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More on Hamlet

More on Hamlet

Last updated on: September 7, 2017 at 12:10 am by Peter Leithart

More on Hamlet 2017-09-07T00:10:12+06:00 Peter Leithart

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ACTIONS A MAN MIGHT PLAY
As many critics have noted, Hamlet is a play consumed with the question of action, in all the various permutations of that term. Hamlet opens the play questioning whether he should take the action of suicide, and after the ghost’s appearance Hamlet questions whether he should take action against Claudius and on what grounds and in what manner. In addition, acting/playacting are major tropes throughout: Hamlet contrasts his genuine grief with grief that might be staged by an actor; as he rages on about Claudius’ villainy, he is brought up short by the realization that he is acting a part and unpacking his heart with words; the central device for testing Claudius’ guilt is the Mousetrap play.

At the heart of the mystery of Hamlet is the question of what code or rules guide human action. Hamlet finds himself in a world that he knows vaguely is rotten, and he soon finds that the world is far more rotten than he realized. But on what grounds and by what rules is he able to act? The opening scenes of the play offer a number of answers to that question, several of which revolve around the issue of honor. Some background discussion of that question will help set the context for the play.

THE DUEL OF HONOR
The rapier – a slender, sharp, light, deadly sword – first made its appearance on the European continent (Spain first) around 1500, and over the following century it spread to the rest of Europe, including England, where London’s first fencing school opened its doors in 1576. As the rapier spread through Europe, so did dueling, for which the rapier was perfectly suited. Lawrence Stone wrote that in England “the number of duels and challenges mentioned in newsletters and correspondence jumps from five in the 1580s to nearly twenty in the next decade, to rise thereafter to a peak of thirty-three in the ten years 1610-19.” Things were far worse in France, where it is estimated that nearly 2000 nobles died in duels between 1601-1609 (from Alice Shalvi).

The spread of dueling was accompanied by the spread of Continental notions of honor and courtesy. Markku Peltonen explains in his history of dueling in early modern England, “The duel of honour and its theory came to England as part of the Italian Renaissance notion of the gentleman and courtier. The duel of honour, in other words, emerged as an integral part of the Italian tradition of courtesy books and also a distinctively Christian tradition of civility whose origins are to be found in monastic and clerical rules of conduct. This Christian tradition of civility or discipline was embraced by both the Catholics and the Protestants alike but was especially strong amongst the latter who promoted it as a religious and moral ideal . . . . Yet during the latter part of the sixteenth century there was a sudden rise of Italian courtesy manuals and guides which were meant for aristocratic and gentlemanly consumption. The first and by far the most popular and influential of these treatises was of course Thomas Hoby’s translation of Baldassare Castiglione’s Il libro del coregiano (1528) under the title The book of the courtier, first published as early as in 1561 and reprinted in English I 1577, 1588 as well as 1603 and issues in Latin six times between 1571 and 1612.”

Though Castiglione mentioned dueling only in passing, at least some English readers fixed on the point: “Thirty years later one English writer poin6ted out that if one wanted to know more about dueling and the concomitant notion of honour, one could do worse than peruse Castiglione’s book: ‘The Early Balthazar Castilio in his booke of the Courtier,’ the Englishman wrote, ‘doth among other qualities requireable in a gentleman, specially aduise the should bee skillfull in the knowing of Honor, and causes of quarrel.” Also popular was a two-volume work (1595) by another Italian, Vincentio Saviolo, who had transplanted to London. His the first volume gave instructions on “the use of the Rapier and Dagger” while the second was concerned with “Honor and honorable Quarrels.”

Saviolo’s two titles suggest that the use of the rapier was closely linked with concerns for honor. Duels were predominantly duels of honor. John Seldon wrote in 1610 that
“truth, honor, freedome and curtesie being as incidents to perfit chivalry upon the lye given, fame impeached, body wronged, or curtesie taxed, a custom hath bin amongst the French, English, etc. To seek revenge of their wrongs on the body of their accuser and that by private combat sul a’ seul, without judicial lists appointed them.” Challenging to a duel was considered a natural response to slander and other damage to reputation. As one writer said, “it is reputed so great a shame to be accounted a Iyer, that any other injury is cancelled by giving the lie, and he that receiveth it standeth so charged in his honour and reputation, that he cannot disburden himself of that imputation, but by the striking of him that hath so given it, or by challenging him the combat.” For Saviolo dueling was simple common sense: “What is to defend your reputation. but so to hurt your enemye, as your selfe may escape free?”

Dueling was seen as a rule-governed method for avenging a wrong, and was part of what Alice Shalvi calls the “irascible” notion of honor. According to Philibert de Vienne, “For an evill doer or guiltie persone, at the last fault that hee committeth, toucheth the honour of him that is offended, which is in these dayes the most odious and hatefullest offence that may bee. For none can so slenderly harme or hurte the honour of a gentleman or courtier but the combate must straight be challenged for want of further proufe, so that for giving of an lie it is permitted lawfull and just to kill a man: for the reproufe of vanitie, and the lye, is the greatest scarre and mayme that they may give to honour. Whereby it appears what estimation was have of our honour: seeing we are allowed as well to defend oure honour, as . . . our lives, and not without reason: for our virtue were of no value. All other offences therefore are lightlyer regarded of us, than of the Lawes . . . except our reputation be touched, for in that cryme we are nearer greeved than at any other, wherein I must needes say the Lawes have been too favourable.” John Selden in 1610 defended the duel on the basis of a code of honor: “For Truth, Honor, freedome, and Curtesie being as incidents to perfit Chivalry upon the Lie given, Fame impeached, Body wronged or Curtesie taxed . . . a custom hath bin . . . to seek revenge of their wrongs on the body of their accuser, and that by private combat, seul a seul, without judicial lists appointed them.”

Some writers condemned dueling, and along with it the honor code that drove it. In an address delivered in 1614 (known as the “Charge concerning Dueling”), Francis Bacon condemned the practice: “My lords, I thought it fit for my place, and for these times, to bring to hearing before your lordships some cause touching private duels, to see if this court can do any good to tame and reclaim that evil, which seems unbridled. And I could have wished that I had met with some greater persons, as a subject for your censure; both because it had been more worthy of this presence, and also the better to have shown the resolution I myself have to proceed without respects of persons in this business. But finding this cause on foot in my predecessor’s time, I thought to lose no time in a mischief that groweth every day; and besides, it passes not amiss sometimes in government, that the greater sort be admonished by an example made in the meaner, and the dog to be eaten before the lion. Nay, I should think, my lords, that men of birth and quality will leave the practice, when it begins to be vil

ified, and come so low as to barber-surgeons and butchers, and such base mechanical persons. And for the greatness of this presence, in which I take much comfort, both as I consider it in itself, and much more in respect it is by his Majesty’s direction, I will supply the meanness of the particular cause, by handling of the general point: to the end that by the occasion of this present cause, both my purpose of prosecution against duels and the opinion of the court, without which I am nothing, for the censure of them may appear, and thereby offenders in that kind may read their own case, and know what they are to expect; which may serve for a warning until example may be made in some greater person, which I doubt the times will but too soon afford.”

Bacon recognized that the motivation for dueling arose from notions of honor: “Touching the causes of it; the first motive, no doubt, is a false and erroneous imagination of honour and credit; and therefore the King, in his last proclamation, doth most aptly and excellently call them bewitching duels. For, if one judge of it truly, it is no better than a sorcery that enchanteth the spirits of young men, that bear great minds with a false show, species falsa; and a kind of satanical illusion and apparition of honour against religion, against law, against moral virtue, and against the precedents and examples of the best times and valiantest nations; as I shall tell you by and by, when I shall show you that the law of England is not alone in this point. But then the seed of this mischief being such, it is nourished by vain discourses and green and unripe conceits, which, nevertheless, have so prevailed as though a man were staid and sober-minded and a right believer touching the vanity and unlawfulness of these duels; yet the stream of vulgar opinion is such, as it imposeth a necessity upon men of value to conform themselves, or else there is no living or looking upon men’s faces; so that we have not to do, in this case, so much with particular persons as with unsound and depraved opinions, like the dominations and spirits of the air which the Scripture speaketh of. Hereunto may be added that men have almost lost the true notion and understanding of fortitude and valour. For fortitude distinguisheth of the grounds of quarrels whether they be just; and not only so, but whether they be worthy; and setteth a better price upon men’s lives than to bestow them idly. Nay, it is weakness and disesteem of a man’s self, to put a man’s life upon such ledger performances. A man’s life is not to be trifled away; it is to be offered up and sacrificed to honourable services, public merits, good causes, and noble adventures. It is in expense of blood as it is in expense of money. It is no liberality to make a profusion of money upon every vain occasion; nor no more is it fortitude to make effusion of blood, except the cause be of worth. And thus much for the cause of this evil.”
He concluded by emphasizing that strength of reputation and honor is shown in being slow to offense: “So of every touch or light blow of the person, they are not in themselves considerable, save that they have got upon them the stamp of a disgrace, which maketh these light things pass for great matters. The law of England and all laws hold these degrees of injury to the person, slander, battery, mayhem, death; and if there be extraordinary circumstances of despite and contumely, as in case of libels and bastinadoes and the like, this court taketh them in hand and punisheth them exemplarily. But for this apprehension of a disgrace that a fillip to the person should be a mortal wound to the reputation, it were good that men did hearken unto the saying of Gonsalvo, the great and famous commander, that was wont to say a gentleman’s honour should be de tela crassiore, of a good strong warp or web, that every little thing should not catch in it; when as now it seems they are but of cobweb-lawn or such light stuff, which certainly is weakness, and not true greatness of mind, but like a sick man’s body, that is so tender that it feels everything. And so much in maintenance and demonstration of the wisdom and justice of the law of the land.”
Hamlet ends in a duel between Laertes and Hamlet, and throughout the play, the principal adversaries – Hamlet and Claudius – are dueling with each other through various intermediaries throughout the play. Fencing practice is going on all over Elsinore in Branagh’s film; the checkerboard floors might point to a similar motif. And some of the central issues of the play revolve around the ethics of honor, dueling, and, related to this, revenge.

ACT 1, SCENE 3
The placement of this scene is dramatically interesting. It stands between Hamlet’s discovery that his father’s ghost is haunting Elsinore and his first interview with the ghost, and this delay both creates expectations and relaxes the pace. Further, the scene offers a second cluster of related characters, as scene 2 did. In place of the father-mother-son royal family in scene 2, there is a father-brother-sister. The scene also sets up the rivalry of Laertes and Hamlet for the affections and protection of Ophelia, a triangle that replicates in some respects the Claudius-Hamlet-Gertrude triangle that has been introduced in the earlier scenes, and will be explicated further in the following scenes.

But the presentation of the Polonius family also raises the thematic issues of honor in various guises. As Martin Dodsworth has said, “It is only a slight exaggeration to say that Laertes and Polonius talk about honour ‘incessantly.’” Laertes no doubt is affectionate toward his sister, concerned for her emotional and sexual safety, but his appeal to her is framed also in terms of honor: “Then weigh what loss your honour may sustain,/If with too credent ear you list his songs,/Or lose your heart, or your chaste treasure open/To his unmaster’d importunity” (1.3.28-31). Polonius is more explicit that Ophelia’s sexual purity is a matter of honor not only to her, but to himself: “And that in way of caution, I must tell you,/You do not understand yourself so clearly/As it behoves my daughter and your honour./What is between you? give me up the truth” (1.3.94-97), and he dismisses Ophelia’s insistence that Hamlet’s importunities have been honorable (1.3.109-110). Polonius also guides Laertes behavior by appealing to the need to pursue honor. Familiarity without vulgarity is the standard for a youth of honor (1.3.60). Polonius’ reference to the possibility of a “quarrel” would, to the Elizabethan ear, immediately raise the prospect of a duel. Polonius warns against entering a quarrel too rapidly, but also encourages decisive action once the quarrel begins (1.3.65-66).

Yet, there is a tension, or even a contradiction, at the heart of Polonius’ and Laertes concept of honor, a tension between the expectations for men and women within the family. Women maintain the honor of the family by maintaining sexual purity, while young men are expected to sow their oats. J. Pitt-Rivers notes this “division of labour in the aspects of honour” is common in the Western tradition, which “delegates the virtue expressed in sexual purity to femails and the duty of defending female virtue to the males. The honour of a man is involved therefore in the sexual purity of his mother, wife and daughters, and sisters, not in his own.”

Ophelia recognizes the double-standard, warning her brother against being an “ungracious pastor” (1.3.44-50), and the double standard is very explicit in Polonius’ conversation with Reynaldo in 2.1. Polonius is eager to find out Laertes’ directions by indirection, and instructs Reynaldo to start rumors about Laertes in an effort to uncover the truth. When Reynaldo objects that rumors of “drinking, fencing, swearing, quarreling,/drabbin
g” (prostitution; 2.1.25-26), Polonius assures him that there’s a difference between incontinency and “taints of liberty” that would reflect “the flash and outbreak of a fiery mind” (2.1.28-35). Dodsworth suggests that Laertes rambling speech to Ophelia is attempting to navigate through the contradiction. On the one hand, he wants to show due deference to his prince, and therefore avoids condemning him. Further, he recognizes that Hamlet, like himself, is free to pursue his desires, also welcome to indulge a “taint of liberty.” Yet, he also wants to warn Ophelia against sexual behavior that would sully her reputation and his. The stops and starts of his speech, Dodsworth suggests, represent the stops and starts of his mind, as he attempts to warn Ophelia about Hamlet without condemning Hamlet.

Polonius and Laertes thus represent the Renaissance notion of courtesy and honor. According to Peltonen, notions of honor can be classified as “vertical” or “horizontal” notions: “Vertical honor can be defined as a right to special respect due to one’s superiority. . . . It can be contrasted with horizontal honour, which can be defined as a right to respect due to an equal. Horizontal honour thus presupposes an honour group which follows the same code of conduct and honour.” By these definitions, the Renaissance emphasized “above all the horizontal notion of honour or reputation which was inherent in the theory of civil courtesy and conversation. A gentleman’s honour was taken to be his reputation amongst his peer group. It was his exterior or appearance, above all how other gentlemen regarded him. Polite behavior was thus a means to show one’s honour and respect to another gentleman.” One Renaissance Italian writer said that “our name dependeth of the general opinions, which haue such force, that reason is of no force against them.” This horizontal honour was manifested in signs of honor, civil courtesies, polite ceremonies. “Curtesie and affabilitie” were the means and instrument for maintaining reputation. On the other hand, if reputation was damaged, then one could attempt to restore it through challenge and duel.

In a recent article in the Renaissance Quarterly Reta Terry has argued that Elizabethan concepts of honor were not merely external, but increasingly internal, a matter of conscience.: “One of the most complex changes in the code of honor was a move from an external code to an internalized concept of what it is to be an honorable man. Men were no longer considered honorable simply by right of birth, nor were they able to claim to be men of honor by producing a long list of heroic deeds. Rather, honor was becoming, by the seventeenth century, a matter of conscience; honorable men needed to seek, in every situation, to behave in such a way as to please both their state and their God. That is not to say that there did not exist a residual chivalric sense of honor which emphasized the importance of blood and lineage as well as marital prowess. Rather, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries this medieval concept of honor both co-existed and overlapped with a more modern code of honor which simultaneously emphasized both godliness and political allegiance to the collective state.” (Terry’s article focuses particularly on the connection of honor and promise – being true to one’s word.)

Alice Shalvi has similar suggested that there was a conflict of different conceptions of honor going on in Elizabethan society generally, and in Shakespeare’s plays in particular: “in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries honour was no longer necessarily connected with virtue (in the sense of moral goodness) and that, like reputation, it came to relate less to what a man really was and more to his standing in the eyes of others. When a man commits murder in order to avenge his slighted honour, he is surely no longer honourable in the sense in which Aristotle and Aquinas used the word. Yet almost all late sixteenth and early seventeenth century writers on honour maintain the right of the gentleman to be free from insult and to avenge himself when he felt slighted, that is, his right to defend his good reputation, as the Elizabethans put it.”

The play thus puts issues of honor at the center of consideration from the opening scenes, but the play also problematizes the honor system. Shakespeare highlights the sexual double-standard, and also shows the tenuousness of Laertes’ position, as he simultaneously attempts to protect his sister’s honor, affirm Hamlet’s honor, yet without assuming a limit on Hamlet’s sexual freedom. Further problems in the honor code of Denmark are highlighted in the next scene, where the theme of revenge begins to take center stage.

REVENGE: ACT 1, SCENES 4-5
If honor might sometimes motivate challenge and dueling, it might also motivate revenge, and this is the central manifestation of the honor code in Hamlet. The concept of honor as reputation is set up near the beginning of Hamlet, even before the conversation of Laertes and Ophelia, in the references to Fortinbras. Fortinbras is bent on revenge, avenging his father’s death – even though his father died in lawful combat with Hamlet’s father. Fortinbras is convinced not to attack Denmark, and goes after Poland as a consolation. He is “of unimproved mettle, hot and full,” and needs to expend his spleen somewhere or other. Even though Hamlet appears to admire him (4.4.53-62), the admiration is severely qualified: Fortinbras is a man of war and violence, motivated by honor, a man who finds quarrel “in a straw/ when honour’s at the stake.”

What does the play assume, and what did it expect the audience to assume, about the morality of revenge? Many commentators take it for granted that, whatever our modern sensibilities, the play assumes that Hamlet is duty-bound to exact revenge for his father’s murder. But this has also been vigorously challenged, particularly by the classic study of Eleanor Prosser, Hamlet and Revenge.

Prosser points out that even those who defend dueling in some circumstances refuse to countenance revenge: “The influential Vincent Saviolo, a fencing master, states explicitly that ‘Combat was ordained for justifying of a truth, and not to laye a waie for one man to revenge him of another, for the punishment of suche thinges resteth in the Prince.’ Under no circumstances does Saviolo justify blood revenge. It is true, as many have noted, that Saviolo sets aside ‘treacherie, or rape, or such like villainies’ as base offenses that must be revenged, but his prescribed course of action would require the discipline of a saint. The ‘revenge,’ even for heinous crimes, must take the form of open combat in the lists, and the challenger’s motives must be totally disinterested. He must proceed without hatred, solely ‘for love of virtue, and regarde of the universall good and publique profite.’ He must have no personal concern for the outcome – merely the wish to put himself at the disposal of Providence. He must ‘be as it were, the minister to execute Gods devine pleasure.”

Bacon’s brief essay on revenge is often cited for its vivid description of revenge as a kind of “wild justice,” but the essay as a whole clearly condemns revenge:

“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. And Solomon, I am sure, saith, It is the glory of a man, to pass by an offence. That
which is past is gone, and irrevocable; and wise men have enough to do, with things present and to come; therefore they do but trifle with themselves, that labor in past matters. There is no man doth a wrong, for the wrong’s sake; but thereby to purchase himself profit, or pleasure, or honor, or the like. Therefore why should I be angry with a man, for loving himself better than me? And if any man should do wrong, merely out of ill-nature, why, yet it is but like the thorn or briar, which prick and scratch, because they can do no other. The most tolerable sort of revenge, is for those wrongs which there is no law to remedy; but then let a man take heed, the revenge be such as there is no law to punish; else a man’s enemy is still before hand, and it is two for one. Some, when they take revenge, are desirous, the party should know, whence it cometh. This is the more generous. For the delight seemeth to be, not so much in doing the hurt, as in making the party repent. But base and crafty cowards, are like the arrow that flieth in the dark. Cosmus, duke of Florence, had a desperate saying against perfidious or neglecting friends, as if those wrongs were unpardonable; You shall read (saith he) that we are commanded to forgive our enemies; but you never read, that we are commanded to forgive our friends. But yet the spirit of Job was in a better tune: Shall we (saith he) take good at God’s hands, and not be content to take evil also? And so of friends in a proportion. This is certain, that a man that studieth revenge, keeps his own wounds green, which otherwise would heal, and do well. Public revenges are for the most part fortunate; as that for the death of Caesar; for the death of Pertinax; for the death of Henry the Third of France; and many more. But in private revenges, it is not so. Nay rather, vindictive persons live the life of witches; who, as they are mischievous, so end they infortunate.”

Prosser concludes from her survey of moralists and legal opinions, “The law was absolute: murder, as such, was never justified. Even if a man’s entire family had been brutally massacred by the most vicious criminal, even if the magistrates themselves were so corrupt that they knowingly would let the guilty go free — even then, the man who planned and executed the death of the murderer would be equally a murderer in the eyes of the law. English law allowed only one exception. Instant retaliation for an injury was adjudged manslaughter, on the grounds that it was unpremeditated, and in the Elizabethan period might be forgiven by royal pardon.”

The Elizabethan stage tells the same story. As Prosser notes, the avenger Cutwolfe in Thomas Nashe’s The Unfortunate Traveller (1594) is often cited as a counter-example, but it is clear that Nashe’s avenger is a fiend. “Though I knew God would never have mercy upon me except I had mercie on thee,” he says, “yet of thee no mercy would I have. Revenge in our tragedies is continually raised from hell: of hell doe I esteeme better than heaven, if it afford me revenge.” As he readies to die, he defends his thirst for vengeance to the crowd: “revenge is whatsoever we call law or justice. The farther we wade in revenge, the neerer come we to the throne of the almightie. To his scepter it is properly ascribed; his scepter he lends unto man, when he lets one man scourge an other. All true Italians imitate me in revenging constantly and dying valiantly. Hangman, to thy taske.” This is hardly a prevasive speech.

Prosser’s survey of dramatic portrayals of revenge leads her to this conclusion: “Of the twenty-one plays analyzed in the present chapter, only four are even slightly ambiguous in their condemnation of revenge. The evidence is even more striking when we consider the judgment on specific characters. We have encountered almost forty who are faced with the decision of whether or not to take revenge: of those who take action, only six are vindicated (whether by civil authorities, as in Antonio’s Revenge, or by supernatural sanction, as in The Spanish Tragedy). These six would hardly represent the dominant theatrical tradition even if they were acting as the ministers of God. But they are not. Horestes, Hieronimo, Antonio, and the trio of revengers in Lust’s Dominion all explicitly align themselves with Hell. The ambiguity of these plays lies in the contradictory vindication applied externall by the playwrights at the end, rather than in the treatment of the revenge itself. Not one of the six characters is motivated to or guided in his revenge by divine authority, or by any principle to which the Elizabethan audience could grant its moral approval.” In short, “the dominant theatrical tadition seems unmistakable” and the audience, Prosser argues, would react instinctively against vengeful characters.

Yet, strong as the condemnation of revenge in many Elizabethan preachers and moralists, it it is challenged by the permission of a kind of revenge that is inherent in the code of honor discussed above. Some, including Prosser, suggest that the moralists distinguished between murder, which had to be avenged by the civil authorities, and private offences against reputation, which the law could not touch. Shalvi claims that there was debate in the Elizabethan period about whether or not a relative of a murder victim could take the law into his own hands if the legal evidence was lacking or if the system was corrupted. She admits that the orthodox view was as Prosser claims – that it was not permissible to take private vengeance, which puts the law out of office, as Bacon said. But the contradictions of the honor code and the condemnation of revenge are sharp, and that is the fissure in the Elizabethan mind that Hamlet is, in part, exploring.

Hamlet opens the play with a deep sense that the garden of Denmark is gone to weeds, and yet he ends his first soliloquy with “I must hold my tongue” (1.2.160). He is already cursing the spite that he was born to a world that needed to be put right. And his hesitations to act in that capacity continue after the ghost’s appearance. His initial passionate answer to the ghost is that he will sweep swiftly to revenge (1.5.29-31), and this is immediately linked to a need to purge the whole of Denark from its villainy (1.5.107-9, 189-90). Yet, he is hesitant, still questioning months later whether it is better to suffer outrageous fortune (as would be demanded by the earlier Stoic-Christian code of honor) or to take up arms to set things right. Hamlet is embodying the contradictions within the honor code of Elizabethan England.

There are two other issues to cover in these two scenes. First, when the ghost reveals that Hamlet’s father died, he places Hamlet is the same situation as Fortinbras of Norway and (later) of Laertes, and, to some extent, Ophelia. Their different responses to the dilemmas they face drive the action of the play in a complex, multiperspectival way. Norman Council puts the issues this way: “Hamlet dramatizes the Prince’s attempt to gain an understanding of his world sufficient to provide him with a valid basis for action. Shakespeare makes clear the universal difficulty of this attempt by showing us three characters who make more conventional responses. Ophelia finds a basis for action in obedience to parental authority and to a series of precepts which she unhesitatingly and conventionally accepts; this abdication of individual responsibility destroys her and contributes to the inscrutable and destructive world which confronts Hamlet. Laertes finds a basis for action in what he uncritically assumes to be his ‘natural’ duty to revenge his father; this assumption destroys his freedom of choice by making him a slave to the demands of honour, and he is unwittingly led to his own destruction. Fortunbras is not concerned with discovering a valid basis for action; he assigns value – honour co
nceived as an end in itself – to whatever straw is available and proceeds to act on the basis of that honour.” Each of these conventional responses is put to severe questioning in the play, tested and found wanting. Something other is needed.

Second, as part of his exploration of the basis for action in a world that has become an unweeded garden, Hamlet in 1.4 talks at length through one of the conventional explanations of tragedy – the theory of the tragic flaw. As Peter Saccio points out, other theories of tragedy are also suggested or alluded to in the play: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern refer to the conventional wisdom that rises and falls are the result of the arbitrary turning of Fortune’s Wheel, and at times Hamlet ponders the possibility that he is a divinely ordained avenger. It is important to see that Hamlet’s musings are not the final word or only word on the subject in the play, and to keep the question in play until the end.

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