Hamlet Book Club Review by Professor Wade Curry
By Wade Curry is Dean Emeritus at the College of New Jersey. He directed plays and taught theatre and English courses there before serving for 18 years as Dean of Arts and Sciences. For 10 years he was Director of the Advanced Placement Program for the College Board. He is presently an active teacher and participant of the RVA Classic Book Club (of Richmond, VA)
Wade led an enthusiastic discussion of Shakespeare’s Hamlet at the October of our RVA Classic Book Club (Richmond, Virginia) on Zoom. Those who attended our Zoom Meeting had a better understanding and appreciation of Shakespeare and his brilliant Hamlet play than did before his excellent session – Murray Ellison, Litchatte Editor Info @ ellisonms2@alumni.vcu.edu should
Hamlet has been the most popular of all plays for 400 years, but it contains several mysteries.
First, the play refers both to touring acting companies and companies of boy actors (1600) and to English tribute paid to Denmark (1000). Directors often perform the play in modern or 19th-century dress so that the play is occurring in three different eras. Shakespeare would probably remind us that he wrote a play based on a Danish folk tale and not a history. Like all classics, Hamlet can be applicable to the lives of each new generation of playgoers but probably not if the playgoer is too bound by dates. Some writers introduce anachronisms on purpose for humor or social commentary.
There is the same casual approach to time in the events in the play. At the speed of a horse (about 25 miles a day), it would take months for Laertes to travel to Paris, receive a message about his father’s death, and return to Elsinore. Travel by sea would probably not be faster since he would have to wait for a ship and probably need to transfer at least once with another wait. The play appears to take place in a few days, but those days had to be scattered across seven or eight months. Shakespeare, who probably took three days to travel the 60 miles from London to Stratford, would have been acutely aware of travel difficulties. He probably used compression to intensify the conflict—especially in Act IV, when Hamlet is mostly offstage.
More jarring is Hamlet’s lack of emotion about the three deaths he has caused. How can he hesitate for four months to kill his father’s murderer, yet feel no remorse about killing three relatively innocent bystanders (Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, and Polonius)? A partial answer is that he sees the three as Claudius’s pawns. We should also remember that, after Claudius revealed his guilt, Hamlet’s “thoughts are bloody” (finally!) and that Hamlet believes that the man hiding behind the drapes is not Polonius but Claudius.
A fourth mystery concerns Hamlet’s mother. Did she have any role in the assassination of her husband? Might she and Claudius have had an affair while her husband was away at war? We could suspect her because of her “o’erhasty marriage” and because she feels deep regret when Hamlet berates her in the climactic bedroom scene. It seems more likely, however, that Claudius proposed the quick marriage to strengthen his campaign to be chosen the king. Gertrude probably found the prospect of remaining queen more attractive than leaving the court. Hamlet doesn’t accuse her of murder or conspiracy. He accuses her of incest (marrying her brother-in-law). Incest was the “unforgivable sin.” The Ghost would not have been so protective *(“Leave her to heaven.”) if he suspected her of any role in his death.
Many, perhaps most, critics believe that Hamlet’s pretended insanity becomes real. This seems wrong to me. In Act V, that great mind is capable of profound insight and calm acceptance of his fate. He confronts his likely end as a destiny that he has resisted, but “still it shall come.”
Any discussion of Hamlet would be incomplete without addressing his “tragic flaw.” What would we do for a perfect example of the tragic flaw without him? But can a reluctance to commit murder, to assassinate the head of a government, be a tragic flaw? Hamlet delays in order to be certain of Claudius’s guilt. When he is certain, he stabs the man he believes to be Claudius. It seems more accurate to me to say that Hamlet is a modern, reasoning man who is caught in a medieval Viking culture. He does have a destiny that is alien to his nature. His struggles to avoid his destiny are of no avail. In a rush of emotion, he kills Claudius, but seven other people die in the process.
What then does Hamlet mean when he asks Horatio to tell his story? He would not plead that Horatio should tell of a man too cowardly to act. Far more likely, he wants Horatio to tell of a man who tried to avoid his destiny but ended by saving his country from a usurping tyrant. The great irony is that the thinking, moral man can stop the ruthless tyrant only when he stops thinking and reacts instinctively to the suicide of his mother.
Cover Image from Amazon.com books
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