Hamlet: A Fascinating Finale

My last blog for this month comes on the same day that we finished reading Shakespeare’s Hamlet in class, so I felt for this blog that it would be good to share some of my initial thoughts to the dramatic and tragic conclusion of the play, and also look into what it has to offer to many of the underlying themes and motifs that have been developed over the course of the five Acts. Within Act V scene ii, the final act of the play, the described deaths of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern and the actual deaths of Gertrude, Claudius, Laertes, and Hamlet himself are witnessed, but there is still plenty of room to analyze for greater meaning behind each of the characters’ words and actions. Perhaps one of the most prominent moments is between Hamlet and Horatio before he goes off to exchange in dual with Laertes, in which Hamlet confides to his guard of him feeling the inevitable nature of his death to come and his readiness to accept this new course that Fate itself has set before him. Hamlet reflects, “But it is no matter…it be now, ‘tis not to come, if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come…let be” (V.ii.227…234-235...237). It is interesting to note here the demeanor and perspective with which he approaches death, something he has reflected upon in the past with fear and dread of the mysterious future that would await. Before destroying his relationship with Ophelia, Hamlet reflected on his views of death as “the dread of some undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveler returns” (III.i.86-87). Now, as he prepares to meet his destiny, he has an unusual calmness to him, seeming to accept himself and his fate willingly despite whatever death may have in store for him. Perhaps the greatest reason behind this is from the final line of the quote, “let be”, which seems to serve as an answer to the timeless question that Hamlet himself raised of “to be or not to be”. Over the course of the entire play, Hamlet has struggled with this conflict, going back and forth between “seeming” to be a man of insanity and irrationality while masking who he actually “is”, a man of integrity and wisdom. Now, as he prepares to meet his death, Hamlet comes to terms with himself and decides that if this is to be his end, he would himself die as the Hamlet that he knows himself to be and not what others may think or wish him to be. Hamlet hit upon the great fact of the “seem” vs. “is” argument, which is that ultimately the truth overcomes the illusion, but what remains the critical factor was the extent of the illusion and the damage that it has done to those involved. Hamlet sees now, before his mother, uncle, and Laertes even die, that time of “seem” must come to an end, that the walls of suspicion, lies, deceit and treachery that have stood as the crux and foundation of the entire play must all come crashing down if the kingdom is to be restored to its former state and liquidated of all that is “rank”. It is only fitting that all those whose actions inadvertently caused the state to deteriorate to where it is at the end are all dead, leaving only Horatio, perhaps the only man to act out of true reason, alive to tell the tragic tale. Hamlet’s purge of rankness in the kingdom would claim his own life as well, and leave the kingdom open to a man untainted by the poison of the previous kingdom, perhaps in the hopes that a new one can be rebuilt and be fruitful and the memory of the time of the rankness of Denmark be forgotten.

Master of Puppets

After having read through the first three acts of Hamlet and having to search for various recurring themes and motifs that Shakespeare inserts that help bring about a greater meaning of the work itself, I found that one of the key recurring ideas of the play is that of struggle of power and the manipulation of people in various circumstances to make them work to satisfy some sort of personal gain. With this thought in mind, I immediately thought of the lyrics to Metallica’s “Master of Puppets” as being of large relevance to this idea, since this song, along with every other song on the album, lyrically focus on the ideas of the loss of control and the abuse of power, both of which can be easily identified within the context of Hamlet as well. The song most explicitly explores manipulation and the struggle for control of one’s own fate in the context of drug abuse, making it very clear from the beginning what the real danger is behind letting substances like these become the driving force of one’s life. After a blistering iconic introduction, James Hetfield fiercely opens with the lines, “End of passions play, crumbling away, I’m your source of self-destruction”. From the beginning, it is made very clear just how real and terrifying drug addiction really is, and ultimately how scary the idea of becoming a slave to something against your will can really be. And while the lyrics may only seem to cover the pitfalls of substance abuse, they in fact can be applied to life itself, how it is that so many people find themselves pulled in various directions by fate and forces outside their control. The ‘strings’ of fate that pull people against there are directly identified in the chorus, “Master of puppets I’m pulling your strings, twisting your mind and smashing your dreams, blinded by me you can’t see a thing, just call my name because I’ll hear you scream”. With these lines, it is impossible not to think of the cover of the album, which shows a line of crosses in a cemetery, each with strings on them which are being held by two hands coming down from the sky. Every person in life likes to believe themselves to be their own ‘master of puppets’, believing in the idea that they can control their destiny or even manipulate others and pull on someone else’s strings. But in reality, we are all slaves to a master of some sort, destined to have our lives determined by a force that will consume our lives until the day we find ourselves resting below a cross in a cemetery. Each person has a different master, like the song describing how drugs ultimately consume a person’s life until death, forever destined to both hate their slavery to this materialistic master, yet loving the temporary pleasure it gives. This idea is represented musically in the song, as it is unabashed heavy riffs until the middle of the song, where it recedes into the melodic and somewhat classical bridge. Perhaps this is a representation of the drug addict having tried to free himself from the tumult that comes alongside being a slave to drugs, and stops using them for a while. But as the intensity and anger builds back up again in the song, it is apparent that there can be no true freedom while under the oppressive rule of the master, and it isn’t long until the song returns to full intensity and thus the power of the puppet master returns with full force. The victim screamed out in agony to the puppet master, “Fix me!” returning back to the drugs that keep him a slave to the master. As the puppet is under full control of the master, he is susceptible to whatever the master wants, seen through the lines, “I will occupy, I will help you die, I will run through you, now I rule you too”. These lines allow for the inference that the puppet reached a full point of being consumed by the master, so much that it was unable to retain a separate life of its own, and as a result died to become part of the master. Such is the fate of all people tied to their personal masters, destined to be consumed by forces that they cannot control which came about as a result of their own actions. Perhaps this is why the song ends with sinister laughter, as the dead puppet is mocked for having created the ties to the puppet master in the first place.

Hamlet: The Art of Illusion

Over the course of a rather hectic week between snow storms and a 4-day weekend, I worked in some time to read through Act III of Hamlet, which essentially consisted of Hamlet destroying all bonds of affection between himself and Ophelia, the performance of the play which mimics Claudius’s killing his brother the king, Hamlet’s scathing remarks to his mother and in his rage killing Polonius, and finally Claudius and his futile attempt to pray to God to forgive his sins. While there are obviously several different places to pick apart the key analytical points of the four scenes and bring out a “so what” toward the overall meaning of Shakespeare’s work, I wanted to focus on the continued motif of the play and the stage in this Act, found in Scene 2 where Hamlet is lecturing one of the players about the execution of his upcoming performance. By observing Hamlet’s criticism of what it means to “seem” the role of a player upon the stage, there is subtle insight into the protagonist’s own mind as he struggles to fight off his inner demons and carry out his own performance of madness for Ophelia, Gertrude, and everyone else he comes into contact with. He begins his criticism by telling the player to “o’erstep not the modesty of nature” (III.ii.20-21). While ‘nature’ most often finds its context in either describing the outside world, here it takes on two other refreshingly different meanings, and while Hamlet gives these instructions to someone else, they actually better reflect the young Prince himself. Here, ‘nature’ can be better connoted to mean a combination of qualities that make up the identity of a human being. With this new understanding, Hamlet seems to be telling the player to not overstep his own boundaries as a person, something that reflects on Hamlet, who also finds himself as a player over the course of the play. It seems here that Hamlet is inadvertently attempting to tell himself how he needs to be careful in his own acting, as to not go over the line in which he loses sense of who he is. Perhaps he partially feels himself losing control of this aspect, having just harshly condemned his past lover Ophelia to a nunnery, he must struggle to keep his own self in check. ‘Nature’ also has a theological connotation, dealing with a state of being in which there is a lack of grace. Again, this idea can applied to Hamlet’s situation as in his act of “seeming” to be someone that he really isn’t, he must be wary to not cross any religious lines with himself. We have seen this before, with God being the only thing that holds Hamlet back from killing himself, and we see it later in scene 3, where Hamlet has the opportunity to strike down Claudius when he appears to be praying, but refuses “to take him in the purging of his soul” (III.iii.90). In this way, Hamlet reveals how he rather difficultly continues to maintain his own personal moral compass in his act of illusion. In final thought, Hamlet’s instruction to the player is layered with an insight onto the purpose of acting itself, which he describes by saying, “from the purpose of playing, whose end, both at the first and now, was and is to hold, as ‘twere, the mirror up to nature, to show virtue her [own] feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure” (III.ii.21-26). Hamlet entreats the player to what he believes to be the very point and purpose to what both of them are taking part in, which is to use illusion to both criticize and reflect upon the current state of reality. What is perceived to be false can mirrored and reflected to reveal truth. Here Hamlet inadvertently reminds the audience why he is doing what he is doing, not just with the play conducted by the players, but the entire façade of madness that Hamlet has been acting out since his interaction with the ghost. Hamlet has the desire to take the essential elements of the world that is around him (nature) and remind everyone what it really is. It is somewhat of a ‘fight fire with fire’ mentality, casting off the illusions of what reality is by creating an alternate one, but it serves the point to reflect a true state of being. That is what Hamlet’s goal is with the play-within-a play about to be put on, and it is also what his goal is with his own personal illusion of madness.

Eldorado

For this blog, I felt it would be as good a time as any to talk about a poem, so for that I decided to go back to a familiar name that I’ve already looked at a couple times in older posts: Edgar Allan Poe. To delve into the fascinating world of Poe, I chose Eldorado, one of his last writings and published only months before his death in 1849. It is a fitting poem written by a man nearing the inevitable end of life’s journey to be about someone to be also on a quest toward a greater goal. The poem opens up in a manner somewhat outside of Poe’s norm, as it seems to evoke thoughts of medieval tales of King Arthur’s court or “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight”, saying, A gallant knight, In sunshine and in shadow, Had journeyed long, Singing a song, In search of Eldorado”. While it is only natural to imagine a shining knight traversing along dangerous pathways to discover the hidden treasures of the long lost city of gold, there is in fact another story being told here, revealed in the end. Each and every person, like the brave knight, ceaselessly traverses through “sunshine and shadow”, through times of joy and times of grief, in order to seek out that which they desire most, something that is different for every person. Poe also identifies a harsh reality toward each person’s internal strive toward their treasure, that many times it is never found. The knight in the poem, “grew old-This knight so bold-And o'er his heart a shadow Fell as he found No spot of round That looked like Eldorado”. Poe’s description of the knight who has spent his entire life scourging for the riches of the earth may seem foolish and rather silly to the modern reader, who scoff at the idea of someone devoting their entire life to the slim chance of discovering physical and ephemeral greatness. But as much many refuse to believe, people have not changed all that much over time, as we what drove men and women to pursue ideas and goals are relatively the same today. The greatest of these is greed, the desire to own much more than is necessary. One does not need to think very hard to determine that greed still drives people, cities, and countries toward greatness, and naturally, toward their own destruction. People never stop dreaming about all that they wish they could acquire over the course of their lifetime, burdened with the task of filling the void within their own hearts with the material desires of this world. Such is where the knight is as well when the shadow falls upon him, and he asks where to find Eldorado. In reply, the shadow says, “"Over the Mountains Of the Moon, Down the Valley of the Shadow, Ride, boldly ride, "The shade replied-"If you seek for Eldorado!"” As the shadow bellows out his spur of knowledge to the aged knight, one would think that this would give the seeker a sense of closure in knowing that even though his journey must go on, he will eventually find Eldorado. But this is not the case. Instead there is an implied feeling that there is no Eldorado, that the physical treasures that the knight pursued and sought out over the course of his entire life in the fragmented hope of finding gold, have all been for nothing. The treasures of this world blinded the knight to what true treasure really is, which is that which transcends beyond the physical world and into the intellectual and even spiritual. The true treasures to be find could be anything from knowledge, wisdom, and understanding to religion or God, all of which are true treasures that can never be measured by physical means, but instead are measured by how it is that they can transform our lives in a way that money never could and never will.