Hamlet beliefs in the Elizabethan World View (The Great Chain of Being) [Archive]

Beewulf

11-16-2009, 07:34 PM

I have an AP Literature project due and its described as is:

Trace the origin and rapidly overwhelming deterioration of Hamlet's once securely held beliefs in the Elizabethan World View. (The Great Chain of Being) The source of your analysis should be Hamlet's soliloquy only. (Ex. To be or not to be...)

Does anyone know the beliefs that Hamlet had in the Great Chain of Being in the beginning of the play until the end of the play. So the before and after.

To respond successfully to the assignment you need to do some research on the philosophy that undergirds the right of English kings to rule temporal realms. Of the several books that examine this subject, E. M. W. Tillyard’s, The Elizabethan World Picture is a good first choice. Tillyard explains the concept of “the great chain of being” and describes how this concept defended the authority of English monarchs against those who questioned their legitimacy. An important principle in the great chain of being is that human are by nature, meant to live in a hierarchal order in which lower links on the chain are obedient to those above.

To demonstrate the “naturalness” of this concept, political theorists borrowed from St. Paul’s arguments in his First Letter to the Corinthians. In this epistle, Paul reminds the Corinthians that while only the select can be leaders, each member of the church (the body of Christ) has a role to play. In order to make his point, Paul draws an analogy to the human body. He says that “as the body is one, and has many members, and all the members of the body, being many, are one body; so also is Christ. For the body is not one member, but many” (12:12). He goes on to say that if an individual body part is dissatisfied with its status or function and tries to rebel, the body as a whole could no longer operate. Paul argues that just as each part of the body must obey the natural order of things, so too must human beings obey the order into which they have been placed

The eye can’t tell the hand, “I have no need for you,” or again the head to the feet, “I have no need for you” . . . God composed the body together, giving more abundant honor to the inferior part, that there should be no division in the body, but that the members should have the same care for one another. (12:18-25)

In other words, all members of the body of Christ (or the body politic) have an important role to play; moreover, it is God’s plan that each member have inborn gifts duly suited to the role God wants him or her to assume:

God has set some in the assembly: first apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then miracle workers, then gifts of healings, helps, governments, and various kinds of languages. Are all apostles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers? Are all miracle workers? Do all have gifts of healings? Do all speak with various languages? Do all interpret? But earnestly desire the best gifts. Moreover, I show a most excellent way to you. (12:27-31)

Paul’s point is that not everyone can be a leader and there’s no shame in that. Accept your lot, be happy, do your job, and know that even a lowly position is important to success of the whole.

So what’s the relationship between Paul’s notion of a natural hierarchy in which all members contribute to the success of the whole and Hamlet’s “To be or not to be” speech? It has to do with the Hamlet’s rueful observations on a malfunctioning body politic. During Hamlet’s soliloquy, he observes that few people have the courage to escape the torments of life because they fear what lies beyond the grave. Without that fear, many might escape their lot in life through suicide. Hamlet asks, for example, “who would fardels bear/To grunt and sweat under a weary life,/But that the dread of something after death” (3:1). Hamlet appears to be questioning the notion of obediently accepting the role one has been fated to perform, and by extension, he may be challenging the order described in the great chain of being. Clearly, Hamlet’s faith in that order declines as the play progresses. To understand how and why that happens, I suggest you examine Hamlet’s growing realization that almost all the people who surround him are tainted by dishonesty. As Hamlet grasps just how rotten his country’s become, you may find evidence that Hamlet loses faith in the idea that Denmark’s political authority is a earthly manifestation of God’s heavenly kingdom.