramatic form is concerned with human life and experience, and in these matters its logic is greater in subtlety and scope than the propositional logic appropriate to the investigation of physical phenomena and their relations. A formal precision of which the logic is too coarse for the subject matter is of limited use.
We might begin the investigation of dramatic form by making an obvious but important distinction. For we should immediately recognize that its logic is concerned with something that is far more complex and intricate than narrative or story-telling, the succession of one event following from another. These are clearly essential but only represent an aspect of the logic of dramatic form.
To see that a particular object is of the right size, shape and material to be a cup involves calculation of some kind and therefore a form of computation. However, in order to perceive this object in the first place – and therefore to measure it in relation to its purpose – it is also necessary to recognize a cup as a vessel for drinking tea or coffee, and recognition is not a computation. It is a direct intuition of an object that gives it an identity or character, and this character does not require computation or even judgement, but is spontaneously realized in an act of sensory perception. When we see a cup, we see a vessel for drinking tea or coffee and this gives us the criteria for computation. Thus, the criteria are the basis for computation and in being so cannot themselves arise out of computation, and this means that experience cannot be essentially computational.
In the sense that sensory perception is not computational we can see that it constitutes a form of knowledge that cannot be translated into something else – like a physical description as we might find in scientific analysis. For example, in addition to their physical properties, colours have a psychological significance. A direct perception of the colour red enables us to check the associations that might be made with that colour; enabling us to see that red goes with certain feelings like anger or sexual passion or empathy or a sense of danger. Someone can know these things by being informed of them without being able to check this information by knowing red as a visual experience. However, in the absence of sensory knowledge we cannot know the unique alchemy of colour in Rembrandt, Turner, Cézanne and Gauguin, or how colour, tone, form and space combine to create a definite aesthetic effect, or how harmony, rhythm, melody and tempo combine to give depth of expression to the music of Bach, or how sound, rhythm, phrasing and caesura combine to affect cadence and meaning in a sonnet by Shakespeare. Because such artistic phenomena are intrinsically psychological, and every successful employment of the sensory elements is unique, there is no set of rules for creating or responding to the precise integration of these elements; the aesthetic significance cannot be captured without including a direct sensory experience that cannot be translated into strictly physical language. In view of these observations about sensory knowledge and inner experience, we can see that a non-computational intuition of oneself and the world corresponds with the logic of dramatic form as an alternative to propositional logic.
The Logical Interdependence of the Physical Object and Sensory Perception
The separateness of mind and the incipient object, so that the former acts upon the latter, is what enables them to generate the character and identity of phenomena – something physical is given its character by the act of sensory perception, which is psychological (Nelson 2017). We can see, therefore, that the integration of sensory perception and materiality depends upon a clear distinction between the two, the psychological action cannot include anything physical and the incipient object cannot include the act of realizing the physical object as something in particular. This separation of functions is highlighted by the fact that in different sentient beings, say a person and a lizard, the same incipient object is realized as different physical objects (a lizard cannot see a cup as a vessel for drinking tea or coffee). Therefore, both idealism and materialism are disqualified, and so are fusions like neutral monism, and panpsychism. Experience is not another physical object and neither is it a part of a physical object. Realization of a physical object depends upon an absolute ontological distinction between the act of sensory perception and the materiality of the object.
Hence, we should observe the logical interdependence of inner experience and materiality that is implied in the realization of the physical object by an act of sensory perception. This is supported by the impossibility of translating sensory knowledge into knowledge of the kind that we see in science, the knowledge of calculation and computability of physical interactions. So, there is a close connection between the distinct roles of mind and materiality in the perception of a physical object and the untranslatability of sensory knowledge. If mind and materiality were merged as in neutral monism and panpsychism then sensory knowledge could in principle be analysed by a computer, since then the monistic entity could be analysed as a physical entity with an experiential extension. The latter would be translatable as instrumental to something merely physical.
The obvious analogy is with an organism. Here we can see the mind as an epiphenomenal extension of the body; or we can see the body as an extension of the mind. In the latter, we can see the behaviour of the organism as a psychology of impulses, thought, desires and feelings which are continuous with physical actions reflecting the ‘soul’ of a sentient being. In this respect, the language for understanding the organism would encompass its physical actions as an expression of its psychology. Both of these conceptions become contentious if the logical interdependence of inner experience and materiality is observed. Moreover, the logical interdependence of these elements is interactive in the realization of the physical object by an act of sensory perception. This is more than an epiphenomenal extension of the physical or a physical expression of psychology, and cannot be limited to a monistic entity that is physical according to one perspective and psychological according to another. In short, there is in the sensory perception that realizes the physical object something more than a merging of the physical and the psychological in which one merely accommodates the other.
The logical interdependence represents an indissoluble duality that entails a further duality, between the realization of the physical object and a primary form of self-knowledge. Because sensory perception gives the object its identity and character it shows a sentient being something of its own character, and can give us subtle intuitions about ourselves when the object is another person. In this respect, realization of the object entails a subliminal form of self-knowledge – which sometimes reflection can turn into actual self-knowledge. Hence idealism, materialism, monism and panpsychism, or any other theory that merges the material with sensory perception, must also be incompatible with a basic form of self-knowledge.
The action, therefore, is not a merging of elements but a transformative contact between contrasting elements. So, if both the physical object and a primary form of self-knowledge reflect the logical interdependence of inner experience and materiality then this interdependence must be true of all phenomena in all respects. A building is realized by the logical interdependence and so is a brick that helps to make the building; by the same token, so is an atom that helps to make it. There would be a logical inconsistency if the building were composed of some kind of entity in which the physical and psychological merge with each other – in terms of their composition we could never make a coherent transition between this entity and the building as a physical object.
To illustrate this opposition, we can compare two ways in which sentience might take place. First, the merging of inner experience and materiality is sometimes implied in a theory which begins with the idea that fundamental particles possess some degree of sentience. In time this grows with the cumulative integration of particles as the forms of life increase in complexity and evolve into organisms and eventually into animals that fully experience a world and themselves. A very different possibility is the evolution of physical systems into a life which originates experience as one of its elements. In this case life is not present in any form in the particle itself and initially is only a prospect towards which the evolving incipient object is inclined (just as an oak tree is a prospect towards which an acorn is inclined). For this conception, the occurrence of life and sentience coincide as complementary elements and allow for the realization of oneself and the world as a potential outcome. The possibility of a physical object can be directly associated with the kind of being for which it is significant.
Thus, the logical interdependence implies that sensory perception and inner experience cannot be adequately defined in physical terms, and this includes being defined as an element of any physical object, Conversely, if I see a cup as a vessel for drinking tea or coffee then the molecules and atoms that are inferred from this knowledge must also be given their identity by an act of sensory perception. We cannot move from the logical interdependence to a separate realm without creating two incompatible physical worlds, and we know categorically that sensory perception gives the cup its character and identity. What we see as a cup is not seen in the same way by a lizard, but the molecules and atoms can be inferred as the same whatever particular character is given to the object by sensory perception. So, if we extrapolate from this action to our ex0erience in general all physical objects and their parts are given their character and identity by our sensory perception of them; we know ourselves and a world by giving them character and identity.
In this light, the logical interdependence acquires a further significance. On one hand the act of sensory perception cannot be defined in physical terms but must be a contrasting element that is radically non-physical. At the same time, the world is comprehensible to us only because it is given character and identity by our experience of it. Taken together these facts imply that the act of sensory perception and inner experience in general cannot be objectified as part of the world of physical objects but must be understood in another way. We have just seen that what we experience as a cup is realized by an act of sensory perception which by definition cannot be applied to the act itself, and in this connection the giving of character and identity to an object should be distinguished from its having a character and identity.
This conception of things excludes the possibility of a world that is independent of experience in which there are many kinds of object, including sentient beings that are possessed of cognitive powers such as sensory perception, inner experience and consciousness. In this world, the powers associated with sentience might be understood as merely attributes or properties that give to the creature its capacity to survive in a certain way and to develop and enhance its particular form of life. According to a naturalistic conception of this kind the powers that represent an inner life are seen as belonging to the character and identity of the creature but do not encompass our giving things their character and identity in the act of sensory perception. In this respect, knowledge of a sentient being is comparable with knowledge of a physical object like a cup or a house. Each is seen to possess certain attributes and properties, and in a sentient being these include qualities associated with sentience.
As a matter of fact, in giving character and identity to things sensory perception and inner experience are neither directly open to sensory perception nor accessible to a systematic explanation. Rather, we know them in ourselves by how they give character and identity to the physical object; when we see a cup as a vessel for drinking tea or coffee or a house as a shelter or a place in which to live we have a sense of how sensory perception acts on a particular occasion. That sense can be much stronger, of course, in our sensory perception of other people, but in our experience generally the logical interdependence of sensory perception and the object is also fundamental to knowledge of our inner life. As an object among others in a physical realm a cup or house can be observed at length or held in the mind and analysed in various ways, while the sensory perception is not itself an object and defies close scrutiny and analysis – even though we may have good reason to associate it with our character and personal history. In this connection, in physically similar circumstances a building might ‘feel’ distinctly different to me on two occasions some years apart, without my knowing or being able to know anything about the psychology and inner experience that might account for the difference. Hence the contrast between apprehension of the object and the experience of apprehension sheds light on our knowledge of ourselves and the world. There is an important epistemic distinction between knowing things according to how we give them character and identity and knowing oneself as the agent of this action.
The logical interdependence between sensory perception and materiality in our realization of the physical object implies interdependence of the physical and psychological in a sentient being. So, the world is physically psychological and psychologically physical. To begin with the former, not only are our thoughts and experiences physically realized in our bodies and in objects, but even the possibility of thinking itself requires the physical media of sounds and visual images or symbols, or tangible forms that are responsive to vision as well as touch. In this respect, having a mind implies its interrelations with a physical sentient being in a physical world. On the other hand, all that we have seen concerning the logical interdependence shows that the physical object is given its character by the psychology of a sentient being. This view of the relationship implies not that the physical and psychological merge but that they act upon each other in experience of ourselves and the world. Without its acting upon the physical there is nothing for the mind to grasp, while without psychological activity there is an incipient object but no physical objects as we perceive and understand them.
Sensory Perception of a Person
The logical interdependence acquires a new significance when the object is a person. This involves something more complex than giving a cup its character and identity. In the first place, a person is not an object with a particular purpose and stable identity, and the logical interdependence cannot easily be disentangled from a rich confusion of thoughts and memories. Social experience is often the opposite of our giving a character and identity to the other person – we normally withhold our judgement in order to enable a free and open communication; an anxiety to pin the other person down to some particular trait stifles what are the primary ends of our engagement, such as to share something and to learn from them. However, it is also possible that these obvious features of our interpersonal experience might disguise from us the logical interdependence when it acts as a vital and necessary part of our interest.
It is fundamental to the argument that in sensory perception the person, like a cup, is a physical object. Hence the character of a person can be realized in the act of sensory perception; I can form a conception of myself by my bodily experience of capacities or shortcomings, and this is true of both physical and mental powers as well as moral qualities. In the case of another person, my being able to realize his or her character is often dependent upon the recognition or evocation of a physical image of him. Sometimes, if I do not know his appearance then I must imagine one. It follows that our sensory experience generally, and not simply that of physical objects, acquaints us continually with the logical interdependence between sensory perception and the object.
For example, in Hamlet we see how sensory experience contributes to turning his mother’s offence into a more general form of moral corruption. Here we can certainly see the logical interdependence between the act of sensory perception and the object (in the form of a person), and this shows a personal attitude emerging without the guidance of reason. Hamlet shifts from inner turbulence over being betrayed and abandoned to a perception of his mother’s character by means of memory and imagination. He does so by seeing her as a physical realization of moral qualities in his mind’s eye, and he takes it to be a true observation. Because he does not have good reasons based on the evidence Hamlet needs these sensory impressions in order to build up the image of a woman defiled by sexual frailty, since without this physical realization he could not sustain a clear idea of her character. The process as a whole illustrates a typical way in which our judgement of someone is dependent upon sensory experience. Therefore, once he has been captured by these impressions and the inclination to which they are attached, Hamlet becomes enslaved by them and loses the ability to question his motives. He makes allusion to the ignominy of a corrupted mind in the comparison of himself with Hercules, and it is a sign of the enslavement that this is only a fleeting moment of self-awareness.
Dramatic Form and the Objective Portrayal of Reflective Life in Action
We can see that Shakespeare is unerringly precise about the psychological interior of Hamlet’s perception of his mother, and in dramatic invention the logical interdependence does not mean a loss of objectivity. The same interdependence applies to my seeing a cup as a vessel for drinking tea or coffee, and that is not a merely subjective perception. We can consider it to be objective in the sense that a cup is seen impersonally in this way by a community, and this makes it rational. So, while the character’s judgement is not the result of reasoning the author’s psychological insight depends upon both reasoning and the logical interdependence. While Hamlet judges his mother by feeling and sensory perception as it is realized in memory and imagination, Shakespeare’s creation of the character depends upon the physical realization of a person with a particular psychology. The portrayal of Hamlet’s reaction is convincing to a community of readers because it has recourse to the feeling and sensory perception that can influence anybody’s judgement of another person. When he draws a character, the dramatist makes use of the logical interdependence, and the characterization demonstrates the action of this interdependence in the formation of a judgement. If the dramatist is Shakespeare this psychological turning of oneself inside out can be profoundly illuminating.
The individuality of the artist is essential to the representation of individuality in the character. This does not make characterization autobiographical, Shakespeare’s individuality is as essential to the (satirical) creation of Polonius as it is to the creation of Hamlet. A landscape by Cézanne is certainly an expression of the artist’s individuality, and this makes the painting a reflection of the act of visual perception in an individual. In both of these cases individuality enables the form that is used by the artist to portray reflective life in action as a precisely specified experience. Inclusion of the artist’s personal history and cultural background does not threaten the objectivity of the portrayal since they, too, are essential elements in the individuality of the person represented by the form. Shakespeare achieves a seemingly inexhaustible multiplicity of ways of transposing his own individuality into characters that have an independent identity and thereby display reflective life in action, without being autobiographical or merely the expression of subjective feelings and attitudes. In particular, this requires a profoundly sensitive integration of inner experience with the social and cultural conditions of the world to which the character belongs.
Hence the transposition of individuality does not entail that the artist has had the experiences that he or she gives to the character. In the characterization of Hamlet, for example, it is not necessary for Shakespeare to have been betrayed by his mother in some deeply disturbing manner; what is necessary is a psychological disposition that enables the author to know how the character might react to such disillusionment. It is extremely likely not only that Shakespeare could understand the inner experience of his character, which includes the deceptive and self-justifying response that we see in Hamlet’s decision to regard his mother’s frailty as sexual in nature. This insight could not be convincing if it were based solely upon observation of others; it also depends upon self-knowledge, and it is in this sense that the individuality of the artist informs that of the character. Shakespeare makes an oblique allusion to this fact in Hamlet’s self-aware comparison of himself with the heroic persona of Hercules.
In general terms, his author’s individuality is more openly transposed in Hamlet’s characterization than in any other character in the plays, and, significantly, he might well be the subtlest and most substantial. Like Shakespeare, Hamlet is a student of the theatre and this is displayed in his gift both for acting and for writing dramatically. The latter is alluded to in his contribution to the play within the play, but the transposition is most striking in the many ways in which histrionic performance dominates his interaction with the other characters. A virtuosic mastery of disguise is complemented by his author’s wit and linguistic invention, and in this we feel the presence also of Shakespeare’s commanding intellect. It is possible, moreover, to connect the actor in Hamlet with what we have seen of his transfer of anguish at his mother’s betrayal to the play-acting that he inflicts upon Ophelia, which might include the self-dramatizing judgement of Gertrude’s motivation (Act 1, scene ii). And it is consistent with the elusive nature of his own identity that the misogyny which makes him forget his love for Ophelia should follow his self-awareness about the perception of Gertrude just mentioned. Alternation between commitment to extreme attitudes and moments of insight into the meaning of his own actions is characteristic of a brilliant mind that is able to see into the moral vulnerability that animates his protean behaviour. Just such a mind is what is needed to create the character.
To summarize the position that is taken here: in order to achieve a convincing portrayal of reflective life in action the dramatist must create characters who are individuals, and this depends upon the transposition of salient elements from the individuality of the dramatist to that of the character. In particular, a transposition of this kind is necessary to reveal the character’s inner experience, since the dramatist’s self-awareness is the only reliable way into that aspect of the portrayal. Another person’s inner experience only rings true when it chimes with what we know of ourselves, either through memory or a strong sense of recognition. Furthermore, in order for the portrayal of inner experience to be true it must be consistent with the psychology of the character, and we have seen that relevant patterns of behaviour in Shakespeare’s experience have also been transposed into Hamlet’s. The success of this transposition depends on a dual perspective: ‘Frailty thy name is woman’ has one meaning for the character, as an expression of his attitude and feeling at the time he speaks, while to the reader and audience it can also reveal a psychological motivation that reflects his individuality and circumstances. Clearly, this kind of dramatic invention is deeper and more refined than autobiography, and depends upon both an unusual self-knowledge in the artist and a mastery of the form into which that self-knowledge is transposed.
This argument elucidates the sense in which the logic of dramatic form creates a portrayal of reflective life in action. Though the play itself might include a social critique, the transposition of individuality that enables the dramatist to portray inner experience resists the temptations of personal desire and preference. In this respect, an artist’s self-exposure precludes the indulgence of self-gratifying illusions about himself and the world. So, while moral judgement is intrinsic to our responses, dramatic form can be faithful to the moral complexity of experience – specifically by allowing the disclosure of character to emerge from the disorder and conflicting passions of human interaction. To this end, a coherent characterization that includes our inner experience objectifies the inner life of the dramatist, and does so by making vision prevail over other personal inclinations. Thus, the transposition that gives the character his individuality lets us speak of Hamlet’s characterization as an objective portrayal.
The Main Relationships in Hamlet
The interdependence of sensory knowledge and a person as its object is the source of an objective portrayal of human life. In Hamlet, this is executed in a number of situations involving different kinds of interaction. In order to be solid and objectively true, characterization has to be psychologically consistent and sensitive to the interdependence, and the analysis that follows will show how this occurs in certain scenes of the play. Specifically, the realization of another person’s character by an act of sensory perception entails that the perceiver is more than a set of moral qualities. The spontaneous realization of personal qualities in sensory perception is informed by inner experience and is not a voluntary expression of moral attitudes and inclinations. What is objective lies to a significant degree in how judgement (including moral judgement) is influenced by the cognitive nature of sensory experience. This argument shows that it is not simply the dramatist’s detachment that makes the characterization objective – what Shakespeare knows of himself in order to define Hamlet’s perception of his mother is theoretically recognizable to any of us and therefore rational.
Thus, we will see the interplay of Hamlet’s relationships with Gertrude and Ophelia as a central structure in a true portrayal. With respect to this intention, it is a theme of Hamlet’s opening soliloquy that judgement of his mother’s character depends upon a physical realization of her in his memory and imagination. Accordingly, attention to the logical interdependence between sensory perception and the object will enable us to see how the form of inner experience affects Hamlet’s perception of Gertrude and Ophelia throughout the play, and, in particular, how his perception of the former affects his perception of the latter.
Hamlet
O, that this too too solid flesh would melt,
Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew !
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 !
Fie on’t ! Ah, fie ! ’tis an unweeded garden,
That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature
Possess it merely. That it should come to this !
But two months dead ! Nay, not so much, not two,
So excellent a king that was to this!
Hyperion to a satyr; so loving to my mother,
That he might not beteem the winds of heaven
Visit her face too roughly. 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. Frailty, thy name is woman ! –
In a little month, or ere those shoes were old
With which she followed my poor father’s body,
Like Niobe, all tears – why she, even she –
O God ! a beast that wants discourse of reason
Would have mourned longer – married to my uncle,
My father’s brother; but no more like my father
Than I to Hercules. Within a month,
Ere yet the salt of most unrighteous tears
Had left the flushing of her galled eyes,
She married. O, most wicked speed, to post
With such dexterity to incestuous sheets !
It is not, nor it cannot come to good.
But break my heart, for I must hold my tongue. (Act 1, scene ii, lines 129 – 159)
In these lines, we can see the interdependence of sensory perception and the object in Hamlet’s memories and imagination as he crystallizes his thoughts in a vividly physical realization of his mother’s character. The explicitness of this realization can be seen as highlighting the nature of our judgements when we think of another person, wherein the evocation of a physical presence is normally indistinct. What matters to the form of inner experience in this instance is that the other person’s character does not appear to us as something that is insubstantial and interior; without the physical realization Hamlet could not form an understanding of Gertrude at all. Furthermore, the soliloquy reveals how mental imagery that is dependent upon sensory perception can intensify our conception of the other person, and in this respect emotion and attitude feed on sensation.
We can see these connections emerge from line 137, when his thought turns from feelings of desertion and disillusionment to the memory of his parents in happier times. Naturally, he forms a physical image of them, and in keeping with the impulse the image is sharply sensuous and emotional. This way of portraying the interdependence arises from a mastery of dramatic form; the interfusion of feeling with memories and imagination truly represents our inner experience and how the person appears to us. In this connection, Hamlet’s imagery has another aspect that is also true of our experience. For in the unfolding of this soliloquy we become increasingly aware that the soliloquy is a fantasy in which he accuses his mother of treachery and betrayal. Marriage to Claudius enables her to share the crown, and earlier in the scene we see that Hamlet is now a feared pariah with a legitimate grievance who is forbidden to leave the country (Nelson 2017). In reaction to this, the image of his father as a loving and protective husband contrasts his moral virtue with a clinging embodiment of physical desire, and initiates the transformation of a happy memory for Hamlet into a judgement of weakness upon her sex (in line 146).
The definition of Gertrude’s treachery is quite specific, and closely related to Hamlet’s conception of her attachment to Claudius. She is not represented as vicious, or devious, and neither is she seen as calculating in the pursuit of her goal. Rather the emphasis is placed on frailty, as Hamlet refers in different ways to an absence of character and moral strength. Her uncontrollable excess of tears is intense but short-lived, and there is nothing lasting in her attachment to the dead king, nothing that would represent loyalty and a genuine concern. In significant human relations, there is a kind of treachery in drifting from one passion to another without purpose or integrity, and what Hamlet sees in the response to her husband’s death applies equally to her betrayal of Hamlet, her son.
Thus, in Hamlet’s fantasy his mother’s tears are unrighteous because they reflect not the grief of a devoted wife but a flimsy surrender to feeling. Reference to the speedy transition from mourning to re-marriage is repeated in lines 152 to 156, which represent a climactic completion of his thought. Hamlet employs his sharpest imagery to imagine Gertrude as a practised exponent of sexual conquest, while the physical energy of lines 156 and 157, heightened by a special sense with which he uses the word incestuous, make sensory perception a powerful vehicle of emotion in the resolution. In spite of his excitement, Hamlet unfolds his thought in a manner that is highly organized and intelligent, and this enables him to perceive his mother’s behaviour according to his will. The imagery that supports a general perception of her as morally vacuous is perfectly suited to the conclusion that her replacement of King Hamlet by Claudius is inspired by lust – in this particular the portrayal is forceful and consistent, and, with respect to depth of character, in keeping with what we are shown of Hamlet’s attitude by later developments.
However, though Hamlet’s perception is inspired by memory and imagination, a detached observer might not be so easily persuaded. Building an image of Gertrude as morally weak and libidinous does not show that she is drawn to Claudius by sexual attraction, and he gives no concrete evidence for this belief. The action of the play strongly suggests that Gertrude has married Claudius as soon as possible in order to hold on to power. Moreover, Hamlet implicitly concedes the vulnerability of his position when, in line 153, he compares his unheroic fabrication with the labours of Hercules. Therefore, in relation to the argument that is presented in this discussion, the reader’s objective point of view reveals a complex interplay of thought, feeling and sensory perception in Hamlet’s inner experience, in which the essential role of physical realization is highlighted by his fantasy, memory and imagination. As the expression of such inner experience, these psychological features exemplify the logical interdependence of sensory perception and the other person as the raw material of dramatic form.
With respect to the main interest of this discussion, the delineation of Hamlet’s actions, character and experience is consistent with the structure of sensory perception. To understand it, we should consider relations between such perception and a detached analysis of the other person. If, therefore, the physical object possessed its own character and our perception of it were merely a representation, then he would not see Gertrude irresistibly drawn to Claudius. Hamlet’s assumptions would ultimately depend upon an abstract psychological analysis that would lack authority. For example, the questionable proposition that all women are morally unstable where sex is concerned and therefore Gertrude must be personally attracted to Claudius. As it happens, Hamlet’s judgement is enlivened by the character that is given to her by his memory and imagination. It is by means of this authority that the taint of sexual frailty dominates his view of her. Thus, by adhering to the actual structure of sensory perception Shakespeare demonstrates how inner experience is instrumental to our judgements about each other. Here the judgement is overreaching, but this kind of perception can equally be a reliable source of knowledge about things and people, and is quite distinct from calculation and psychological analysis.
We can form a better understanding of relations between sensory perception and analysis if we examine more closely their entanglement in a commonplace example. In my seeing that someone has lost the thread of what I am saying there are elements both of calculation and of direct intuition. Thus, I might see his hesitation as incomprehension because I know that what I am trying to convey is unfamiliar, or intricate or poorly expressed. Here there is room for a form of calculation, but, significantly, it is not calculation about his psychology. Correspondingly, I could see the reason for hesitation in his expression and demeanour – that is, by a direct intuition that he is confused – as opposed to his being absorbed in thought or momentarily distracted. In the absence of calculation, the intuition would not have a context so there would be no reason to link his physical expression with incomprehension; while without the intuition, calculation would only be an unverified speculation – he might have lost the thread, or might hesitate for some other reason. Therefore, my judgement lies neither solely in calculation nor solely in sensory perception but in a synthesis of the two, and because we know that judgements of this kind are often correct it is reasonable to see them as a form of knowledge.
Act 1, scene iii
In the structure of the play, Hamlet’s soliloquy is immediately followed by a parallel scene that ties his situation to that of Ophelia, and this parallel is significant to Hamlet’s relationships with the women. Our recognition of the significance depends upon seeing how the initial circumstances affecting Hamlet and Ophelia act as a prompt to our understanding of their association in the unfolding action. Otherwise, there is no reason to include this scene in the play. Thus, it is clear that behind the valedictory occasion of Laertes’ returning to France there is a deeper interest in the intenrion of her brother and father to separate her from Hamlet. The enquiry that follows will show that she quietly mocks their efforts and that she will not act upon their guidance. This is an important indication of where Ophelia’s affiliations lie, in spite of her appearing to spy for the king.
At the beginning of this scene, Laertes delivers a lengthy sermon, and she makes a trenchant reply.
Ophelia
I shall the effect of this good lesson keep
As watchman to my heart. But, good my brother,
Do not, as some ungracious pastors do,
Show me the steep and thorny way to heaven,
Whiles, like a puff’d and reckless libertine,
Himself the primrose path of dalliance treads
And recks not his own rede. (Lines 45 -51)
Ophelia counters Laertes by being unceremoniously worldly. We see her mockery in the obvious contrast in tone and in her impassive response to what she knows to be a pretence of concern for her welfare. Her unwillingness to argue about the position of Hamlet and her relationship with him, or about the preservation of her ‘chaste treasure’, might be seen as an understandable reaction to her brother’s effrontery. But the circumstances suggest a deeper and more disturbing reason. An assembly of the court attended by Laertes and Polonius (Act 1, scene ii) has ended with Claudius denying Hamlet the liberty of returning to Wittenberg, and this is a clear sign that he is imprisoned in Denmark so that he remains under the King’s anxious eye. Therefore, Hamlet is now an enemy of the state and a pariah to the prevailing authority. This means that there is no longer any immediate prospect of the kind upon which Laertes has based his argument that Ophelia will be cast aside in the interests of some greater imperative.
In connection with this argument, it can be assumed that Ophelia is well aware of her lover’s loss of status as it is inconceivable that the crestfallen Hamlet should not have confided in her, and we might assume that he has done so long before the king’s announcement. Thus, it follows that Ophelia can see through Laertes and knows that he is trying to rescue himself and the family from an undesirable association. In the view of Polonius and Laertes, Hamlet has become a perilous liability and could be the cause of their ruin.
Ophelia begins her speech with a deliberate ambiguity. In its obvious sense, ‘effect’ refers to what Laertes intends, and this makes the first sentence compliant with his purpose. However, given what we know of the situation, ‘effect’ also refers to the effect that his speech has on her and here the meaning is in direct opposition to the obvious sense. Against her show of compliance, Ophelia tells herself that she must use her response to his ‘lesson’ as a reminder to suppress any feeling that might betray her collaboration with Hamlet. The seeming compliance is needed in order to shield her true affiliation.
Ophelia’s reference to ungracious pastors shows Laertes that she does not need a lecture about the ways of the world and passes the enquiry back to him and his circumstances. The sting comes in the expression ‘puff’d and reckless libertine’, which insinuates that by returning to France he will be tempted once more, and that his susceptibility is closely related to what we have just seen of his character and personality. Thus, ‘puff’d’ refers not only to his anatomy but also to his psychology, in which lofty condescension exemplifies a male assumption of superiority. In this respect, the reckless attitudes of the libertine are assimilated to a more general conception of masculine egotism. Laertes has the tables turned on him, since it is he and not Ophelia who is in danger of being naïve and ignorant.
This subtle and disciplined response to Laertes is succeeded by a freer treatment of Polonius, upon whom she uses her wit to surreptitiously ridicule and unsettle. Being careful not to lose her own composure, Ophelia mimics her father’s wayward rhetorical posturing in a way that creates doubt and confusion and makes him increasingly temperamental. In Sensory Knowledge and Art there is an extended analysis of her mischievous play and the ways in which it induces a sample of his tortuous polemical style. Thus, the scene ends with a deliberate ambiguity that indicates the main reason for including this action in the play. On being instructed that she must end all contact with Hamlet, Ophelia appears to comply, with ‘I shall obey, my lord’. But if we remove the comma, she is saying, ‘I shall obey my lord’, and when spoken the ambiguity is easy to conceal – the two senses can sound exactly the same. Polonius has just referred to Hamlet as Lord Hamlet, so Ophelia is privately saying, ‘I shall obey my lord, Hamlet’. Hence the scene that introduces Ophelia makes it clear that she is Hamlet’s accomplice in the action that follows, and this is essential to our understanding of what happens between them and how it is related to his feelings about Gertrude.
In the parallel between this scene and the scene it follows, Ophelia’s perception of Laertes and Polonius is similar to Hamlet’s perception of Gertrude. There is a consistent use of dramatic form to portray character in these relationships, and it is not the case that Hamlet is simply at the mercy of will and feeling while Ophelia is detached and purely rational. From the nature of her engagement it is clear that will and feeling play an essential part in Ophelia’s defence of her independence – without them she would lack the energy and imagination to withstand the coercion of her brother and father. In the absence of will and feeling there would be no awakening of the self-awareness and past experience that is necessary to insight into their character and motivation – her mental strength depends not simply on reason but on the interaction of reason, will, feeling and sensory perception. In this respect, her reasoning and Hamlet’s reasoning about his mother are the same; both are objective in the sense of being true to our perception of the object – in particular, the object as it is determined by an act of sensory perception and the inner history of a sentient being.
Thus, the divergence does not involve any difference in the structure of a person as an object of perception. Rather, the difference lies in the physical images of Gertrude that are created by Hamlet’s memory and imagination, in which he ‘sees’ her as weak and inconstant; the drive that is generated by will and feeling results in an imaginary perception, the type of which plays no part in Ophelia’s experience. An acute reader knows that her perception of Laertes and Polonius, including their look and sound, is perfectly in keeping with how they appear to a clear thinking and intelligent observer, and is thereby a reliable basis for an objective judgement. Therefore, an elusive interaction of reason, will, feeling and sensory perception is presented in the parallel dramatic action of scenes ii and iii of Act 1.
By being sensitive to the circumstances and inner experience of the characters, this interaction produces a delusory perception in one and a true perception in the other. And from its psychological detail we can appreciate the distinctive vision with which the dramatist is able to portray a person’s inner life. Of particular significance is the insight that Hamlet’s delusory perception is neither simply irrational nor hallucinatory, but arises out of the nature of ordinary experience. Insofar as the physical object is given its character by an act of sensory perception his images of Gertrude are a variant upon such perception, which makes them a direct and sensory confirmation of his judgement. The images are delusory because the interdependence of reason, will and feeling that makes our sensory perception possible also creates an instability that sometimes dismantles its rational basis.
In order to consolidate this argument, I will trace these necessary relations in the kind of ordinary experience that might give substance to dramatic form. Say an acquaintance invites me to meet a friend of his so that we can all share ideas about a subject of common interest. I am wary of this invitation because on previous occasions I have been caught in awkward and embarrassing exchanges with the acquaintance in company that has been sympathetic to him and not to me. So, I demur and the conversation moves on, touching incidentally upon a confessional moment that superficially has nothing to do with the invitation. He tells me, ‘If you think I am kind, you should meet my brother’ and rambles on for a while about his brother’s neighbourly virtues. His contribution to this conversation is made through a veil of good humour and smiles that might be taken for uncalculated friendliness.
In this conversation, it is obvious that there are a number of ways in which reason is involved in a judgement about what is going on, and equally that this involvement is inseparable from an interaction of reason with will, feeling and sensory perception. Hence the fear that I am being asked to offer myself up to being cornered and, perhaps, punished for my views is a rational response to what I know from past experience. In this there is no engagement for my reason without the desire to avoid several uncomfortable consequences. My judgement is only worthy to be considered a judgement in the light of my desire to avoid being fraudulently defeated in argument, and of being left with feelings of resentment about the argument itself and about having been tricked into the situation. If I did not care about such things there would be no grounds for a judgement and nothing for my reason to work on.
Similarly, the circumstances suggest that the purpose of introducing his brother is to imply that, in general, I should consider this acquaintance to be of good will and unlikely to injure me. Therefore, reason tells me that I am being gulled into accepting the invitation and that he has something to lose if I decline; here the interaction of reason with will and feeling is generated by my sense of emotional coercion and, again, the lasting effect of being deceived. Even the friendly smile becomes a weapon, and in all details of this experience the interaction is necessary to my forming a judgement – reason does not function autonomously. Moreover, in my awareness of the other person’s manner reason and sensory perception are interfused, and this creates an impression in which reason is not a form of calculation but nevertheless could help me to make the right judgement. Influenced purely by a disposition to assess his honesty by physical appearance, I might accurately feel that his air of friendliness is not genuine. In this experience seeing into my own perception of another person is a means of self-defence, but a high degree of self-awareness is unusual in our sensory perception of others and the example is chosen simply to elucidate the nature of this relation along with the conditions of our reasoning in this sphere.
Contrary to Aristotle’s definition of tragedy as a resemblance that shows us the fall of a good man we see in Hamlet something far more complicated. It is more revealing to explore the complexity of our moral judgement by engaging with the perception of ourselves that lies within in our sensory perception of others, and we have seen how this is achieved in the play. So, when we observe a cup we give the object its character and this enables us to see it as a vessel for drinking tea or coffee; but in seeing a person our perception itself is of much greater significance. Rather than simply presenting the individual as having certain moral qualities Hamlet involves us in the instability that threatens our moral judgement when we attempt to form a clear conception of someone else. This is particularly revealed in Hamlet’s remembered and imagined images of Gertrude (Act 1, scene ii), which invoke the shadowy sense of ourselves that often accompanies our sensory perception of others. In Hamlet’s experience, we see also how the compelling force of his image of Gertrude as sexually voracious in lines 156 to 159 makes his perception of himself all the more shadowy, as it suppresses the fleeting awareness of his own frailty in lines 151 to 153.
The second and third acts of the play are dominated by a dissembling response to the spying activities of the King, the Queen and Polonius; Hamlet and Ophelia collaborate in a succession of attempts to deceive and unsettle. In this connection, Hamlet anticipates their scheme when he lets slip to Horatio and Marcellus his intention to assume an antic disposition (Act 1, scene v, lines 170 – 173), and this phase of the action adapts the character of Amleth, the trickster in The History of Denmark by Saxo Grammaticus. Hence there should be no surprise when, in Act 2, scene I, Ophelia tells her father, with a sense of alarm, that Hamlet has appeared to her in a state of physical and mental disorder. This is her first positive action as his accomplice and the details provide an opening for what is to be a sustained comedy that is carried along by the resourceful deception of Claudius, Gertrude and, above all, Polonius. It is for his benefit in particular that the notion of a lovesick Hamlet is created. In this connection, it is significant that Ophelia’s melodramatic disclosure follows immediately upon her father’s detailed instructions to Reynaldo for a surveillance project upon Laertes.
The tenor of Ophelia’s speech in this scene is exemplified in,
‘That done, he lets me go
And,with his head over his shoulder turn’d,
He seem’d to find his way without his eyes
For out adoors he went without their helps
And to the last bended their light on me.” (lines 96 – 100).
Here she speaks like a little girl who is caught up in things that are beyond her grasp, and ends with a quaintly outmoded conception of vision. However, we already know that she is quite in command of worldly things and has a considerable mastery of the language. Thus, it is clear that she is fabricating her reaction to an invented scene and that this would be obvious to Polonius if he were not so confident of his authority over her.
This theme is extended in Act 2, scene ii by Polonius’s presentation of a note from Hamlet to Ophelia to the King and Queen.
Polonius
I have a daughter – have while she is mine –
Who in her duty and obedience, mark,
Hath given me this. Now gather, and surmise. (reads)
‘To the celestial and my soul’s idol, the most beautified Ophelia.’ That’s an ill phrase, a vile phrase; ‘beautified’ is a vile phrase. But you shall hear. Thus: In her excellent white bosom, these, &c.
Queen
Came this from Hamlet to her?
Polonius
Good madam, stay awhile; I will be faithful. (reads)
‘Doubt thou the stars are fire;
Doubt thou the sun doth move;
Doubt truth to be a liar;
But never doubt I love.
O dear Ophelia, I am ill at these numbers.
I have not art to reckon my groans; but that I love thee best, O
Most best, believe it. Adieu.
Thine evermore, most dear lady, whilst
this machine is to him, HAMLET.’
This, in obedience, hath my daughter shown me;
And more above, hath his solicitings,
As they fell out by time, and place,
All given to mine ear. (lines 115 – 127)
Only the most insensitive reader could fail to respond to the comedy in Hamlet’s exhortation of love, and it is equally certain that Ophelia could not be taken in by it. We need simply consider his normal speech and virtuosic wit to realize that these trite and clumsy lines could not be seriously intended by the most lovesick Hamlet. Even Polonius, who is taken in, can see that there is something wrong with the use of ‘beautified’, though he does not mention that it contradicts the writer’s purpose. Nobody who understands the meaning of this word would use it as a term of romantic endearment. Thus, ‘beautified’, and the phrases ‘I have not art to reckon my groans’ and ‘whilst this machine is to him’ embellish the absurdity of the note as a whole. In addition to this expression of the disruptive intentions of the lovers, these lines make an important connection between the credulity of Polonius in accepting the letter at face value and his confidence in the dutiful loyalty of Ophelia. This is given a special emphasis by his affirming her obedience to him twice in the extract.
At the end of this meeting the King, Queen and Polonius agree to further the investigation by placing Ophelia in Hamlet’s way during his customary walk (llnes158 to 166) and eavesdropping upon their conversation. Common sense suggests that Polonius should have to arrange for the encounter some time in advance so that Ophelia would be ready for it, and this means that she would have time to warn Hamlet of the King’s plan. Thus, the relevant scene confirms that he does indeed know that he is being spied upon, as, with Ophelia’s collaboration, he appears to extemporize a performance that is directed towards the eavesdropping audience. In this connection, his ‘soliloquy’ is not a dramatically arbitrary meditation on the nature of life and death by a melancholy prince; rather, as we will see, it is structurally integrated into the complex action of the play.
Act 3, scene i
Hamlet
To be, or not to be – that is the question;
Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die, to sleep –
No more; and by a sleep we say to end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to. Tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish’d. To die, to sleep;
To sleep perchance to dream. Ay, there’s the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause. There’s the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time.
Th’oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely,
The pangs of despis’d love, the law’s delay,
The insolence of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? Who would these fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death
The undiscovered country, from whose bourn
No traveller returns – puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pitch and moment.
With this regard, their currents turn awry
And lose the name of action. (lines 56 to 87)
Hamlet presents an elevated reflection upon life and death as a parody of the humanist philosophy that we find in essays by Erasmus and Montaigne. We can appreciate that he does so deliberately in a number of interrelated ways. To begin with, the theme is decidedly weak, since it is not our concern for what follows death that deters us from committing suicide but a strong attachment to life. Whatever our misfortunes and disappointments they are vastly outweighed by the will to live, and a compilation of unpleasant and disheartening experiences would make little impression on most of us. Parody is immediately suggested by the oratorical language in which Hamlet frames his speech, and we might contrast its comic effect with the inner speech of the genuine soliloquy that we have seen in the first act. Thus, the tone of this mock-soliloquy is established in the opening lines with their arresting declaration and rhetorical flourishes – such as ‘To be or not to be – that is the question’’, ‘nobler in the mind’ and ‘slings and arrows of outrageous fortune’. Continuation in this vein is accompanied by a sense of light-headed, impromptu elaboration which suggests a pleasure that is taken from toying with ideas. In particular, in the repetition of, ‘To die, to sleep’ in line 64, which recovers the thread of his thinking in order to develop the argument; the connection of sleep with dreams leads into disturbing thoughts about what follows life, (Ay, there’s the rub’). We see the same improvised quality in the many ways in which the same idea is repeated in different words, and in how being carried away by speculation creates a loss of clear focus in what is being said. This is especially true of the close, where Hamlet allows the explanation to drift into a confusion of ending one’s own life with ‘enterprises of great pitch and moment’. We might recall from the opening soliloquy that Hamlet rejects suicide on the grounds that God has ‘fix’d his canon ‘gainst self-slaughter’. Consistency within the argument or with his own attitudes has little to do with what he is saying.
Hence the meaning of this speech does not lie in its theme; it lies in the use that the speaker is making of his theme. While giving the impression that his ‘despair’ is caused by Ophelia’s rejection, its meaning lies in the circumstances of this speech, including his knowledge that the King, Queen and Polonius are spying on him. In this light, our interest in Hamlet’s motivation turns from the theme of his musings to their form, and this is specifically related to what the eavesdropping trio have been led to believe about him. We know that their presence on this occasion has been prompted by Ophelia’s false rumour of a lovesick Prince, which has been substantiated by a letter designed by them to mislead. We have also seen that this letter gives the impression of a mentally and emotionally frail and disordered individual who can barely express himself in words. Now, only a few days later, the spies are invited to witness a virtuosic performance of supreme self-confidence which seems to be boundlessly resourceful and is characterized by rhetorical skill and a complete mastery of the language.
Even the logical flaws and air of absurdity give the speech a comic vitality which the speaker controls with great ingenuity. For example, the development of his theme from line 70 culminates in, ‘Who would these fardels bear,’ (line 76) to ‘puzzles the wlll’ (line 80). The modulation of figurative language in these five lines turns comic excess into an exquisite reflection that is deeply persuasive to the ear and thereby creates uncertainty in his audience. Thence his conclusion, in lines 82 to 87, moves from the contemplation of life’s blows to an unsubstantiated judgement of universal significance. Here, ‘conscience’ is used in the sense of inward knowledge, which in this case refers to knowledge of our weakness in the eyes of God. But Hamlet’s analysis of conscience by means of metaphor is deliberately confusing. For if such knowledge makes us cowards and our exercise of conscience is equated with the ‘native hue of resolution’ being ‘sicklied o’er by the pale cast of thought’ then the argument is both self-contradictory and blasphemous. For we know that to live by observing ‘his canon’ it is essential to follow the guidance of conscience, and that according to Christian doctrine this could not be interpreted as cowardice. Hamlet lures his audience into an imaginary insight spun from his powers of invention; he transforms a demonstration of mastery into a mesmerizing spell. Thus, the speech is given its meaning by a desire to mystify and unsettle, as a preliminary to the ‘assault’ upon Ophelia that will add further shock to their sense of his mental state and character.
Ophelia begins the exchange by pretending that they have been apart for some time, ‘for this many a day’, and, unconvincingly to an innocent observer, is holding some letters which she has ‘longed long to re-deliver’. This is supposed to be a chance encounter and yet Ophelia has prepared for the occasion by bringing along a prop that will serve to generate conversation between them. Hamlet’s obstructive response is therefore an opportunity for her to enact the part of a disillusioned victim of love; the emphasis upon her loss being merged into a moral reproach that is unjustified if, as the eavesdroppers believe, it is she who has ended the relationship.
In connection with all of these details there are no innocent observers, as the spies can see both the letters and enactment as devices by means of which Ophelia intends to draw out Hamlet’s condition, while Hamlet himself is fully aware of their real purpose. The only incongruity is that if Hamlet were innocent, as the spies imagine, then he, like any innocent observer, might wonder why she is carrying around a number of his letters to her. Hamlet immediately plays upon this incongruity.
Hamlet
Ha, ha! Are you honest?
Ophelia
My lord?
Hamlet
Are you fair?
Ophelia
What means your lordship?
Hamlet
That if you be honest and fair, your honesty should admit no discourse to your beauty.
Ophelia
Could beauty, my lord, have better commerce than with honesty?
Hamlet
Ay, truly; for the power of beauty will sooner transform honesty from what it is to a bawd than the force of honesty can translate beauty into his likeness. This was sometime a paradox, but now the times gives it proof. I did love you once.
Ophelia
Indeed, my lord, you made me believe so.
Hamlet
You should not have believ’d me; for virtue cannot so inoculate our old stock but we shall relish of it. I loved you not.
Ophelia
I was the more deceived.
When we know that Hamlet is aware that he is being overheard, and with keen attention, the logic of these lines is clear. Ophelia’s having the letters on her person is suspicious, and so his enquiry ‘Are you honest?’ is a challenging threat to the King’s design, while Ophelia plays her part by feigning incomprehension. Hamlet intensifies the eavesdroppers’ discomfort by asserting that honesty does not have the power over beauty that beauty has over honesty; suggesting that the King deviously uses the power of Ophelia’s beauty in order to carry out his investigation. Hamlet makes the connection in, ‘This was sometime a paradox, but now the time gives it proof.’ In his allusive way, he is taunting the King over a habit of deception, and this is abruptly turned into a moral reproach by the admission to Ophelia, ‘I did love you once’. Thus, his playing the situation as though she is fallen helps to substantiate the general truth that ‘virtue cannot inoculate our old stock but we shall relish of it’. Because beauty and innocence cannot resist, youth too will join the ‘old stock’ and taste of corruption. Here a direct allusion to Gertrude and Polonius is obvious and intended to disconcert, and assault upon the former is a shaping influence in the exchange as a whole. So, Hamlet follows the logic of his argument by taking back the admission of having loved Ophelia, implying that he has only made use of her, and releases an outpouring that blurs the distinction between acting and giving vent to real feeling.
Hamlet
Get thee to a nunnery. Why would’st thou be a breeder of sinners? I am myself indifferent honest, yet I could accuse me of such things that it were better my mother had not borne me. I am very proud, revengeful, ambitious; with more offences at my beck than I have thoughts to put them in, imagination to give them shape, or time to act them in. What should such fellows as I do crawling between earth and heaven? We are arrant knaves, all; believe none of us. Go thy ways to a nunnery. Where’s your father?
Ophelia
At home, my lord.
Hamlet
Let the doors be shut upon him, that he may play the fool nowhere but in’s own house. Farewell.
Ophelia
O, help him, you sweet heavens!
Hamlet
If thou dost marry, I’ll give thee this plague for thy dowry; be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as snow, thou shall not escape calumny. Get thee to a nunnery, go, farewell. Or if thou wilt needs marry, marry a fool; for wise men know well enough what monsters you make of them. To a nunnery, go; and quickly too. Farewell.
Ophelia
O heavenly powers, restore him!
Hamlet
I have heard of your paintings too, well enough; God hath given you one face, and you make yourselves another. You jig and amble, and you lisp, and nickname God’s creatures, and make your wantonness your ignorance. Go to, I’ll no more on’t; it hath made me mad. I say we will have no more marriage; those that are married already, all but one, shall live; the rest shall keep as they are. To a nunnery, go.
This excursion into the nature of honesty is a further contradiction of the earlier image of a lovesick Hamlet, developing the mesmerizing effect of his mock soliloquy at the beginning of the scene. There is a thematic connection between the contemplation of suicide and Hamlet’s various ways of attacking the institution of marriage, and his pretence of nihilism is, in both cases, levelled at the degenerate activities of his eavesdropping adversaries. Hence there are moments when it appears that he is communicating with them through his exchanges with Ophelia, especially in the first speech in this passage. The phrase, ’it were better my mother had not borne me’ is intended to make Gertrude feel uncomfortable, while the following sentence is clearly aimed at Claudius, who is spying because he fears that Hamlet may be ‘proud, revengeful and ambitious’, and therefore a threat. The question at the end of this speech, ‘Where’s your father?’ makes a sudden shift in order to unsettle, as it suggests to the spies that Hamlet knows perfectly well where Polonius is situated.
However, within the attempt to create disorder in the minds of the eavesdroppers Hamlet’s preoccupation with honesty takes another turn. There is a particular vehemence in the speech that begins, ‘If thou dost marry’ and introduces the main idea with, ‘I’ll give thee this plague for thy dowry’. Hamlet’s tone invites us to consider what is conveyed in the idea and the effect that the lines might have not only on the spying King and Queen but also on Ophelia. Thus, we can appreciate that espionage, and even spying upon those around us, is almost inseparable from misrepresentation. It is quite rare to hear about someone being spied upon in order to discover his or her virtues, while rumour and gossip select the features of a person’s character in order to condemn, and suppress whatever might qualify or explain. Hamlet is saying that however blameless you may be your marriage will be defiled by the other people you move among, and completes the idea by asserting, in so many words, that you will not be chaste and pure anyway. Moreover, his rhetorical design and choice of words single out marriage by using ‘calumny’ in a way that suggests calamity. This is an exaggeration, as misrepresentation of one kind or another is pervasive in all of our relationships and its presence in marriage is no more disastrous than elsewhere. Nobody can escape it and generally it is only a minor distraction.
On the other hand, his identification of spying with calumny is not difficult to understand. Hamlet examines honesty from a number of different angles in this exchange; and the connection between misrepresentation and spying is related specifically to his being spied upon by his mother, who has chosen, at his expense, to further the interests of Claudius. There is, however, a dramatic complication in the very strength and conviction of Hamlet’s argument, for, though Ophelia knows that he is performing a part, she cannot but recoil from his attack on marriage. It is clear that the deeper his involvement in the argument the greater his rage against Gertrude, and this obscures from him the reaction that might be expected from Ophelia. In turn, he loses the self-awareness that accompanies our perception of others, and is no longer in touch with his own feelings for her.
Hamlet’s amnesia in this scene marks a critical moment in his association with Ophelia. For we can see quite clearly just how much of his purpose and motivation he has disclosed to the King and Queen. Already he has given them several reasons to suspect him of a complicated move against them and one which could be interpreted as a direct threat to their power. Of the eavesdroppers, Claudius is the most acutely aware of the implications of Hamlet’s antic behaviour, and in Act 3, scene he tells Gertrude and Polonius of his intention to remove the threat. Whereas he formerly wished to confine Hamlet to the court he now finds the protean unpredictability of his enemy too burdensome and looks to exile as a solution. Therefore, insofar as Hamlet has skilfully contrived to unsettle the King, he must be aware that he has imperilled both himself and Ophelia, and that he should be careful to conceal her involvement as his accomplice. However, in their next meeting that we see, his failure to protect her is strongly implied in a series of exchanges that accompany the dramatic fire that is set alight by his use of the play-within-the-play.
Act 3, scene ii
Queen
Come hither, my dear Hamlet, sit by me.
Hamlet
No, good mother; here’s metal more attractive.
Polonius
[To the KING.] O, ho! do you mark that?
Hamlet
Lady, shall I lie in your lap?
Ophelia
No, my lord.
Hamlet
I mean, my head upon your lap?
Ophelia
Ay, my lord.
Hamlet
Did you think I meant country matters?
Ophelia
I think nothing, my lord.
Hamlet
That’s a fair thought to lie between maids’ legs.
Ophelia
What is, my lord?
Hamlet
Nothing
Ophelia
You are merry, my lord. (lines 105 t0 117)
Hamlet’s reply to his mother is not simply a metaphor, the ensuing exchange with Ophelia shows that he is employing a homophonic pun involving the closely related words metal and mettle. Thus, Polonius takes the phrase in its obvious sense, to mean, ‘here’s a sexually more attractive alternative’ and he awakens the King to this confirmation of his theory about Hamlet. In doing so he alerts all who are present to what is being exchanged between Hamlet and Ophelia in the lines that follow. The more complicated and intended meaning of the phrase conveys Hamlet’s recognition of Ophelia’s spirit and courage in acting as his accomplice, her mettle, and this is more subtly related to ‘metal more attractive’. In seeing her, he is immediately attracted to an idea, and his words associate the invisibility of magnetism with the invisibility of a thought. Hamlet realizes that he can make use of Ophelia’s allegiance to unsettle the King in advance, and soften him up for the climactic moment in the play-within-the-play.
These circumstances make it clear that the exchange between Hamlet and Ophelia has not been prepared, and therefore that she has not been given time to consider the consequences of this attack upon the King. Her being given no warning means that she has little understanding of what Hamlet is up to as she tries to cope with his public involvement of her in his outrageous innuendo. For example, the expressions country matters and nothing (no thing) are familiar ways of referring to women’s parts; with characteristic ingenuity, he bends her responses until she is unable to resist and is forced to play along with him (‘You are merry, my lord.’). At this point, he has achieved a measure of success in showing that Ophelia only appears to be on the side of the King but is really on Hamlet’s side. A much stronger exposure of this tie comes during the performance.
Ophelia
You are as good as a chorus, my lord.
Hamlet
I could interpret between you and your love, if I could see the puppets dallying.
Ophelia
You are keen, my lord, you are keen.
Hamlet
It would cost you a groaning to take off mine edge.
Ophelia
Still better, and worse. (lines 239 to 243)
Ophelia’s obvious capitulation reveals to the King and his followers that she and Hamlet are lovers, and their earthy intimacy shows that she has only been an ally to the King in name. Thus, Hamlet has lured her into giving herself away and done so quite deliberately, as a psychological device intended to further his overall design. The exchange, moreover, takes place just moments before the conscience of the King is securely caught by the performance and it is tumultuously brought to an end.
From such an incorporation of Ophelia into his attack upon Claudius we might assume that he is cold-bloodedly sacrificing her to his own ends. However, we cannot understand his actions in this scene without a wider and more generous conception of his motivation. In this connection, we might recall Hamlet’s formulation of a plan to expose the King during the soliloquy in Act 2, scene ii.
Hamlet
Hum – I have heard
That guilty creatures, sitting at a play,
Have by the very cunning of the scene
Have been struck so to the soul that presently
They have proclaimed their malefactions;
For murder, though it have no tongue, will speak
With most miraculous organ. (lines 584 to 590)
In the lines that immediately follow, Hamlet qualifies his position by referring to the possibility that he has been deceived by the Ghost or by his own weakness and melancholy (lines 591 to 600), but the concluding partial couplet shows confirms trust in the course of action that he has chosen. Hence a strong feeling that the King will be unable to resist is tied to the conviction implied in the lines quoted – namely, that in the theatre a direct confrontation with his actions can drive a guilty man to confess. Just as, in the opening soliloquy, Hamlet sees his own weakness in portraying Gertrude as lustful but continues to nurse the idea, so he nurses the belief that the play-within-the-play will force a confession from Claudius.
Thus, Hamlet assumes that Ophelia is safe from the King’s retribution because the performance is about to make him bowed and contrite. This belief is re-enforced by the psychology of Hamlet’s elaborate plan. By the time he permits Ophelia to appear as his accomplice, he has expended a great deal of time and ingenuity on his design and each stage of its execution has fallen out as he planned. This gives a sense of inevitability to the prospect that he will reach his goal and that a new order will be established. So, Hamlet is not sacrificing Ophelia, but her security and his own depend upon his judgement that the King will be broken by the performance.
These intricacies in relation to Ophelia can be seen as one thread of the inner state which evolves in Hamlet as his plan unfolds. The danger in what he has undertaken combined with his apparent success evokes an obvious excitement in him – especially in the elation he shares with Horatio in lines 265 to 288. However, within this complex of deliberation, impulsiveness, anticipation and disorganized emotion Hamlet is engaged in a high wire act over which he has limited control, both with respect to what is external and with respect to what may be unconsciously brewing in himself. So, when, after being summoned by Rosencrantz and Guildenstern and then by Polonius, Hamlet goes to his mother to face her interrogation, the high state he is in turns into an inwardly generated vertigo that has appalling consequences.
To be psychologically specific, Hamlet’s state of mind is most powerfully affected by the crosscurrents of three obsessions, 1) the action that he has initiated against the King, 2) an unspoken desire to undo his mother’s act of betrayal in marrying Claudius, and 3) a sense of uneasiness about his failure, highlighted just moments earlier, to exact his father’s revenge. These currents are deeply intertwined, not only because his plan to demoralise the King is an elaborate substitute for direct action, but also because the second obsession subliminally inhibits his ability to act decisively; he can undo his mother’s betrayal only if Claudius is alive (Nelson 2017). Thus, in the closet scene (Act 3, scene iv), the disorder of Hamlet’s state of mind comes out in many ways.
Enter Hamlet
Hamlet
Now, mother, what’s the matter?
Queen
Hamlet, thou hast thy father much offended.
Hamlet
Mother, you have my father much offended.
Queen
Come, cone, you answer with an idle tongue.
Hamlet
Go, go, you question with a wicked tongue.
Queen
Why, how now, Hamlet!
Hamlet
What’s the matter now?
Queen
Have you forgot me?
Hamlet
No, by the rood, not so:
You are the Queen, your husband’s brother’s wife;
And – would it were not so! – you are my mother.
Queen
Nay then, I’ll set those to you that can speak.
Hamlet
Come, come, and sit you down; you shall not budge.
You go not till I set you up a glass
Where you may see the inmost part of you.
Queen
What wilt thou do? Thou wilt not murder me?
Help, help, ho!
Polonius [Behind]
What, ho, help, help, help!
Hamlet [Draws]
How now! a rat?
Dead for a ducat, dead!
[Kills Polonius with a pass through the arras.
Polonius [Behind]
O, I am slain!
Queen
O me, what hast thou done?
Hamlet
Nay, I know not:
Is it the King?
Queen
O, what a rash and bloody deed is this!
Hamlet
A bloody deed! – almost as bad, dear mother,
As kill a king and marry with his brother.
Queen
As kill a king!
Hamlet
Ay, lady, it was my word. (lines 7 to 30)
Attention to these lines will show that though he is summoned by Gertrude to appear and explain himself, the motivation for what happens in this scene lies in Hamlet’s obsession with the desire to undo her betrayal. This begins with his obvious refusal to explain his part in the performance, which reverses the spying activities of the King by exposing him as the murderer of King Hamlet. The initial exchanges between mother and son reflect the logic of this situation from the start; in lines 9 to 12 Hamlet responds to accusation with accusation, and when he disdains her authority she threatens to ‘set those to you that can speak’ – meaning guards who can make him listen and reply. Thus, when Hamlet answers threat with counter-threat, in the form of setting up a glass ‘Where you may see the inmost part of you’, Gertrude fears for her life. And his impulsive action against the spy who is hiding behind the arras is a further retaliation against the forces that oppose him.
In spite of the sense of purpose in Hamlet’s reversal of his mother’s intentions, his wild attack and what follows show that an inwardly generated vertigo has taken control of him. The lack of emotion or remorse at what he has done is both strange and shocking; lines 24 and 25 are detached and impassive, while Ophelia is a distant memory. Furthermore, this mood is continued in the reply to Gertrude that follows, in which the gravity of his action is submerged by his preoccupations, and in lines 27 and 28 he implicitly accuses her of the murder of his father. Here the loss of balance is clear; Hamlet is elated that his trust in the Ghost has been validated and the Ghost has commanded that Gertrude should be left alone. In this connection, Hamlet forgets a strong indication that she has played no part in the murder.
Notwithstanding interruption, Hamlet’s deeply considered purpose is in two parts: the first is to show in a stark and disturbing manner the moral offense that lies in his mother’s marriage to Claudius, and the second is to persuade her to engage in a form of redemption, one that, for Hamlet, will undo her betrayal. From lines 40 to 88, he delivers a perfectly composed argument that is rhetorical and enriched by visual demonstration, and its control is clearly owed to its having been rehearsed. With characteristic strength of description, image and comment he draws his mother into the orbit of his inner experience and, by removing the disguises by which we neutralize our moral indifference, exposes her ‘inmost part’ as he has promised to do. Hence, Gertrude’s anguished reaction is provoked not only by an awakened conscience, but also by the torrent of feeling in Hamlet’s assault, and therefore by recognition of the pain she has caused him. So, in response to his hysterical supplement to the theme of sexual inclination, she is only able to repeat her plea to be spared further punishment (lines 94 to 96).
Moments later, as he turns his fire upon the King, an interruption occurs in the form of hallucination.
Enter GHOST
Hamlet
A king of shreds and patches –
Save me, and hover o’er me with your wings,
You heavenly guards! What would your gracious figure?
Queen
Alas, he’s mad!
Hamlet
Do you not come your tardy son to chide,
That, laps’d in time and passion, lets go by
Th’important acting of your dread command:
O, say!
Ghost
Do not forget; this visitation
Is but to whet thy almost blunted purpose,
But look, amazement on thy mother sits
O, step between her and her fighting soul!
Conceit in weakest bodies strongest works.
Hamlet
How is it with you, lady?
Queen
Alas, how is’t with you,
That you do bend your eye on vacancy
And with th’incorporal air do hold discourse?
Forth at your eyes your spirits wildly peep;
And, as the sleeping soldiers in th’alarm,
Your bedded hairs like life in excrements
Start up and stand an end. O, gentle son,
Upon the heat and flame of thy distemper
Sprinkle cool patience! (lines 102 to 124)
To Hamlet’s particular kind of vertigo, the timing of this hallucination is dramatically significant. It comes at the end of a long attack upon Gertrude, and almost immediately following his extreme vilification of her intimate relations with the King (lines 91 to 94). The imagery is an invective triumph of his troubled imagination, and we know from the opening soliloquy that Hamlet is unsure about this perception of his mother. In the time that has elapsed it has become even more compelling because it provides him with the means to undo her betrayal. So, this is what produces the hallucinatory experience; his high wire act has led him to a moment of crisis in which his most urgent inclinations collide with anxiety concerning the truth of beliefs upon which they depend.
Hamlet is fully aware that his actions have been an evasion, and so his first reaction is to confess his fault, to which the imagined Ghost provides an immediate confirmation. However, this opening is only a pilot for the correction of his treatment of the Queen; for as long as the hallucination enthrals him, Hamlet is compelled to admit the need to revise his view of her. This accounts for the sudden change in tone when he addresses her, in line 116. Meanwhile, Gertrude struggles with the extraordinary situation and her reaction shows that the ghost that appears is in Hamlet’s mind; but she also makes an allusion that contradicts his perception the marriage. In line 123, the use of ‘flame’ echoes Hamlet’s reference to flaming youth (line 84) and thus implies that the flame is not in her passion for Claudius but rather in her son’s hectic imagination. Her response is muted because she wishes to avoid explaining why she has married. Of course, both Gertrude and Hamlet know that it has been to hold on to power and privilege, and she has already expressed her guilt over the consequences.
When the hallucination ends and Hamlet is no longer affected by its subconscious origins, he returns to his main objective. In passing, he responds to Gertrude’s a use of ‘flame’ when he tells her, ‘ Mother, for the love of grace,/ Lay not that flattering unction to your soul,/ That not your trespass but my madness speaks:’ (lines 144 to 146), and this re-iteration of his fantasy is a necessary prelude to the completion of his attempt to redeem her.
Hamlet
Good night – but go not to my uncle’s bed;
Assume a virtue, if you have it not.
That monster custom, who all sense doth eat,
Of habits devil, is angel yet in this,
That to the use of actions fair and good
He likewise gives a frock or livery
That aptly is put on. Refrain to-night;
And that shall lend a kind of easiness
To the next abstinence; the next more easy;
For use almost can change the stamp of nature
And either curb the devil, or throw him out,
With wondrous potency. Once more, good night
And when you are desirous to be blest,
I’ll blessing beg of you. For this same lord
I do repent; but Heaven hath pleas’d it so,
To punish me with this, and this with me,
That I must be their scourge and minister.
I will bestow him, and will answer well
The death I gave him. (lines 159 to 177)
In these lines, Hamlet enters the language of holy solicitude as he plays confessor to his mother’s imagined depravity. Having invented the precise nature of her fall from grace, he now frames her redemption in terms of religious ideas and imagery. Thus, the moment of fulfilment for Hamlet is characterized by a further expression of rhetorical skill that serves a precarious grasp of what is real in his situation. In this respect, the plausible invention in his analysis of habit creates a setting for the notion that his mother’s failings exist and can be conquered. His facility and imagination thereby become the means by which his ‘reality’ is established, and give him the authority to offer spiritual guidance. This complex of unsettling deformations represents an occasion for the unconscious disclosure of his character, made all the more starkly contorted by its being spoken to his mother. We cannot avoid seeing him through her eyes. Then, the proposal that once Gertrude has reformed they might exchange blessings is followed immediately by repentance for the murder of Polonius, a moment that is reversed by proclaiming himself to be ‘scourge and minister’ of the unworthy. However, it also introduces a moment of sober self-awareness – in lines 158 and 159 the first thought of Ophelia appears in this scene, in his recognition that the murder has ended their passion.
By the end of the third act, we can see the extent to which Hamlet is exposed to the instability of our perception of others, and our perception of ourselves. The dramatic structure is one in which his sense of others and of himself are disturbed by events, and as he attempts to act upon them he becomes more and more deranged. His vertiginous experience in Act 3, scene iv is therefore the culmination of difficulties that are partly created by that instability. When he has reached the point of realizing his objectives the whole enterprise is in the process of dissolving into thin air. The plan to catch the conscience of the King collapses and, when it is brought clearly to light, the undoing of Gertrude’s betrayal is based on an illusion. Furthermore, in the course of this descent Hamlet’s failure to see truly into himself and others is directly responsible for the ways in which he loses touch with Ophelia, and then loses her altogether.
In the first three acts, we have seen in some detail how the relations between Hamlet, Gertrude and Ophelia affect each other and determine the actions and experience of the characters. In Acts 4 and 5 we see how Hamlet’s failure changes the complexion of this set of relationships, and at this point the action is led by the relationship between Ophelia and Gertrude.
Act 4, scene v. Elsinore. The Castle
Enter Queen, Horatio and a Gentleman.
Queen
I will not speak with her.
Gentleman
She is importunate, indeed distract.
Her mood will needs be pitied.
Queen
What would you have?
Gentleman
She speaks much of her father; says she hears
There’s tricks i’ th’ world, and hems, and beats her heart;
Spurns enviously at straws; speaks things in doubt,
That carry but half sense. Her speech is nothing,
Yet the unshaped use of it doth move
The hearers to collection; they yawn at it,
And botch the words up to fit their own thoughts;
Which as her winks and nods and gestures yield them,
Indeed would make one think there might be thought.
Though nothing sure, yet much unhappily.
Horatio
‘Twere good she were spoken with; for she may strew
Dangerous conjectures in ill-breeding minds.
Queen
Let her come in. [Exit Gentleman
[Aside] To my sick soul, as sin’s true nature is,
Each toy seems prologue to some great amiss,
So full of artless jealousy is guilt,
It spills itself in fearing to be spilt. (lines 1 to 20)
In these lines, the scene begins with somewhat indefinite suggestions about what is happening. This indeterminate mood is introduced by Gertrude’s refusal to ‘speak with her’, which we might immediately relate to the King and Queen’s awakening to Ophelia’s treacherous allegiance with Hamlet (Act 3, scene ii). Therefore, in Gertrude’s curt expression there is a strong sense of justified grievance and an implication that the suppliant has put herself beyond the pale. However, in the Gentleman’s response lies the possibility that there might be something more in the situation, especially in the tension between Ophelia’s disordered mental state and an underlying rationale and purpose.
Thus, within her various kinds of physical and psychological distortion and aberration there is a contrasting thread of sense that is reasonably consistent. If we take the starting point of his speech from line 5, her preoccupation with her father gives an orientation to the speech itself, and we might consider that it is in relation to him that there are tricks in the world. In this respect, the world for Ophelia has become disturbingly unstable; her erratic behaviour and manner are at one with ‘Spurns enviously at straws, speaks things in doubt / That carry but half sense.’ Here the word enviously is used in the sense of carefully or cautiously, and so what is described is an anxious recoil from things that are actually harmless. In the light of what we know has happened to Ophelia, her expression or enactment of psychological fragility and dread is not inevitably a sudden and inexplicable descent into madness.
These observations add a further significance to Gertrude’s ‘I will not speak with her’, insofar as the unsettling tricks in the world may well be associated with the death of Polonius, and this seems to be confirmed by her aside when she agrees to admit Ophelia into her presence. In connection with the aside, it is evident that Gertrude is not uneasy because her son has murdered Ophelia’s father, since this could not be seen as her sin, or a reason for her to be sick in her soul. Rather, she is cut to the quick by conscience, and, in her closing couplet, is doubtful about her evasively refusing to see Ophelia. The word jealousy is used to mean anxiously possessive, and so ‘artless jealousy’ means uncontrollably fearful of showing her guilt. In order to understand what really troubles her we have to go further into the scene.
Enter Ophelia distracted
Ophelia
Where is the beauteous Majesty of Denmark?
Queen
How now, Ophelia!
Ophelia [Sings]
How should I your true love know
From another one?
By his cockle hat and staff,
And his sandal shoon.
Queen
Alas, sweet lady, what imports this song?
Ophelia
Say you? Nay, pray you mark.
[Sings] He is dead and gone, lady,
He is dead and gone;
At his head a grass-green turf,
At his heels a stone.
O, ho!
Queen
Nay, but, Ophelia –
Ophelia
Pray you mark
[Sings] White his shroud as the mountain snow-
Enter King
Queen
Alas, look here, my lord.
Ophelia
Larded with sweet flowers;
Which bewept to the grave did not go
With true-love showers. (lines 21 to 38)
Though her behaviour is distracted, when we know what Ophelia is saying it is clear that her speech (and song) is well organized and skilful; in describing her as speaking things in doubt, that carry but half sense, it is likely that the Gentleman mistakes her allegory and allusiveness for incoherence. She is feigning madness so that she can confront the King and Queen, and this takes the form of working upon their conscience by insinuation. Thus, her songs give expression to ways in which there are tricks in the world, and the second song shows us what lies behind Gertrude’s uneasiness.
In lines 23 to 26, Ophelia alludes to her suffering as a result of Hamlet’s amnesia and negligence. Pilgrims wear a hat that is decorated with cockles, which is therefore taken as a symbol of true devotion. So, one of the tricks played upon us by life is to be taken in by our superficial perception of others; Ophelia has been so sure of her love for Hamlet that she has risked everything on his behalf. In the second song, she is thinking of her dead father and the incompletion that gives a special bitterness to this reflection. Line 27 is given an unexpected twist by her inclusion of ‘not’, for this insinuates what is shortly to be admitted by the King; namely, that the body of Polonius has been buried in secret and without ceremony, on the King’s authority. Ophelia sees this as a punishment for her association with Hamlet, and her insight in this respect is powerfully supported by Gertrude’s inner torment. Here the trick that is played upon Ophelia is the resourceful manipulation of circumstances by vengeful and malevolent tyrants; this is much closer to sin and sickness of soul than an interment in ‘hugger-mugger’ for purely political reasons. On the appearance of Laertes, she returns to lament their father, with the intention of spurring her brother to their own revenge.
The disguised antipathy between Ophelia and the King and Queen, and the tortuous psychology that shapes it, has much to do with Ophelia’s death. For though its exact nature is left obscure we can be sure that she does not die the ‘poetic’ death that is described by Gertrude in Act 4, scene vii. Apart from her unreliability and motives for concealing the cause, the description gives itself away; its detail could only be accessible to an observer who calmly stood by and watched Ophelia drown, and no-one would admit to this kind of inaction. The policy of concealment is brought out more obviously in her burial, in which Laertes and Hamlet, for their own separate reasons, seek to spoil the discreet ordering of events that has been set up by the King and Queen. In this scene, Hamlet’s anguished guilt and anger are reflected in his wild behaviour, but later in Act 5 we see a deeper psychological consequence of what he has done to Ophelia.
Act 5, scene ii
Horatio
You will lose this wager, my lord.
Hamlet
I do not think so; since he went into France I have been in continual practice, I shall win at the odds. But thou wouldst not think how ill all’s here about my heart; but it is of no matter.
Horatio
Nay, good my lord –
Hamlet
It is but foolery; but it is such a kind of gain-giving as would perhaps trouble a woman.
Horatio
If your mind dislike anything, obey it. I will forestall their repair hither, and say you are not fit.
Hamlet
Not a whit, we defy augury; there is a special providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now; ‘tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now, if it be not now, yet it will come – the readiness is all. Since no man owes of aught he leaves, what is’t to leave betimes? Let be. (lines 201 to 210)
This exchange follows the comedy of Osric’s invitation to Hamlet to compete with Laertes at the behest of the King. Behind the language of extravagant formality that dominates the tone of this meeting it is clear that Hamlet is being placed in a position of some peril, and this fear informs Horatio’s opening assertion. In this case losing the wager means more than simply losing a sporting contest, as Hamlet himself is fully aware. He indicates this when he repeats the ridiculous terms of the so-called wager in lines 151 to 160 of this scene, and notes the attempt to sound plausible (‘that’s the French bet against the Danish’). Notwithstanding his grasp of the situation, Hamlet takes Horatio at his word and confidently affirms that given the odds he can master the challenge. At this point, Hamlet’s speech takes an abrupt inward turn, referring in a general way to his feelings (lines 202 to 205).
Horatio misunderstands this turn, assuming that the ill ‘about my heart’ is a sign of misgiving about the encounter, and takes this as a cue to call it off. Hamlet’s ‘thou wouldst not think how ill all’s here about my heart’ does not suggest a feeling of uneasiness or suspicion concerning his present situation; it reflects a prevailing and deep-seated mood, and its arising as a non-sequitur strengthens the impression that he needs to make it known. Then, the reason for his attempt to play down this experience is that to explain it would require him to explain what he has kept secret from Horatio, namely Ophelia’s part in various attempts to unsettle the King. This concealment comes out in the action leading up to the dramatic performance in Act 3, scene ii, lines 54 to 84 (Nelson 2017). In the scene itself, Hamlet’s instability is evident in the contrast between his desire to protect Ophelia and his almost immediate exposure of her before and during the performance.
In trying to pass over an experience that is clearly significant to him, Hamlet calls it, ‘such a kind of gain-giving as would perhaps trouble a woman’.
Etymologically, ‘gain’ in this sense is short for ‘against’ – meaning ‘in opposition to’ – and what is against giving could be withholding and it could be taking away or losing. Therefore, by using the word gain-giving he does not mean misgiving or suspicion; rather, he refers to the loss of spirit that is a consequence of losing Ophelia and the way he has lost her. The void into which he has cast her is now his void, and he can see, no doubt, how close his amnesia of her has been to his mother’s amnesia of himself. Thus, when he tells Horatio that he defies augury and implies that all is in the hands of providence, Hamlet knows that he is putting himself at the mercy of Claudius, and that he has become an amorphous residue of the resourceful and energetic protagonist of the previous action.
Conclusion
The discussion of Hamlet shows us how the dramatist is able to portray reflective life in action, and to do so in a way that skilfully incorporates the social, cultural and psychological attributes of character and the world to which it belongs. In this connection, the portrayal goes well beyond the attribution of virtues and vices and other psychological qualities, and immerses the viewer or reader in the complex interplay of forces that determine a character’s decisions and how he or she takes action. Thus, Hamlet’s amnesia and failure to see Ophelia’s position and protect her from Claudius and Gertrude can be traced to his reaction to their marriage, and then to his designs against them – in this, we see how the dramatic portrayal of our life in action exemplifies a distinctive form for the representation of human experience. Such representation is both more exploratory and more precise than a sense of how one interest might obscure another or the knowledge that we do not fully understand our own motives. Hence the rich interactions of character and situation that are accessible to a great dramatist exceed the psychologist’s scientific experiments and the prophet’s aphoristic pronouncements. And no matter how ingeniously and persuasively it is devised, a moral and psychological description cannot be on quite the same footing as Shakespeare’s dramatic portrayal of reflective life in action.
Hamlet is seen as being too weak to act, particularly by himself, but the portrayal of reflective life in action shows us that there are physical and psychological constraints upon his freedom to retaliate. Furthermore, within these constraints and up until the final act, his bold and assertive behaviour tests the limits of his situation; his guise of self-tormenting life denial in the mock-soliloquy that opens Act 3, and elsewhere, is a way of toying with bands of spying collaborators in order to mislead and unsettle them. So, to interpret the character only in broad moral and psychological terms is to miss the point altogether, as the precise definition of unfolding experience and its social and cultural context is itself a deeper and subtler alternative to the attribution of general features. In this respect, the play creates a finely drawn portrayal of an individual’s experience, and resemblance is subordinate because his inner life owes its realization to the author’s intuition. For example, Shakespeare’s insight into Hamlet’s reaction to Gertrude’s betrayal does not arise out of a likeness, but from a sense of how this character might feel and act.
Furthermore, it is more than a matter of contingency or chance that Hamlet loses control of action that he generates in the play. For in Hamlet, dramatic form represents the form of reflective life in essential ways. To be specific, a reflective life is one that is valued in itself, and this means that the individual is necessarily entangled in the lives of others who also experience life as being valued in itself. Without this entanglement, there could be no development of a rich and interesting life at all, as a full life depends upon the many-sided interaction between individuals, and, for each individual, a number of different kinds of relationship. In this connection, Hamlet subtly dramatizes the limitations that entanglement places upon our understanding of ourselves and others, and therefore of the world to which we belong.
At the beginning of the action Hamlet’s inability to understand his mother’s feelings develops, as we have seen, into an uncertain grasp in his perception of her and of his own motives. His failure of insight influences both how he goes about exposing Claudius, and the execution of revenge. However, this is only part of a more extensive and serious dramatization of how our understanding is affected by entanglement in the lives of others. Most significant is the relation between Hamlet’s acceptance of Ophelia’s support and his uncertain knowledge of how Claudius will react to the assault upon his peace of mind in the play-within-the-play. In the excitement of executing his design against the King, Hamlet assumes that a successful outcome will protect Ophelia. This confidence is ill-judged, as we see that Claudius is not to be deterred from his ambition, and Ophelia’s punishment is included in his response.
In Act 3 we see a further development of dramatic form as a reflection of the form of human life and experience. If we consider the form of a play in its most general sense it is obvious that ‘play’ alludes to an activity in which invention and imagination are set free to shape and orient that life and experience. Hamletunmistakably draws attention to this element in the creation of the play in its central character; Hamlet is based on the ingenious trickster Amleth and, as we have seen, Shakespeare makes the character a resourceful player in the realm of personal relations. Thus, the invention of psychological attitudes and impersonation is natural to him and is effortlessly conveyed in what, in Act 1, he calls his ‘antic disposition’. We also see that the play-acting is psychologically complicated by a strong tendency for lines to be blurred between his performance of a role and the expression of real feeling – this is impossible to miss in Act 3, scene i, in which the pretence of verbal aggression towards Ophelia is heightened by an oblique attack on Gertrude and Claudius. Here the action departs from a clear delineation of psychological and moral features, and the uncertainty that is conveyed by this complication has a deep significance for the characterization. Its pervasiveness suggests that the player in Hamlet is engaging is a high-wire act that is perilously sustained. (In this we can see that Shakespeare’s dramatic play with the characterization determines the psychology of his character.)
Hence the development in Act 3 sees, in a succession of scenes, the character in a state of inwardly generated vertigo which includes the killing of Polonius, hallucination of the Ghost and the loss of reason, as he labours to undo his mother’s betrayal. A progression towards this vertigo is evident in the high shared with Horatio in response to the King’s moral collapse during the performance of The Murder of Gonzago. Then, overhearing his contrition in scene iii gives Hamlet a false assurance that he has broken Claudius. In the illusory success of elaborate play-acting a confusion between what Hamlet enacts and what is real also becomes increasingly acute in relation to Ophelia. This is especially so in his failure to fully recognize her situation as his accomplice, for Hamlet’s amnesia is not simply caused by his concentration upon the King, he loses touch because the execution of his design elevates the drama he is creating over his ties in the real world.
Shakespeare’s mastery of dramatic form does not reveal aspects of the form of reflective life that we cannot know from reflection. But the microscopic portrayal of such life in action shows us how the interrelations of inner experience, social involvement, culture and interpersonal relations are delicately held together in our life and experience. The consequences of Hamlet’s perception of his mother for his relationship with Ophelia, and ultimately for himself, could only be clearly defined by a profoundly sensitive use of dramatic form. In this respect, the subtle portrayal of reflective life in action is capable of showing us the nature of our life and experience in ways that we might otherwise never be able to see. In Hamlet, we are shown how the perception of ourselves and others is constantly influenced by inclination that is determined by the interrelations; Hamlet’s perception of Gertrude is powerfully affected by the combination of their social status and filial relationship, and, in this respect, the culture to which they belong shapes their perception of themselves and each other. Conditions of the same kind can be applied to his relationship with Ophelia, and to all of the other relationships in the play.
Therefore, it is important to recognize that experience and behaviour in the characters of the play are determined by events and their social and psychological background. This is especially true of Hamlet, whose actions are typically based on more than a preconceived conception of his character and psychology. For example, each of his soliloquies is different in its expression of his nature: in the first there is a genuine inwardness in his tormented perception of his mother and fantasy of passing judgement on her; then, at the beginning of Act 2, he enacts a mock soliloquy that is aimed at the eavesdropping King and Queen, and Polonius. In Act 3, his soliloquy which begins, ‘O what a rogue and peasant slave am I’ expresses an impulse towards the formation of a plan to expose Claudius, while, in the following act, ‘How all occasions do inform against me’ begins a soliloquy in the aftermath of action, in which the insistence upon inner strength is shown to be hollow. Instead of an unfolding of events that demonstrates psychological consistency
in the hero, consistency lies only in the various ways in which changing circumstances create a range of responses that can be seen to belong to the same person.
Hence, characterization in terms of moral virtues and their simplified psychology is replaced by a more objective portrayal. As we have seen, it is objective not in the sense that it is true independently of human interest, but in the sense that the characters are true to the form of human life and experience. Rather than conforming to an action that gives them perspicuous moral and psychological features, character is largely defined by realistically shifting circumstances which are often unforseen, involving a tension between the necessity for moral virtue and pursuit of a life that is valued in itself. For while this reflective life knits us together in shared experience, and makes morality necessary, drama comes alive when one person is in conflict with another. In this respect, Shakespeare is less interested in moral appraisal than in the intricacies of such conflict in the individual lives of his characters; this provides him with the basis for a true portrayal of reflective life in action. In this connection, his far-reaching enquiry into our perception of others reveals the tension between virtue and life, and thereby the logic of dramatic form deepens our insight into the nature of life and experience. Thus, Hamlet’s loss of spirit does not arise out of a moral violation that is punished by his author’s dramatic manipulations, things fall out in this way because his moral failure undermines the natural but inadequately recognized inclinations of his own reflective life.
A corollary of this moral and psychological realism lies in the association of meaning with dramatic form. Judgements about the characters are often based on superficial responses to language and behaviour; for example, the mock soliloquy at the beginning of Act 3 is assumed to be a piece of serious philosophical reflection, or Hamlet’s assault upon Ophelia in the same scene is taken to be an expression of misogyny. In this essay, I have shown that the relevant speeches are specifically aimed at Hamlet’s audience behind the arras, and cannot be equated with his personal views. Concerning the idea of Hamlet the misogynist, we might counter this judgement with his attack on Polonius (Act 2, scene ii) for the older man’s bullying exploitation of his daughter. But in either case the dramatic circumstances play a decisive part in the meaning of what is said and its significance to characterization.
To close, it has been shown that the logic of dramatic form emerges clearly from an analysis of the triple relationship between Hamlet, Gertrude and Ophelia. As a structural element of the action, the interplay between these characters has given us a coherent and substantial experience of Hamlet as a portrayal of reflective life in action. Thus it also shows, in a way that is counter to the logic of propositions, how dramatic form can be profoundly illuminating when the richness and subtlety of inner experience is generated by complex interactions that are psychologically and socially well-defined.
Related Texts
Nelson, B. R. Forms of Enlightenment in Art. Cambridge: Open Angle Books, 2010
Nelson, B. R. Sensory Knowledge and Art. Cambridge: Open Angle Books, 2017
Nelson, B. R. The Inner Necessity of Moral Virtue, 2020 [online] Available at www.brnelson.co.uk
B R Nelson 
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