Hamlet Minor Characters
It is reasonable to wonder what Shakespeare had in mind while writing
Hamlet.
After all, Shakespeare wasn't a philosopher or historian, or even
a literary
critic. He was a playwright. He didn't leave critical essays
examining his work.
It is left to us to examine his work and decide for
ourselves, if we care to,
what Shakespeare was thinking. Did he know that he
was writing a drama of deep
psychological significance, a play which would
eventually be viewed and read the
world over, produced many times over
hundreds of years, taught in schools, and
thought of as one of the world's
greatest plays? I, for one, imagine him
crossing the "t" in the last word of
the play, putting down his pen,
and saying, "I hope it runs a year." Yet
Hamlet is an extremely
complex play. To appreciate the imagination which went
into the creation of this
tragedy, let's first delve into what is putatively
Shakespeare's most complex
tragedy, King Lear. Lear has three daughters:
Cordelia, who is faithful and
unappreciated by Lear, and Regan and Goneril
who receive everything at his hands
and betray him. These themes of misplaced
love and filial betrayal are mirrored
in the subplot of the play, the
relationship between the Earl of Gloster and his
two sons, Edmund, who is
supported and approved by Gloster and betrays him, and
Edgar, who
unjustly becomes a fugitive from his father's wrath. The mirror is
whole. In
it we view Cordelia's reflection and see Edgar, while Regan's
and
Goneril's reflections, which are of one face, show us Edmund. In the
main plot
of Hamlet, Hamlet's father has been murdered. Hamlet swears
revenge, but feign's
madness and delays. In the subplot, the chamberlain,
Polonius, is murdered by
Hamlet. One of Polonius's children, Laertes,
swears revenge, while the other,
his daughter Ophelia, goes mad. Here, the
mirror is cracked. Hamlet's reflection
is splintered. We see one part of him,
his revenge motive, in Laertes' action,
and we see his pretended madness in
Ophelia's piteous condition. More than this,
Hamlet's image is dimmed
compared to those of his counterparts. Hamlet speaks of
revenge, but
procrastinates; Laertes instantly raises and army and attacks the
kingdom,
but he must be satisfied over his father's murder. Hamlet only acts
mad;
Ophelia's madness is too real. Shakespeare presents us with a play
dealing
with striking human similarities and differences-and a protagonist
who is more
than a character, but is a compendium of the qualities of the
minor characters.
Hamlet's unrealized potential throws the fully-realized
actions of Laertes and
Ophelia into relief. If the play were about
Laertes and Ophelia, Hamlet would be
the perfect foil. In Hamlet's
fibrillating performance we appreciate Laertes
boldness. Viewed against
Hamlet's affected loss of wits, Ophelia's true madness
is the more pitiful.
But to consider Hamlet a foil for Laertes and Ophelia is to
miss the point.
After all, Hamlet is the hero. The play is, more than anyone,
about him.
Mirrors can be deceptive. One can lose sight of what is real and what
is
merely image. Claudius is a case in point. We could never mistake
Claudius
for the protagonist of the play. Could we? He is Hamlet's
antagonist. But, In
fact, Claudius has several characteristics common to
Shakespeare's tragic
heroes. Using *A. C. Bradley's definition, let's examine
Claudius's
qualifications to be the protagonist of Hamlet. · The tragic hero
is a person
of high degree or great importance. Claudius qualifies here. He
is the king. As
his fortunes go, so go those of all who surround him. As he
is cheerful, the
court is cheerful. As his brow is contracted in woe, so the
Danish court
suffers. · The tragic hero has a predisposition in some
particular direction,
accompanied by an inability to resist the force which
drives him or her.
Claudius is ambitious. His · ambition drives him to
murder his brother, the
former king. · Claudius is evil. But the tragic hero
need not be good. Consider
Macbeth and Richard III. · By their acts,
Shakespeare's tragic heroes hope to
achieve intended outcomes. "But what they
achieve is not what they
intended; it is terribly unlike it." Claudius's
murderous act brings him
only short-lived happiness. As the play opens,
Claudius's situation is secure.
He fears no upsets until Act 3 unfolds.
From then on he knows no peace. He is
threatened from within by pangs of
conscience and from without by Hamlet's
knowledge of his crime. Finally, he
pays for his crime with his life. · The
play depicts also the troubled part
of the hero's life. Beginning with the death
of Polonius, Claudius must plot
to kill Hamlet. Moreover, he must deal with
rejection by · Gertrude, the
madness of Ophelia, and an insurrection brought by
Laertes. At the end of
Act 5, he dies. · In the end there is a sense of waste.
Our reaction to
the death of the protagonist can be expressed with the words
"If only . . ."
All the foregoing characterize Shakespeare's tragic
heroes. What is missing
in Claudius's case is a tragic effect. There is no sense
of waste in
Claudius's death, no sense that this death could have been avoided,
no
arousal of "pity and fear" as there is in Hamlet's, Macbeth's,
Othello's,
and Lear's deaths. If only Macbeth had been less ambitious, Hamlet
more
forceful, Othello less passionate, and Lear wiser, their untimely deaths
need
not have occurred. We feel sympathy for these tragic heroes. We react
to
their deaths with a sense of regret. No one regrets Claudius's death
enough to
say "if only . . ." And so, Claudius's reflection, while almost
that
of a protagonist, lacks the proper form. Gertrude, Hamlet's mother, is
at once a
cause of Hamlet's pathos through her marriage to Hamlet's uncle and
a glass
through which we view something of Hamlet's family. We see the family
together
only once, the ghost appearing in order to remind Hamlet of his vow
of
vengeance, perhaps, also, to reunite the family. The moment in Act 3 that
he
appears, when Hamlet and his mother are together, suggests such a
motive.
Moreover, he appears in his night gown instead of in armor, as in
his first
appearance. Acting like a husband, he rescues his former wife from
Hamlet's
anger. However, the ghost's efforts at reunion fail. Gertrude's
guilt--marriage
to a husband's brother was considered incest--prevents her
from seeing the
ghost. By reflection we see Polonius's family, all members
destroyed through
involvement with Hamlet. We see them together, too, only
once, early in the
play, as Laertes is preparing to set sail. Ophelia is
guiltless. Laertes is
guilty only of seeking revenge for his father's murder.
Polonius is guilty of
being a busybody, a dangerous involvement in Hamlet's
tragedy. The longer Hamlet
procrastinates, the more bodies pile up, and the
more the question of his
procrastination takes on importance. Why does
Shakespeare make us, wait until
the end of Act 5, for Hamlet finally to play
his proper role and resolve all
questions? This is Shakespeare's genius. We
view Hamlet's procrastination as
probable. After all, no matter what Hamlet
does, the past cannot be undone.
Running a sword through his uncle's ribs
will not bring Hamlet's father back. We
are willing spectators to the
unfolding of this tragedy. And between the
anticipation and the act fall some
of the most beautiful lines in all of
dramatic literature. Shakespeare
achieves his goal. Hamlet has run a year,
several hundred times
over.
Bibliography
A. C. Bradley, "The Substance of Shakespearean
Tragedy"
Shakespearean Tragedy, MacMillan and Company Limited, 1904, pp.
1-29 **David
Daiches, A Critical History of English Literature, Vol.
2.