Among the most powerful tragedies in the English language, Hamlet is a drama set in Denmark, where Prince Hamlet exacts bloody revenge on his uncle Claudius for murdering his father, the King, usurping the throne, and for marrying his mother, who willingly consented. , to his great disappointment, thus laying the groundwork for real and feigned madness, from unspeakable grievance to livid fury, thus giving Shakespeare the groundwork to explore themes of tragic waste, revenge, incest, and moral deprivation, everything at once.
The universality of Shakespeare’s genius is somehow reflected in Hamlet. Hamlet has a wise and ingenious mind, abstract and practical, the greatest scope of philosophical contemplation mixed with the most penetrating sagacity in the affairs of life; playful joke, biting satire, sparkling retort mixed with the darkest and deepest thoughts that can stir a man. He is quick to guess the nature and motives of those who come into contact with him. He is just as comfortable taunting Polonius with hidden sneers, dispelling Ophelia’s dreams of love, squashing the sponges (Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, a pair of servants and Hamlet’s childhood friends) with sarcasm and invective, or if he speaks with euphemisms with Osric. and lampooning as he speaks it, whether he is uttering wise maxims or welcoming Players with droll grace, probing the innermost soul of others or probing the mysteries of his own.
Shakespeare has created Hamlet by presenting him in all kinds of company. We see him with the girl (Ophelia) whom he loves and with the mother (Gertrude) whom he has adored. We see him with his closest friend (Horatio) whose temperament is the complement of his, and we see him with his schoolmates as he once knew them. He is a very different person with Claudius, Leartes and Polonius. We laugh with him at Osric, with him we hold our breath at the fearsome presence of the Ghost. Perhaps we love him more when he is with the common people, with the Actors and the gravedigger. And then, above all, we listen to Hamlet when he is alone. He entrusts all the many moods to him. We know what others think of him, we know what he thinks of others, and we know what he thinks of himself.
It follows that Hamlet is the most multifaceted of Shakespeare’s creations. Indeed, Hamlet could say with the poet Walt Whitman: “I am great, I contain multitudes.”
Hamlet is both individual and universal. He is a common man, he is a courtier, a soldier and a scholar: the Elizabethan ideal that combined the chivalry of the Middle Ages with the intellectual curiosity of the Renaissance. The fact that critics would never leave Hamlet alone, the futile effort to get to the heart of the mystery, is surely the best evidence that the real and enduring mystery of the human situation has been widely represented.
Hamlet, then, is Hamlet; Hamlet is Sir Philip Sidney; Hamlet is Richard Burbage. He is Goethe and Coleridge. He is you and me. He is William Shakespeare. He is an individual, and yet more than an individual; he is larger than life. In Hamlet, Prince Shakespeare has held up a mirror not only of the age, but also of nature or humanity. “I have a taste of Hamlet myself,” confesses Coleridge, and Hazlitt repeats the same opinion: “It is we who are Hamlet.”
