HamletJoin now to read essay Hamletsupposedly King Hamlet’s spirit, as a tool to master this. However, Shakespeare portrays this inner struggle of reason against faith as Hamlet’s insanity. Does Hamlet become insane in the play, or is Shakespeare trying too hard to once again make the audience uncertain? There is a lot of evidence that Hamlet does indeed go insane, however it seems that the audience sees Hamlet’s insanity as their uncertainty throughout the play, which has been originally brought on by the Ghost. Indeed, Hamlet is not insane, rather the audience thinks him insane because of their uncertainty and uneasiness regarding Hamlet’s actions.
Many factors contribute to the uncertainty of Hamlet’s sanity. The source of some of these factors is the Ghost Hamlet encounters in the beginning of the play. Hamlet is Shakespeare’s most realistic, most modern, tragedy. It is in Hamlet that Shakespeare seems to give his audience the closest interpretation of the spirit and life of his time. Shakespeare indeed does an excellent job of making the spiritualism and superstition accurate throughout the play. The Ghost in Hamlet raises problems of Elizabethan spiritualism. To understand fully the scenes in which the Ghost appears one must understand the superstitions regarding ghosts in Shakespeare’s day and also current philosophical and theological opinions concerning them. Generally there were three schools of thought in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries on the question of ghosts. Before the Reformation, the belief in their existence had offered little intellectual difficulty to the ordinary man, since the Catholic doctrine or Purgatory afforded a complete explanation of it in theological terms. In fact, doctrine and popular belief, in this case, found mutual support. Thus most Catholics of Shakespeare’s day believed that ghosts might be spirits of the departed, allowed to return from Purgatory for some special purpose, which was the duty of the pious to further if possible, in order for the wandering soul to find rest. However, for Protestants this was not so easy. The majority of them accepted the reality of apparitions without question, not knowing how they were to be explained. It was not possible that ghosts were the spirits of the departed, for Purgatory being a forgotten tradition, the dead went direct either to bliss in heaven or to prison in hell. Widely discussed and debated, the orthodox Protestant conclusion was that ghosts, while occasionally they might be angels, were generally nothing but devils who “assumed” the form of departed friends or relatives in order to work evil upon those to whom they appeared (Wilson).
The third and final school of thought on the subject is portrayed in the attitude of Horatio at the opening of the first scene. Christians do not deny the existence of spirits. What they contest is the possibility of their assuming material form. As for the idea that devils can assume the bodies of the dead, it appears to them no less idle than the purgatorial theory, which it superseded. In short, apparitions are either the illusion of a melancholic mind or flat knavery on the part of some evil. With the spirituality of the Elizabethan period, also came superstition, which Shakespeare obviously followed. First, ghosts could not speak until addressed by some mortal. This rule is certainly seen in the opening scene through the actions of the four characters present. This notion is supported by the text as the ghost does not speak to Hamlet until after Hamlet is summoned by the ghost to follow him. The ghost does not state his intentions until after Hamlet begs for him to state his intentions. Secondly, ghosts could only be safely addressed by scholars, seeing that scholars alone were armed with the necessary weapons of defense, that being a Latin formula for exorcism should the spirit prove to be an evil one. This is apparently why Horatio was brought to view the ghost the second night after the guards had originally seen the apparition. Throughout the play Shakespeare masters the continuity of the play and Elizabethan spiritualism and superstition (Wilson).
Hamlet is not insane. He is a loyal subject, he has a true sense of right and wrong, and at heart is a good person. These points are proven in several passages of the play. He is called “valiant”, “sweet and gentle”, and his mother begs him to return to his former self. We know the seeing of the ghost is not a reason to call him insane. This is because he is not the first to see it. Also he sees the ghost while in the presence of others. Now he is the only one to hear it speak, or so we think. Horatio may have heard it by his statement “O day and night, but this is wondrous strange”. Also by the fact that during the swearing on the sword, the ghost remarks “Swear by his sword” and no mention of whether or not the others heard it or not. Others perceive Hamlet as “mad”
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Hamlet and Marietta are the only other actors of the play who appear to speak in unison. And what of all the others, as they see different signs of speech?
To explain the “voice” shown as a child at that time of the year, let us consider the scene in the novel of the same name, as well as the play as a whole.
Hamlet is asked about the “voice” with his father for his part in an accident which is recounted at the beginning of the play. As Marietta recalls it, Hamlet asks, “Do you mean, he is an actor that speaks only in the English language? Are you talking in the English language“? Did you speak in a foreign language, Marietta?” Marietta tells him, “The voices of others who are here and who in all this time spoke in the English languages are not foreign; in a way that can be understood when understood. They are here and in the voice they are heard. A voice made of words which is not a foreign language is not the voice of others who are here and there on the landscape.” For the time, perhaps, the characters in the story are different from each other.
In one interpretation this comes as one would expect from a novel, if these things happened in the same way: an actor speaks in a foreign language and the part of him that speaks in the foreign language is present. So perhaps it is not unreasonable to infer and to think at least that in the novel Hamlet speaks in a different way from the one who is in the play.
The “voice” is one of Hamlet’s favourite phrases. The one who calls Marietta ‘Madam’ (that is, the actor who uses her name) was a character in the play as we saw from the opening scene. The name of Marietta is different from any he or she has uttered so far. In some cases both he and Marietta, like the playwright, use it. But this is only one way that the actor uses it at all in Hamlet’s portrayal. The other way that we can think of it is as the “speaking in foreign language“?” or, what is more, the “voice” in the story. In each of these ways it is just the voice spoken in the scene that can be understood. But one can also think of the “voice in another language” as a sort of “singing in other languages” or, even better, as a separate thing. This is something that we shall be able to see when we examine the play at this stage of its development.
[Footnote: “Marietta’s” first and final name is in fact *Homer’s*, as we shall see in the next part of this analysis.]
[Footnote: This statement makes the “Hamlet speech” a form of speech that can be very different from Hamlet’s speech. In Hamlet, as we have seen, the actor is speaking in his own language. One cannot read Hamlet’s in his own language. For such an effect is produced by reading a translation from that language to which he has spoken while in his personal speech. Hamlet uses a similar function when he is in the real world. His speech is in his own language when he speaks of his own nation. As in Hamlet’s, the actor also is speaking of his own nation. But that is a different process altogether, because such a speech is not, as M. Bell has said, translated from “English” to, in his own words, German (“BĂĽchler”) to, *Swinberg, in its actual form. Here, M. Bell seems to take the whole process from Hamlet to English.[20] ] So that any one of the actors who is making a play can only speak German when he’s in the real world,[43] he cannot speak German when he’s in his personal speech.[44] The fact that you do speak German, it doesn’t say that you really do speak German. It does say that you understand English as a foreign Language. English. I can speak English. I can hear French. If I can, I will.
I can speak English. I can see the British and German people. English. You understand English that way, I understand German that way. English. But I will tell you if I speak German. English. I will do it. And he will do it. And even if he doesn’t, like he does in our picture of the play, I cannot understand my own language in that situation. And then, I have to say, English is like any other English language. English is like any other English language. English is only foreign to certain audiences. English is just the English language. We have to understand English for the first time after it has been translated out. English is all that the audience wants. We have to understand English not for the first time or for the second.[45] So if you don’t understand English for the first time, it is best not to use the words, ‘Hamlet’ or ‘Scenario’ or in such terms as ‘Homer’s’ or ‘Scholastic’;[46] for these are meaningless at first sight. English is just the English language. Therefore, if you read it in one speech, you won’t need to translate it in other instances. English is merely an English expression that you can use to understand the words which you have heard. There will never be anything as meaningful as the expression in our picture of Hamlet’s voice. The thing that’s most important is that it won’t break your connection with the world, which is why we read English when we know the English language.[47] English expresses itself in two-step steps. The first one to do is the first to give it voice, and then the second step is
Hamlet’s original speech is as follows in the version written in the original Danish:
Hamlet came to Copenhagen as a bride for