Rebuttal Essay about Hamlet

WRITE A REBUTTAL to this mini-essay by Professor Suwak published Nov. 15, 2016

Though it is easy for some in the 21st Century to empathize with Hamlet, many readers go too far. This is understandable, but it means they miss an important aspect of the play. Some readers have an immediate liking to him, feel sorry for him, because of his situation: he has been hurt by those closest around him. His uncle has killed his father, and his mother has remarried, so soon after his fathers death as to make a mockery of his parents relationship, and by extension, Hamlet thinks, making a mockery of him, their only son. The mistake some make is in ascribing all of Hamlets grief to the situation that preceded his seeing the ghost. It is the ghosts injunction to get revenge , to commit murder, that makes Hamlet mad. Without the ghosts dictum, Hamlet would soon have recovered from the loss of his father.

Modern readers may think that Claudius admonishment Tis unmanly grief is harsh, unfeeling, and unrealistic. The thinking might go like this: Well, Claudius did not understand the grieving process. Plus, he doesnt care about Hamlet really recovering, he just wants to shame Hamlet into moving on. Claudius is only compounding Hamlets grief, not assuaging it. However, we should not impose our modern day thoughts about psychology onto 16th century characters. Hamlet does see his grief as unmanly. Ultimately, he would have been persuaded by this argument, and would move on, probably fairly quickly, had it not been for the terrible burden placed on him by the ghost. Hamlet knows, of course, that all that lives must die, as he says to his mother Ay madam, it is common (I . 2. 73). Hamlet is an adult, one who lives in a world where, unlike the world of many modern readers, is full of death. He is old enough to know how the world works, and while he is never going to be happy with what Claudius did, the death of his father by the bite of a serpent is not enough to drive him mad. One line that suggests he may soon be ready to heal is what he says to Horatio in Act I Scene 2 : (well teach you to drink deep ere you depart. ( 175 ). Hamlets planning to party with his friend!

Some readers tend to ignore those lines, however, and see the pre-ghost Hamlet as clinically depressed, not simply, as I am arguing, sad. Readers may be misled by such early lines as these: That the Everlasting had not fixed / His canon gainst self-slaughter ( I . 2 132-133) into thinking that Hamlet is so despondent with his situation that he would in fact kill himself if it were not a sin. This is misleading because adults rarely, if ever, kill themselves out of grief of losing their parents. Furthermore, as a Christian with faith in Divine Providence, Hamlet would have consoled himself with the faith that his father would rest in Heaven and that Claudius would pay for his sin in the afterlife. Hamlet would have very soon been on the road to recovery had it not been for the selfish and vengeful request from the ghost. Its not grief that propels this tragedy, it is a fathers cruel mandate that does so.

Another factor from his orientation as a Christian that would have sped his process of grieving (were it not for the intervention of the ghost) was the idea of Purgatory. We know from Act One that the ghost is serving time in Purgatory: I am thy fathers spirit / Doomed for a certain term to walk the night / And for the day confined to fast in fires / Till the foul crimes done in my days of nature / Are burnt and purged away (I. 5. 9 – 12). Hamlet never wavers in his belief that the ghost is his father in Purgatory. The typical duty of the living – to have masses said in the name of the recently deceased – gets replaced in the play with the duty to revenge. The Elizabethan audience would have recognized the duty to seek out the Church for rest for a soul in Purgatory without question, and so too they would have recognized the fathers ghost as cruel and unusual to demand revenge instead of prayers. The remembrance the living owed the dead was an obligation, not something necessarily done out of love. Indeed, we hardly see Hamlet have any nice words about his father, making the revenge mandate that much more painful.

Part of the sadness of this play is that without the ghost’s selfish demand Prince Hamlet would be a model for the future. The play celebrates him as a type of “new man” who breaks with past traditions. For example, he disapproves of the institution of marriage, telling Ophelia to “Get thee to a nunnery” (Act III, Scene 1, 118) and later “I say we will have no marriage” (Act III, Scene 2, 140). He hesitates to kill Claudius in the chapel (Act III, Scene 3) because as a modern man he is against the idea of ” an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.” He says so much in lines 76 – 80: “A villain kills my father , and for that / I , his sole son, do this same villain send / To heaven/ Why this is hire and salary, not revenge.” One final example of his modernity is how innovative he is with the play that is performed in the castle (“The Murder of Gonzago”). Here Prince Hamlet is showing his theatrical gifts, staging the play in order to show innovations in stagecraft, and perhaps providing the audience an on-stage representation of William Shakespeare himself.

Once the sad (but not suicidal) Hamlet has been given the charge of revenge, however, he becomes a killing machine. He becomes so deranged that his accidental killing of Polonius does not even make him flinch. Of course he thinks he is killing the king when he stabs through the tapestry, but the act does not bother him. He had no intention of killing Polonius, and because it is his mother’s chamber he would have been completely convinced that it was Claudius there, and even finding out it is not does not disturb him.

NOTE:

Most of your paragraphs will begin with stating your opposition to a point made in my mini-essay. So you might start sentences with these phrases:

Professor Suwaks argument that.is flawed because.

He does not recognize that

His argument overlooks the fact that..

Your essay will be based on counterclaims, but you can also write one paragraph that begins with a concession.

I concede that Professor Suwak is correct when he argues, and I will make the additional point that..

I concede that Professor Suwak is correct when he argues……………..; however, I must insist that……………………..