What does "Pentecost" mean?

Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Eve Tushnet

Home
Catholic
Religious Music & Entertainment

Last updated on: December 9, 2004 at 7:21 pm by Eve Tushnet

2004-12-09T19:21:00-04:00 Eve Tushnet

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

HAMLET: If in King Lear the tragic sidekick’s role is restricted by the larger story, in Hamlet his role expands to become the central story. In creating Hamlet, and shoving him into the role of a revenger, Shakespeare thrusts his new type of marginal character onto the center stage. Hamlet’s character is in many ways an extension of Mercutio; he has a similar ironic view of the world, the same sense of being on the margins (he, unlike Shakespeare’s other tragic heroes, does not seem to know the title of his play), and the same dilemma of a vigorous intellect facing the physical reality of death. At the beginning of the play Hamlet clearly sees himself in Mercutio’s role, as the ironic commenter on the fringes of the Danish court, his separation from the spies and speechmakers around him made more obvious by his mourning clothes. His first words, “A little more than kin and less than kind” (I.ii.67), would have made Mercutio grin with their mixture of bitterness and ironic humor. Like Mercutio, he never loses this sense of humor, whether explaining to Horatio that Claudius and Gertrude married immediately after old Hamlet’s death so that “The funeral baked meats” could “coldly furnish forth the marriage tables” (I.ii.187-8) or mocking Osric’s position at court by calling him “spacious in the possession of dirt” (V.ii.101). Like Falstaff, he uses his wit and imagination as a defense against Claudius’s schemes and surveillance, as when he befuddles Polonius by calling the old man a “fishmonger” (II.ii.190). His wit, like that of his predecessors, also acknowledges the danger underlying its humor; Hamlet’s answer to Polonius’s question, “Will you walk out of the air, my lord?”, is “Into my grave?” (II.ii.224-5)–an entirely justified and not only ironic response. He does not see himself as a marginal figure separate from the play’s center; he, like the Fool, Mercutio, and Falstaff, has too much at stake to be a Thersites-like griper or malcontent. Unlike those characters, however, he wants to fill the role of the hero, and knows that he cannot. Throughout the play he compares himself to his models of heroism, whether on the stage or the battlefield, and he never measures up; this self-image as tragic sidekick rather than tragic hero becomes part of his conflict.

The treatment of death in Hamlet fits better with Mercutio or Falstaff’s opinions of it than Romeo or Hal’s. Although through most of the play Hamlet is caught up in considerations of the metaphysical aspects of death, toward the end he begins to take a far less abstracted view of death; it becomes not “sleep” or “The undiscovered country from whose bourn/No traveler returns” (III.i.72, 87-8), but simply the end of the body and the mind, inevitable and ignoble. The wit which he shares with the tragic sidekicks serves him well when he finally must come to terms with the reality of his own approaching death; he comes in Act V not only to the calm fatalism of “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” (V.ii.234-6), but also the appreciation of the physical comedy of death in the graveyard scene. The play’s grim ending accords with Hamlet’s disillusionment with the idea of the “noble death.” Although there is an ooutward appearance of justice and symmetry, with Laertes killed “as a woodcock to mine own springe” (V.ii.336) and Claudius dead by “a poison tempered by himself” (V.ii.360), the audience does not leave feeling that justice has been served and Hamlet has died defending his father’s honor against the usurper. Fortinbras’s final summation of Hamlet’s character gets him completely wrong, saying that he would “have proved most royal” and that “the soldier’s music and the rite of war/Speak loudly for him” (V.ii.444-6). Fortinbras, attempting to cast Hamlet as a tragic hero, erases the true picture of Hamlet as a brilliant, humorous man tormented by his inability to act as a hero, his lingering on the margins of his own tragedy.

In moving the marginal character to the center of the play, Shakespeare makes explicit the criticisms of both tragic form and heroism which are implicit in the creation of the Mercutio-Falstaff archetype. By forcing a character who cannot play the tragic hero’s role into the tragic hero’s story, Shakespeare points out the artificiality of more typical tragedies; he throws the play off balance, calling into question the assumptions underlying other tragedies. In Hamlet, pursuit of abstractions like heroism and revenge leads only to meaningless deaths, from the mistaken killing of Polonius to the carnage which ends the play. Hamlet, knowing that his actions will have consequences, must untangle the possible results of his actions and weigh their justifications in a way that the tragic hero can simply avoid; he can never assume that he is in the right. He even admires Fortinbras, who is much more of a hero-type than he is, praising the other prince’s “spirit with divine ambition puffed” (IV.iv.52). When he compares his own inaction and confusion to the player who “But in a fiction, in a dream of passion” (II.ii.579) can take heroic action while he cannot, Shakespeare makes the audience understand both his anguish and the falseness of his model. In Hamlet heroism itself becomes entirely theatrical: even a murderer like Claudius can wrap himself in kingly glory; even a thoughtless warmonger like Fortinbras can seem valiant. Shakespeare both connects heroic ideals and theatrical pretense, and places their “un-theatrical” (one of the play’s paradoxes is that its central character insists that he is not an actor) and un-heroic opposite at the center of the play. In this way he overturns the audience’s view of the hero even more profoundly than he did with Mercutio and Falstaff, who eventually had to move aside so that the hero could emerge.

Uncategorized

Previous Post

December 9, 2004

Next Post

December 9, 2004

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category Art Best-Of Gay Catholic Whatnot Mackerel-Snapping self-obsessed Too much is never enough Uncategorized

Select a Month November 2023 October 2023 September 2023 August 2023 July 2023 June 2023 May 2023 April 2023 March 2023 February 2023 January 2023 December 2022 November 2022 October 2022 August 2022 July 2022 May 2022 March 2022 February 2022 January 2022 December 2021 November 2021 October 2021 September 2021 August 2021 July 2021 June 2021 May 2021 April 2021 March 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012 December 2011 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011 May 2011 April 2011 March 2011 February 2011 January 2011 December 2010 November 2010 October 2010 September 2010 August 2010 July 2010 June 2010 May 2010 April 2010 March 2010 February 2010 January 2010 December 2009 November 2009 October 2009 September 2009 August 2009 July 2009 June 2009 May 2009 April 2009 March 2009 February 2009 January 2009 December 2008 November 2008 October 2008 September 2008 August 2008 July 2008 June 2008 May 2008 April 2008 March 2008 February 2008 January 2008 December 2007 November 2007 October 2007 September 2007 August 2007 July 2007 June 2007 May 2007 April 2007 March 2007 February 2007 January 2007 December 2006 November 2006 October 2006 September 2006 August 2006 July 2006 June 2006 May 2006 April 2006 March 2006 February 2006 January 2006 December 2005 November 2005 October 2005 September 2005 August 2005 July 2005 June 2005 May 2005 April 2005 March 2005 February 2005 January 2005 December 2004 November 2004 October 2004 September 2004 August 2004 July 2004 June 2004 May 2004 April 2004 March 2004 February 2004 January 2004 December 2003 November 2003 October 2003 September 2003 August 2003 July 2003 June 2003 May 2003 April 2003 March 2003 February 2003 January 2003 December 2002 November 2002 October 2002 September 2002 August 2002 July 2002 June 2002 May 2002 April 2002 March 2002 February 2002 January 2002

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

What does "Pentecost" mean?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Twentieth Fiftieth Twelfth First