SOURCE: Planinc, Zdravko. “‘It begins with Pyrrhus’ (2.2.451): The Political Philosophy of Hamlet.” Hamlet Studies 20, nos. 1/2 (summer/winter 1998): 35-49.

[In the following essay, Planinc contends that Hamlet is evidence that Shakespeare's abilities as a political philosopher are on par with those of Plato. Planinc asserts that both King Hamlet and King Claudius come up short as Platonic ideals, but that Shakespeare endowed Prince Hamlet with the greatness of mind to become Plato's philosopher-king.]

Shakespeare is as good a political philosopher as Plato. And if he had had a Socrates to write about, he would have been better. As it is, his portrayal of Hamlet, a contemplative prince struggling to attain intellectual and spiritual maturity, as well as his rightful crown, is as close as anything we have in literature to Plato's account of the difficult education of philosophers and the likelihood that they will become kings. And, in one important sense, Shakespeare's project is broader: he attempts to describe a contemplative king who transcends the distinction between pagan and Christian—someone of whom it could be said, taking him for all in all, “‘A was a man” (1.2.187; 3.2.31-32).¹

Shakespeare, like Plato, has no doctrine or theory to advance; his judgment of practical and political matters exists only in the particular. Consequently, like Plato, he does not write treatises; he writes in such a way that his judgment is always presented in action. The plays, like the Platonic dialogues, demand interpretation: we are only able to see Shakespeare's, or Plato's, mind at work if we exercise our own capacities for interpretive judgement. Not in just any manner either: a play like Hamlet is not a complicated ink-blot. Like the Republic, it is written to guide a reader's judgment toward a proper understanding of its meaning. Of course, it is also written to amuse a reader; but ultimately, it is meaningful, and its meaning is illuminated from within.

The political philosophy of Hamlet is distinctly Platonic in content as well as form. Like Plato, Shakespeare examines several related questions: What is the nature of politics? What is the nature of a human being? And what is the relation between them? The study of politics is conventionally divided into internal and external affairs: the order of the polity, or the regime, on the one hand; and war, on the other. Philosophic anthropology is similarly divisible into internal and external affairs: it studies the order of the soul, broadly understood; and the place of the human soul in a greater or transcendent order. Now, there are any number of improper relations between polities and souls. In the Republic they are contrasted with the proper relation; and the nature of the proper relation is discussed by way of a parallel between the just regime and the just soul—more specifically, by the possibility or the rule of the best.

These topics are all examined in Hamlet: not abstractly, but concretely; and not peripherally, but as questions central to the meaning of the play—something of the heart of its mystery. They will be discussed in turn. First, political science proper. Danish “external affairs” consists primarily of the possibility of war with Norway. And Danish “internal affairs,” the nature of the regime and the legitimacy of Claudius' rule. Next, the philosophic anthropology of the play: it consists almost entirely of the study of Hamlet's character. The proper order of the soul is something Hamlet himself must learn; and the soul's place in a transcendent order is a question he experiences immediately when confronting “this thing” (1.1.25)—perhaps a ghost, perhaps an angelic messenger, perhaps a devil (2.2.600)—this thing that “shakes [his] disposition / With thoughts beyond the reaches of [his soul]” (1.4.55-56). The Platonic parallel between polities and souls is also evident in the play. The disorder of the regime and the disorder of Hamlet's soul are matched; they can only be brought into order together. And the “external” threats to Denmark and to Hamlet are similarly matched. The Norwegian military threat and “this thing” are associated from the beginning of the play. To understand the nature of their relation, however, one must know the story of the Trojan horse.

From the First Player's recounting of the story in Act 2, we learn that there are Trojan horses of the soul just as there are Trojan horses in politics. Hamlet must learn this as a single lesson as well if he is to have any possibility of becoming fit to rule and winning his rightful crown.

I

THE TROJAN HORSE IN POLITICS

“… the Norweyan lord surveying vantage …”

(Macbeth 1.2)

The character of Danish external affairs depends, in large part, on the character and military career of the previous king, Hamlet the Elder. He was a successful warrior, and in the Baltics as well. He had won a part of Norway by killing Fortinbras the Elder in single combat. His honor was at stake, so he was quite willing to wager a piece of Denmark for the contest; no other reason than honor-seeking is given for this bit of chivalry. In less chivalrous manner, Hamlet the Elder had also defeated the Poles; and we learn from Claudius that, late in his reign, he had also forced the English to pay tribute, perhaps with Claudius' military assistance (4.3.63-66). So he was something of a raider; in other words, a pirate to those he plundered. The English have a good deal of experience in such matters: as soon as Hamlet died, they stopped paying the tribute. And Fortinbras the Younger, also sensing weakness during the Danish succession, began to make plans to regain what Norway had lost to Denmark—and perhaps a bit more, perhaps as much as he could get. After all—his father killed, his country dishonored, a succession crisis and “right of memory” in Denmark that might be claimed (5.2.391), weak enemies throughout the region—why not?

Shakespeare obviously wants his audience to consider things, in the first instance, from the Danish point of view. But beneath all the easy claims to justice in such matters made in the play, there is a strong sense that all those who “puff” up their spirits with “divine ambition,” all those who “make mouths” and “find quarrel in a straw / When honor's at the stake” (4.4.50-57), are the same. Nevertheless, one must defend one's country if it is threatened. And Prince Hamlet, especially so; even if his country's worst enemy resembles his father, and might also be the kind of son his father would have preferred.

In the midst of hasty military preparations to meet the Norwegian threat, both Claudius and Hamlet put forward bids for the crown. The Danish council and Queen Gertrude both prefer Claudius, most likely because of his recent military successes against the English; though the natural successor, Hamlet is untried in war. Once king, Claudius' first act of state attempts to set things right. He dispatches two ambassadors, Cornelius and Voltimand, with a firmly worded letter to the elderly ruler of Norway. The details are familiar: when Fortinbras the Elder was killed, his son was too young to assume the throne, so his brother did—perhaps as Regent, perhaps not; now “old Norway,” as he is called, is bedridden, and ambitious Fortinbras is still not king, even though he is in his 30s. Fortinbras claims to be organizing an expedition against Poland in order to obtain funding—no reason need be given, since Poland is Catholic—but its real object is Denmark. Claudius' letter is intended to expose Fortinbras' true purpose to old Norway.

What appallingly bad, not to say rotten, judgment. What does Claudius think a letter will do? Can “impotent” old Norway, who has overstayed his welcome on the throne and is soon to die anyway—can he wag his finger at Fortinbras, mouth a few banalities about justice, and dispel Fortinbras' ambitions and the desire for revenge that animates Norwegians? And would he? If he actually knew nothing of Fortinbras' intentions, would not Claudius' letter more likely cause him to desire one last go of it? And what does Claudius imagine slacking off military preparations will accomplish? True, Danes may get the impression that the threat has been handled effectively, but there has been no reply to the letter.

The ambassadors are gone for two months, a surprisingly long time given how close Norway is. When they return, they state simply that old Norway's finger-wagging was completely successful. What is more, Fortinbras was so penitent that he vowed “never more / To give th' assay of arms against [Denmark]” (2.2.70-71). And old Norway was so overjoyed by this sudden law-abidingness that he gave Fortinbras a goodly sum of money to fight the Poles anyway; that is, to undertake the military expedition that had had no real purpose in the first place.

Claudius and Polonius, his chief councilor, think the “business … well ended.” They even agree to the Norwegian request that Fortinbras' troops be given safe passage through Denmark on their way to Poland. Again, what appalling judgment. If the quick changes of heart and the seemingly pointless Polish campaign were not grounds enough for suspicion, any prudent military leader would have to pause and consider the risks of allowing foreign troops onto Danish soil. Not only would the Norwegians be free to survey the countryside, but Denmark would also be left exposed to attack by the battle-tested troops on their way home, perhaps even to attack on two frontiers. All these reasonable doubts are brought into focus by a single additional fact: the Norwegians do not wait for a reply to their request. Fortinbras' army leaves Norway for Denmark at the same time the ambassadors return. Now, why is it that Voltimand does not mention to the court that there are Norwegian ships just offshore that will land troops tomorrow?

It should be clear that Denmark is being offered a Trojan horse. The Norwegians are attempting to rout the Danes as the Greeks routed the Trojans. But where the Greeks concealed their soldiers physically as well as with lies, the Norwegians use lies alone; and the ambassadors act the part of Sinon. Claudius is far more gullible than Priam; and Fortinbras is as patient as the “hellish” Pyrrhus, “he whose sable arms, Black as his purpose, did the night resemble / When he lay couched in the ominous horse” (2.2.452-54).

But what of Hamlet? What is his role? Something is compelling him to slaughter Claudius, but that is Fortinbras' work: were Hamlet to satisfy his longing for vengeance, Denmark would fall as quickly as Troy. Something in Hamlet is also resisting the compulsion. He refuses to be Pyrrhus; but he does not recognize immediately that circumstances cast him in the role of Laocoon, the Trojan priest who was the only one, along with Cassandra, to warn Trojans of the danger. Had he been in court when the ambassadors returned, he might have sensed the trap right away. As it happens, it requires only a brief encounter with the landed troops to sober Hamlet. He quickly comes to understand that the two “adders fanged” who take him to his death are like the two serpents that killed Laocoon, and that he must somehow succeed where Laocoon failed.

It might be mentioned in passing that no one, it seems in the past 400 years has noted the obvious parallel between the political plot that frames Hamlet and the Trojan horse story recounted in such detail in Act 2. To paraphrase Claudius: so much for the scholarship.

II

“Hail, King! … compass'd with thy kingdom's pearl”

(Macbeth 5.7)

Claudius does not rule the way Priam ruled, not only because he is a lesser man, but primarily because the regime in which he rules is different. Insofar as anything is suggested about the regime, it is evident that Denmark is ruled by crown-in-council, and that the council is so well established that the monarchy might best be called an elective one. The authority of the crown is thus restricted. Not only by the council—often that is nothing more than the need for the monarch to obtain nodding approval from a chief councilor. The crown's authority is also restricted by the much more annoying necessity for the monarch's decrees to observe the rule of law. In order for Claudius to act politically as king, his will must take the form of a written text, the text must bear an official seal, and the substance of the text must be legal.

Such niceties might be overlooked in certain circumstances. In war, for instance, where the will of the king as military leader is far less fettered because domestic law does not apply, and perhaps also because a certain degree of illegality is necessary for success. And when a king is very successful in plundering other lands—as successful as the elder Hamlet, say—he might be able to persuade his subjects to allow him similar liberties at home. One senses that this is what happened during the reign of King Hamlet; the strength of his crown can be measured by the weakness of Polonius. By the time Claudius assumed the throne, the institutions of rule by crown-in-council had grown somewhat tarnished from disuse. But they had not been abandoned.

The most significant feature that distinguishes the Danish regime, no matter how distorted by neglect, from any ancient kingdom can be stated simply: the Danish king has “two bodies.” Unlike an ancient king, whose authority is identical with his person, the Danish king is simultaneously, but independently a person and the head of the body politic. His actions as a man and his actions as a king are distinct. His actions as a man do not count as the monarch's will. And furthermore, if the body politic refuses to accept any of his royal actions as lawful, it may dismiss them as private acts, if it is willing to face the consequences. In other words, even though it may precipitate a civil war, in such circumstances a parliamentary institution may separate the body politic from the king's person and invest it in another person before separating, quite legally, the king's own body into two pieces. This may not be Plato or Vergil, but it is a common enough theme in the Tudor and Stuart periods.

Despite the dangers, Claudius is willing to murder his brother in a bid for the crown. Had it been detected, his regicide would have been punishable by death. As it stands, it is a fact eventually known to only two people, and impossible to prove without a rather unlikely public confession. Given that Claudius successfully becomes king, the matter becomes more complicated. Once he heads the body politic, how can he be punished? And who has the authority to do so? One's heart is with Hamlet, of course; and Claudius is a vile and petty man. Nevertheless, if one were forced to choose between Hamlet raging for “private” vengeance—not public justice—and Claudius as an established king defending the realm in difficult times, one would unfortunately have to choose Claudius. Is he not right to worry about all possible threats to his authority, especially given that any civil disruption could only benefit the Norwegians? And is he not right to suspect Hamlet's behaviour? After all, during his play's performance before the court, Hamlet noisily takes over the role of Lucianus the regicide, nephew—not brother—to the king. Madness is no excuse: Junius Brutus also feigned madness for political reasons.

Fortunately, we are not forced to side with Claudius. Hamlet is not only a man, he is the Crown Prince. He need not act against Claudius alone; there is the council to assist him. But on what grounds can he appeal to the council? The murder of the elder Hamlet cannot be proven. However, the attempted murder of the younger Hamlet can be: “There's letters sealed” (3.4.209), and what they contain can depose a king. When Claudius stamps the royal seal on a death warrant for the Crown Prince, ordering him to be executed in a foreign state under tribute, without council approval, without a public declaration of his reasons, and without a public trial, he oversteps even the most generous estimate of his prerogative. His act is illegal. The world being what it is, Claudius would be able to get away with murdering Hamlet; but the regime being what it is, he cannot get away with attempting to murder Hamlet. All Hamlet need do—beyond surviving the attempt—is produce the evidence and begin proceedings against Claudius for the deed, “so crimeful and so capital in nature” (4.7.7). And when he returns to Denmark with the sealed commission in his hands and announces himself “Hamlet the Dane”—that is, the rightful king—it is evident that he has every intention of going to “a public count” (4.7.18).

Before Hamlet can truly proclaim himself “the Dane,” however, he must become fit to rule; and that is a spiritual matter, not a legal or political one.

III

THE TROJAN HORSE OF THE SOUL

“I am sick at heart / When I behold—”

(Macbeth 5.3)

For most of the play, Hamlet's soul is profoundly disordered, and if he is to become fit to rule, he must somehow put it in order. It is not disordered by the usual run of vices found in all “indifferent[ly] honest … arrant knaves”: pride, ambition, vanity and the like (3.1.123-30). Rather, the disorder may rightfully be called madness. But merely naming the disorder madness goes no farther than Polonius, who says: “to define true madness,’ / What is't but to be nothing else but mad?” (2.2.93-94). A more substantive understanding is necessary. Most Shakespeare scholarship is, again, of little assistance; the Gravedigger's assessment of Englishmen's understanding of Hamlet's madness still holds true: “'Twill not be seen in him there” (5.1.154). Indeed, it is quite common to assume that Hamlet is not mad at all, that he is simply another Brutus feigning madness until the right time and circumstances present themselves. This is the Hamlet of Saxo Grammaticus, Shakespeare's source for the story; this is also the Brutus of Shakespeare's Rape of Lucrece: but it is not Shakespeare's Hamlet.

It is simply never the case that Hamlet is perfectly sane while pretending to be mad. The closest he ever comes to this condition is when he foolishly pretends to pretend madness for the amusement of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern—a passing moment in a magnificent scene (2.2) in which his soul goes through a vast spectrum of states, his behaviour through an equally broad range of manners, and his “inward” and “exterior” aspects are never quite in harmony, except briefly when welcoming the Players. Even Claudius knows enough, when speaking of “Hamlet's transformation,” to observe that “nor th' exterior nor the inward man / Resembles that it was” (2.2.6-7).

Hamlet's “inward” transformation is not a simple matter. There are any number of causes of disorder in the soul. The most mundane are the soul's own constant churnings; and the most intriguing of its churnings are the erotic ones. Hamlet does have his erotic difficulties, but to think that they are the causes of his transformation would, again, go no farther than Polonius, or worse, very far in the wrong direction with Freud. The disorder of Hamlet's soul is given its unique character by two far more profound things: by the nature of the forces that act on it—from without, as it were—and by the consequent difficulty he experiences in maintaining the authority of reason within his soul.

The various realms of being in which human beings participate are not passive. We constantly suffer their unforeseeable actions; and the locus of such experiences is the soul. If the forces that pass through a soul are great enough, the soul's order will be overturned. The resulting disorder is madness, or a mania. A mania is not necessarily a bad thing. To assess its character, one must assess both the character of the forces that cause it and the character of the order that might emerge from it. To speak more concretely, using Christian symbolic terms for the sake of convenience: sometimes the divine moves us, or angels appear to us; and sometimes the demonic moves us, or devils appear to us. Both are deeply disturbing experiences; both demand an appropriate response; and both leave us radically free to determine what an appropriate response is. Needless to say, part of the response—a rational component—is determining which is which. Reason usually has a well-defined position of authority in the soul's order, somewhat resembling rule by crown-in-council; but such experiences—by their intensity, uniqueness and apparent “externality”—completely overwhelm it, leaving it confused and breathlessly attempting to catch up. The experiences themselves are authoritative, and reason must learn to conform to their authority if it is to have any authority of its own.

The significance of these remarks for understanding Hamlet's madness is straightforward. When “this thing” appears to Hamlet, it does not present him with an epistemological problem to solve; it is an event in his soul that “horridly … shakes [his] disposition,” leaving him a “fool,” confused “With thoughts beyond the [reach] of [his] soul” (1.4.54-56). The “thing” itself, its very nature, is the immediate cause of Hamlet's madness. Before it speaks a word, Hamlet understands that it demands a response: “Why is this? Wherefore? What should we do?” (57). And when it does speak, Hamlet's experience of disorder only intensifies. It “prey[s] on garbage” in Hamlet's soul—all of his resentment, worldly ambition, pride, self-righteousness, things in his soul that are “rank and gross”—and it tests his virtue by courting him with “lewdness … in a shape of heaven” (1.5.54-58; 1.2.136). It not only tells him the shocking fact of his father's murder, along with rather surprising news about the judgement of his father's soul; it also reveals its intent in speaking these things—to bind him to revenge as firmly as he is bound to love.

Hamlet's uncertainty about the nature of “this thing”—“spirit of health or goblin damned”—is, in part, an uncertainty about the authority of his reason. There is a very reliable indicator of Hamlet's rationality at any moment in the play: his relation to Horatio. As the pun in his name suggests, Horatio is the very embodiment of rationality. But of what kind? Although he studies at Wittenberg, Luther's university, Shakespeare does not intend Horatio to represent the fideistic notion of reason. He is more “antique Roman” than Lutheran. Shakespeare quite deliberately uses the changing relation between Hamlet and Horatio in the play to illustrate the changing relation between the spiritual and the rational within Hamlet's own soul; but Shakespeare's understanding of the soul's proper order owes more to Plato than it does even to Cicero or Plutarch, to say nothing of Luther.

Compare two similar scenes, one from the beginning and one from the end of the play. In Act I, when Hamlet first confronts the “thing,” Horatio worries that it might “deprive [his] sovereignty of reason,” drawing him into madness, and insists that Hamlet “Think” and “Be ruled” (1.4.73-81). Sound advice. But when Horatio thinks such matters “wondrous strange,” Hamlet properly reminds him: “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, / Than are dreamt of in your philosophy” (1.5.173-76). In Act 5, when Hamlet speaks of the “ill … about [his] heart,” Horatio advises him to “obey” his “mind['s] dislikes”; but Hamlet rejects such “antique Roman” rationalism as no better than “augury,” and prefers instead an openness to providence, a spiritual “readiness” that is “all” (5.2.210-22).

If reason alone were to judge, Hamlet's refusal to be ruled is as mad in the latter scene as it is in the former. It is, perhaps, in degree; but that does not make it the same madness. When Hamlet returns to Denmark, he is a different man. He is no longer troubled by his experience of the “thing”; it no longer moves him one way or another. Indeed, he lingers in the graveyard and feels no more than the normal revulsion. But the transformation that has occurred during his voyage—the “sea change” in his soul—is something more than the return of reason to its proper seat of authority. Hamlet's soul suffers from a different mania that does not disorder the soul; rather, it allows the soul to discover a new order, and a new authority for reason in that order. Reason can do more to bring about the experiences that cause such madness than any other part of the soul can; they are suffered. However, reason can recognize their authority once they occur.

In the play's most overt symbolic presentation of such an understanding, Horatio allows himself to be ruled by the authority of Hamlet's spiritual “readiness.” In a more subtle statement of the same understanding, the Hamlet who appears in Act 5 has succeeded in placing Horatio “in [his] heart's core, … in [his] heart of hearts” (3.2.72). And what is more, he has succeeded in attaining the “godlike reason” (4.4.39) of which he spoke so longingly before embarking on his voyage to England.

The soliloquy in which Hamlet longs for “godlike reason” and compares himself to the “delicate” Prince Fortinbras—whose “spirit” is so “puffed” up with “ambition” that he would reenact the fall of Troy—recalls an earlier soliloquy in which an equally bloody-minded Hamlet orders his “brain” to turn about after comparing himself to the somewhat more delicate First Player, who only recites the story of the fall of Troy. In the later soliloquy, Hamlet complains that he does not act even though he has “cause, and will, … and means” to do so (4.4.46). It is his reason that holds him back, even though it cannot yet suggest a proper cause, will and means for action. In the earlier soliloquy, Hamlet complains that even an actor can make his “conceit,” his “soul” and his “visage” conform to one another, though the motives for such harmony of mind, soul and action are not his own. It is Hamlet's proper spirit that prevents him from acting like Pyrrhus—his spirit, and his profound doubt about the motives being suggested to him. When Hamlet returns to Denmark, both the “exterior” and the “inward” man have been transformed again; and he finally knows how he will act.

IV

“What! Can the devil speak true?”

(Macbeth 1.3)

What is “this thing,” this Trojan horse of the soul? A great deal has been written in an attempt to answer this question on doctrinal or dogmatic grounds. It cannot be done. There is an answer to the question, but it favors no particular religious denomination. Shakespeare's understanding of the mysteries of the transcendent order and its influences upon human beings is nothing so simple as a doctrine.

To begin with a simple fact: all things that might be said to make up a transcendent order are not the same simply because they are transcendent. “Ghosts” are not the same as “angels” or “devils”; in other words, the souls or spirits of dead human beings are not the same as the various manifestations of a transcendent order to the human soul. Another simple fact: there ain't no such thing as ghosts. Whatever else might be said about an afterlife aside, no one returns from the dead. Hamlet understands this in one of his most lucid moments: he says death is an “undiscovered country from whose bourn / No traveler returns” (3.1.80-81). This leaves angels and devils, or the profound experiences of good and evil that living human beings symbolize by such words.

Angels and devils are said to “appear.” This may suggest that they appear to the senses, in the physical realm, but they do not. Angels and devils have no corporeal bodies; in other words, the experiences these words describe occur only in the soul; there is nothing physical about them, though they may have physical consequences. Yet people find themselves compelled to speak of such experiences as “appearances.” Several reasons suggest themselves for this: first, the experiences, by their very nature, are unexpected—even though one might prepare for them, one must suffer them; second, the experiences suggest an even greater source, of which they are only manifestations; third, the substance, character or meaning of such experiences is not immediately evident; and finally, all language unavoidably concretizes experience. Hence, the need to speak of appearances, even when concerned with essences.

Angels and devils therefore do not appear to us as they are. But they do appear in a way that suits their purpose and the occasion. What then of “this thing's” appearance? If it is not the spirit of Hamlet the Elder escaped from some Purgatory, Hades or other middling province in death's dominion—as it cannot be—then either an angel or a devil appears in this way to suit its purpose. It takes Hamlet most of the play to determine which it is—and not surprisingly, given the nature of the mania it causes.

When Hamlet first confronts it, he immediately distinguishes, as did Horatio, between what it might be and how it appears:

Be thy intentions wicked or charitable …
Bring with thee airs from heaven or blasts from hell …
Thou com'st in such a questionable shape
That I will speak to thee. I'll call thee Hamlet …

(1.4.41-44)

He allows the “shape,” though “questionable,” to influence him; or, more precisely, he discovers himself to be open to its intentions, and he is therefore willing to accept its shape as true. His initial terror gives way to a terrifying willingness to be ruled by it. And what are its intentions? In the words Hamlet later recites before the Players, it asks him to become like “hellish Pyrrhus,” to take revenge on Claudius and to revel in the consequences—the fall of Denmark. It asks him to coat himself “Head to foot / … With the blood of fathers, mothers, daughters, sons,” and to allow the fires of a burning Elsinore to “bake” and “impaste” the blood until he becomes “o'ersized with coagulate gore” (2.2.456-63).

Half his heart would do it. The other half would not. He refuses to succumb to its influence entirely. But he also cannot simply “throw away the worser part of [his heart] / And live the purer with the other half” (3.4.164-65). The mania that “this thing” causes in him is not something a human heart can resist alone.

The head must be allied with the heart; reason must have its proper place if the soul is to be ordered. But reason too can be deceived, and often more readily than the heart. The easiest way to deceive reason is to offer it the truth. Reason alone does not know that the truth spoken for the wrong reason is a lie in the soul; that is the soul's understanding. And Hamlet's reason is deceived in just this way. His reason is a powerful ally for his heart because it rightly reminds him that. “The spirit [he] has seen / May be the devil, and the devil hath power / T'assume a pleasing shape” (2.2.599-600). But his reason also leaves his heart defenseless when it takes the bait of truth the spirit offers: the fact that Claudius killed his brother to obtain the crown. Hamlet cannot get this fact out of his mind. His doubts about the nature of the thing he has seen also cause him to doubt this fact as well, to search for “grounds more relative,” for rational proof. But when he gets “proof,” when Claudius rises during the play, Hamlet's satisfied reason deserts his heart. “O good Horatio,” he says, “I'll take the ghost's word for a thousand pound” (3.2.284-85). More than at any other time, Hamlet accepts the thing as “an honest ghost” (1.5.144) and opens his heart to its influence: “Now could I drink hot blood” (3.2.389).

This is no honest ghost. Like the Trojan horse, it appears to be a sacred thing, but its appearance conceals a “hellish” intent. This ghostly or spiritual Trojan horse seems to be an angelic messenger taking the form of old Hamlet, but it is actually a demon intent on corrupting Hamlet's soul—with the truth if need be—and then unleashing him in Denmark as Pyrrhus was unleashed in Troy.

Hamlet faces a difficult problem: how can head and heart combine to resist such a demonic influence? Separately they come to nothing: rational rigor is as ineffectual as a fanatical attempt to expunge all evil from the soul. Even together, they require assistance; but of what sort? Prayer suggests itself. However, the only prayer Shakespeare gives us in the play is Claudius' soliloquy, “O, my offense is rank, it smells to heaven” (3.3.36ff)—a wonderful example of utter hypocrisy. Claudius' prayer can be described in the choice words of that other hypocrite, Polonius:

We are oft to blame in this—
'Tis too much proved—that with devotion's visage
And pious action we do sugar o'er
The devil himself.

(3.1.46-49)

To which Claudius hypocritically answers, “'Tis too true.”

Hamlet does not pray. But he is a contemplative by nature. And what is contemplation if not prayer without the outward visage and pious action? Contemplation properly done, that is; since it too may be hypocritical. In a meditative or contemplative exercise, the head and heart together attempt to create a proper order in the soul by orienting it toward a transcendent good or God. If all goes well, there is sometimes a response. In Christian terms, sometimes an angel appears. Hamlet does contemplate in the play, sometimes poorly and sometimes well. An angel does appear to him; and its appearance is the spiritual event that finally allows him to attain “godlike reason.”

Hamlet's contemplative or meditative exercises are presented in his soliloquies. Now, not all soliloquies are contemplative exercises: a soliloquy simply portrays the inward man—not always a pleasant sight. But several of Hamlet's show him practicing the “art of dying.” When Hamlet first appears in the play, before his encounter with the spirit, he is presented as attempting to rise above all that is “rank and gross,” all that is worldly, all that partakes of “this too too sullied flesh.” He attempts to move toward God, but he fails because he cannot put it all beneath him; he cannot stop remembering; more specifically, he cannot stop participating in all that is rank and gross in his own soul. In the end, all he can manage is a barely endurable silence (1.2.129-59). After he encounters the spirit, his troubles are far worse. And yet he somehow succeeds in rising above everything in the soliloquy beginning, “To be, or not to be …” (3.1.57ff), rising, indeed, to the very point of recognizing the true nature of the thing that claims to be a “traveler” returning from the “undiscovered country.” Again, he fails to sustain the spiritual ascent, this time because of the trap for which Ophelia consented to serve as bait. It is only when things are at their worst that Hamlet's contemplative longings succeed in reaching their end. His success is not shown on-stage; the audience learns of it later, with Horatio.

It is only when Hamlet immediately confronts death while aboard the ship for England that all things of the flesh, things worldly and demonic, finally “resolve [themselves] into a dew” (1.2.130). The consequence of such a resolution is the spiritual “readiness” that is “all” and the “godlike reason” that is illuminated by such readiness. The consequence is not a pure heart, free of its “worser half.” Things remain “ill … about [Hamlet's] heart”—partly because being “sick at heart” is inescapable for mortals, and partly because the “divinity that shapes our ends,” when it appeared in the midst of the “fighting” in Hamlet's heart that would not allow him to rest, acted “rashly” and roughly (1.1.9; 5.2.4-11, 210-11).

V

When Hamlet returns to Denmark, he has undergone as has been often remarked, a “sea change.” The ambitions of Alexander the Great are as nothing to him. In the spirit of Yorick the jester who played with him when his father did not, the only properly ambitious man in his father's court—Hamlet even composes a rhyme about “Imperious Caesar,” who,

… dead and turned to clay,
Might stop a hole to keep the wind away.
O, that the earth which kept the world in awe
Should patch a wall t' expel the winter's flaw!

(5.1.213-16)

And yet Hamlet is not simply a contemplative soul, turned away from the things that are Caesar's. He recognizes that, while he “draw[s] breath,” he must act in “this harsh world” (5.2.350). He recognizes that he must act justly; not from pride or self-righteousness, and certainly not from the demonic passions that had troubled him. What is more, he must act justly as the Crown Prince. His duty to Denmark requires him to act as Laocoon acted, warning Trojans of the lies that conceal the dangers within the horse at their gates. But he must succeed where Laocoon failed. If success requires the death of two “adders fanged,” so be it: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern need not trouble his conscience (3.4.210; 5.2.58). And if it requires the deposition of Claudius, let that come as well. The right “cause, and will, … and means” present themselves for it (4.4.46): a council no longer hindered by Polonius and made sober by proof of Claudius' incompetent military judgment can readily be persuaded to divest him of the “body politic” once it is presented with sufficient legal grounds—namely, the sealed commission. The order for Hamlet's execution is illegal. The order for Claudius' execution need not be. In Claudius' own words: “where th' offense is, let the great ax fall” (4.5.221). And if this settles all worldly debts between them, so much the better.

The Hamlet who returns to Denmark and announces himself “the Dane” is not only a true contemplative, but also a true king. His spiritual “readiness” is not resignation, but rather a spiritual dispensation that combines the vita contemplativa and the vita activa perfectly: Plato's philosopher-king; but also something else. In the words of the gospel of Matthew (10:16 ff.[Geneva edition]) that Shakespeare is also concerned to understand, Hamlet's dispensation makes him as “wise” as a “serpent,” and as “innocent” as a “dove.” It makes him fit to rule others. However, the world remains “harsh” even when one attains the “readiness” to meet its harshness. Hamlet is wary of men, of their councils and kings, but in Act 5 he goes to encounter them anyway, “tak[ing] no thought how or what [he] shall speak.” For he knows that “it shall be given [him] in that hour what [he] shall say.” He fears neither those “which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul,” nor “him, which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.” And his “readiness” will finally allow “the spirit of [the] father” to speak in him.²

Notes

1. All references will be from Hamlet, ed. David Bevington et al. (NY: Bantam, 1988).

2. Earlier drafts of this address were given to the Canadian Political Science Association, the Political Science Department of McMaster University and the Toronto chapter of the Conference for the Study of Political Thought. My sincere thanks to all participants.