There are numerous examples of violence throughout Hamlet. However, it is best to concentrate on those which have the greatest degree of dramatic significance for the play as a whole. Let us start off with one that takes place before the play even starts: the murder of King Hamlet, the protagonist's father. This is arguably the most important act of violence in the text: it sets the tone for all subsequent events in the play and provides Hamlet with the prime motivating factor for his actions (or lack thereof). The murder of Hamlet's father is the foundational act of violence that leads directly or indirectly to all other acts of violence in the play.
In act 1, scene 5, the ghost of Hamlet's father appears to him and tells him how he really died. Hamlet, like everyone else, assumed that his father had died after being bitten by a poisonous snake. In reality, Claudius crept up on him while he was sleeping in the orchard and poured poison down his ear. Additionally, Claudius seduced King Hamlet's queen, Gertrude:
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.
Hamlet's fraught relationship with his mother will be an important theme running throughout the rest of the play. The ghost is firmly establishing in Hamlet's mind an intimate link between Claudius' act of murder and Gertrude's adultery.
Gertrude, unwittingly perhaps, always seems to be related to violence. Indeed, for Hamlet, her betrayal of his father and subsequent marriage to Claudius is an act of violence against honor, dignity, and all that is decent.
Gertrude is in the thick of things again in act 3, scene 4. She gets into a blazing row with Hamlet, who lets fly with a volley of vicious personal abuse against his mother. As expected, it revolves around his detestation of Gertrude for marrying his father's murderer. Hamlet's verbal violence spills over into physical violence as he stabs and kills Polonius, who had been hiding behind a curtain to eavesdrop on Hamlet's conversation. At this stage in the play, whether we believe that Hamlet's madness is real or feigned, there is no doubt that whatever is going on in that mind of his is having deadly repercussions.
Murder is not the only kind of violence which has significance in the play. Take Ophelia's suicide, for example. At least, most people conclude that she committed suicide. The Church refuses to bury her in hallowed ground, a sure sign that she actually did kill herself. At the very least, Ophelia does not really care whether she lives or dies because she is so psychologically damaged by the twin tragedies of Hamlet's rejection and the death of her father, Polonius. It is significant that a relatively passive character in the play shows more resolution in enduring "the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune" than Hamlet himself, even though it did lead to her death.
The act of violence that the whole play leads up to—Hamlet's revenge upon Claudius in act 5, scene 2—turns out to be much less dramatic than we expect. One quick swig of poison and it is all over. However, there is still some significance to this particular act of violence, nonetheless. Claudius's death allows King Hamlet to be avenged and serves as a neat instance of poetic justice. Just as he poisoned his brother and (inadvertently) his wife, so too has he poisoned himself.
Hamlet had a number of oppurtunities to kill Claudius. In this scene he stabs him, but it is not enough to kill him. It is important for the overall dramatic structure of the play that Claudius ends up dying in the same way as his brother. Thus, the ambiguity of violence in Hamlet is revealed. It can be terrible, brutal, and unjust. Yet, just like fire, it can purge and destroy.
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