Suicide in Hamlet

[Dante Wodehouse]

I think Hamlet's real dynamic is his transition from the fantasies of youth to the realities and burdens of adulthood. Gertrude is a queen and mother who is also a sexual being. These are things that are a part of growing up. That's how I see Hamlet.

Interesting and quite possibly true. I never thought about it that way.

[Jim58]

Hamlet is probably younger than 30;

My view is that Hamlet's age is more an expression of maturity rather than chronological precision. If Shakespeare wanted to apply chronological certitude then the age issue would have been more explicit. Take Romeo and Juliet where Shakespeare drew time in the play much more precisely.

His tragic flaw is his overbrooding. He thinks too much.

The problem with that is characterizing it as a flaw. How can thinking be a flaw let alone thinking too much? Further, what brings about Hamlet's direct demise stems from an act in 3.4 when he stabs Polonius without thinking. In the man/beast dichotomy drawn in the play, thinking is actually a human virtue.

I think this notion of thinking too much comes from a more complex thematic element that Hamlet stumbles upon in the 2B speech: the difficulties of translating resolution into action. This is pondered in the 2B speech and universalized by the Player King and Claudius. This issue isn't unique to Hamlet, it is part of our nature as humans.

[Redzeppelin]

Double post - see below.

[Redzeppelin]

Gainsaying really adds nothing to the debate. If you disagree with my interpretation, please be so considerate as to explain your interpretation. Further, I never said Hamlet is a bratty kid. It's just the immaturity of youth.

I have a problem with the term "immaturity" unless you wish to qualify the term. Your argument that his emotionalism is due to "immaturity" puts one possible interpretation on the root of his behavior. I'm simply contending that there are acceptable circumstances that could lead a mature individual to react as Hamlet does.

You have offered one interpretation.

Correct; so have you. We disagree with each other. So?

Hamlet as "a virtuoso intellect of devastating insight, irony and perception." This is not only static it is wrong.

Prove it.

I on the other hand see Hamlet as a dynamic character who grows through the play. He learns about the duplicity of the adult world. He learns that his father had his faults and his mother wasn't virtuous. He realizes the difficulty in turning resolution in action. Part of his growth is ushered by three adults in the play - the Ghost, the First Player and the Gravedigger. Hamlet realizes by the end of the play how wrong he was about Ophelia and himself. The play is marked repeatedly about Hamlet's fears and doubts.

Everything you said above is correct - but does not mean that Hamlet is "immature."

No, I think your interpretation is wrong.

So I hear.

As for critical thought you haven't offered any in your support. The William Main reference doesn't address your contention. I do agree that the world of Hamlet "is a world "tapestries" behind which all the characters are hiding." I would appreciate more detail in your cite. I am not familiar with him. Might I suggest reading Harold Jenkins, Arden Hamlet. He's very easy to find on Amazon, in book stores and libraries.

"We tend to define 'genius' as extraordinary intellectual power...Of all fictive personages, Hamlet stands foremost in genius. Shakespeare gives copious evidence of the prince's intellectual strength...Prince Hamlet is the intellectual's intellectual: the nobility, and the disaster, of Western consciousness. Now Hamlet has become the representation of intelligence itself... What Hamlet does have is an enormous sense of his own ever-burgeoning inner self, which he suspects may be an abyss. That suspicion seems to me the true subject of all seven soliloquies, not one of which is spoken in act 5.

"What would it be like to be confronted by Hamlet? Iago, who can so easily manipulate everyone in his play, would be unmasked by Hamlet in ten lines or less, and the Edmund of King Lear would do no better. Claudius is rendered furious or incoherent each time Hamlet tests him..."

Harold Bloom
I don't expect the excerpts above to change your mind; but these ideas inform my interpretation. These interpretations from Bloom do not point towards an immature youth - at least in terms of the general interpretation of the word "immature."

I think you fail to appreciate that all editions of Hamlet derive from the three surviving texts of Hamlet. On the age issue all three text differ markedly. Read Steve Roth's, Hamlet: The Undiscovered Country. I don't know if the whole book is still available on line but the age chapter is here.
http://princehamlet.com/chapter_1.html

I told you that I wasn't using act 5 as a foundational argument. The text trumps speculation. I simply pointed out that the only (reasonably) direct reference to age suggests that Hamlet is older than a teenager.

I keep pointing out that your analysis is wrong.

Yes you do - but "pointing out" is not the same as "refuting."

Shakespeare did not model his plays off the rantings of a 2,000 year old philosopher. Second, Aristotle's analysis is PLOT based and not character based. Third, a character based analysis didn't develop until 1905 when AC Bradley wrote Shakespearean Tragedy which has been misinterpreted and ill-applied by school teachers ever since. I ask you again, if Hamlet has a tragic flaw what is it?

I didn't say Shakespeare "modeled" anything on Aristotle. The odds are good that he'd read Aristotle and absorbed Aristotle's ideas about the tragic hero:

Aristotle once said that "A man doesn't become a hero until he can see the root of his own downfall." An Aristotelian tragic hero must have four characteristics:
1. Nobleness (of a noble birth) or wisdom (by virtue of birth).
2. Hamartia (translated as tragic flaw, somewhat related to hubris,
but denoting excess in behavior or mistakes).
3. A reversal of fortune (peripetia) brought about because
of the hero's tragic flaw.
4. The discovery or recognition that the reversal was brought
about by the hero's own actions (anagnorisis).

These characteristics are consistent with Shakespeare's portrayal of his protagonists.

[Jim58]

The odds are good that he'd read Aristotle and absorbed Aristotle's ideas about the tragic hero:

Aristotle once said that "A man doesn't become a hero until he can see the root of his own downfall." An Aristotelian tragic hero must have four characteristics:
1. Nobleness (of a noble birth) or wisdom (by virtue of birth).
2. Hamartia (translated as tragic flaw, somewhat related to hubris,
but denoting excess in behavior or mistakes).
3. A reversal of fortune (peripetia) brought about because
of the hero's tragic flaw.
4. The discovery or recognition that the reversal was brought
about by the hero's own actions (anagnorisis).

These characteristics are consistent with Shakespeare's portrayal of his protagonists.

I am struck by your lack of scholarship. These posts are read by more than you or me. I think one has a responsibility to ground arguments in authority and to cite that authority. Now then not only did I reference this cite http://www.jsu.edu/depart/english/gates/shtragcv.htm 2 weeks ago addressing this very point but now you post an unattributed quote that you pulled from Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragic_hero
If that's not bad enough, had you read the entire text of your authority or even scrolled down a screen length or so you would have seen this:

Tragic virtue
An alternative view of the tragic hero, especially in Renaissance British literature, is one in which he or she possesses a tragic virtue (as opposed to the Classical idea of a tragic flaw). In this paradigm, the hero exhibits traits that would under other conditions be considered desirable, but due to external circumstances cause their eventual undoing. For example, Shakespeare's character Hamlet from the play of the same name is often criticized for his contemplative nature, and his failure to act is cited as his tragic flaw. Under other circumstances, however, such as the kingship that Hamlet was to inherit, a contemplative nature is certainly a virtue. The tragedy of Hamlet, then, is not that a flawed character simply succumbs to his failings, but that a virtuous character is consumed by circumstances not under his control.

So then our audience should not focus on what brings Hamlet down, rather we should identify with his growth in a struggle cut short.

[Cordell Walker]

Suicide is a touchy subject in many cultures. The Killing of one’s self is in some places considered honorable. In others, it is considered repulsive. One of the main themes of Hamlet is the evaluation of the act of suicide from many different angles.
During the play, suicide is considered religiously, aesthetically, and morally by a list of characters including Hamlet, Horatio, and Ophelia. They all agree on aspects in different categories, but each character treats suicide differently.
In Hamlet’s soliloquy in act 1, scene 2, he expressed how much he wanted to die, and also what is holding him back. “O that this too sullied flesh would melt, Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew, Or that the Everlasting had not fixed His canon ‘against self-slaughter” (1.2. 128-132). Hamlet wishes to die, but he cannot because he is restrained by Biblical law. Religiously it is unacceptable to kill himself. Hamlet believed that this course of action wild lead to hell or purgatory. Why die, just to face and afterlife worse than the one you just threw away.
Another one of Hamlet’s soliloquies, the infamous “To be or not to be” speech, dealt with his fear of this horrible afterlife. In this speech, Hamlet rationalized his hesitancy to kill himself. “To die, to sleep, To sleep perchance the dream ay, there’s the rub, For in that sleep of death what dreams may come, when we have shuffled off this mortal coil,/ Must give us pause” (3.1. 65-68). In effect, he said that people have to think twice before killing themselves because death is a gateway to the unknown.
Morals involved in suicide stem partly from religious views and partly from social classes such as the ones outlined in Class, by Paul Fussell. The upper class is allowed to somewhat dictate their own moral system, another difference between the classes is created by the social hierarchy. This is best seen in the dialogue between the doctor of divinity and Laertes during Ophelia’s funeral.
Doctor: No more be done.
We should profane the service of the dead
To sing a requiem and such rest to her
As to peace parted souls.
Laertes: I tell thee, churlish priest,
A ministering angel shall my sister be
When thou liest howling (5.1. 237-244)
The doctor understood the blasphemy of burying a woman who committed suicide in a Christian cemetery. It is morally wrong to do such. Laertes became angry because he did not want to believe that Ophelia killed herself.
Her social status caused the doctor to be overruled and Laertes disregarded morality to believed that Ophelia would go to heaven anyway.
People live because they fear the unknown. They use religion and other spiritual beliefs to attempt to shine a light on what lies in the darkness of death. In the end no one knows what the end will bring, but until they do hell will be the ultimate deterrent to suicide.

[Redzeppelin]

I am struck by your lack of scholarship. These posts are read by more than you or me. I think one has a responsibility to ground arguments in authority and to cite that authority. Now then not only did I reference this cite http://www.jsu.edu/depart/english/gates/shtragcv.htm 2 weeks ago addressing this very point but now you post an unattributed quote that you pulled from Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragic_hero

Why don't you spare me your indignation and respond to my argument? I'm not interested in what you think my responsibility is - Aristotle's comments on the tragic flaw are commonplace knowledge - the source is not a significant issue; did Wiki get it wrong? If so, you have a legitimate gripe; if it got it right, what's your problem? It's not like you couldn't find Aristotle's ideas on this without me citing. I agree that Wiki is hardly a scholarly site - but come on: some of us have lives and don't feel the need to spend excessive time finding sites that our discussion opponents "approve" of.

If that's not bad enough, had you read the entire text of your authority or even scrolled down a screen length or so you would have seen this:

Tragic virtue
An alternative view of the tragic hero, especially in Renaissance British literature, is one in which he or she possesses a tragic virtue (as opposed to the Classical idea of a tragic flaw). In this paradigm, the hero exhibits traits that would under other conditions be considered desirable, but due to external circumstances cause their eventual undoing. For example, Shakespeare's character Hamlet from the play of the same name is often criticized for his contemplative nature, and his failure to act is cited as his tragic flaw. Under other circumstances, however, such as the kingship that Hamlet was to inherit, a contemplative nature is certainly a virtue. The tragedy of Hamlet, then, is not that a flawed character simply succumbs to his failings, but that a virtuous character is consumed by circumstances not under his control.

So then our audience should not focus on what brings Hamlet down, rather we should identify with his growth in a struggle cut short.

"Should" is your idea. So there's an alternate view - now what? Hamlet's trajectory fits within the Aristotlian tragic flaw model. If you don't agree - fine. You're not the final arbiter of what the play is about, and C.S. Lewis and Harold Bloom both have asserted that the view one has of Hamlet is very much dependent upon the viewer - that we see a bit of ourselves in Hamlet and that each of us walks away with a bit different picture of him. My picture is that he's brilliant, ironical and experiencing immense trauma; your picture is that he's immature and in need of growing up. There you go.

[srhoton]

There are numerous instances in “Hamlet” where suicide is contemplated. The struggle between life and death consumes Hamlet throughout the entire play. Hamlet considers suicide, which is illustrated in many instances throughout this intriguing play. Hamlet never does commit suicide despite his on going internal battle. Ophelia on the other hand does. So what caused Ophelia to go through with it and not Hamlet?
Hamlet contemplates suicide even to his last breath, but he never does commit this sinful crime. I feel that the reason that Ophelia had the “will power” to commit this crime and not Hamlet was due to the fact that he thought about what would happen if he did and Ophelia put little or no thought into this sinful action.
The famous speech “To be, or not to be, that is the question” ( 3.1.58) is one of the many times that Hamlet discusses the thought of suicide. He is wondering weather or not to commit suicide and end the pain of experience. He states that life is unbearable, but no one wants to go to a place that is unknown. He express this by stating, “And makes us rather bear those ills we have, than fly to others that we know not of?” ( 3.1.79-80) In this speech Hamlet never says why he wants to commit suicide, besides the fact that he is unhappy in life. He never said I or me in this speech. The words that Hamlet uses during this famous speech illustrates that this is but a debate that he is having.
Characters often say things to one another without directly stating the truth. Hamlet does this with himself. The fact that he does this during the play shows the readers that he is confused and unsure what he wants to do with his life.
“His canon 'gainst self-slaughter! O God ! O God!” (1.2.132) Hamlet wants to kill himself but he knows that if he does, he will forever perish in Hell. He realizes that God says that suicide is a sin and that is what keeps him from committing this crime.
Ophelia never does discussion the negative side of suicide. The reason that Ophelia commits this sinful crime and Hamlet does not, is because he analyzes the outcome and she does not. The thought of seeing his father in the agonany that he did and realizing that he would be the same causes Hamlet not to take his own life. Ophelia was so unbearly sad due to the lost of her brother and the death of her father, that she never even considered the possiblity of life without them. She took her own life and never thought twice about it. The simple fact of thinking actions through is the difference of life and death in this situation.

[Ray Eston Smith]

A unifying theme of Hamlet is "To thine ownself be true" (1,3,78). Of all the main characters, Hamlet is the only one who finally is true to himself. Consequently, of all the main characters, Hamlet is the only one who avoids self-slaughter.

Even Horatio is taught by Denmark to "drink deep" (1,2,175) and so tries to drink the last drops of poison from the cup. But Hamlet saves Horatio so that he can tell Hamlet's story and teach us all not to drink from the cup of self-slaughter (5,2,346).

Fortinbras Sr. and Fortinbras Jr. value land more than they value themselves. Fortinbras Sr "did forfeit his life" fighting for land (1,1,91). Fortinbras Jr goes to war, "exposing what is mortal and unsure to all that fortune, death, and danger dare, even for an eggshell" (4,4,51), "a little patch of ground that hath no profit in it but the name" (4,4,18), that is "not tomb enough and continent to hide the slain" (4,4,65).

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, willing spokes to the king's nave (2,2,30;3,3,15), are deliverers of their own death warrant (5,2,44-59).

Polonius is a busybody, minding everybody's business but his own. Thus he was killed by a sword-thrust meant for somebody else. (3,4,33)

Laertes subverts his own life so totally and unthinkingly to filial duty that he is willing to go to hell to revenge his father's death (4,5,131). Although he is satisfied in nature with Hamlet’s repentance, he continues the fatal duel until by some elder masters [Claudius] he has a voice and precedence of peace. Thus he is fighthing not for himself but for a cause borrowed from Claudius.

When Laertes allied himself with Claudius he dulled the edge of his husbandry. Then, in the subsequent duel with Hamlet, Laertes first wounded Hamlet with his poison-tipped sword, then accidently exchanged swords with Hamlet and was fatally poisoned with his own sword. Thus he was a borrower and lender of swords, and was killed by a lent sword while fighting for a borrowed cause. [We shall see later that Laertes symbolized Christopher Marlowe and that "go far with little" is a paraphrase of Marlowe’s "infinite riches in a little room." (The Jew of Malta,]

Gertrude cannot separate her too two solid flesh (this "solidity and compound mass",3,4,49) from the doomed flesh of Claudius. Her soul is grappled to his "with hoops of steel" (1,3,63) - wedding bands. So she drinks poison, extending her union into hell (5,2,331).

Ophelia lets her brother keep the key to her memory. She "does not understand herself so well as it behooves" Polonius's daughter, and so she lets her father tell her what to think (1,3,105). When she falls into the water, she makes no attempt to save herself because her true self has already been lost. She dies by falling into a mirror image of her father in the "glassy stream"

Both Claudius and Hamlet Sr are unable to separate themselves from their land. So they slaughter their own souls, dooming themselves to be dragged down into hell by their possessions. Hamlet Sr is "doom'd...to walk the night" (1,5,10) to "walk in death" for "extorted treasure in the womb of earth" (1,1,140). Claudius could save his soul by sincerely repenting, but he cannot repent because he won't give up his kingdom and he cannot "be pardon'd and retain the offense" (3,3,56), he finally drinks a poison "tempered by himself" (5,2,332).

In the end, Hamlet recovers his true self in time to save his soul, although not his life.

http://academia.wikia.com/wiki/More_...nself__Be_True

[drlex]

Like it has been reiterated over and over in this forum, suicide is very present in Hamlet. This leads me to two questions that need to be answered in Hamlet. Why does Hamlet like to talk about suicide, but never follows through with the action? Why is Ophelia quick to act on the subject of suicide, but does not have thoughts about suicide?

At the risk of contradicting the entire thesis of this thread, may I suggest that a wish for death may not necessarily mean that Hamlet desires to actively kill himself (which is the definition of "suicide"). Hamlet wants to be done with the pain of life - that is true, but I think he is more likely looking at life as tedious and difficult, and death as release from these things. But as to an actual desire to kill himself? I think many people in dire circumstances wish for the release of death, but if you offered them a chance to kill themselves they'd say "no - I don't want to instigate my death - I just wish I weren't here anymore, dealing with this pain."

Hamlet considers suicide many times, we see this in his “To be or not to be” soliloquy:

Hamlet
“To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;…” (3.1.58-71).

He likes to play around with the thought of death throughout the whole play, but never commits the heinous act of suicide. I think that he puts a lot of thought into the consequences of death and that is why he never follows through with it. He wants to be able to repent for killing his uncle before he dies, but if he kills himself before having a chance he would go to hell. This is why he did not follow through with suicide and because it was not condoned in those days by the church. He wants to be true to himself and that could be a reason for his “insanity” that he plays up, possibly to buy him more time to think on how to get revenge on his father. I do not think that he wants to die until he has had revenge on his uncle for his father’s death. Even though he is a big procrastinator and waits until almost the end of the play to find out for sure that his uncle did kill his father. Even when the opportunity arises to kill his uncle while he is praying, Hamlet refuses because his uncle will go to heaven.

Ophelia is on the reverse side of this argument though. She has few if any thoughts about suicide, but is driven to madness and actually commits suicide. I think that she meant to commit suicide because of the details Queen Gertrude gives:

QUEEN GERTRUDE
“There is a willow grows aslant a brook,
That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream;
There with fantastic garlands did she come
Of crow-flowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples
That liberal shepherds give a grosser name,
But our cold maids do dead men's fingers call them:
There, on the pendent boughs her coronet weeds
Clambering to hang, an envious sliver broke;
When down her weedy trophies and herself
Fell in the weeping brook. Her clothes spread wide;
And, mermaid-like, awhile they bore her up:
Which time she chanted snatches of old tunes;
As one incapable of her own distress,
Or like a creature native and indued
Unto that element: but long it could not be
Till that her garments, heavy with their drink,
Pull'd the poor wretch from her melodious lay
To muddy death.” (4.7.162-179).

She fell into the brook and did not even struggle or try to get out. She just kept singing and the water soaked into her clothes and sucked her underneath the water and she died. In my opinion she was driven mad because of all the events that were happening and evolving around her which drives her to not even struggle to live anymore. I think that she does not see a point to living anymore and why should she. Her father is dead, her brother is away, and Hamlet does not love her anymore as he states in about the middle of the play.