Hamlet Part One: The Challenge of the Ghost

Overview:

Once Hamlet hears the Ghost's story, he must investigate and then revenge himself on King Claudius before the king can kill him. The icon for this play shows the mask that a player wears (and that Hamlet wears and suspects others wear) and the skull he finds lurking behind it. As the play opens, Hamlet is already depressed about the situation in Denmark, even before he talks to the Ghost.

Summary of Part One

 I. Hamlet is depressed by his father's death and Gertrude's quick remarriage to her brother-in-law, Claudius. (Click on the underlined passage to go to this part of the lecture.)
II. The Ghost says Claudius murdered him and challenges Hamlet to revenge.
III. Hamlet's response goes from acceptance to questioning to initial reluctance.

To respond to Lecture Part One, click here to call up the questions for this segment. Copy the question into a word processor, write your response and then submit it as indicated by your instructor

Continue to Lecture Part Two of Hamlet
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I. The Opening Situation: Hamlet is in a depressed state of mind as the play opens.

A. His noble father is dead. Hamlet Sr. had been a hero, winning land from Fortinbras Sr. in single combat according to a contract that would have lost Denmark an equally valuable parcel of land if Hamlet Sr. had lost. With King Hamlet's death, young Fortinbras (the son of the Norwegian king killed by Hamlet Sr.) is trying to get the land back, as Horatio reports when he explains the day-and-night , 7-days-a-week preparations for war that he and the guard see in Act 1, scene 1:

[King Hamlet] was, as you know, by Fortinbras of Norway,
Thereto prick'd on by a most emulate pride,
Dared to the combat; in which our valiant Hamlet,
For so this side of our known world esteem'd him,
Did slay this Fortinbras; who, by aseal'd compact,
Well ratified by law and heraldry,
Did forfeit with his life all those his lands
Which he stood seized of, to the conqueror;
Against the which, a moiety competent
Was gaged by our king; which had return'd
To the inheritance of Fortinbras,
Had he been vanquisher; as, by the covenant
And carriage of the article design'd,
His fell to Hamlet. Now, sir, young Fortinbras,
Of unimproved mettle hot and full,
Hath in the skirts of Norway here and there
Shark'd up a list of lawless resolutes,
For food and diet, to some enterprise
That hath a stomach in't; which is not other
As it doth well appear unto our state,
But to recover of us, by strong hand
And terms compulsative, those foresaid lands
So by his father lost. And this, I take it,
Is the main motive of our preparations.
(1.1.94-117)
NOTE: Boldface here and throughout the Lectures marks parts of the text that are especially important. If you want to hear the text, click on the act, scene and line number following the quotation. The gravedigger in 5.1.147-53 tells us this happened 30 years before at the same time that Hamlet was born.

B. His mother, Gertrude, marries her brother-in-law, Claudius. The speed of her remarriage makes her previous loving behavior toward her first husband seem insincere:

1. As King Hamlet's son, Hamlet may be prejudiced, but he describes the former behavior of his parents as follows:

why, she would hang on him,
As if increase of appetite had grown
By what it fed on.
(1.2.147-49).
And King Hamlet was
so loving to my mother
That he might not beteem [allow] the winds of heaven
Visit her face too roughly
(1.2.144-46)
2. Hamlet sees her as "frail"--presumably, too easily won by Claudius (whom he sees as much inferior to his father), because of her sensuality or weakness:
. . . and yet, within a month,
Let me not think on't: Frailty, thy name is woman!
A little month; or ere those shoes were old
With which she follow'd my poor father's body,
Like Niobe, all tears; why she, even she--
O God! a beast, that wants discourse of reason,
Would have mourn'd longer, - married with my uncle,
My father's brother, but no more like my father
Than I to Hercules: within a month,
Ere yet the salt of most unrighteous tears
Had left the flushing in her galled eyes,
She married. O! most wicked speed, to post
With such dexterity to incestuous sheets.
(1.2.149-62)
3. The remarriage to a brother-in-law is "incestuous" according to Christian law. Shakespeare's contemporaries would have been aware of this point of law because it had led to the founding of the Anglican Church in England about 60 years before Hamlet was staged in 1601: Henry VIII needed a special dispensation from the Pope to marry his first wife, Katherine of Aragon, because she was the widow of his brother, Arthur. Later he said his lack of a male heir by Katherine showed God's displeasure at an incestuous marriage. When the Pope would not annul the marriage, Henry VIII broke with the Catholic Church and founded his own similar church--the Anglican Church (like the Episcopal Church in the US)--in which, as head of the church, he could be sure of getting a divorce to marry Anne Boleyn, already pregnant with his child (Elizabeth). Remember Henry VIII--his father Henry VII will show up in the play Richard III.

C. Claudius has become king.

1. The warlike preparations of Fortinbras put the state in some peril. Claudius diplomatically writes to Norway, the uncle of young Fortinbras, and gets him to rein in the activities of his nephew.

2. Claudius names Hamlet as heir to the throne -- "for let the world take note,/ You [Hamlet] are the most immediate to our throne"(1.2.112-13)--and this means Hamlet, unlike Laertes, cannot go back to the university. Presumably, Gertrude is too old to have more children, and so Claudius' marriage to her suggests real love and a reining in of desire for power through offspring. He also refers to Gertrude as "imperial jointress" or co-owner of his state (1.2.9).

D. What are Hamlet's feelings in response to this situation?

1. Is his ambition thwarted? Yes and no.

I am myself indifferent [that is, relatively] honest; but yet I could accuse me of such things that it were better by mother had not borne me. I am very proud, revengeful, ambitious; with more offenses at my beck than I have thoughts to put them in, imagination to give them shape, or time to act them in. What should such fellows as I do crawling between earth and heaven? We are arrant knaves all; believe none of us. Go thy ways to a nunnery.
(3.1.132-40)
[Claudius] hath killed my king and whored my mother,
Popped in between th' election and my hopes,
Thrown out his angle for my proper life.

(5.2.72-4)

2. He feels he is the only person around with integrity. Others may have seemed to mourn King Hamlet's death, but their subsequent actions (especially Gertrude marrying Claudius) make him suspect the depth of their feelings.

3. When Claudius and Gertrude urge him to ease up on his mourning after almost two months and ask him why the death of his father (an inevitability for every mortal) seems so hard to accept for him, Hamlet answers:

"Seems," madam! nay, it is; I know not 'seems.'
'T is not alone my inky cloak, good mother,
Nor customary suits of solemn black,
Nor windy suspiration of forced breath,
No, nor the fruitful river in the eye,
Nor the dejected haviour of the visage,
Together with all forms, modes, shows of grief,
That can denote me truly; these indeed seem,
For they are actions that a man might play;
But I have that within which passeth show;
These but the trappings and the suits of woe.
(1.2.79-89)
Here Hamlet makes a distinction between inner reality and outward appearance. Unlike some people he could mention (namely, Gertrude and Claudius), Hamlet really DOES mourn his father. It doesn't just "seem" as though Hamlet is taking his father's death hard. It isn't just that he's still wearing black (as opposed to everyone else in the court!), or sighing or crying or looking depressed. These outward appearances cannot "denote" or  truly define his inner feelings since this behavior and clothing can be put on, can be "played" to "seem" sad. He concludes that he has inside himself a grief that passes any outward appearance (that is, "the trappings and the suits of woe").

4. When he is alone, his soliloquy shows how depressed he has become by the actions of Gertrude and Claudius and by his inability to say anything about it.

O! that this too too sullied flesh would melt,
Thaw and resolve itself into a dew;
Or that the Everlasting had not fix'd
His canon [law] 'gainst self-slaughter! O God! God!
How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable
Seem to me all the uses of this world.
Fie on't! ah fie! 't is an unweeded garden,
That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature
Possess it merely. That it should come to this!
But two months dead: nay, not so much, not two:
So excellent a king; that was, to this,
Hyperion to a satyr; so loving to my mother
That he might not beteem the winds of heaven
Visit her face too roughly. Heaven and earth!
Must I remember! why, she would hang on him,
As if increase of appetite had grown
By what it fed on; and yet, within a month,
Let me not think on't: Frailty, thy name is woman!
A little month; or ere those shoes were old
With which she follow'd my poor father's body,
Like Niobe, all tears; why she, even she-
O God! a beast, that wants discourse of reason,
Would have mourn'd longer, - married with my uncle,
My father's brother, but no more like my father
Than I to Hercules: within a month,
Ere yet the salt of most unrighteous tears
Had left the flushing in her galled eyes,
She married. O! most wicked speed, to post
With such dexterity to incestuous sheets.
It is not nor it cannot come to good:
But break, my heart, for I must hold my tongue!
(1.2.133-64)
Editors disagree whether Hamlet describes his flesh as "sullied" --that is, somehow defiled by the actions of others-- or "solid" (which would fit his wish to melt or turn liquid from his current "too solid" state). In either case, the only two desirable states that occur to Hamlet not only end in his being obliterated but also are understood to be impossible. Hamlet goes on to talk about how he wants to disappear when somehow something happens to dissolve him (what a strange metaphor--like the Witch in the Wizard of Oz!). Then he imagines suicide ("self-slaughter"), but he acknowledges that God's law ("canon") forbids this. He feels that nothing is worth the effort: "How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable/ Seem to me all the uses of this world!" And the world itself seems like an "unweeded garden," still fertile and growing, but untended, going to seed rather than to flower or harvest. The proper gardener or ruler--his father--is dead, and Hamlet sees the new government as inadequate.

5. When Hamlet hears of the Ghost, he assumes it has to do with revealing "foul deeds"(279), and he asks Horatio and the guard to keep the apparition secret, rather than telling it to the King or someone else.

Return to Summary of Part One

II. The Challenge of the Ghost: Is the Ghost real? Is it an "honest ghost"?

A. We know it couldn't be a figment of Hamlet's imagination here because others see the Ghost (in 1.1, 1.4 and 1.5).

B. Is it really a ghost? At this time it was thought that sometimes apparitions were not ghosts but evil spirits impersonating the dead to lure the living to their damnation.

1. Horatio realizes the Ghost could be real or an evil spirit.

Though Horatio has not formerly believed in ghosts, he knows what their powers are supposed to be--to foretell danger to the state, to seek buried treasure, or to seek their own ease (140-51), but he is careful not to inquire if it will involve him in evil:

If there be any good thing to be done
That may to thee do ease and grace to me,
Speak to me.
(1.1.142-44)
And in 1.4, he warns Hamlet against following the Ghost alone:
What if it tempt you toward the flood, my lord.
Or to the dreadful summit of the cliff
That beetles o'er his base into the sea,
And there assume some other horrible form,
Which might deprive your sovereignty of reason
And draw you into madness!
(1.4.77-82)
2. Hamlet realizes the Ghost might be an evil spirit, too, but he insists on taking his chances to hear the Ghost:
Angels and ministers of grace defend us!
Be thou a spirit of health or goblin damn'd,
Bring with thee airs from heaven or blasts from hell,
Be thy intents wicked or charitable,
Thou comest in such a questionable shape
That I will speak to thee
(1.4.43-8)
3 The Ghost is clearly not angelic. He seems to be in Purgatory since he died unconfessed of his sins (and thus he seems to be a Catholic ghost). Would a Protestant nation be wary of a Catholic ghost?

C. The Ghost not only reveals that Claudius killed him, but is quite angry that Gertrude has committed adultery. The Ghost seems quite self-involved:

'T is given out that, sleeping in mine orchard,
A serpent stung me; so the whole ear of Denmark
Is by a forged process of my death
Rankly abused; but know, thou noble youth,
The serpent that did sting thy father's life
Now wears his crown.

Hamlet: O my prophetic soul! My uncle!

Ghost: Ay, that incestuous, that adulterate beast,
With witchcraft of his wit, with traitorous gifts,
O wicked wit and gifts, that have the power
So to seduce! won to his shameful lust
The will of my most seeming-virtuous queen.
O Hamlet! what a falling-off was there;
From me, whose love was of that dignity
That it went hand in hand even with the vow
I made to her in marriage; and to decline
Upon a wretch whose natural gifts were poor
To those of mine!
But virtue, as it never will be moved,
Though lewdness court it in a shape of heaven,
So lust, though to a radiant angel link'd,
Will sate itself in a celestial bed,
And prey on garbage.
(1.5.42-64)

In this passage, the Ghost starts out with the wrong that Claudius does to the state. By pouring poison in the king's ear (as the Ghost later explains), Claudius has abused the "ear of Denmark" by passing off a lie. Secondly, the Ghost mentions the theft of the crown by this deceptive brother (called a serpent, perhaps reminiscent of the fall in the garden of Eden since the Ghost goes on to accuse Claudius of seducing his queen). The third betrayal involves incest (marrying his brother's wife) and adultery. The Ghost seems to find it incredible that Gertrude could fall from the dignity of his married love to shameful lust, except by the "witchcraft" of Claudius' wit and seductive powers. The Ghost immodestly claims that Claudius' "natural gifts were poor/ To those of mine." He then condemns his "most seeming virtuous queen" by saying that just as a virtuous woman could not be seduced to lewdness even if tempted by a heavenly appearance, so in the opposite case, a lustful woman, even though married to "a radiant angel" would become sated with that celestial sexual relationship and "prey on garbage." This wretched image makes lustful sexuality into an appetite similar to gluttony, picturing Gertrude as a kind of sexual scavenger.

D. The Ghost seems as upset about the marriage as the murder, though he warns Hamlet not to hurt his mother:

If thou hast nature in thee, bear it not;
Let not the royal bed of Denmark be
A couch for luxury and damned incest.
But, howsoever thou pursuest this act,
Taint not thy mind, nor let thy soul contrive
Against thy mother aught; leave her to heaven,
And to those thorns that in her bosom lodge,
To prick and sting her.
(1.5.88-95)
E. From the beginning, the Ghost calls for Hamlet to revenge him. Is a ghost this upset and outraged to be believed and obeyed?

Return to Summary of Part One

III. Hamlet's reaction goes from rabid acceptance, to a strategy of testing, to reluctance.

A. When the Ghost reveals he has been murdered (but has not yet revealed by whom), Hamlet enthusiastically vows revenge:

Haste me to know 't [the details of the murder], that I, with wings as swift
As meditation or the thoughts of love,
May sweep to my revenge.
(1.5.46-8)
B. When he hears that Claudius is the killer, he exclaims, "O my prophetic soul."

C. His initial response is to swear revenge--by heaven, earth and even hell:

O all you host of heaven! O earth What else?
And shall I couple hell? O fie! Hold, hold, my heart;
And you, my sinews, grow not instant old,
But bear me stiffly up! Remember thee!
Ay, thou poor ghost, while memory holds a seat
In this distracted globe. Remember thee!
Yea, from the table of my memory
I'll wipe away all trivial fond records.
All saws of books, all forms, all pressures past,
That youth and observation copied there;
And thy commandment all alone shall live
Within the book and volume of my brain,
Unmix'd with baser matter. . . .
(1.5.99-111)
D. I would direct the actor playing Hamlet to cool progressively from this point on. He tells Horatio that the Ghost is "honest" (154), but the man who has denied himself suicide because of respect for God's law cools down by line 192 to mention a way of testing the Ghost's story: he already is plotting to put on "an antic disposition"--that is, to pretend to be mad.

E. By the end of the scene, he is reluctant to fulfill the appeal to nature (revenge) by doing the immoral act of murder:

The time is out of joint. O cursed spite
That ever I was born to set it right!
(1.5.210-111)

To respond to Lecture Part One, click here to call up the questions for this segment. Copy the question into a word processor, write your response and then submit it as indicated by your instructor.

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Continue to Hamlet Lecture Part Two

  

URL: http://www.iupui.edu/~elit/shakes/ham/fhamp1.html

Last updated: 11 May 1998 by Helen Schwartz
copyright 1997 Helen J. Schwartz