Hamlet Creates Us In His Own Image

In Act 2.2, Hamlet can’t just be happy to see his friends.  Something’s up.  Must be.  His reaction to seeing his friends may raise some wonder about his popularity at school.  Hamlet may know this about himself.  His friends wouldn’t just come see him for the sake of seeing him.  They’ll deal with him at school, but otherwise….

Perhaps some of that snootiness or the reason why he may not be the most popular cat at Wittenberg comes out in his rationale for why R & G have been sent for: 

                                             ….I have of late—but
wherefore I know not—lost all my mirth, forgone all
custom of exercises; and indeed it goes so heavily
with my disposition that this goodly frame, the
earth, seems to me a sterile promontory, this most
excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave
o'erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted
with golden fire, why, it appears no other thing to
me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours.
What a piece of work is a man! how noble in reason!
how infinite in faculty! in form and moving how
express and admirable! in action how like an angel!
in apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the
world! the paragon of animals! And yet, to me,
what is this quintessence of dust? man delights not
me: no, nor woman neither, though by your smiling
you seem to say so.

Of course, Hamlet does know why he has lost all his mirth, etc.  But Hamlet is a creator and like the creator of the book of Genesis, Hamlet experiences major disappointment at the sight and thought of his design.  This is the world in Hamlet’s eyes.  A tale told by an idiot?  Not so.  Hardly.  Rather by, perhaps, an instrument of darkness and instruments of darkness, as Banquo says, tell us truths. 

It is no accident that Hamlet invokes the name of God, the creator of the book of Genesis, before he says:

                             

                                 ….O God! God!

How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable,

Seem to me all the uses of this world!

Fie on't! ah fie! 'tis an unweeded garden,

That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature

Possess it merely. That it should come to this!

Hamlet can commiserate with God.  There are many times in the Old Testament when God feels the same way as Hamlet does about creation.  Consider before the flood of Genesis 6 when it pains God in his heart that he had created the world and its unsavory inhabitants.  Likewise for Hamlet.  God created a world based on his image.  Hamlet, too, creates a world—stark as it may be—in his image.  Both are heartbroken by the result.

But what about man?  Hamlet is all of the things that he describes about man.  Having been in college for a little while, though, he may not be as express and admirable in form and moving.  As Gertrude points out later on, he’s fat and scant of breath!  A young Falstaff!  As much as Ophelia loves him, why else would she be frightened by him in his doublet all unbraced, etc? Otherwise, Hamlet represents all of the things that he describes in his retort to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.  But Hamlet recognizes the vanity and futility of all of it.  He’ll have none of it.  

He accounts us man, and in doing so, creates us in his image, and is once again disappointed.

Of Time & the Dagger

31 Jan / 01 Feb 2011

Welcome!  The goal of this project is to provide a (close to) daily reflection on a passage from the works of Shakespeare.  Our inaugural talking point comes from Macbeth.    

One of the most compelling speeches in the play is the dagger speech in Act 2.1, which contains an interesting use of the past tense:

I see thee yet, in form as palpable 

As this which I now draw.

Thou marshal’st me the way that I was going

And such an instrument I was to use.

As Macbeth imagines not a bare, but a bloody bodkin with which he himself might Duncan's quietus make, he pulls out his own dagger to make a comparison with the imaginary one.  In doing so, Macbeth lets out a use of the past tense that provides additional interesting insight into his psyche: his concept of time.  The dagger represents an action that will likely take place in the future.  Macbeth, however, speaks to the dagger as if though it is leading him to a place he's already been--to the performance of the fateful, be-all and end-all blow--and as if though the action already happened! 

So why speak in the past tense about something that is going to happen in the, albeit very near, future?  I would say that Macbeth’s mind and concept of time are operating similarly to Billy Pilgrim’s in the Kurt Vonnegut novel Slaughterhouse Five.  When Billy meets the alien Tralfamadorians, his concept of time changes; he begins to understand time as resembling a “span of the Rocky Mountains,” as the Tralfamadorians dumb it down for him.  Measuring time in moments is a human, and frankly limited, method.  Understanding that all things are happening at once—birth, death, war, love, and everything in between—is much more advanced.  To Macbeth, then, all things are happening at once: the thought of killing Duncan, killing Duncan, and the aftermath of killing Duncan.  The moment that Macbeth even gave thought to it in the first place is the moment that he killed Duncan.  The very moment that he lusted in his heart, as Christ says, he broke the commandment.

Despite of all controversy, as Lucio says in Measure for Measure, this is a great moment for Macbeth; a moment in which in his madness he has a superhuman mental experience.