Death
Hamlet
William Shakespeare
by William Shakespeare
Completed: 2022
Rating (X/10): 10
—
DEATH IN HAMLET
William Shakespeare’s Hamlet is saturated with death. Much of this death is literal and obvious, but some of the death is metaphorical or allegorical. Death was an important part of Shakespeare’s life before he penned Hamlet, and his pain and traumatic experiences with death bleed through the fabric of his life and splash upon the pages of his writing. Historians cannot say for sure, but Shakespeare titling his most complex play “Hamlet” following the death of his son “Hamnet” certainly seems like more than mere coincidence. The death of Shakespeare’s father also seems to have influenced Hamlet, a play which heavily emphasizes and explores paternal death, both literally and metaphorically. Inspiration for Hamlet, or perhaps even significant portions of content, were derived from “[…] a play called The Spanish Tragedy by another Elizabethan, Thomas Kidd. Also, he has a historical source for Hamlet, a work called Gesta Danorum by [Danish historian] Saxo Grammaticus” (Curtis). Shakespeare presumably understood that the play had a foundation worthy of his own interpretation and contribution. Shakespeare injected his own pain, guilt, and experience with death into the play and created Hamlet, which is perhaps the most famous and well-known play ever written.
The death of Shakespeare’s son Hamnet almost certainly had a profound affect on his life and world-view. “Hamnet Shakespeare would never inherit the status of gentleman or the sword that went with it. On 11 August 1596, he was buried in Stratford. There is no record of the cause of his death. The death rate nationwide was unusually high in the summers of 1596 and 1597, not only because of plague, but because of bad harvests which left children susceptible to illness” (Potter 204). Shakespeare would also lose his father not long after the death of Hamnet.
“From the beginning of the play, Shakespeare exploits and subverts the classical traditions that bequeathed to later generations a three-part revenge action consisting of (1) Atrocity, (2) the Creation of the Revenger, and (3) Atrocity. He does not depict the initial atrocity, the killing of king and father, in […] disturbingly vivid imagery” (Hamlet p. xv). That Hamlet opens with the Ghost is evidence that Shakespeare was struggling with the death of his father, and he wanted the death of Hamlet’s father to similarly be a focal point of struggle in the play. To lose his son and then his father must have been difficult for Shakespeare to endure. King Hamlet had recently killed King Fortinbras of Norway and usurped his land in the name of Denmark. Perhaps Shakespeare viewed his father in the same way that he portrays the Ghost of King Hamlet: as a patriarch, a strong father, intelligent, powerful, dominating, and as the leader of a great kingdom, or in the case of Shakespeare, a great family. The Ghost is bound to the night and must recede when the cock crows at dawn, as the cock is a metaphor for vigor, life, and a new day, none of which the Ghost can achieve. The Ghost does not get anymore new days, nor does Shakespeare’s father. The Ghost describes his tenure as being in a “prison house,” meaning Hell. “ The Ghost bitterly regrets missing three Catholic sacraments – the Eucharist (“unhouseled”), Penance (“disappointed”), and Extreme Unction (“unaneled”) (Hamlet p. xvi). Perhaps Shakespeare was having dreams about his father, and upon waking in the morning to the crowing cock, lost the vision, and thus found the inspiration in Hamlet for the Ghost character. Notably, the Ghost appears to Hamlet in his war armor, alluding to future war with Norway and the coming usurping of Denmark by Prince Fortinbras. The Ghost closes with the line, “Adieu, adieu, adieu! remember me” (Prince of Denmark 1.5.87). The Ghost’s final words become Hamlet’s oath to kill Claudius, and the Ghost commands Hamlet, Horatio, and the guards to swear to keep the oath in secrecy.
Following the encounter with the Ghost, Hamlet falls into deep mourning and a state of madness. King Claudius, Hamlet’s uncle and stepfather, tells Hamlet that his depression is “a fault to Heaven, a fault against the dead” (Prince of Denmark 1.2.101-102). During the scene with the Ghost, the audience is told by the Ghost that “[…] sleeping in my orchard, a serpent stung me,” which is a direct reference to Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden (Prince of Denmark 1.5.38-39). The serpent is Claudius, and Shakespeare is metaphorically comparing him to Lucifer and the “death” of humanity. Also in Act 1, Claudius speaks harshly to Hamlet and says, “Throw to earth this unprevailing woe,” which a metaphorical reference to Lucifer being thrown out of Heaven (Prince of Denmark 1.2.106-107). Shakespeare shows the audience an intense irony in Claudius’ character; Claudius thinks of himself and grand and justified, but the audience sees him as equivalent to Satan. It could also be surmised that the manner in which King Hamlet was murdered is suspect and probably relevant to Shakespeare’s own life. Claudius murders King Hamlet by pouring poison into his ear. The Ghost tells Hamlet that the poison worked immediately. Shakespeare is using metaphor to relate poison in the ear to hearing bad news and the similar way that both immediately kill.
The metaphorical deaths of Hamlet’s relationships are likely born from Shakespeare’s own pain, and specifically most poignant are the deaths of his relationships with his mother, Gertrude, as well as his girlfriend, Ophelia. These metaphorical deaths are antecedents to the literal deaths of Gertrude and Ophelia. Hamlet’s entire family is dismantled and dead, and Shakespeare must have been feeling this about his own family.
Hamlet is not suicidal, but throughout the play, he makes it known that he values his quest of killing Claudius more than he values his own life. “Except my life, except my life, except my life” (Prince of Denmark 2.2.218-219). In perhaps the most infamous line in all of literature, Hamlet delivers his “to be or not to be” soliloquy (Prince of Denmark 3.1.56). Again, Hamlet is not necessarily suicidal, but he is certainly questioning whether or not it is worth enduring the pain of life when one moment of pain could prevent a lifetime suffering.
With the arrival of the players, Hamlet is struck with the idea to perform a play called The Mousetrap, whereas the King in the play would be poisoned in the ear by his brother, thus having his throne and Queen usurped. Hamlet strategically positions Horatio to watch the reactions of Claudius and Gertrude. Hamlet believes that a negative reaction from the king would be a manifestation of guilt in the murder of King Hamlet. “For murder, though it have no tongue, shall speak with most miraculous organ” (Prince of Denmark 2.2.604-605). The Mousetrap achieves its goal of angering King Claudius, and he leaves the theater and goes to pray in the confessional. With Claudius’ guilt hanging heavy, Hamlet is tempted to murder Claudius but does not because he is concerned that murdering Claudius while he is pray would allow Claudius’ soul to go to Heaven. Hamlet vows to kill Claudius while he is enraged or drunk, ensuring that he goes to hell.
Claudius schemes with Polonius to have Gertrude entrap Hamlet in her bedroom where she can extract information from him about what he knows regarding the murder of King Hamlet. Polonius hides in Gertrude’s room to spy on the conversation between Hamlet and her son. When the conversation becomes heated, Polonius calls for the guards and exposes his hiding place. Hamlet assumes that the person hiding must be Claudius, and Hamlet stabs through the curtain and kills the spy; however, it is Polonius that Hamlet has murdered, not King Claudius as he intended. Hamlet falls victim to madness and rants wildly at his mother, but he is calmed when the Ghost of King Hamlet appears in Gertrude’s bedroom. Gertrude says that she cannot see the Ghost, which further infuriates Hamlet, so he chops Polonius’s body into pieces and buries the pieces. Laertes returns home to Denmark from France with a small army, and he is enraged that his father, Polonius, was not only murdered but was not given a state funeral service.
The graveyard scene is especially saturated with the theme of death, for obvious literal reasons, but also for less obvious reasons. The scene opens with the gravediggers discussing the circumstances of death of the person to be buried, and the audience knows this person to be Ophelia. After learning of her father’s murder at the hands of her lover, Ophelia is afflicted with madness and commits suicide by drowning herself in a river. In suicide, a soul is bound to hell, and the gravediggers discuss the merits of allowing a desecrated soul to be buried in a Christian graveyard. Hamlet and Horatio watch and listen to the gravediggers’ conversation, then they approach and ask the gravediggers who the grave is for, to which they reply, “[…]For no man, sir. […] For none [woman], either,” insinuating that a victim of suicide is no longer a proper Christian soul (Prince of Denmark 5.1.136-138). The gravediggers also joke about the gallows being stronger than the church because “that frame outlives a thousand tenants” (Prince of Denmark 5.1.45-46).
The death of the Roman empire is a subtle, secondary theme in Hamlet. Shakespeare mentions several Roman and Greek leaders throughout the play, and he is clearly drawing upon the similarities of the fall of Rome to the fall of Hamlet’s Kingdom of Denmark. In the graveyard scene, Hamlet considers the skulls which the gravedigger is cleaning. The gravedigger tells Hamlet that the skull is that of the former court jester, Yorick, who Hamlet knew well. Hamlet cradles Yorick’s skull and muses about Alexander the Great when he says, “Alexander was buried; Alexander returneth to dust; the dust is earth; […] Imperious Caesar, dead and turned to clay” (Prince of Denmark 5.1.115-119). “Christianity must be seen as part of the systematic evolution [and death] of the Roman world. It was as much an effect of that world’s gradual transformation as it was a cause” (Schultz 714). Shakespeare dwelling on the death of empires is probably an indication that he was deeply troubled by the death of his own family members.
At the end of the play, there is a crescendo of death. Hamlet sends the couriers, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, to their deaths in revenge for conspiring against him with Gertrude and Claudius. Claudius knows that his fate is coming soon, and he says, “My offense is rank, it smells to heaven” (Prince of Denmark 3.3.40). He knows that he does not belong in Heaven because of the murder he has committed. Despite praying for forgiveness, Claudius says that “Revenge should have no bounds” (Prince of Denmark 4.7.125). Claudius then proposes to Laertes that a rapier duel should be scheduled, and that he further proposes that they should murder Hamlet either by poisoned rapier or poisoned wine. The plan backfires magnificently, however, with Queen Gertrude unknowingly drinking the poisoned wine. As she is suffering and lamenting, Laertes is struck with his own poisoned rapier by Hamlet before falling from a balcony to his death. In his dying breaths, Laertes tells Hamlet that he will die also, because he too has been cut with the poisoned rapier. In response, Hamlet stabs and kills Claudius with the poisoned rapier. Gertrude and Hamlet both die from the poison, and only Horatio is left standing as a representative of Denmark. “There was a pattern with class: all the royals (King Hamlet, Queen Gertrude, King Claudius, and Prince Hamlet) are poisoned, which speaks, no doubt, to the theme of decay and rot Shakespeare used to characterize the Danish royalty” (Wilson). The Kingdom of Denmark itself is murdered when Prince Fortinbras breeches the castle and usurps the throne amidst the corpses of Danish royalty.
There may never be a clear answer about Shakespeare’s motivations for developing Hamlet, but the pain he experienced from the death of his son and father is evident. The plot, characters, and gothic environment are all indications that Shakespeare was most likely suffering from both the literal and metaphorical death of his family.
Works Cited
Curtis, Carl. “Introduction to Hamlet: The Ghost and the Play.” Liberty University. Accessed 03 October 2022. Video. https://canvas.liberty.edu/courses/33....
Potter, Lois. “The Life of William Shakespeare: A Critical Biography.” John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, https://ebookcentral-proquest-com.ezp....
Shakespeare, William. “Hamlet.” W.W. Norton and Company. New York and London. 2019. Print.
Shakespeare, William. “Prince of Denmark [Hamlet].” The Complete Works of William Shakespeare. Barnes and Noble, Inc. New York, New York. 2015. p.670-713. Print.
Schultz, Celia E., Ward, Allen M., Heichelheim, F.M., and Yeo, C.A. “A History of the Roman People.” Rutledge, Taylor and Francis. New York and London. 2019. Print.
Wilson, Jeffery. “The Meaning of Death in Shakespeare’s Hamlet.” ANQ: A Quarterly Journal of Short Articles, Notes and Reviews. 2021. https://www-tandfonline-com.ezproxy.l...
William Shakespeare
by William Shakespeare
Completed: 2022
Rating (X/10): 10
—
DEATH IN HAMLET
William Shakespeare’s Hamlet is saturated with death. Much of this death is literal and obvious, but some of the death is metaphorical or allegorical. Death was an important part of Shakespeare’s life before he penned Hamlet, and his pain and traumatic experiences with death bleed through the fabric of his life and splash upon the pages of his writing. Historians cannot say for sure, but Shakespeare titling his most complex play “Hamlet” following the death of his son “Hamnet” certainly seems like more than mere coincidence. The death of Shakespeare’s father also seems to have influenced Hamlet, a play which heavily emphasizes and explores paternal death, both literally and metaphorically. Inspiration for Hamlet, or perhaps even significant portions of content, were derived from “[…] a play called The Spanish Tragedy by another Elizabethan, Thomas Kidd. Also, he has a historical source for Hamlet, a work called Gesta Danorum by [Danish historian] Saxo Grammaticus” (Curtis). Shakespeare presumably understood that the play had a foundation worthy of his own interpretation and contribution. Shakespeare injected his own pain, guilt, and experience with death into the play and created Hamlet, which is perhaps the most famous and well-known play ever written.
The death of Shakespeare’s son Hamnet almost certainly had a profound affect on his life and world-view. “Hamnet Shakespeare would never inherit the status of gentleman or the sword that went with it. On 11 August 1596, he was buried in Stratford. There is no record of the cause of his death. The death rate nationwide was unusually high in the summers of 1596 and 1597, not only because of plague, but because of bad harvests which left children susceptible to illness” (Potter 204). Shakespeare would also lose his father not long after the death of Hamnet.
“From the beginning of the play, Shakespeare exploits and subverts the classical traditions that bequeathed to later generations a three-part revenge action consisting of (1) Atrocity, (2) the Creation of the Revenger, and (3) Atrocity. He does not depict the initial atrocity, the killing of king and father, in […] disturbingly vivid imagery” (Hamlet p. xv). That Hamlet opens with the Ghost is evidence that Shakespeare was struggling with the death of his father, and he wanted the death of Hamlet’s father to similarly be a focal point of struggle in the play. To lose his son and then his father must have been difficult for Shakespeare to endure. King Hamlet had recently killed King Fortinbras of Norway and usurped his land in the name of Denmark. Perhaps Shakespeare viewed his father in the same way that he portrays the Ghost of King Hamlet: as a patriarch, a strong father, intelligent, powerful, dominating, and as the leader of a great kingdom, or in the case of Shakespeare, a great family. The Ghost is bound to the night and must recede when the cock crows at dawn, as the cock is a metaphor for vigor, life, and a new day, none of which the Ghost can achieve. The Ghost does not get anymore new days, nor does Shakespeare’s father. The Ghost describes his tenure as being in a “prison house,” meaning Hell. “ The Ghost bitterly regrets missing three Catholic sacraments – the Eucharist (“unhouseled”), Penance (“disappointed”), and Extreme Unction (“unaneled”) (Hamlet p. xvi). Perhaps Shakespeare was having dreams about his father, and upon waking in the morning to the crowing cock, lost the vision, and thus found the inspiration in Hamlet for the Ghost character. Notably, the Ghost appears to Hamlet in his war armor, alluding to future war with Norway and the coming usurping of Denmark by Prince Fortinbras. The Ghost closes with the line, “Adieu, adieu, adieu! remember me” (Prince of Denmark 1.5.87). The Ghost’s final words become Hamlet’s oath to kill Claudius, and the Ghost commands Hamlet, Horatio, and the guards to swear to keep the oath in secrecy.
Following the encounter with the Ghost, Hamlet falls into deep mourning and a state of madness. King Claudius, Hamlet’s uncle and stepfather, tells Hamlet that his depression is “a fault to Heaven, a fault against the dead” (Prince of Denmark 1.2.101-102). During the scene with the Ghost, the audience is told by the Ghost that “[…] sleeping in my orchard, a serpent stung me,” which is a direct reference to Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden (Prince of Denmark 1.5.38-39). The serpent is Claudius, and Shakespeare is metaphorically comparing him to Lucifer and the “death” of humanity. Also in Act 1, Claudius speaks harshly to Hamlet and says, “Throw to earth this unprevailing woe,” which a metaphorical reference to Lucifer being thrown out of Heaven (Prince of Denmark 1.2.106-107). Shakespeare shows the audience an intense irony in Claudius’ character; Claudius thinks of himself and grand and justified, but the audience sees him as equivalent to Satan. It could also be surmised that the manner in which King Hamlet was murdered is suspect and probably relevant to Shakespeare’s own life. Claudius murders King Hamlet by pouring poison into his ear. The Ghost tells Hamlet that the poison worked immediately. Shakespeare is using metaphor to relate poison in the ear to hearing bad news and the similar way that both immediately kill.
The metaphorical deaths of Hamlet’s relationships are likely born from Shakespeare’s own pain, and specifically most poignant are the deaths of his relationships with his mother, Gertrude, as well as his girlfriend, Ophelia. These metaphorical deaths are antecedents to the literal deaths of Gertrude and Ophelia. Hamlet’s entire family is dismantled and dead, and Shakespeare must have been feeling this about his own family.
Hamlet is not suicidal, but throughout the play, he makes it known that he values his quest of killing Claudius more than he values his own life. “Except my life, except my life, except my life” (Prince of Denmark 2.2.218-219). In perhaps the most infamous line in all of literature, Hamlet delivers his “to be or not to be” soliloquy (Prince of Denmark 3.1.56). Again, Hamlet is not necessarily suicidal, but he is certainly questioning whether or not it is worth enduring the pain of life when one moment of pain could prevent a lifetime suffering.
With the arrival of the players, Hamlet is struck with the idea to perform a play called The Mousetrap, whereas the King in the play would be poisoned in the ear by his brother, thus having his throne and Queen usurped. Hamlet strategically positions Horatio to watch the reactions of Claudius and Gertrude. Hamlet believes that a negative reaction from the king would be a manifestation of guilt in the murder of King Hamlet. “For murder, though it have no tongue, shall speak with most miraculous organ” (Prince of Denmark 2.2.604-605). The Mousetrap achieves its goal of angering King Claudius, and he leaves the theater and goes to pray in the confessional. With Claudius’ guilt hanging heavy, Hamlet is tempted to murder Claudius but does not because he is concerned that murdering Claudius while he is pray would allow Claudius’ soul to go to Heaven. Hamlet vows to kill Claudius while he is enraged or drunk, ensuring that he goes to hell.
Claudius schemes with Polonius to have Gertrude entrap Hamlet in her bedroom where she can extract information from him about what he knows regarding the murder of King Hamlet. Polonius hides in Gertrude’s room to spy on the conversation between Hamlet and her son. When the conversation becomes heated, Polonius calls for the guards and exposes his hiding place. Hamlet assumes that the person hiding must be Claudius, and Hamlet stabs through the curtain and kills the spy; however, it is Polonius that Hamlet has murdered, not King Claudius as he intended. Hamlet falls victim to madness and rants wildly at his mother, but he is calmed when the Ghost of King Hamlet appears in Gertrude’s bedroom. Gertrude says that she cannot see the Ghost, which further infuriates Hamlet, so he chops Polonius’s body into pieces and buries the pieces. Laertes returns home to Denmark from France with a small army, and he is enraged that his father, Polonius, was not only murdered but was not given a state funeral service.
The graveyard scene is especially saturated with the theme of death, for obvious literal reasons, but also for less obvious reasons. The scene opens with the gravediggers discussing the circumstances of death of the person to be buried, and the audience knows this person to be Ophelia. After learning of her father’s murder at the hands of her lover, Ophelia is afflicted with madness and commits suicide by drowning herself in a river. In suicide, a soul is bound to hell, and the gravediggers discuss the merits of allowing a desecrated soul to be buried in a Christian graveyard. Hamlet and Horatio watch and listen to the gravediggers’ conversation, then they approach and ask the gravediggers who the grave is for, to which they reply, “[…]For no man, sir. […] For none [woman], either,” insinuating that a victim of suicide is no longer a proper Christian soul (Prince of Denmark 5.1.136-138). The gravediggers also joke about the gallows being stronger than the church because “that frame outlives a thousand tenants” (Prince of Denmark 5.1.45-46).
The death of the Roman empire is a subtle, secondary theme in Hamlet. Shakespeare mentions several Roman and Greek leaders throughout the play, and he is clearly drawing upon the similarities of the fall of Rome to the fall of Hamlet’s Kingdom of Denmark. In the graveyard scene, Hamlet considers the skulls which the gravedigger is cleaning. The gravedigger tells Hamlet that the skull is that of the former court jester, Yorick, who Hamlet knew well. Hamlet cradles Yorick’s skull and muses about Alexander the Great when he says, “Alexander was buried; Alexander returneth to dust; the dust is earth; […] Imperious Caesar, dead and turned to clay” (Prince of Denmark 5.1.115-119). “Christianity must be seen as part of the systematic evolution [and death] of the Roman world. It was as much an effect of that world’s gradual transformation as it was a cause” (Schultz 714). Shakespeare dwelling on the death of empires is probably an indication that he was deeply troubled by the death of his own family members.
At the end of the play, there is a crescendo of death. Hamlet sends the couriers, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, to their deaths in revenge for conspiring against him with Gertrude and Claudius. Claudius knows that his fate is coming soon, and he says, “My offense is rank, it smells to heaven” (Prince of Denmark 3.3.40). He knows that he does not belong in Heaven because of the murder he has committed. Despite praying for forgiveness, Claudius says that “Revenge should have no bounds” (Prince of Denmark 4.7.125). Claudius then proposes to Laertes that a rapier duel should be scheduled, and that he further proposes that they should murder Hamlet either by poisoned rapier or poisoned wine. The plan backfires magnificently, however, with Queen Gertrude unknowingly drinking the poisoned wine. As she is suffering and lamenting, Laertes is struck with his own poisoned rapier by Hamlet before falling from a balcony to his death. In his dying breaths, Laertes tells Hamlet that he will die also, because he too has been cut with the poisoned rapier. In response, Hamlet stabs and kills Claudius with the poisoned rapier. Gertrude and Hamlet both die from the poison, and only Horatio is left standing as a representative of Denmark. “There was a pattern with class: all the royals (King Hamlet, Queen Gertrude, King Claudius, and Prince Hamlet) are poisoned, which speaks, no doubt, to the theme of decay and rot Shakespeare used to characterize the Danish royalty” (Wilson). The Kingdom of Denmark itself is murdered when Prince Fortinbras breeches the castle and usurps the throne amidst the corpses of Danish royalty.
There may never be a clear answer about Shakespeare’s motivations for developing Hamlet, but the pain he experienced from the death of his son and father is evident. The plot, characters, and gothic environment are all indications that Shakespeare was most likely suffering from both the literal and metaphorical death of his family.
Works Cited
Curtis, Carl. “Introduction to Hamlet: The Ghost and the Play.” Liberty University. Accessed 03 October 2022. Video. https://canvas.liberty.edu/courses/33....
Potter, Lois. “The Life of William Shakespeare: A Critical Biography.” John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, https://ebookcentral-proquest-com.ezp....
Shakespeare, William. “Hamlet.” W.W. Norton and Company. New York and London. 2019. Print.
Shakespeare, William. “Prince of Denmark [Hamlet].” The Complete Works of William Shakespeare. Barnes and Noble, Inc. New York, New York. 2015. p.670-713. Print.
Schultz, Celia E., Ward, Allen M., Heichelheim, F.M., and Yeo, C.A. “A History of the Roman People.” Rutledge, Taylor and Francis. New York and London. 2019. Print.
Wilson, Jeffery. “The Meaning of Death in Shakespeare’s Hamlet.” ANQ: A Quarterly Journal of Short Articles, Notes and Reviews. 2021. https://www-tandfonline-com.ezproxy.l...
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