Hamlet

[cedmonds]

a class i am currently attending is debating the tragic flaw in Hamlet. I am aware of his tragic flaw of "inability to act", but i am aware that there is another. " his rashness of behavior" May someone please explain this one to me. Thanks

[AbdoRinbo]

Shakespeare undoubtedly calculated very carefully the ambiguity of Hamlet's character. If he really was crazy, then he was an exceptional actor. If he was rash, then his inability to act (which seems to fit the circumstances) is heavily outweighed by his ability to cajole Claudius into his rashness was mere insanity. The mere fact that you are probing Hamlet's mind pays credence to Shakespeare's accomplishment as a psychologist.

For my part, I have not found a single flaw in Hamlet.

[Sindhu]

If he really was crazy, then he was an exceptional actor.

Could you clarify that a bit more, please? I find it very interesting because I've been always in the Hamlet's not crazy camp and argued that his exceptional acting capabilities are best reflected in his managing to delude a lot of people into thinking briefly at least that he WAS crazy. Your comment seems to say the exact opposite and I'd really like to discuss it.
Sindhu.

[Jay]

I also thing that Hamlet was perfectly sane, just played being crazy... now I got an interesting idea (and might probably be stoned for it ;)), but what if it wasn't Hamlet who was crazy, but Shakespeare himself? I mean, in that time when he was writing Hamlet...

[AbdoRinbo]

I don't think Hamlet was crazy either. But he was very ambiguous.

[Munro]

When I read and saw Hamlet I decided that he began by feigning insanity for attention and to disturb his family, but throughout the play he slowly decended into his act and could no longer tell the difference between his reality and the situation he was presented with, and it all eventually became too much for him.
The actor of Hamlet I saw made it seem like that, as well, and it might be one of those script things where the actor has to interpret it himself for the production he's in.

[arabian night]

Well, in my point of view i think hamlet's tragic flaw which will lead him to hamartia is " thinking too much about the action" he should have killed claudius since he was the murderer of his father "the king" ...as a murderer he should be punished ...his sin is awful" divine right of kings....
hmmm why i think his flaw is "thinking too much"...because he was thinking in a way that puts him in the place of God ...he wanted to kill him when he is not asking for forgiveness....AS WHEN HIS FATHER DIED WITHOUT CONFESSING HIS SINS...Hmalet chose lesse over greater good....he chose not to kill claudius to revenge...while he got the right time and place to kill him.

[byquist]

It's interesting that in the speech to Horatio about the kettle-drums and braying and stuff, he say, "so of't it chances in particular men ....." You know the spot check it out, when he talks about a man (or woman) or every man and woman, having one major, presumably identifiable or leading fault or fopaugh, weakness or vulnerability. Or "flaw." Hamlet, so self-aware, philosophizes about this 1 major defect or impediment which, if they didn't have, they would be perfect. No doubt he is aware of the 1 flaw that has ensnared him, or maybe he is predicting that no matter how great my youth has been I'm gonna be hit and haunted by my built-in flaw sooner or later.

[Ahmed]

How are Hmalet and Gatsby similar?

[kirkhoffj]

When reading hamlet, i actually don't always get the feeling of his inability to act, rather, i receive a feeling that he actually is just blind in a way. Much the same as the ancient greek tragedies of Aeschylus, Euripedes and Sophocles. Rather than actually put together the pieces, he acts very quickly.

[The Unnamable]

Hamlet doesn’t act? What should he do? Kill someone? Why? Hamlet’s ‘problem’ is that he thinks and feels. No one in the play can see the beauty, splendour and grandeur of life as he can (“this majestical roof fretted with golden fire”). However, no one is so paralysed by the other side of the coin, either. I love the idea that a mere character who thinks more than anyone on this entire forum could benefit from the homespun advice of those with all the answers. There are Poloniuses everywhere, ignoring the ‘infinite jest’ of that smiling skull. It’s obviously ‘caviare to the general’.

[Virgil]

When reading hamlet, i actually don't always get the feeling of his inability to act, rather, i receive a feeling that he actually is just blind in a way. Much the same as the ancient greek tragedies of Aeschylus, Euripedes and Sophocles. Rather than actually put together the pieces, he acts very quickly.


I agree with kirkoff that the notion of Hamlet's inability to act is over played. When he thinks it's Claudius behind the curtain he acts quickly and impulsively, only to kill Polonius by mistake. Supporting Kirkoff's point is the imagery of the fog with the ghost. The fog suggests the inability to completely percieve and piece things together. This is different than Sophicles where Oedipus is blind to the facts; Hamlet has vague facts from which he has a hard time drawing conclusions.

As to Hamlet's sanity, I've always felt that he was insane, but that he believed himself to be sane but decided to act insane. Rather convoluted and probably unlikely, but I can't help feeling that way.

Some critics have felt that Hamlet is a flawed work because shakespeare can't seem to make up his own mind as to whether Hamlet is paralized or impulsive. However, if you read it from the inability to piece facts together I think it holds together well. He may not therefore have a flaw, or if he does it could be that he has this need to find the truth.


From Jay:

now I got an interesting idea (and might probably be stoned for it ), but what if it wasn't Hamlet who was crazy, but Shakespeare himself? I mean, in that time when he was writing Hamlet...

With all do respect Jay, that sounds silly.

[The Unnamable]

Isn’t the fog a more general reflection of the difficulty we all have in making sense of our lives, rather than just Hamlet’s? I was reminded of Kurosawa’s use of dappled light effects in ‘Rashomon’. The viewer never seems to know where he or she is – there is always a sense of an ever-shifting reality. Also, Thom Gunn’s poem, ‘Human Condition’ makes a similar use of fog:


HUMAN CONDITION

Now it is fog. I walk
Contained within my coat;
No castle more cut off
By reason of its moat:
Only the sentry's cough,
The mercenaries' talk.

The street lamps, visible,
Drop no light on the ground,
But press beams painfully
In a yard of fog around.
I am condemned to be
An individual.

In the established border
There balances a mere
Pinpoint of consciousness.
I stay, or start from, here:
No fog makes more or less
The neighboring disorder.

Particular, I must
Find out the limitation
Of mind and universe.
To pick thought and sensation
And turn to my own use
Disordered hate or lust.

I seek, to break, my span.
I am my one touchstone.
This is a test more hard
Than any ever known.
And thus I keep my guard
On that which makes me man.

Much is unknowable.
No problem shall be faced
Until the problem is;
I, born to fog, to waste,
Walk through hypothesis,
An individual.

Hamlet has a hard time drawing conclusions not because he is a hopeless ditherer but because he is a perpetual witness to the complexity of human behaviour. There seems to be an assumption that Hamlet’s ‘problems’ could be ‘solved’ by his simply getting on with it. This is, for me, similar to the notion that the problems of world hunger could be solved by having every one eat out at a nice restaurant.

[aequitas]

I agree with Unnamable in that Hamlet struggles to make sense of...well, the "human condition." In doing so, though, I think he reveals a prominent flaw: he's a control freak. Hear me out. The fact that he is so determined to find the answers to his situation, and the ways in which he seeks these answers--indeed, Hamlet himself is trying to "solve" his "problems"--shows his need for power over his own life. The "To be or not to be" speech, especially, reveals Hamlet's desperation in his attempt to control his life: committing suicide would (ostensibly...but that's a different issue!) seem to be the ultimate display of control over his life, no?

I believe Hamlet's...controlling-ness (running out of synonyms), and the perfectionism that accompanies it, are the main reasons for his belated revenge on Claudius: Hamlet gets increasingly picky about the circumstances in which he will kill the king. At first, he only wants to ensure his own safety--and justifiably so--and does this by feigning insanity to ward off suspicion. But later, he decides that he must be completely convinced that Claudius is going straight to hell once he dies, and so Hamlet refrains from killing him once he has the opportunity.

Hamlet also appears fairly nitpicky in the context of his vengeance plots. The play he asks the players to perform (The Murder of Gonzago) bears a very strong resemblence to the royal family's situaion; nevertheless, Hamlet insists on adding another speech of "some dozen or sixteen lines" to the play, just in case. This seems a little over-the-top, especially since Hamlet should be careful about arousing suspicion. His speech to the players right before the play, too, is indicative of extreme perfectionism (to the point of being fairly condescending).

And it's interesting to note that once Hamlet decides that there's "a divinity that shapes our ends," or something like that (I don't have my copy with me--that's from memory), and decides that he might as well go fight Laertes because he's going to die anyway, he unknowingly enters the situation in which he actually gets to kill the king. Once he relinquishes control he can achieve his goal (or one of them, at least). And he finally finds the answer to his "to be or not to be" monologue, too: "Let be."

I'd like to hear your thoughts on that, Unnamable--just interested.

Regarding Hamlet's insanity, or lack thereof, I think that if there's anything seriously wrong with him, he has a bit of a God complex. Because really, he can't make Claudius go to hell if Mr. Omnipotent up there wants him in heaven, right?

And sorry about the length. I'm a bit long-winded at times...

(Not as bad as Polonius though--"brevity is the soul of wit," my elbow!)

[ShoutGrace]

Regarding Hamlet's insanity, or lack thereof, I think that if there's anything seriously wrong with him, he has a bit of a God complex. Because really, he can't make Claudius go to hell if Mr. Omnipotent up there wants him in heaven, right?

He can’t make Claudius go to Heaven or Hell; only Claudius and his actions can do that. What Hamlet can do is intervene at the proper time and kill Claudius when his ‘sins are still staining his soul’, so to speak. It will be recalled that this is precisely the notion put forth by the Ghost earlier in the play:

“Thus was I sleeping by a brother’s hand
Of life, of crown, of queen at once dispatched,
Cut off even in the blossoms of my sin,
Unhouseled, disappointed, unaneled,
No reckoning made, but sent to my account
With all my imperfections on my head.”

Hamlet wants no less for Claudius.

This of course all stems from the Catholic tradition of mortal and venial sins, shriving, etc.


(Not as bad as Polonius though--"brevity is the soul of wit," my elbow!)

Exactly. Shakespeare knew what he was doing, I guess. :D

[WriterAtTheSea]

... isn't it amazing how much influence the RCC had on Shakespeare even in his writing. A wonderful analysis here Shout. I fully concur. I think Hamlet tries to play God in a sense...by killing Claudius. Just a thought. :banana:

[mortalterror]

When reading hamlet, i actually don't always get the feeling of his inability to act, rather, i receive a feeling that he actually is just blind in a way. Much the same as the ancient greek tragedies of Aeschylus, Euripedes and Sophocles. Rather than actually put together the pieces, he acts very quickly.

Ever since I read Aeschylus' The Libation Bearers I cannot get out of my head how similar the two stories are. A usurped crown, young princes returning from foreign lands to reclaim their birthright, a murdered father/king, an incestuous affair, the slow move to action. Hamlet has his foil Horatio, and Orestes has Pylades. Read the Fagles translation if you get the chance. I think it's even superior in some ways to Hamlet. Mostly because of how simple, inevitable, and unified the plot is in The Libation Bearers but it's all over the place in Hamlet.

I love Hamlet, but there are two things that bug the heck out of me every time I see or read that play. 1)The play within a play. I hate self-conscious literature. 2) In the middle of the play, apropos of nothing, Hamlet is saved by a band of pirates.

[jaymrobinson]

I think a major flaw of Hamlet is how he talks over everyone's head. He talks over Gertrude's head, over Cladius' head, over Ophelia's head, etc. He would be served better in many situations by speaking more plainly.

[Lioness_Heart]

Hamlet seems to be taking quite a lot from the Greek tragedies, and the classic idea of a tragic hero (although not entirely - Shakespeare is kind of redefining the genre)

The typical tragic flaw is hubris (pride) but I'm not sure that Hamlet really has that.. except that he goes off intent on dealing with things alone, including his 'antic disposition' which further isolates him. So perhaps hubris does play a small part.

His madness or not stems from the meeting with the ghost and what he hears, so in a way, it's not his fault (reinforcing the tragic hero role). I believe that he is not mad, at least initially, but he becomes so isolated and paranoid (albeit with reason) that his eccentric behaviour just escalates, until he no longer controls what he has put in motion (this is in a way embodied also in the final scene that ends in them all dead - neither Laertes nor Hamlet intended for any aside from those they want revenge on dead). So in a way, he probably does become mad, although it is primarily due to the mad way he acted. A big theme in Hamlet is acting, and Hamlet himself seems fascinated by the theatre. Perhaps he acted a little too well and fooled himself that he was mad.

Sorry this post has no flow (and probably loads of typos). I'm too tired to write coherently.