How Hamlets mind works and what it does: the effect of this education

what he talks about and does gives us a good insight

he uses his learning to try and figure out what is happening: why do bad things happen? why do
tragedies happen?
Shakespeare leaves it up to his characters to try and understand why this is happening; what is the
nature of tragedy? We share the experience of someone figuring it out to get there.
Speech 1: (1.4)
(1.4) Hamlet is talking about the Danes like of drinking how it ruins their public image
the subject starts out as Claudius drinking and ends up with the idea that one fault can bring
destruction to a man -- he gets very carried away on this -- he is more interested in the theory (from
Aristotle) than the particular occurrence -- he is thinking of Aristotle -- he is lecturing here
You can take this to say that tragic fall (due to one vicious fall) can bring about a mans fall -- one
could say that this tells us we can use it to figure out all of Shakespeares fall -- but this theory is
distinctly limited in its usefulness -- it usually boils down to pride and that the whole play is a sermon
on play -- or that the flaw must account for everything that goes wrong in the tragedy -- this line of
reasoning puts you in a bad position
the notion of tragic flaw is useful, but it will not cover the whole of a play -- whatever Hamlets flaws
are they cannot explain what happens in this play or any revenge tragedy because the hero begins in a
miserable position so he cannot be responsible for his fall
Hamlet is thinking about this classical idea of the origin of evil -- but it is too small a notion to cover
all the things that are wrong in Denmark -- but he passes on to other notions
Speech 2 (2.2.468)
Speech about how Pyrrhus killed Priam -- there is another classical thinker involved -- Boethius, the
last of the classical or first of the medieval writers -- he had started as a Roman nobleman but he was
accused of something horrible and was imprisoned and then executed -- his book sets the mode for
much of medieval literature -- he writes about a dream where he was informed that all earthly things
are unimportant -- he is responsible for the widespread notion that a force called Fortune allots the
irrational distribution of goods and evil and that it is the job of tragedy to lament this distribution -Fortune is the ending of a time of prosperity into wretchedness -- Fortune has a wheel which raises
you up and down -- in this view tragedy is just a play where it works out badly for the characters
Fortune is just an example of the mutability of life -- a strumpet of a Goddes
The first player in this speech cries "out out fortune" -At this point Hamlets mind is moving towards a Boethius type explanation
But while Fortune is certainly a good explanation, if everything is sheer happenstance, then there is
nothing we can understand -- it then provides no guidance -- it is too big an explanation if a flaw is too
small of one
Closet Scene (3.4.156 p. 1723)
Third view when he comments on his own murder of Polonius -- he sees the corpse and comments that
he has been punished by heaven with being their "scourge and minister" -- God intervenes with the
selection of human beings to carry out his purposes
Such an agent could be described as a scourge or minister
The scourge is so evil that he is beyond salvation -- his use by God to punish others is not a problem
because he is damned already -- Richard III against the Woodvilles
The minister is also selected by God, but the punishment he gives out is by purging out the evil and
replacing it with a better situation -- Henry Richmond is a minister
In the case of Hamlet, the two roles are put together -- the bad guy and the good guy are in one -- it is
difficult to be one without the other -- it is very messy physically and morally
This idea comes up first in Isaiah -- God appoints Cirrus the Great of Persia to be his minister, despite
the fact that he is a gentile
Hamlet has a very well stocked mind and is moving through a series of different ideas and trying to
figure out what fits
Providence (5.2.157 p.1751)
Final duel scene -- they are about to enter into the duel and Horatio says to him that if he has any
misgivings you should listen to them -- Hamlet is saying we do not need to look into the future

(Augery) as there is no point in interpreting omens as everything has a divine providence -- he is

echoing part of Matthew, Jesus assurance that everything is ordained by God -- that the value of the
lives of men are much more valuable
What he is saying is that this business of divine governance which may have selected him as a scourge
or minister is governed by God -- we dont need to select a view to try and interpret that as God has
worked it out
He then goes on to say that he does not need to fear in the future or present as the thing is certain and
he doesnt need to worry about it as it is in better hands -- he says that all he has to do for his part is to
be ready at all times -- Hamlet is ready -- he has been practicing fencing every day
We do not see the process by which Hamlet arrives at this confidence in a universal providence -- it
did happen during his voyage back to Denmark -- Hamlet tells Horatio that it happened one night
when he could not sleep one night and found the letter -- amazingly he knew the handwriting of the
court scripter -- luckily he had in his pocket his fathers ring -- and luckily the pirates just attacked
then -- luckily he managed alone to get on the pirates ship -- even in this he says God was present -so now he believes in God as those accidents delivered him from murder and got him back, that power
must be designed to help him in Denmark
Richard II, how the King had dust thrown on him when he was brought through London -- here it is a
tired old gentleman (York) seeking some consolation -- but when Hamlet comes to these conclusions
God gives him good reasons to think this
King Lear will give us a greater variety of non-Christian views
Shakespeare
he is not preaching ideas -- he is showing the human experience -- so that is part of how he imitates
human life, but it is not the point of the play
What do we have?
We have a well educated humanist protestant who is looking for the truth in the loneliness of the
freedom to figure it out himself -- he uses four passages
These passages furnish him with possible explanations of his troubles -- the ancient documents can
help him -- these pieces of literary criticism help him to figure out what kind of story he is in. A
remarkable thing to watch happening.
Lecture 3 - Friday, November 12, 1999
The Film
Polonius as being far too interested in his childrens sex lives
Handling "to be or not to be" in front of a 1-way mirror is an obscene invasion of the privacy of the
children by the parents
Shift in Fortinbras at the end to a much more aggressive person at the end -- he is sacking the palace,
why do so if he is going to inherit the kingdom -- and to have the last image of the film be the statue of
Hamlets father being pulled down -- at the end the idea that nothing matters and that his tale is not
going to be told -- why is he doing this particularly when the sword scene was so final?
Portrayal of the ghost -- difficult to do on stage -- the effect should be that this universe isnt just what
we see that there is more behind it -- we should get a feeling for what sort of a character he is
Hamlet is always screaming -- makes him a violent madman rather than a quiet pensive type
Monday: play as being a questioning play raising questions about the universe
Wed: Hamlet going through a bunch of different positions -- would make the play seem very
intellectual, but the movie makes it seem much more of flesh and bone and passion
Friday: What about the ways you can look at Hamlet
About Hamlet
Saccio does not consider Hamlet to be a mystery -- looking at how he is thinking and feeling is not too
hard to figure out -- Lear is his play about old age -- MacBeth is his play about middle age: begins to
wonder if that is it to life -- Hamlet is young and he suffers from difficulties which are characteristic of
young students: how to make the ideas he has learned make sense with his feelings
the idea of him paralyzed by thought is only a half truth as he is a very passionate person as well (first
Ghost scene) -- for every soliloquy he has a rash rage of anger -- he interrupts his own production of
the play
Both parts are there in the characterization -- he cant get his act together

When he admires people he admires very different people (p. 1702, end of act 2) -- that the player
could cry at the death of Heccuba -- not too much longer (3.2, p. 1709) he is saying to Horatio that he
most admires him as he does not let his emotion control him -- quite a contrast between wanting the
passion of the players and the self-control of the stoic Horatio -- this is a very frequently encountered
state of affairs in people of his age -- difficult to live, but not hard to understand
This contrast between how young people respond to great upheavals and how they think of them is
very common in this play.
Revengeful Children and dead fathers - Contrast
Contrasting examples
There are lots of dead fathers with revengeful offspring -- Fortinbras -- Phyrrus in the players speech
to get back at Troy for killing his father Achilies -- major counter example to Hamlet is Polonius -most of act 4 while Hamlet is at sea is devoted to the responses of Opheila and Laertes -Opheilas response is the passive one -- she sort of commits suicide as a madman -- we see her largely
as she is subject to her male masters -- she is very much victimized by Hamlets feelings, this is not
the most mature relationship -- how you cant know Ophelia because it is all from Hamlets view
Laertes is the active one -- he returns from Paris to start a rebellion, threatens the King, and will do
anything he can to get revenge -- his underhanded behavior in the fencing scene is considered by
Hamlet beforehand -- he dramatizes a route of revenge which Hamlet rejects, his methods are not
underhanded -Lertes and Ophelia demonstrate responses to the murder of a father which Hamlet rejects -- the fact
that they are brother and sister suggests that they are paired -- they both give themselves entirely over
to passion -- they flank Hamlet and show the disastrous results which could have occurred if Hamlet
had chosen those methods
So by the end of Act 4 we might think that Hamlet hasnt done so poorly -- he has retained some
reason -- by and large he confines himself to speaking daggers not using them
Act 4 is very long with two Ophelia mad scenes and 400 lines on Laertes plan -- it is a clarifying
scene sorting out some of the major issues of the plays -- for 3 acts we have seen him on the verge of
madness and resolve to instant action, but not do it -- but he manages to keep going in a way the other
two have not
Hamlets Delay
Intellectual progress of Hamlet -- but it is not all from thinking
Why does Hamlet hesitate? at the time he considers the ghost to be authoritative -- why dose it take so
long?
1 - if he didnt, there would be no play -- very true and cynical -- he ought to have written something
meaningful -- about the human race: it has been accepted as a masterpiece, then we are disparaging the
taste of 4 centuries of critics
2 - because the task set to him is difficult and perilous -- cant trust the ghost -- Claudius is crafty -- it
is true, but only locally -- each of the obstacles can be dealt with -- the mousetrap to test the word of
the ghost -- but he continues to delay
3 - Freud -- Claudius has killed Daddy and married Mommy which is what Hamlet wants to do so he
cant kill him out of moral hatred because that is what he wanted to do -- Hamlets large interest in his
mothers sex life and the ghost enters in the bedroom scene just when Hamlet is getting all hot -- there
are some problems: Oedipus conflict is about repressed, unconscious struggles, cant play it directly -there is no way you can get it across to an audience which is unaware of the theory -- it is hard to play
-- it is also a limited explanation -- it works extremely well for the closet scene -- it is too small for the
vast issues of the play
4 - Hamlet is perplexed by the status of blood revenge -- does it do any good? The intellectual Hamlet
is the sort who would think about it -- the only trouble is that Hamlet does not argue about the
appropriateness of revenge -- the players speech or Laertes might provoke a moral cases about it, but
dont -- the only one who does is Hamlet at the end when he justifies it -5 - some other characteristic in Hamlet incapacitates him for action -- finding some other temporary or
ingrained explanation for his inability to act -- horror at how wicked the world could be -- a
predisposition to thought -- a kindness of constitution which can not murder -- the play does provide
support for lots of these: the ghost is horrifying, time is out of joint (disposition), to be or not to be

(inclination to thought) -- the trouble with these views is not that they lack support, it is that they lack
consistent support -- they dont give us a whole answer, each of them is local to a given scene -Trying to isolate the dynamism of the play in the delay of the chief character is futile -- in many cases
it is the whole play which delays, refocuses, reshapes, false starts, unexpected turns -- there is no
single secret, rather there is an attempt to make sense out of dislocations and happenstance. it does
achieve coherence, but not in an idea or theory, but in action
This requires you to be aware that you are watching a deliberately constructed piece of theatrical art -this is the one most conscious of itself as a theater -- they play rolls (Hamlet mad, Claudius kind) -they set up scenes -- the players come in and Hamlet gives them advice
What do we want in a play -- sustained significant action in satisfying rhythms -- this play
continuously frustrates those desires -- the play is trying to find significance in action
Ghost appears, wont talk, have to wait later -- wont talk to Hamlet have to move off to another scene
-- keep pushing the action off
(2.2.555 p.1703) -- Hamlet commenting that he must go kill (he is working himself up to a real
genuine passion), but then he stops and asks what he is doing -- he is not going to kill -- the passion is
completely real, but then his mind takes over and the passion seems like play acting -- the prayer scene
is the other big example -- it looks like a big confrontation and tension, but the inaction says nothing is
there
Last Scene
When the two strong characters have been kept apart for so long we need a very good strong
emotional and clarifying ending -- the king is caught on the sword and poison drink -- Laertes plan
fails -- Hamlet gets to kill the king with good evidence -- to the audience it is a rhythm of completion
-The significance of the duel scene keeps shifting for the characters -- they have to go from fencing for
fun to death -- every evil of the play is brought out
The play ends in a final discharge of energy -- he orders a peal of cannon to be shot off -- clear the air,
it is done
the last scene seems to be satisfying in its completeness -- action is complete and the deaths and
Fortinbras funeral arrangements are decisive.