EN
203 Guy
Tiphane
Prof. A. Davaran April
10, 2002
Shakespeare’s
Hamlet: A Guide to Politics
Shakespeare in his histories and tragedies exposed several thoughts of kings and politicians to his Renaissance public. Act 3, Scene 3 of Hamlet is particularly rich with such thoughts and it is amazing that we can relate these to the actions of politicians in our modern states. The scene occurs after Hamlet’s successful disclosure, through the play-within-the-play, of Old Hamlet’s murder, sparking Claudius’s quick response with the aid of Polonius and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. The King now knows, from the staging of the play in Scene 2, that Hamlet’s “madness” has to do with the murder. Claudius needs to get rid of Hamlet so that the truth will not be revealed (3:3, 1-7):
King: I like him
not, nor stands it safe with us
To let his madness range. Therefore
prepare you.
I your commission will forthwith dispatch,
And he to England shall along with you.
The terms of our estate may not endure
Hazard so near ’s as doth hourly grow
Out of his brows.
But it becomes a matter of state, as the combined responses of Guildenstern and Rosencrantz indicate (3:3, 7-23):
Guildenstern: We
will ourselves provide.
Most holy and religious fear it is
To keep those many many bodies safe
That live and feed upon your Majesty.
Rosencrantz: The
single and peculiar life is bound
With all the strength and armor of the mind
To keep itself from noyance, but much more
That spirit upon whose weal depends and rests
The lives of many. The cess of majesty
Dies not alone, but like a gulf doth draw
What’s near with it. Or it is a massy
wheel
Fix’d on the summit of the highest mount,
To whose [huge] spokes ten thousand lesser things
Are mortis’d and adjoin’d, which when it falls,
Each small annexment, petty consequence,
Attends the boist’rous [ruin]. Never
alone
Did the King sigh, but [with] a general groan.
Their appeal is not for the King himself, but for the “many many bodies that live and feed upon your Majesty,” so they call for the King to act in order to protect themselves and the people of Denmark. Ironically, they may not realize that they are volunteering for a dangerous mission: the King is the only one to know the actual goal of sending Hamlet away to England. How are we, the audience, to respond to this situation? Is it not very similar to affairs of state even in modern democracies? We know more than the other characters of the play, and we know that so far Claudius is the only guilty party in the play, but could the response of the two change our view or at least cast a doubt in our minds? Does it not relate, in our real world, to our politicians’ “issues of national security” which we implicitely approve, but of which we will never be informed? Machiavelli in his 1513 work The Prince seems to be in agreement with such political motives:
“A Prince should therefore disregard the reproach of being thought cruel where it enables him to keep his subjects united and obedient. For he who quells disorder by a very few signal examples will in the end be more merciful than he who from too great leniency permit things to take their course and so to result in rapine and bloodshed; for these hurt the whole State, whereas the severities of the Prince injure individuals only.”[1]
The scene continues to provoke the audience into another illusion: that one can play virtue in order to preserve his life. After agreeing with Polonius to continue his spying on Hamlet, Claudius appears to be remorseful, but does not see any way of mercy as long as he is “still possess’d of those effects for which I did the murther: My crown, mine own ambition, and my queen.” He kneels in prayer. Hamlet renounces to kill him at this moment because he thinks that in doing so Claudius would die in a state of grace. The illusion is revealed when Claudius rises (3:3, 97-98):
King: [Rising.]
My words fly up, my thoughts remain below:
Words without thoughts never to heaven go.
In other words, the character of Claudius kneeling in prayer gives us the illusion that he is repenting his sin, just as Hamlet interprets it. But we are privy to his last words in the scene telling us that he does not repent. Those words also tell us that we cannot rely on what we see to judge a person, in this case a king whom we “live and feed upon.” As an audience, we are reminded of how many times we see the photos of our chiefs of state in church on page one of our newspapers. We are also reminded of our own power games, as little and insignificant as they may be.
An argument could be made, by contrasting Hamlet’s attempts at deceit with those of Claudius, that Hamlet could never be king. At Ophelia’s grave, he declares “I lov’d Ophelia” (5:1,255) while he had previously told Ophelia “I lov’d you not” (3:1, 119). He justifies sending Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to their death in England with personal vengeance (5:2, 57-62), not affairs of state. Ignoring any of Laertes’ grievances, he wants to “court his favors” (5:2, 78) and doing so claims “madness” (5:2, 219) as his excuse. He miscalculates his moves and it is only at the end, when Horatio is the only witness left, that Hamlet’s memory is transmitted to Fortinbras, who assumes it: “For he was likely, had he been put on, To have prov’d most royal” (5:2, 379-380). Could that be a calculated move on the part of Fortinbras to gain the favors of the people of Denmark?
While Machiavelli’s The Prince remains the basic guide to political power, it cannot be put in any other form than the essay that it is. Shakespeare’s Hamlet makes it explicit for us in the theatre, one theme of the play among so many, and one more subject of discussion at the café.