The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 20.0409 Monday, 27 July 2009
[1] From: David Bishop <
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Date: Saturday, 25 Jul 2009 16:32:20 -0400
Subj: Re: SHK 20.0403 What is Hamlet's flaw?
[2] From: John Drakakis <
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Date: Sunday, 26 Jul 2009 16:45:29 +0100
Subj: RE: SHK 20.0403 What is Hamlet's flaw?
[3] From: David Basch <
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Date: Sunday, 26 Jul 2009 11:56:58 -0400
Subj: Re: SHK 20.0403 What is Hamlet's flaw?
[4] From: Donald Bloom <
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Date: Monday, 27 Jul 2009 08:42:29 -0500
Subj: RE: SHK 20.0403 What is Hamlet's flaw?
[5] From: Steve Roth <
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Date: Sunday, 26 Jul 2009 10:22:52 -0700
Subj: Re: SHK 20.0403 What is Hamlet's flaw?
[1]-----------------------------------------------------------------
From: David Bishop <
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Date: Saturday, 25 Jul 2009 16:32:20 -0400
Subject: 20.0403 What is Hamlet's flaw?
Comment: Re: SHK 20.0403 What is Hamlet's flaw?
This thread may be swerving off its topic, but I would like to reply
briefly to Joe Egert.
Claudius's revealed guilt at the end is mainly for Hamlet's murder --
and Gertrude's more ambiguous death.
At the beginning Hamlet thinks he's a flawed man, especially compared to
his godlike father, but believes that his mourning is genuine, unlike
Claudius and Gertrude's: "I have that within which passes show." He
also, at first, promises to revenge his father without letting any
"trivial fond records" get in the way. Even here, his resolution is
expressed in a way that makes it suspect, to the audience, since it's
compared to very unrevengeful activities: "swift as meditation or the
thoughts of love." Hamlet at the beginning may feel weak or inadequate
but not yet guilty of an unexplainable, or cowardly, delay. Then he
proposes to put an antic disposition on, and when he appears again he's
reading on a book. Already he's showing the tardiness that makes him
guilty in the eyes of the ghost, and in the corresponding part of his
own conscience.
If the ghost is guilty for his killing of Fortinbras, that guilt, like
all his other guilt, as a sinning human being, could presumably have
been wiped out by proper shriving. I tend to believe his guilt is only
normal human guilt, which incurs frightening purgation, thus
intensifying Hamlet's anxiety about the punishment he would face for
killing a king. It wouldn't be mere purgation, but damnation, as Laertes
says: "I dare damnation." And there's that oxymoron again: to dare
damnation you have to know you're doing something damnable, but demanded
by a different kind of conscience. To refrain from revenge, and
regicide, out of fear of God, would be cowardly -- from that ghostlike
point of view.
Best wishes,
David Bishop
[2]-----------------------------------------------------------------
From: John Drakakis <
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Date: Sunday, 26 Jul 2009 16:45:29 +0100
Subject: 20.0403 What is Hamlet's flaw?
Comment: RE: SHK 20.0403 What is Hamlet's flaw?
I'm not sure what text of Hamlet Joe Egert is reading. Look at
5.2.313-14 where Laertes spills the beans. It is Laertes' exposure of
the king's hand in the poisoning that produces Hamlet's response.
Hamlet's action produces a response from the onstage audience: 'Treason,
treason'. And it looks like 'treason' until Laertes augments his
explanation at 5.2.321-25, after Hamlet has made Claudius drink from the
same cup as Gertrude. It is this sequence of events that brings
Claudius's crime out into the open, and so the allegation of 'treason'
could, at this point, just as easily (and more properly) be levelled at
him. All Hamlet is doing at this point is enacting 'justice' which is
part of the content of 'revenge'. Insofar as it is revenge then it is
very heavily circumscribed, and must be distinguished from the other
anarchic forms of killing and of revenge that provide a contrast within
the play.
On the issues of 'pharmakon' and 'presence' David Bishop might like to
have a look at Derrida's essay on 'The Pharmakon' in 'Dissemination'.
The matter isn't quite as 'off-topic' as he thinks since both these
concepts are integral to the idea of tragedy, and have a specific
relation to this tragedy in particular. Hamlet's 'problem' isn't
psychological, and he doesn't have a 'fault' in his 'character', any
more than Macbeth's 'fault' is the very ambition that the ethos presided
over by Duncan encourages. The play poses the question of what happens
when meaning is not present to itself, and when what grounds meaning
becomes contaminated. Words and actions are separated from each other in
'Hamlet' and the tragic hero has to try and somehow resolve the dilemma.
Claudius always speaks with forked tongue, and what does this do to
'custom' and 'antiquity', 'the ratifiers and props of every word'? How
can the tragic hero make sense of the task with which he is confronted
when authority and the meanings that it authorises are contaminated? Why
should we assume that the Ghost's injunction to 'revenge' must be taken
negatively? The Ghost of Old Hamlet is the remnant of an authority that
has been superseded, and would he not have been the both the guarantor
of meaning and law? Why should we assume that Old Hamlet wants PERSONAL
revenge? One of Hamlet's problems is that he has to interpret the
Ghost's injunction in a world where meaning is no longer clear. (We
don't really need to guess at whether Shakespeare read Aristotle's
Poetics. If he read any Aristotle, then it is more likely that he read
'The Politics' of which a translation appeared in 1598.)Is it any wonder
that he has a problem? What his problem certainly isn't is the kind of
petty bourgeois angst that arises from autonomous personal
'relationships'. This is not the male equivalent of Desperate Housewives!
Cheers,
John Drakakis
[3]-----------------------------------------------------------------
From: David Basch <
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Date: Sunday, 26 Jul 2009 11:56:58 -0400
Subject: 20.0403 What is Hamlet's flaw?
Comment: Re: SHK 20.0403 What is Hamlet's flaw?
Concerning the issues of Hamlet's flaws, I have a comments on Joe
Egert's remarks. He writes:
>Where is Claudius' guilt for murdering his predecessor
>publicly revealed in 5.2? I don't see it.
Just because Joe Egert doesn't see it does not mean that others, equally
astute and qualified as himself don't as well. For example, Lawrence
Olivier saw it in his film of Hamlet and helped his audience to do so.
In that film, we saw Claudius dramatically rise, quite disturbed, in
front of the court spectators. Gertrude is outraged at Hamlet for
bringing about this situation so angering to Claudius. If Hamlet had
struck him at the time, he, the people's favorite, could have argued
before the Danish court as the heir to the throne that the reenactment
of what Hamlet thinks happened with his father caught Claudius's
conscience more than anyone else and revealed his guilt. This
observation is something that Horatio corroborates. Thus, Hamlet would
have struck, beaten the rap, and saved himself. Joe Egert may not see it
this way but it is nevertheless an arguable point.
Joe Egert also wrote:
>David Basch denies human agency as an instrument of Providence
>in misquoting Hamlet on the "divinity that shapes our ends,
>rough hewn though it may be." Shakespeare acknowledges such
>agency, though shorn perhaps of prescience of those ends ...
>"rough-hew them how we may."
I would rejoinder that though my failing memory may have erred in citing
the line, I do not deny human agency as an instrument of Providence and
wonder at how Joe Egert could arrive at such a hasty conclusion about me
from such a limited fact.
In any case, the point I tried to make earlier still stands. Hamlet was
arguing against obeying the premonition he had, which Horatio urges him
to pay attention to. Yet Hamlet, defying "augury," insists on abandoning
himself to whatever lies ahead on Claudius's turf. But Hamlet's uneasy
feelings are not "wimpy worrying" and seem a warranted, far-reaching
emotional response to his situation in which he can expect that Claudius
is busy plotting against him. However, it seems that Hamlet's past
experience of coming through Claudius's earlier plot, with everything
falling into line enabling him to discover and rewrite Claudius's death
sentence and return rapidly to Denmark, makes him think he sees clear
signs of Providence at work and that he can religiously accept whatever
Providence has in store for him.
On the other hand, Horatio's counsel was to have Hamlet avoid the duel.
We can infer that Horatio conceives that Hamlet should rather come up
with a plan to deal effectively with his situation. After all, Hamlet,
the favorite of the people, could have noted Claudius's plan to have him
killed in England, bringing up also Claudius's reaction to the play. The
fuss could have worked for Hamlet. Hamlet did have alternatives.
But Hamlet's problem was that he is "overly wise" in thinking he
actually understood God's ways in the manner he did, a manner altogether
inappropriate and ineffective to deal with his situation. This was the
outcome of one of his fatal flaws in character. This is a flaw he shares
with many other overly wise persons in the world that court the danger
of harming themselves by reacting passively to events, thinking they
have superior wisdom and understanding of unknowable forces, rather than
conceiving more down to earth responses that less clever but more
effective persons would take.
As we see in the events of the play, Hamlet's being overly wise and over
righteous -- flaws Hamlet he doesn't even know he has -- are not mere
errors but are rooted in his character. As Shakespeare shows, these are
sufficient to do in even good persons.
The play Hamlet is a parable that can serve as a life lesson that the
great Shakespeare communicates in his powerful drama. In doing so,
Shakespeare brings the inspired words of Ecclesiastes's warning to clear
view and life for his audience. But it is we that have to study the play
to see this and have the wherewithal to recognize it and not evade it by
getting lost in the play's events, reading the signs wrongly as pointing
elsewhere toward our own less relevant to the play preoccupations.
It is truly tragic that a man as admirably brilliant and righteous as
Hamlet could destroy himself by faults hidden to himself, even as he
recognizes the virtues of his friend Horatio that he again tragically
fails to emulate.
David Basch
[4]-----------------------------------------------------------------
From: Donald Bloom <
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Date: Monday, 27 Jul 2009 08:42:29 -0500
Subject: 20.0403 What is Hamlet's flaw?
Comment: RE: SHK 20.0403 What is Hamlet's flaw?
Flaw? We don't have to look very far. The world's leading expert on
Hamlet tells us that he is "very proud, revengeful, ambitious." Put it
another way: which of the Seven Mortal Sins does he lack? He does not,
to be sure, appear to be greedy or gluttonous. But for the rest -- look
to't.
Is he then contemptible? Despicable? Hardly, unless we are such utter
hypocrites as to imagine that he is worse than we ourselves are.
Whatever the author may have believed and how deeply, the play is a
product of a Christian country in a time when religious issues were
particularly important -- even (or rather, especially) among the
intelligentsia. This play is permeated with questions about death and
judgment, heaven and hell, sin and forgiveness, hope and despair. Hamlet
is a son of Adam: he was born with all the "tragic flaw" he needed,
As he says, "What should such fellows as I do crawling between earth and
heaven? We are arrant knaves all . . ." And, of course, why would any
female, whether a sweet young things or a treacherous slut, want to be
"a breeder of sinners"?
I don't propose to "work this all out" by means of some Christian
interpretation, whether orthodox or heterodox. For one thing, I have
gained at least a little humility through many decades of having my
vanity exposed. But for another - and mainly - I don't believe
Shakespeare "worked it out." I don't know that he wanted to or even that
he could have if he did want to.
If you are of one sort of mind, you will accept the idea that it can't
be worked out. (Don't ask me what "it" is: if I could tell you, I would
have worked it out, or would think I had.) If you are of another, you
will find some agreeable philosopher, prophet, saint or church that will
supply a satisfactory working out. But even if you are of the latter
group (as I am), you will need to recognize that it can't all be worked
out without some things being taken on faith.
Hamlet and his play belong to one of those areas that defy the simple
creedal, catechetical, or critical formulas. This defiance does not make
the formulas invalid, nor the play (and here I agree with Lewis that
Eliot was simply wrong) inferior. It does, though, make it infinitely
fascinating though exceedingly treacherous.
Cheers,
don
p.s. Is Polonius the only major character impervious to these questions
and to doubts about himself? If so, that would seem an especially
telling point.
[5]-----------------------------------------------------------------
From: Steve Roth <
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Date: Sunday, 26 Jul 2009 10:22:52 -0700
Subject: 20.0403 What is Hamlet's flaw?
Comment: Re: SHK 20.0403 What is Hamlet's flaw?
Hi All:
As one of the primary Hamlet malefactors (though I try to keep my posts
few and short), I thought I'd offer to take some of that load off Hardy
by offering the blog at http://princehamlet.com as an alternative forum.
It might also provide a(nother) proving ground for the blog as a
mediated medium. If anyone (including Hardy) is so inclined, they may
feel free to re-direct these lengthy Hamlet discussions to that forum.
Though I doubt I can do so as well as Hardy, I'll do my best to keep
discussions there at least civil, though not perhaps reliably profound.
I haven't set up the blog there yet but have been intending to and can
do so very quickly.
Thoughts?
Thanks,
Steve
[Editor's Note: I endorse Steve Roth's idea above and encourage anyone
with a special interest in _Hamlet_ on in Hamlet to go to this site and
blog away. Over the years, Steve Roth has proven himself a thoughtful
and focused contributor to discussions on SHAKSPER, and I am sure he
exercises the same degree of thoughtfulness at his blog. -HMC]
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