Download Hamlet: Unraveling the Rotten State of Denmark - A New Interpretation and more Study notes Diplomacy in PDF only on Docsity!
Thomas Westbrook Dr. Wilson Expos 20: Why Shakespeare? 25 February 2015 “Something Is Rotten in the State of Denmark” (But Not What You Think) In William Shakespeare’s Hamlet , when Marcellus famously proclaims “something is rotten in the state of Denmark” (1.4.90), there would seem to be an obvious answer as to what that rotten thing is: King Claudius has murdered his predecessor and brother, King Hamlet. Upon closer examination, however, this interpretation is problematic. For one thing, at this point in the play the Ghost has only just appeared, and neither the audience nor Marcellus has any reason to think the king was murdered. For another, Marcellus’ line responds to a question by Horatio about what Prince Hamlet is going to do next. A reader new to Hamlet might, if asked Marcellus’ meaning, say Denmark’s problem is that Norwegian invaders are looming on the horizon while the heir to the throne is wandering the castle deranged and quite possibly violent. Under the first interpretation, Claudius has polluted Denmark, and Shakespeare is arguing the uncontested point that killing one’s brother for power is wrong. In this paper, however, I argue that the primary source of pollution in Denmark is not Claudius’ crime but Prince Hamlet himself. Death and decay seeps out from Hamlet’s mind, in both his actions and his speech, until the court itself comes tumbling down. Hamlet is what is rotten in the state of Denmark. Were this a “morality play,” in which the good are rewarded and the bad punished, it would be a rather unnecessary denunciation of fratricide. Instead, however, Hamlet is a tragedy, a generic classification we understand better by contrast with the morality play. Hamlet destroys an otherwise flourishing Denmark. Consider what Shakespeare has
shown us of him at the point when Marcellus delivers his famous line. This is a man who has previously considered suicide (1.2.129-34), and who announces again here that he doesn’t value his own life (1.4.65), even though his claim to the throne seems secure. Hamlet demonstrates a worrying fixation on the Ghost, repeating his desire to follow it four times and taking a frantic tone in conversation with his friends. He refuses the advice of his friends not to follow it and instead threatens to kill them when they try to stop him (1.4.84-85), after which Horatio and Marcellus agree that Hamlet seems mad and is not currently fit to command: HORATIO: He waxes desperate with imagination. MARCELLUS: Let's follow; 'tis not fit thus to obey him. HORATIO: Have after. To what issue will this come? MARCELLUS: Something is rotten in the state of Denmark. (1.4.87-90) Which is more plausible, that Marcellus prophetically sensed the spiritual pollution caused by King Hamlet’s murder and therefore replied to Horatio with a complete non sequitur , or that Marcellus answered Horatio’s question with the reasonable point that Prince Hamlet may be a danger to the state? Furthermore, Marcellus is correct to see Hamlet as a danger to the state. After the Ghost’s appearance, Horatio compares Denmark’s current state to that of Rome before the murder of Caesar (1.4.87-89). His parallel has nothing to do with hidden past crimes, but with a death to come. Just as Brutus killed Caesar (and Shakespeare had just written Julius Caesar , so he certainly knew what he was implying here), so Hamlet will kill Claudius. Imagine the events of Hamlet without Hamlet’s perspective. Claudius rules capably, diplomatically preventing the invasion of Denmark. Suddenly, inexplicably, Prince Hamlet goes mad. Concerned, Claudius and Gertrude try to find out the source of his madness in order to help him, but discover only that Hamlet is dangerous as well. Claudius plans to exile Hamlet for his own good (3.1.185-89). Before that, however, Polonius volunteers to try one last time to help
If associations with images of rottenness signify a source of spiritual pollution, however, then Hamlet is damned as well. Even before meeting the Ghost, Hamlet considers the world “an unweeded garden / That grows to seed,” inhabited by “things rank and gross in nature” (1.2.134- 40). Afterwards, decay seems to be a topic of choice for Hamlet. He brings it up unprompted in conversation with Polonius (2.2.197-98), with Rosencrantz and Guildernstern (2.2.332), with Gertrude (3.4.74-75, 168-70) and with Claudius (4.3.22-28). None of these examples refer to the body of his father, or his father’s murder. Hamlet’s preoccupation with images of death and decay soon seems almost unrelated to his meeting with the Ghost. In fact, his revelation in the graveyard is that all humans, regardless of identity, are exactly the same in that they all rot. The entirety of human existence, to judge from the images swirling around Hamlet like a pestilent cloud, can be boiled down to “paint an inch thick” applied over a grinning skull (5.1.200-01). Only by a tremendous stretch of the imagination can such a sweepingly morbid worldview be seen as the direct result of the original pollution of his father’s murder, as the murder is practically forgotten by this point. It is not the Ghost who appears in a graveyard meditating on death. Although meeting the Ghost may have led to his current condition, the pollution is coming from Hamlet himself. Hamlet’s role in the play, with regard to the other characters, is as the agent of death. From the moment of his introduction, audiences get the sense that something is not right with the Prince. In bright and cheerful Elsinore, only he dresses in mourning clothes. The courtiers and even his own family are afraid of him. They don’t know why, at least not until people start dying, but they are. They sense that something about Hamlet is deeply wrong. Then, one by one, by accident or by design, by his own hand or by backlash from his actions, everyone close to Hamlet begins to die. Death follows Hamlet. It does not, however, follow Claudius, the other
candidate for the source of pollution, who deals in diplomacy and even refuses to carry out Hamlet’s execution in Denmark. The reason why Hamlet’s relationship to the pollution of Denmark is unclear, and by extension why it is so easy to see Marcellus’ comment as a reference to the murder of King Hamlet alone, is simple: Hamlet is the main character. We see the play from his perspective. When images of decay swirl around Hamlet’s brain, we imagine that he is simply observing the corrupt court of Denmark. When people begin to die around him, we imagine that something is killing the Danes, not that Hamlet himself is causing their deaths. Unlike a morality play, which allows its audience to disassociate themselves from wrongdoing by circumscribing it within “bad” characters, Shakespeare writes Hamlet as a window into Hamlet’s mind, a mind that is slowly warped as Hamlet loses himself in death. The rottenness that plagues Denmark is not observed by Hamlet, but caused by his own sickness. Although it turns out that Hamlet is the primary source of corruption in Denmark, however, he is also correct. Claudius did murder the king. By creating this tension between Hamlet’s knowledge of the truth and the trouble he causes, Shakespeare moves the play beyond the reach of easy moral judgment. In a morality play, wrongdoing would pollute the state, and rooting it out would purify it. In Hamlet , however, wrong has been done, but it is the discovery of the wrongdoing that pollutes the state. In other words, Hamlet does exactly what the protagonist of a morality play is supposed to do by discovering the crime. Yet this discovery is precisely what leads to pollution and the fall of Denmark, because Shakespeare wrote Hamlet as a tragedy, not a morality play. Unlike the aforementioned morality play, which carefully separates the good and the bad, in a tragedy a sympathetic protagonist inadvertently causes spiritual pollution and catastrophe.
Works Cited Shakespeare, William. Hamlet. Ed. A.R. Braunmuller. New York: Penguin Group, 2001.
