Link to essay
Thomas Beek
English 150/8: Professor Knapp
Term Paper
12/12/2006
Christianity and the Comedic in Hamlet
Some of the difficulties faced by Hamlet are due to his anachronistic circumstance. He is called upon to follow the motif of the heroic age and avenge his father’s murder, but he is in the wrong milieu for this attitude. Hamlet lives in a Christian age, where blood revenge is proscribed. “The disparity between its primitive and its civilized components, which is an integral part of its fabric, is equally vital to its significance” (Levin 8). The addition of Christianity, a “civilized component,” enables a plausible change to the plot, the “fabric,” and adds to the original meanings of the play, a layer of Judeo-Christian attitude.
Since the classical dramatic models were familiar and popular, they formed convenient foundations for English plays. The importation of a play from its original setting can produce unusual results, however. The register of the classical Greek plays was polytheistic and their government democratic – completely opposite of Elizabethan England. But the situations into which characters are placed in the Greek dramas makes them universal also. Then the Romans showed how to import theater from one culture to another. Still polytheistic and amoral by the standards of Elizabethans, but still a lesson in dramatic transference. Europeans took up the plays left by these bygone cultures and expanded and amplified their themes. We find in Hamlet, therefore, remnants of classical Greek and Scandinavian heroes. But Hamlet is set within Christendom from its opening scene: “Why such impress of shipwrights, whose sore task/Does not divide the Sunday from the week” (1.1.76). Marcellus is asking Horatio why there is such a build up of armaments and ships of war being built that the poor shipbuilders cannot observe the Sabbath. Here is also a clue to the disasters to come. The forced discharge of state duties on the Sabbath bodes disaster.
England had pagan ceremony, fairy stories, and myths since time immemorial. They added color and fantasy to the drudgery of medieval life. Europe eventually got Christianity, but the predilection for the pagan ceremony remained. Under Catholic rule, the mystery play cycles filled the gap. But the Elizabethan Protestants eventually banned them. Into the breach came the theater. “Shakespeare's theater…was able to appropriate and transform the spiritual ‘energy’ or charisma associated with forbidden Catholic practices such as exorcism or services for the dead” (Goldman 1). Plays were censored, of course, but the censors were no matches for clever playwrights like Shakespeare. He managed to get a ghost from purgatory – a feature of Catholic dogma – urging revenge on a Protestant Elizabethan stage. Quite an accomplishment, especially considering the consequences of failure and conflicting with the law. This pushing of the envelope would have added to the excitement of attending Hamlet at this time.
The problem that Prince Hamlet faces in executing his revenge is not the same as the cultural problem with Hamlet’s proposed revenge. It is Hamlet’s Christianity and the awfulness of revenge for a Christian Elizabethan audience that forms both the main dramaturgical problem and the spiritual focus of the play. This tension, and the author’s awareness of it and working with it, is embodied in both the text of Hamlet and in the character of the Prince. The struggle on stage mirrors the struggles in the minds of viewers. The struggle becomes drawn and the stakes are high. Hamlet becomes overwhelmed and begins to show signs of mental stress. He could do anything. Thus, Shakespeare has Hamlet come close to the precipice, such as when he comes upon the praying Claudius, and then back away. Just as it is thrilling to watch the spectacle of a legal trial and await its outcome, so does Hamlet thrill by the multitude of weighty and thorny problems than Hamlet finds himself heir to instead of Denmark.
One of the wonderful qualities of Hamlet is its multiple levels of meaning, such that the play can be interpreted from at least four levels of meaning, and is in essence a different play from each perspective.
1. Theatrical (revenge tragedy genre)
2. Psychological
3. Religious
4. Metaphysical / Philosophical
One may interpret Hamlet as a revenge tragedy only, as have critics in the vein of T. S. Eliot. If one follows this interpretation exclusively, there is a long wait—until the end of play—for the revenge to happen. And as Hamlet finally kills Claudius, it happens seemingly not for the original reason, or in the familiar mood. When Hamlet finally kills Claudius, it is not the heroic stab-him-through-to-the-dirt type of event, but a mere prick with the tip of a poisoned sword. This is hardly the release that revenge is wont to give. Here also I believe along side of the tragic lies the comedic.
The shudder that an audience feels as a result of Hamlet’s contemplated revenge is maximized by his being a good soul, which for Elizabethans meant Christian. To viscerally feel the horror of Hamlet’s circumstance, the audience must be made to closely identify with him. This notion castigates any claims that Hamlet was naturally indolent or timid. And Hamlet’s starting out in the play as a normal person, a nice person, with a sense of humor even, makes it very much more likely that someone watching Hamlet would ask themselves, “What would I do if my father’s ghost appeared and asked me to avenge his murder?”
Murder in revenge captivates and stuns the mind and whirls in the imagination dreadful notions of hell. For a theatrical producer this is pure delight. And all one has to do to slow down the pace is introduce some religion. Thus, one crucial light to always shine on Hamlet is that it is primarily a theatrical work, as opposed to a work produced by and for philosophers. And yet in a way few sermons or philosophical lectures do, Hamlet reveals that philosophy is inherent and immanent in everyday life.
Upon returning from Wittenberg Hamlet seems a most jovial and collegiate fellow. He does not seem overly bookish, or self-involved. When he jostles Horatio – “there is more in heaven and earth, Horatio,/Than are dreamt of in your Philosophy” (1.5.167). Here the religious register of the play adds a layer of ambiguity regarding the syntax. Perhaps Horatio studied philosophy at university? Or Horatio could represent those more interested in natural philosophy than in religion, and Hamlet a Christian preacher. In any case, Prince Hamlet comes across here as man of experience and reason. His character seems modeled after the archetype for the Fool, as on the Tarot deck or in theater, sagacious and guileless. Hamlet’s demeanor recalls the words of Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew, “Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven” (18.3). Thus, the picture of his teetering on the brink of the fiery pit (by contemplating revenge and then, at least seemingly, suicide) is made more dreadful and nerve-wracking.
The struggle against the physical world, as pitched and exalted as it may be, does not kindle human imagination as do the social and psychic struggles, and the grand struggle between darkness and light, good and evil. There is a yearning for higher understanding in human life, and an urge to move beyond the mere brute struggle for existence, to find something suitable for our advanced intellects to grapple with. The solution for the tragedian is to include the sacred and its impositions on human action into the story, thus creating critical dramatic tension. Agamemnon was trapped between the religious sacrifice of his daughter or the loss of his fleet, a predicament imposed by the gods, which adds awful import to the drama. Clytemnestra and Aegisthus act on their own agency, similar to Gertrude and Claudius: mortals acting in the capacity reserved for the divine. In both plays the religious dimension increases the sense of outrage for the murder of a sitting king, which is made more egregious by neither Agamemnon nor Claudius having had a chance to prepare themselves for the next life: “Cut off even in the blossoms of my sin,/Unhouseled, disappointed, unaneled” (Hamlet 1.5.76-7).
The gods who are to blame for Agamemnon’s woes are not imbued with the same perfection as the Judeo-Christian God; they are lusty and commit mistakes for which they suffer. Therefore, classical actors have more tacit license to act in avenging wrongs without invoking the sense of umbrage that a Christian audience feels about sins against the lovely and beneficent God Almighty, or His Lamb, Jesus. Human weakness is the impetus for tragedy. But whereas the ancients were still working it out in revenge dramas, Elizabethans were supposed to have worked all of that out by dint of Christianity. But since the same animal urges lurk in all humans, their presentation in a play produces the highest thrill. It is the reforming force of religion that was supposed to curtail this chaos for Elizabethans. Shakespeare’s audience would see the blood feud code that would have been chivalric in the ancient world as wicked and vulgar. Such an audience would be scared by the ghost and made to squirm in their seats by Hamlet’s seeming contemplation of suicide and then revenge. But because Prince Hamlet is Christian, they would have identified with him through all of his mental and spiritual struggles. This single change by Shakespeare to the extant Hamlet’s character—making him Christian—without any other changes whatsoever, would have been enough to make the play a hit. The fact that the play was popular enabled Shakespeare to continually produce it and to enlarge upon the difficulties faced by Hamlet in executing his stratagem.
Another problem for Hamlet, as he considers avenging his father’s murder, is finding the inspiration for the deed. When Hamlet first arrives back in Denmark and is speaking with Horatio, he reveals his feeling pinched by the marriage of his mother to Claudius, “Would I had met my dearest foe in heaven/Or ever I had seen that day, Horatio!” (1.2.181) In mentally comparing Claudius with his father he would like to think that his father would outshine anyone, “’A was a man, take him for all in all,/I shall not look upon his like again” (1.2.187). All that Horatio can come up with is “’A goodly king” (1.2.186). We like to be attracted to larger than life figures, they make us feel that there is great potential in us as well. Problematically, King Hamlet appears not to have been much taken with Christian principles, and so Prince Hamlet’s holding him in so high esteem would present a problem in an Elizabethan drama. The comedic is oddly inserted into this conversation about how great a king was the old King Hamlet:
Hamlet: …My father, methinks I see my father.
Horatio: Where, my lord?
Hamlet: In my mind’s eye, Horatio.
Horatio: I saw him once…
Hamlet’s father appears only as a ghosts, so when Prince Hamlet says “I see my father,” it causes a little start. And the words we would certainly speak in reply are spoken by Horatio, “Where?” Hamlet: “In my mind’s eye, Horatio” (185). Horatio’s line, “My lord, I think I saw him yesternight” (189), continues Horatio, unintentionally continuing in the comedic vein already established. Hamlet has just played a little joke at the expense of Horatio’s nerves, which sets the stage for the comedic. Then immediately Horatio comes back with his having also seen the dead king. Just the idea of seeing a man returning home the day after his wife has remarried his brother is enough to make the atmosphere tense. But if the man seen is already dead, then what we have is sardonic humor, perhaps also absurd, achieved by comedic elements being inserted in strange places in the plays structure. There is yet another kind of problematical comedy. It occurs in Hamlet’s dealings with Ophelia.
After he has deciding to affect madness. His treatment of Ophelia is not funny, but cruel:
Ophelia: My lord, I have remembrances of yours
That I have longèd long to redeliver.
Hamlet: I never gave you aught. (3.1.95)
This is not what we have understood, up to this point, to be Hamlet’s nature, so even though he is affecting madness, this cruel treatment of Ophelia blends strangely with both his humor in his speech to her, and with his supposed Christianity, which should have mediated his cruelty. Here we encounter the aforementioned problems with making Hamlet Christian. The character of Hamlet, as it has been inherited from ancient origins, was not nearly as likeable as Shakespeare’s Hamlet. At least we see that Hamlet is loath to deceive Ophelia, and considers such deception against her sinful: “—Soft you now,/The fair Ophelia!—Nymph, in thy orisons/Be all my sins remembered” (3.1.89). His precursors in the Scandinavian traditions, Amlođi and Ambeles, were similarly rough in their treatment of women when alone with them (Murray 6). It is unnecessary to go further into the many variants of the story and main character. This example should suffice to show that there are strongly non-Christian elements inherited with the story of Hamlet that have been brought in almost as-is without ‘Christianization’ for benefit of Elizabethan audiences. The problems here are obvious and when, as with Hamlet’s treatment of Ophelia, they are not easily reconciled they simply add to the unusual sensibility of Hamlet as a work of art.
Hamlet says darkly comedic things that work on the level of comedy, but which do not fit Hamlet’s character as he was, but since his nature seems in flux, we do not know what to expect from Hamlet. After the dumb show and prologue in Act 3 Hamlet complains that the prologue was too short:
Hamlet: “Is this a prologue, of the posy of a ring?”
Ophelia: ‘Tis brief, my lord.
Hamlet: As woman’s love.
He is referring to Gertrude’s love for the old King Hamlet. This sardonic humor carries the play along as the players in the play within the play get ready to perform. During The Mousetrap Hamlet makes vulgar comments to Ophelia:
Ophelia: You are keen, my lord, you are keen.
Hamlet: It would cost you a groaning to take off mine edge.
This lewd aspect, like the cruel one, is inherited from the prior incarnations of the hero and are misplaced here, except that they seem to work to convince us that Hamlet may indeed suffer mentally and is not quite himself after all (as opposed to merely “putting on”).
A huge turn about that revolves on the Christian concept of salvation occurs in the scene where Hamlet does not kill the praying Claudius. Hamlet desists for reasons reprehensible to Christian sentiment: he did not want Claudius to attain salvation. Is Hamlets supposed madness enough to account for his suddenly very unchristian character? It does not seem to fully account for it, but it does also make the play weird in a way that works. Hamlet mirrors real life in an artistic and interpretive way. We are Prince Hamlet. Like the protagonist in Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, Hamlet is everyone.
The multiple levels of interpretation in Hamlet raise questions about the nature of theater and the viability of mixing elements from earlier tradition with those of a later one. Elizabethan theater descended from classic forms, but the societies themselves differ in radical ways. What was acceptable in Greek society would not be at all acceptable in Elizabethan society. And yet, Elizabethans continually absorbed themselves in both the derivatives of Greek drama, and in the original plays. Shakespeare’s first roles as an actor were probably in Greek classics. There is something in the classic idea of theater that has held the imagination ever since. Therefore, it is not surprising that classic heroes and stock characters would find their way into Elizabethan plays. Characters like Orestes (and Hamlet) are traditional types from tragedy. What is weird about Hamlet is that Hamlet seems like a Christian version of Orestes until after his pact with Horatio, Marcellus and the Ghost. Then he begins to follow the familiar trope of the revenge code.
The effects of the conjunction of classical motifs, like the revenge code, with Christian ones, such as salvation, is that the audience, like Hamlet, would become confused about what they should be wanting to see, what results would satisfy the action. For instance, should Hamlet kill Claudius directly once his guilt is established, or should there be a trial? Perhaps this is problem also. If not Hamlet’s revenge, what should be the fate of Claudius? What other results were possible or feasible for the play? The answer is that Claudius does suffer for his crime, but his suffering ironically comes from his own conscience.
During Claudius’ soliloquy, where he laments, he suffers mental anguish. Here the guilty suffers and is penitent. At least the audience’s desire for vengeance is somewhat satisfied by the dramatic irony of this scene. If there is a tinge of guilt for enjoying the plight of Claudius as he squirms on stage after his being discovered by Hamlet’s device, it can be set off by pious enjoyment a sinner’s turn to prayer. And even here, Shakespeare has inserted the comedic:
…what form of prayer
Can serve my turn? “Forgive me my foul murder”?
That cannot be, since I am still possessed
Of those effects for which I did the murder,
My crown, mine own ambition, and my queen.
May one be pardoned and retain th’ offence? (3.3.51-56)
Claudius has not paid attention in church. He thinks of being pardoned for fratricide and getting to keep the goodies. But, in any case, he is undergoing a type of punishment. He appears so devoid of spiritual sense as to be pitiable. He understands logically that what he has done is wrong, but he has trouble sincerely feeling it: “Try what repentance can. What can it not?/Yet what can it when one cannot repent?” (3.3.65-6). But then he comes around and begins to actually repent: “Bow, stubborn knees, and, heart with strings of steel,/Be soft as sinews of the newborn babe./All may be well” (3.3.70-72). Here is an unusual moment when a Christian would be drawn to identify with Claudius because of his pious confession of his sin and his blossoming repentance. At this point Claudius is off limits from a Christian perspective; he is beginning to repent. And as he himself has quoted, what can repentance not do? It cleanses sin and prepares a soul for salvation. To murder such a penitent would be an outrage to heaven. Ironically, Hamlet’s reasons for not killing Claudius at this moment are hellish and abhorrent: damnation. Hamlet has become so deranged from events up to this point that it has poisoned his soul.
At this point in the play, Hamlet takes on a villainous aspect and Claudius becomes heroic. Claudius may even rise above the position of his slain brother, Hamlet the King, due to his acceptance of Christian principles, which it would appear the King Hamlet lacked, as portrayed in his lust for conquer and his fondness to war with his neighbors:
Was, as you know, by Fortinbras of Norway,
Thereto pricked 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… (1.1.82-86)
King Hamlet was a poor Christian: proud, warlike, easily provoked. Old Fortinbras merely dared him after all, he did not attack with armies. If Claudius turns out to be a better king than King Hamlet was, it denigrates Prince Hamlet. It would mean that Prince Hamlet got all riled up to avenge the death of a hot-headed, non-Christian king, one who brought the menace of young Fortinbras’ armies down on Denmark for no reason other than he was taunted by a dare. From the Christian view, there would have always existed the possibility for Hamlet to foreswear the violence. Being Christian, he need not have felt himself bound to follow the blood-revenge code. He could either have forgiven Claudius, or forsworn the kingdom.
The Christian and the comedic work in Hamlet in surprising ways. Christianity itself seems impetus to anti-Christian sentiment and action. The comedic appears where traditionally the mood is somber, but its use appears necessary to reveal the ridiculousness of Hamlet’s mindset – a Christian prince set about on a heroic and pagan quest for blood vengeance. The comedic reveals the contrast between the amusing and the horrible. A more thorough examination of their working and dynamics in the play would surely reveal more connections between these two registers, and the way in which the connection between the tragic and the comic results in their changed meaning and relevance in the play.
Works Cited
Goldman, Peter. “Hamlet's Ghost: A Review Article.” Anthropoetics 7, no. 1, Spring / Summer 2001. <http://www.anthropoetics.ucla.edu/ap0701/hamlet.htm> (7 Dec. 2006).
Leavenworth, Russell E. (ed.). Interpreting Hamlet. Chandler Publishing Company. San Francisco, CA: 1960.
Levenson, J. C. (ed.). Discussions of Hamlet. D. C. Heath and Company. Boston, MA: 1960.
Levin, Harry (ed.). The Questions of Hamlet. Oxford UP. New York, NY: 1959.
Mercer, Peter (ed.). Hamlet and the Acting of Revenge. The Macmillan Press Ltd. London, England: 1987.
Murray, Gilbert. Hamlet and Orestes: A Study in Traditional Types. Oxford University Press American Branch. New York, NY: 1914.
