“Darkness starts inside of things
But keeps on going when the things are gone”
— Christian Wiman
This work(blog post) distills the black ink of themes used to write Hamlet, that when split chromatographically, it is the composition of many sub-themes like that of tragedy, the passion of grief, and vacillation, but from the amalgamation of these themes rises the answer it gives to the enigma of posed by life.
To say that tragedy takes lower precedence in Hamlet, would take one to be more headstrong than the Joan of Arc. Each page of this masterpiece lays soiled with the aftermath of tragic episodes. We’re introduced to a prince who has been dispossessed of his birthright. He has been wronged by his dead father (who did not nominate him as the heir to his kingdom), by his uncle (who guilefully assumed the kingship), and by his mother (whose re-marriage to her first husband’s brother placed his precedence above her son). Even after all this, rather than being a loving son who is compelled to shed blood against his better judgment, Hamlet instead emerges confused, self-indulgent, and frequently heedless. This exploration of his complex thoughts and emotions is what differentiates it from the conventional revenge tragedy.
The grief that must ornate this play is fabricated, as often seen in Shakespeare’s work (“All the world’s a stage, / and all the men and women merely players”; As You Like It, 2.7.145-47), likewise in this work he is meta-poetic of all the grief that needs to be staged. This can be seen when Hamlet’s mourns turn into his second soliloquy (Hamlet, 2.2.576–93).
The reason Hamlet must ground itself as a meditation on the principles of living is on the stance of it refuting the principles of Elizabethan humanism, wherein all human beings would aspire to reach fully considered judgments than rely on their overtly emotional dispositions. This was to be accomplished through the study of the humanities: history, poetry, and moral philosophy. In the play, we see that Hamlet’s attachment to the parts of the historian, poet, and philosopher rises from his inability to inhabit the one role that he should, after his exchange with the Ghost—namely, that of the revenger. Hamlet is never intensely vindictive, he is in fact embroiled in a self-deceiving ruse that evades the situations that underpin it. Must humanism stand between this compulsion to kill? This subsequently leads to his death and the obliteration of his family and Denmark’s political autonomy.
What a piece of work is a man, how noble in
reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving
how express and admirable; in action how like
an angel, in apprehension how like a god: the
beauty of the world, the paragon of animals—and
yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust? Man
delights not me
(Hamlet, 2.2.327-32)
It is around these lines that Hamlet first comes across to us, after seeing through the reasons of his friends paying a visit to him to this prison called Elsinore, he starts to ramble about his alienation. This alienation is begotten by the moral obligations he must confine his being to. He is anything but man, he is a slave (“O what a rogue and peasant slave am I!”; Hamlet, 2.2.576). As a character, he is a slave to the kingdom and as a mindset to humanism. It’s easy to see that this withdrawal of himself from others to think before any actions can play out or his indecisiveness, dramatize the failings of his received wisdom but what Shakespeare wants us to conclude that humankind is ultimately bound to ignorance.
In conclusion, we understand that humanist moral philosophy is not only disconnected from one’s true self, but actively obscures the true nature of human existence. This is why it would later evolve to become a modernized version: autonomy, putting moral weight on an individual’s ability to govern himself, being independent of his place in a metaphysical order or his role in social structures and political institutions.
Update: Yeah, it’s been a long time. I thought about just ending the career of this blog-thing after like a Chris Chan binge, but then I looked at the pages of the blog, and the sheer amount of gone into writing erroneous sentences, making those god-awful code/math explanations and I was just left with a warm fuzzy feeling. Maybe I should keep it alive and like work on the content. In some dreaded way, this blog is my very own mind palace.