Blog 3: response to Feb. 8th

Posted on February 8, 2007

Although the precise relation to our interest in tragedy might be unclear, I hope I have impressed upon you that readers and audiences of Hamlet have always been confused as to why Hamlet delays in killing Claudius. Shakespeare makes important changes to the source that really emphasize this "problem" within the story: Hamlet doesn't kill Claudius in III.iii when he has the perfect opportunity; he berates himself for not getting on with it; the Ghost chides in III.iv and must "whet his almost blunted purpose" (though if the Ghost here is a hallucination then this is just Hamlet chiding himself); Shakespeare on two occasions has Hamlet declare he is more than ready to kill Claudius, and then he doesn't; when he does kill (Polonius), he must know that it cannot be Claudius (so he IS capable of killing, just not Claudius). Eliot says that the "delay" is unexplained, but what he means is that the delay functions powerfully as a centerpiece of the plot (as important as the movement of revenge itself), and that something seems to be "blunting" the motive of revenge (that is, dulling the desire for vengeance so that the emotional energies are dissipated elsewhere). Whether or not you agree that the play is an "artistic failure" for that reason--that is, because Shakespeare cannot structure an intelligible design for the delay into his larger story (essentially Eliot's point)--you can at least acknowledge what he's addressing.

One of the discussion questions you'll have for Feb. 13th (our last day on Hamlet) asks simply: why do you think Hamlet delays? You can give any answer you want, or you can summarize the views of others, or try to extrapolate from views of Greek tragedy. But what we covered in class on Thursday, Feb. 8th was the "Freudian" explanation offered by Freud's disciple, Ernest Jones. The problem with Jones' reading--which I'll summarize in a moment--is that it is TOO good; that is, it accounts for the main action of the play (and many of its smaller details) so effectively that it has the curious effect of making this grand if difficult play seem much smaller. In other words, it seems like a reductive theory BECAUSE its explanatory power is so high. So what, again, is that theory?

The main issue for Jones is that Hamlet is "motivated" (if we can call it that) not so much by his desire for vengeance against the man who killed his father as by his unconscious desire to "have" what Claudius now has: sexual possession of Gertrude. It's odd in a way that Eliot is able to point out that Hamlet's obsession with Gertrude blunts the vengeance without also seeing that Hamlet has an unhealthy sexual obsession with his mother (which Zeffirelli exploits in his film). Perhaps Eliot doesn't want to consider this possibility because he has an unhealthy sexual obsession towards HIS mother (I wouldn't put anything past Eliot!). That said, Jones' theory of sexual desire (the Oedipus complex, from the fact that Oedipus has sex with his own mother) does explain what Eliot finds so perplexing in the play: Hamlet's madness is something more that a mere put-on, even if he's not totally insane; Hamlet is out of control enough that he ends up calling attention to his knowledge of the murder when he should be keeping this a secret. AND, most significantly, Jones' theory explains why Hamlet delays in killing Claudius (as well as why Hamlet is finally able to kill Claudius): he delays because "the more vigorously he denounces his uncle the more powerfully he stimulates to activity his own unconscious and 'repressed' complexes. He is therefore in a dilemma between on the one hand allowing his natural detestation of his uncle to have free reign, a consummation which would stir still further his own horrible wishes, and on the other hand ignoring the imperative call for the vengeance that his obvious duty demands. His own 'evil' [that is, his forbidden desire for his mother] prevents him from completely denouncing his uncle's, and in continuing to repress the former he must strive to ignore, to condone, and if possible even to forget the latter" (Norton Hamlet, 205; Jones has a number of similar remarks on 205-06). In sum, Hamlet delays because to do what he wants (kill Claudius) brings him too close to a desire (to have his mother sexually) that he cannot bear to admit into his consciousness. So the delay is a way of acting out this struggle to repress a desire his conscious mind finds abhorrent.

Besides the delay in the killing, this reading explains many other details of the play. Jones reads this vexed sexual obsession back into Hamlet's (mis)treatment of Ophelia, for example. It also explains why Hamlet can finally kill Claudius: because once Gertrude is dead, the repression is lifted and he can fulfill the demand of duty to avenge his murdered father (or even to avenge himself since he is now dying at Claudius' instigation). And, perhaps most tellingly, the theory helps explain why Hamlet inadvertently tips his hand to Claudius during the Mousetrap: it is the nephew rather than the brother who aims to kill the king in the play, and when Hamlet says (almost yelling in the BBC version) "you shall see ... how the murderer gets the love of Gonzago's wife," we could take this to mean NOT a threat to Claudius (I will kill you) but a revelation of his unconscious desire (I will get my mother's love, and body, which you now have), a revelation that might be directed as much to Gertrude as to Claudius (after all, throughout the scene Hamlet is more concerned to provoke Gertrude than to provoke Claudius: he wants HER attention).

Whether this is "tragedy" or not, it is certainly a story about suffering--psychic tribulation. But Stephen Greenblatt ("Speaking with the Dead") and Robert Watson ("Giving up the Ghost") have very different readings of the prime locus of that tribulation--that struggle in Hamlet's mind. And that is where we will finish up.