words in scarlet ink

…that’s the full name of the play. I’ll just call it Hamlet here. I started (re)reading Hamlet because I was going to see it performed at the Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival, and I have to say, it translates much better as a performance. So I re-read it. Nothing I put here is a criticism of the performance I saw, because that was quite good.

So, when I read Shakespeare, I always read the Folger Shakespeare Library editions of plays, because they explain word meanings and have pictures of certain things, etc…

Reading the play, not seeing it performed, the character Hamlet is really whiny. Or at least it feels that way. An actor makes the play much more worth while, but there really isn’t much room for comic relief in Hamlet, and that really, really shows when just reading the play.

Anyway, I’d love to write some kind of wacky literary criticism of Hamlet that insists the character Hamlet is mentally ill and brings about his own downfall. If it isn’t for his father’s ghost being seen by Horatio and some of the guards, the entire plot is driven by a ghost’s instructions and what is already in Hamlet’s own mind (that his uncle’s marriage to his mother – a month after his father died, no less – is gross). I kind of see Hamlet’s point, because it strikes me as gross, but Hamlet’s actions aren’t justified until at least Act III, where his uncle admits to the audience that he totally murdered his brother for the throne. Marrying his brother’s hot wife is just gravy, apparently. But up until that point, this is all speculation and Hamlet taking instructions from a GHOST. What person of sound mind and body DOES that?

There’s a lot of excessive speech making in Hamlet, which makes it rather boring to read. As I said, I’d read this already (about three years ago now), but I feel as though it really sunk in this time. One of my Facebook statuses about this play while I was reading it was, “The real tragedy of Hamlet is all the whining he does. Man up and kill your uncle already.”

I’ve read that the play is a great literary statement on the blurry lines of right and wrong, justice and revenge, and human sanity. I call BS on that, because while whether it was right or wrong for Hamlet to avenge his father by murdering his uncle is debatable, it is most definitely revenge and only barely justice if justice at all.

Then the whole sanity thing? Infuriating. Hamlet was faking his madness. Ophelia was the only one who went mad…and for no apparent reason, except that she was a delicate flower who wilted under Hamlet’s rapier wit. There have been a large number of essays and criticisms about Ophelia, and I have to admit, she got a pretty raw deal, even for a Shakespeare play. Some of Shakespeare’s works are less than flattering toward women (Lady Macbeth might be one of the most plainly conniving females in all of literature). Some portray women really well (Viola in Twelfth Night), but this is the only one I’ve read thus far that makes a female character look really pathetic.

First, Ophelia was conspiring with Claudius (Hamlet’s uncle) and her father to try to find out why Hamlet was being such an emo kid, so she was strong enough to do that (they decided he was lovesick). Then she and Hamlet have some more interaction, and they decide Hamlet is not lovesick but legit nuts. Then there’s a little more interaction between them, Hamlet says some mean stuff, and she goes mad. Really? Hamlet says, “Get thee to a nunnery” and Ophelia can’t take it and loses her mind?

Some argue that Hamlet and Ophelia have actually already slept together, even though that is not clearly stated in the text, and this lends credit to why she lost her mind. He says he won’t marry her unless she’ll sleep with him and then when she does, he calls her a whore and won’t marry her. I even read one article where one of the sources the author cites says Shakespeare intentionally left this vague because he couldn’t make up his mind whether they should or shouldn’t have done it. Even if they did sleep together, and in Hamlet’s quest to get back at his uncle he was cruel to Ophelia, this doesn’t justify the madness described. The human mind in question would have to be particularly frail, and Ophelia does not come across as frail early on.

To add insult to injury, then she vaguely dies – it’s unclear whether it’s a suicide or an accident. It’s only at her funeral we learn that Hamlet really did love her (which is annoying anyway). It all makes me almost root for suicide. That, at least, would be a conscious decision that shows some strength of will and control. But really? The situation overall doesn’t say anything about madness, it just says women are weak.

Next, there’s Hamlet’s mother, Gertrude. It’s never stated whether she’s in it with Claudius to kill Hamlet’s dad. The ghost of Hamlet’s father never says if she is, and even directs Hamlet be gentle with his mother, but I have to assume that she was in on the murder plot. Why else would you marry your husband’s brother merely a month after your husband dies?

The Folger Shakespeare Library edition of the play explains that whether it was kosher to marry your dead spouse’s sibling was an actual debate at the time (in Denmark or in Shakespeare’s England, I don’t remember which) with some people deciding it was okay and others finding it incestuous. I suppose it could just be a plot device used to advance Hamlet’s grievances and sense of disgust, but at the same time, because it’s never stated and because Hamlet reacts so badly to it, it almost makes sense that she was in on the murder plot. She refuses Claudius in bed because Hamlet asks her not to sleep with him, but I’m not sure if that was just the performance I saw or whether that was in the actual play. I lent the play to my friend after we saw the show, so I can’t currently check. But given the circumstances, and I admit I’m not really a scholar, I have to conclude she was in on it. So she looks awful as well. And her death was stupid too, by the way.

THEN. Yes, there’s more. There’s Claudius, Hamlet’s uncle. He isn’t a well defined villain. The reader kind of assumes he’s jealous and sees an opportunity and gets carried away. He’s regretful later. And then he realizes he’s in too deep and the only way to survive is to kill Hamlet as well. But Claudius is a weak villain. In Othello, Iago is jealous and evil and has no remorse for the lives he destroys. He’s a villain. In Macbeth, Macbeth is power hungry and misguided. He’s a villain. They’re clearly defined with definitive destructive traits. Claudius is too wishy-washy to be someone to really root against for most of the play.

And when Act V, Scene II comes to a close, everyone but Horatio is dead. Curtain.

Yet, in spite of all this, Hamlet remains one of Shakespeare’s most beloved works. After careful consideration, I’ve concluded that it’s the beauty of the language that makes this play one of the most enduring, admired plays ever written. Macbeth is a better story, but Hamlet is more beautiful. The speeches in Hamlet, the speeches that are so long to read, are some of the most compelling I’ve ever seen when brought to life by a gifted actor. The words and the phrasing lift the play above so many others, even among Shakespeare’s other works. So while I might not re-read Hamlet often, I will see it performed over and over again. The command of language demonstrated in Hamlet is what makes it the crowning achievement of Shakespeare’s collection and one of the brightest jewels of composition and expression in the English language.