Why should you read Hamlet Iseult Gillespie
“Who’s there?”
Whispered in the dark,
this question begins a tale of conspiracy,
deception and moral ambiguity.
And in a play where everyone
has something to hide,
its answer is far from simple.
Written by William Shakespeare
between 1599 and 1601,
“Hamlet” depicts its titular character
haunted by the past,
but immobilized by the future.
Mere months after the sudden
death of his father,
Hamlet returns from school a stranger
to his own home,
and deeply unsure of what might be lurking
in the shadows.
But his brooding takes a turn
when he’s visited by a ghost that
bears his father’s face.
The phantom claims to be the victim
of a “murder most foul,”
and convinces Hamlet that his uncle
Claudius usurped the throne
and stole queen Gertrude’s heart.
The prince’s mourning turns to rage,
and he begins to plots his revenge
on the new king and
his court of conspirators.
The play is an odd sort of tragedy,
lacking either the abrupt brutality or
all-consuming romance
that characterize Shakespeare’s
other work in the genre.
Instead it plumbs the depths of its
protagonist’s indecisiveness,
and the tragic consequences thereof.
The ghost’s revelation draws Hamlet into
multiple dilemmas–
what should he do, who can he trust,
and what role might he play
in the course of justice?
These questions are complicated
by a tangled web of characters,
forcing Hamlet to negotiate friends,
family,
court counselors, and love interests–
many of whom possess ulterior motives.
The prince constantly delays and dithers
over how to relate to others,
and how he should carry out revenge.
This can make Hamlet more than a little
exasperating,
but it also makes him one of the most
human characters Shakespeare ever created.
Rather than rushing into things,
Hamlet becomes consumed with the awful
machinations of thinking itself.
And over the course of the play,
his endless questions come to echo
throughout our own racing minds.
To accomplish this,
Shakespeare employs his most introspective
language.
From the usurping king’s blazing
contemplation of heaven and hell,
to the prince’s own cackling meditation
on mortality,
Shakespeare uses melancholic monologues
to breathtaking effect.
This is perhaps best exemplified in
Hamlet’s most famous declaration of angst:
“To be or not to be—that is the question:
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows
of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles
And, by opposing, end them.”
This monologue personifies Hamlet’s
existential dilemma:
being torn between thought and action,
unable to choose between life and death.
But his endless questioning raises
yet another anxiety:
is Hamlet’s madness part of a performance
to confuse his enemies,
or are we watching a character
on the brink of insanity?
These questions weigh heavily on Hamlet’s
interactions with every character.
And since he spends much of the play
facing inward,
he often fails to see the destruction
left in his wake.
He’s particularly cruel to Ophelia,
his doomed love interest who is brought to
madness by the prince’s erratic behavior.
Her fate is one example of how tragedy
could have been easily avoided,
and shows the ripple effect of Hamlet’s
toxic mind games.
Similar warning signs of tragedy are
constantly overlooked throughout the play.
Sometimes, these oversights occur because
of willful blindness–
such as when Ophelia’s father dismisses
Hamlet’s alarming actions
as mere lovesickness.
At other points, tragedy stems
from deliberate duplicity–
as when a case of mistaken identity
leads to yet more bloodshed.
These moments leave us with the
uncomfortable knowledge
that tragedy evolves from human error–
even if our mistake is to
leave things undecided.
For all these reasons, perhaps the one
thing we never doubt is Hamlet’s humanity.
But we must constantly grapple with who
the “real” Hamlet might be.
Is he a noble son avenging his father?
Or a mad prince creating courtly chaos?
Should he act or observe, doubt or trust?
Who is he? Why is he here?
And who’s out there–
waiting in the dark?