Hamlet as a Revenge Tragedy Essay

HAMLET

SOME ASPECTS OF THE PLAY

HAMLET as a Revenge Tragedy

Elizabethan dramatists did not first invent HAMLET. Behind the play, versions of the tale are known which go back at least to the thirteenth ■century; but in all versions, the theme is the same: revenge. Elizabethan playgoers had a peculiar delight in this theme and there are many revenge plays. Most of them follow a pattern, just as in these days the crime and detective thriller runs to type.

In the thriller, there is first the crime. The mastermind is stimulated and begins to rotate. Then follow the false clues, all set out according to the elaborate rules of the game, the triumphant but unexpected solution, the analysis of the evidence, and the punishment of the guilty.

Revenge plays also have their pattern. It occurs first in The Spanish Tragedy which was the father of all Revenge Plays and in an even more extravagant specimen, exactly contemporary with HAMLET, Marston's ANTONIO'S REVENGE.

The story of the Revenge Play begins with the crime, usually murder but with varying motives. The duty of vengeance is laid on the next of kin, who is faced with the problem of identifying the murderer, a matter of some difficulty. He encounters many impediments to vengeance. Finally in the last Act, comes the triumphant conclusion when the original murderer is appropriately dispatched and since playgoers liked their tragedies to be richly coloured, the avenger and all others neatly concerned perish together in one red ruin.

There was, moreover, etiquette, a morality, in revenge. Vengeance was a pious duty laid on the next of kin; it was wild justice, but to be satisfactory and successful something more than strict justice was needed. The Old Law claimed an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth; vengeance demanded both eyes, a jaw full of teeth and above all that the victim, after exquisite torments of body and mind, should go straight to Hell there to remain in everlasting torment. A perfect revenge required, therefore, great artistry.

The pattern can be illustrated from John Marston's Antonios REVENGE, the sequel to ANTONIO AND MELLIDA; both parts were written in 599. There are, indeed, certain similarities with Shakespeare's HAMLET which seem to be more than coincidence.

The theme of the Hamlet story in all its versions is how a king was killed by his brother and how the king's son ultimately took vengeance on the murderer* It is therefore bound by the normal conventions of the theme.

The plot of Shakespeare's HAMLET is neat, admirably worked out, symmetrical and in the Jonsonian sense 'artificial'. It is also highly improbable. A brother kills a king and marries the widow; and hence the King's son has double cause to hate the uncle and a filial obligation to avenge the dead. But, if the final vengeance it to be satisfactory, the son should also perish; and there must be an adequate cause for his end other than mere accident. So the son of the murdered King also kills a father; and on that father's son too is laid the duty of vengeance; and by a supremely artistic device the double vengeances come to a point at the same moment. That, however, will mean that at the end of the play the murderer-Uncle will be dead and the son-venger will be dead; but the other venger and the Queen who was the cause of all the trouble will survive. Such an ending is contrary to good form. Some means must therefore be devised to despatch these two at the same time. The poisoned rapier, exchanged in the heat of combat, whereby both vengers are killed with the same weapon is most satisfactory; and for the Queen, the accidental cup of poison intended for the nephew but destroying the erring; wife and mother is a very effective touch, full of grim irony.

This conclusion, however, will leave the practical problem that the royal family of Denmark has been entirely wiped out. Someone must take charge or the audience will leave the theatre unsatisfied, and wondering what happened next. Let someone come in with an army and then there will be a fine military funeral for Hamlet and a general feeling that the state of Denmark is at last in strong hands.

But that solution will introduce other problems, for this army and its commander must be introduced naturally; at such a late point in the action the play must neither be delayed nor diverted for explanations, of this commander is a rival Prince who has a claim on the throne then there rounded and satisfactory ending. There is, however, another difficulty; somehow this Prince must have been introduced early and kept constantly n mind so that this entry at the end is quite natural and, indeed, inevitable.

There are still a few loose ends. How does the son find out about he murder? The discovery is usually one of the major incidents in a Revenge Play. One method is the ghost of the murdered man; no Revenge Play is complete without at least one ghost.

And still something is lacking. There is no love interest. Prince Hamlet must be provided with a lady ; and if she can be the sister of the man who ultimately kills him it will add greatly to the piquancy of the situation. It would, of course, be best to have her dead before the last Act, for as things are now planned we have already four corpses. Let the poor girl go mad; we always have a mad scene in a Revenge Play ; and then let her kill herself in he fourth Act.

These, then are the stock incidents of an exciting melodrama; incidents which are used over and over again in any Revenge Play ; and these Shakespeare transmuted into his HAMLET.

Shakespeare had one advantage; the story was an old favorite. There was no need, therefore, to start with explanations and back history. Instead, ie could open his play with creating atmosphere.

In the scheme, the first scene is apparently irrelevant, but it set the audience in the right mood. A dark, jumpy scene on the battlements; a sentry anxiously waiting for his relief and scuttling back to the guard room as quick as he can; whispered talk about a thing which appears. So they have brought Horatio, for he is a scholar and will naturally know about these mysteries, then it does appear in the same figure like the King that is dead.

Horatio pronounces that i* bodes some strange eruption in the state of Denmark. There are all the signs of immediate war; and the political gossip is about young Fortinbras, a dangerous young man.

Then the Ghost returns. There were, according to contemporary ideas, ] four reasons why the dead should walk again - to reveal some secret; to warn j the living of some calamity, especially impending death ; to reveal buried treasure ; or to bring to light the manner of its death. Horatio knows all this and he adjures the Ghost accordingly. But before Horatio has had time to utter the fourth, and true reason, the cockcrows, and the Ghost hurries away to its j own place. So the three young men agree to tell Hamlet and the dawn comes up. So far nothing has been explained, but we sense the feeling of brooding I suspicion. Something is very rotten in the State of Denmark.