William Shakespeare made a bad plot choice. That’s what some people seem to think, asking “Why does Hamlet wait to kill the king?” A better-crafted play would have put the action earlier, so the argument goes. However, the seemingly insolvable and baffling plot device remains unexplained only if one misunderstands the nature of the play. If the story were plot-driven, then bafflement would be an appropriate response. In fact, the play is character-driven, and when viewed in this light, a solution to the bafflement is close at hand.
It has to do with genre, and it is this from which comes the complexity that would otherwise be very simple. Like the sphere model of the universe, which became so complex with added spheres one within another, trying to make sense of a fundamentally flawed theory, the theory that Hamlet’s inaction is a plot failure is based on a failure to realize what manner of system is being studied.
Shakespeare did not do anything similar in Macbeth or A Midsummer Night’s Dream, both of which are plot-driven stories; by which to say the driving force of the story is that of what happened. They are action-based.
On the other hand, Hamlet is a literary play. It is character driven. The plot is not “Let us see how Hamlet goes about killing his uncle, ” the plot is “Let us see how Hamlet psychologically copes with the fracturing of his family and the burden of a murder—however justified.” The play, aptly called Hamlet, is not about Hamlet’s actions, but Hamlet’s psychology and inner emotional landscape. The play shows clearly the effects of isolation on the protagonist as he wrestles with a moral decision, thinking through his tangled emotions, dealing with a terrible secret which he cannot reveal to anyone, experiencing the very fracturing of a family, the structure of which should be based on trust, and which is now nothing but secrets within secrets.
Hamlet didn’t go straight from the ghost’s visitation on to kill his uncle for a very simple reason: he was not an automaton. He was not unfeeling. He was not ruthlessly certain. The entire story is based around Hamlet’s slowly fashioning himself, readying himself to be able to perform the deed of vengeance, and when that ruthless certainty is reached, he does his task, and then he dies.
The play follows the slow hollowing-out of Hamlet’s character from an entire person, to a tool meant for only one task. Like Ophelia, he is haunted by his father’s wishes, which in the end, destroy him, just as it does her.
The story is that of a young person who, because his parents expected him to be nothing but an extension of themselves, taking hold of their own hopes, fears, dreams, and rules, entirely stripped away all choice and individuality. It is not a tale of vengeance. The plot is not about the practicalities of murder, but the inner landscape of a young man who has the role of assassin thrust upon him and is entirely unprepared to go through with it, as he should be.
What does he really hesitate on? At first he does nothing about the ghost because he is uncertain if he should trust it; also, he knows within himself that to kill his uncle would be the end of him; as a self-aware protagonist in a tragedy, he knows what will happen once he kills Claudius—he will lose everything. He desperately wants connection, but in his hour of need he feels abandoned and set apart. So yes: Hamlet puts off the murder.
But in a story based on the emotional landscape of the protagonist, a play that is intimately connected and fashioned around Hamlet’s perceptions and mindset, we are seeing into a character put into an intolerable situation and watching him slowly crumble. It is a psychological play. If Hamlet had cheerfully murdered his uncle at once, the “plot” would have been served, yes—but that was never the point of the play. Instead, Shakespeare explored a different kind of story power—that of the psychologically-driven work. And in this, he reveals another level of his own genius and power as a playwright and a weaver of tales.
Photo by Geir Tønnessen, Creative Commons, via Flickr. Post by Sara Barkat.
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Callie Feyen says
I found this very interesting, Sara. Thank you. I think about Romeo and Juliet, and the palpable gasp readers and viewers of the play let out when we think, “If only Juliet had woken sooner! If only Friar Lawrence’s messenger had gotten to Romeo before Benvolio!” Perhaps that is why the play is often cast aside as “melodramatic.” But your essay makes me wonder whether Shakespeare was exploring this urgency adolescents experience. After all, in the original poem, Romeus and Juliet (I believe that was his name), were 16 and 17, and had three months of marital bliss. Shakespeare changed their age to 13 and 14, and gave them just one night together. I suppose it could be because of the timing and production of the play, but your words on Hamlet make me think Shakespeare was exploring the psych of an adolescent.
I always find your essays interesting, Sara. I learn something every time. Thank you.
Sara Barkat says
As far as I understand it, Romeo’s age is never divulged in the play, and he seems to regard himself as more grown up–though his cousins/friends of course mention how silly he’s being, pining after Rosalind and all; he’s certainly not acting very mature but he seems to both act and be treated as a little older; I always assumed there were at least two years between him and Juliet; much is made of her young age and even with a difference in gender or something like that, if he was so close to her own age I would think that might be mentioned. Is there something particular about the story which seems to imply that he is only a year older than her?
Interestingly, though they are the main characters and as such their mental states inform the play, I feel that Shakespeare’s real focus here is less an exploration of their psyches and more an exploration of the conflict that occurs between them and the older and more powerful figures in the play, a conflict which is echoed in the conflict between the Montagues and Capulets; to go back to your point about Hamlet, that play seems to be a more primary exploration of the psyche of a young person.
I enjoy talking to you about these things, , Callie 🙂
Rick Maxson says
Another fascinating essay, Sara. Your powers of analysis and writing are always informative and a pleasure to read. I like your observation here that the best stories are where the protagonist is forced into their actions, rather than simply a tale of simple choice and execution.
I look forward to your next piece.
The accompanying photograph was very apropos for the essay. Was that your choice?
Tim Harris says
Thank you for your essay, which I read with interest. But may I say that I think you miss, among other things, the political dimension of the play, and I fear that you fall into the trap that Harley Granville Barker put his finger on: ‘Hamlet so dominates the play that we are too apt to see things through his eyes.’. Yes, Hamlet is unsure at first, since it is quite possible, he supposes, that the Ghost might be a devil in disguise, but that doubt is resolved (for him) as a result of Claudius’s behaviour when “The Murder of Gonzago” is played before him. Hamlet’s dilemma now is whether he follows the Nordic tradition of revenge (his father was clearly a savage warrior) and if he dies as well in the act, it is no matter if others judge him as a murderous malcontent whose desire for revenge springs from private resentment; or whether he follows a strategy whereby Claudius’s crime may be exposed and his “revenge” be publicly and politically recognised as just.
Hamlet’s Denmark is a curiously ambiguous place, split between old Norse, near pagan values and the values of a Renaissance court that presumably follows Christian teachings, according to which the taking of revenge is a damnable offence. “Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord.” The Christianity of the play is also ambiguous – Hamlet has been studying in Wittenberg, the city associated with Luther: Protestant sects reject the Catholic doctrine of Purgatory, and, besides, there is nothing in Catholic teaching that suggests that souls might be let out of Purgatory to wander the night and encourage others to seek revenge – any soul that managed that would surely be kicked out of the refining fires of Purgatory and sent straight to Hell! And it is even ambiguous in the play as to whether Denmark’s monarchy was elective or whether a child of the king should succeed. Shakespeare constantly exploits ambiguity in his tragedies and historical plays, raising profound political issues but in a way that will not catch the attention of (admittedly not always very efficient) censors.
There is also the curious “double bind” into which the Ghost puts Hamlet: “But, howsoever thou pursuest this act,/ Taint not thy mind…” How can Hamlet pursue his revenge without tainting his mind? Francis Bacon was Shakespeare’s contemporary and begins his essay “Of Revenge” thus: “Revenge is a kind of wild justice; which the more man’s nature runs to, the more ought law to weed it out. For as for the first wrong, it doth but offend the law; but the revenge of that wrong putteth the law out of office. Certainly, in taking revenge, a man is but even with his enemy; but in passing it over, he is superior; for it is a prince’s part to pardon.”
To get to the politics of the play: “succession” in government may seem to be a notion that applies only in the past and is irrelevant in the modern age, but that is not the case, as we may see from the January 6th riots and the attempts to block the succession of Biden, as well as from the civil wars that come about after the deaths of dictators. There were, for example, great worries as to who should be the successor of Elizabeth I, since if no clear successor was found, there would almost certainly be civil war (there was in fact a bit of a civil war after she ascended the throne, and her position was threatened throughout her reign). That is why, to the relief of her courtiers, Elizabeth gave her “dying breath” to James VI of Scotland, as Hamlet gives his dying breath to Fortinbras. Modern democracies have sought to ensure a smooth succession in constitutional and legal ways, but even these are not water-tight. One wonders whether there will be a smooth succession if a Democrat wins the next presidential election in the USA (I am, by the way, British, and, frankly, I am very worried about the way things are going in Britain, too).
Yes, certainly Hamlet returns to Denmark having made up his mind to do justice (I advisedly say ”justice” rather than “revenge”). I agree that he has determined to be “ruthless” (Horatio is shocked when Hamlet justifies his sending Rosencrantz & Guildenstern to their deaths), but I do not think that he merely fashions himself into a tool for “revenge”. He needs Claudius, his “mighty opposite”, to show his hand somehow so that the justice of his revenge may be recognised. At Ophelia’s graveside he declares “This is I,/ Hamlet the Dane”, which is a public declaration that he is the true king of Denmark, something that Claudius would not fail to take serious note of.
In the event, Claudius does show his hand, and the result is the death of Claudius, Gertrude, Laertes, and Hamlet (following, of course, the deaths of Polonius & Ophelia, Rosenkrantz & Guildenstern), and a new king of Denmark in Fortinbras, who is a throw-back to the Norse kings of old. I have often wondered what the Ghost, assuming it really is the ghost of old Hamlet, thinks of what he has wrought: so many deaths, including his wife and son, and the throne going to the son of his greatest enemy, Fortinbras.
I don’t know whether you have seen the greatest film of “Hamlet “ever made: by the great Russian director Grigori Kozintsev. It was made after the death of Stalin, under whose rule “Hamlet” was, shall we say, suppressed (there was no official ban, it seems), since, for Stalin, it cut to close to home. What I love about the film is that the politics of the play are recognised and taken seriously, as they have not been, and are not, in Anglo-American productions or films of the play, or in most criticism of the play. Because of their experience under Stalin, Russians were intensely aware of the politics of the play, and this awareness comes across in the film. The film is far superior to Olivier’s, in which Hamlet’s predicament was reduced to the Freudian Oedipus complex. The actor who played Hamlet, Innokenti Smoktunowski is the greatest Hamlet I have ever seen anywhere, and he had, at one time, been in a Soviet labour camp.
I also recommend the book, “Hamlet or Hecuba”, by that nasty but highly intelligent and perceptive (in some respects) old Nazi jurist, Carl Schmitt. It is published by the Telos Press, New York.