SOURCE: “Hamlet: The Duel Within,” in Shakespeare's Reflexive Endings, pp. 1-20, Edwin Mellen Press, 1990.

[In this essay, Willson emphasizes the iteration, in Hamlet's final scene, of action, motifs, and language presented in the first scene. He further contends that by the end of the play, Hamlet has become a stoic, leaving Providence to direct events rather than trying to control them himself. In addition, Willson discusses the significance of the duel between Hamlet and Laertes, and the resolution of the theme of revenge versus justice.]

hamlet. O! I die, Horatio;
The potent poison quite o’ercrows my spirit:
I cannot live to hear the news from England,
But I do prophesy the election lights
On Fortinbras: he has my dying voice;
So tell him, with the occurrents, more and less,
Which have solicited. The rest is silence.

1

In his famous 1765 Preface Dr. Johnson made this comment on Shakespeare's endings:

It may be observed, that in many of his plays the latter part is evidently neglected. When he found himself near the end of his work, and, in view of his reward, he shortened the labour to snatch the profit. He therefore remits his efforts where he should most vigorously exert them, and his catastrophe is improbably produced or imperfectly represented.

Johnson rarely gives illustrations of his general statements in the Preface, disdaining to paint streaks on the tulips. In this instance his habit is particularly frustrating. We might agree with him about certain comedies: The Comedy of Errors, for example, requires the audience to accept an improbable reappearance of Egeon's wife as the means to a happy solution of the problem of family separation. One need only mention All's Well That Ends Well to mark Shakespeare's blind rush to resolve a romantic puzzle with the cheapest of plot tricks. But if Johnson, as we suspect, means us to accept his generalization as applying to the endings of Lear or Antony and Cleopatra, we must surely balk. Are not these endings organic developments, the fearfully inevitable resolutions of plots that have a destined quality about them?

The answer to our question about Johnson's criticism and its application can, no doubt, be found in his belief that writers must make their works exemplars of virtue and justice. Shakespeare's endings, like his whole plays, offer evidence of his chief defect as an artist: “He sacrifices virtue to convenience, and is so much more careful to please than to instruct, that he seems to write without any moral purpose.” Holding this strict view of the writer's responsibility, Johnson was bound to regard Shakespeare's aesthetically powerful tragic endings as dramatic tricks designed to titillate an audience in greater need of moral guidance.

Johnson's complaint appears on the surface to be borne out by the ending of Hamlet. Hamlet's duel with Laertes, with its attendant spectacle, looks like Shakespeare's hurried attempt to satisfy our desire for revenge while glossing over the moral implications of both Hamlet's and Claudius' actions. Yet Johnson's blinders have to a great extent misled his judgment. The final duel functions as the foremost illustration of a theme, heavy in its moral overtones, that has been firmly established throughout the play. Claudius becomes another “enginer / Hoist on his own petar.” His belief that his position as king gives him god-like power is literally exploded in his face.¹ And even though the fallout touches Gertrude, Laertes, and Hamlet, we have a strong feeling of the workings of justice despite the helter-skelter appearance of events.

But the limited notion of a bomb that explodes in the inventor's face does not adequately describe the significance of final things in Hamlet. Drama was more to Shakespeare—and is more to us—than simply a way to teach moral lessons; trapping Claudius appeals not only to our sense of justice but also to our aesthetic sensibilities. He proves to be yet another example of limited man overestimating his power to control events, and in observing this fact we realize that he and Hamlet share the same trait. To convince us that both villain and hero attempt similar maneuvers to satisfy their thirst for revenge is a masterstroke of Shakespeare's art. What seems to elevate Hamlet above Claudius in this respect is that Hamlet discovers in time the limitations of his ego: “The readiness is all” reveals this discovery. Claudius' ambition, a trait that Shakespeare scrupulously avoids giving to Hamlet, drives him to overreach himself in his sure-fire, ingeniously designed final duel.

The struggle between Hamlet and Laertes has about it, as well, a mirror-image effect because both are sons seeking to avenge their fathers' deaths. Hamlet in fact attests to their brotherly status before the duel: “For by the image of my cause I see / The portraiture of his” (V.ii.77-78).² Hamlet confronts a “model” revenger in Laertes, someone who, unlike himself, seeks a direct and violent path to right a wrong done to his family. This fact further heightens the tragic irony of the final scene because we know that Claudius should be their proper target and that they ought to turn their swords against him. Laertes has been trapped by his own fury to do Claudius's bidding, while Hamlet's caution has kept him free of his uncle's snare until the last scene. Only after each is fatally wounded does the wished-for union of wills between Hamlet and Laertes occur, adding to the poignancy of the ending. The “sons” are sacrificed to the ambition of the “father king.”

Hamlet also seems to approach the duel with a new-found recklessness, a quality much admired in Renaissance conduct books like Castiglione's The Courtier. This nonchalance comes with a change in attitude about his proper role. He is in effect facing a portrait of his youthful exuberance in Laertes, literally wrestling it down before the audience of the court. A comparable struggle occurs in Romeo and Juliet when Romeo meets Paris before the Capulet monument in the final scene. Romeo, presenting a personality more desperate than Hamlet's, urges Paris to leave the scene and escape his wrath, addressing him in the dark as “boy.”³ Laertes and Paris appear to be innocent victims caught in the path of desperate men, but their roles could also be described as symbolic, since each represents some quality in the hero that will be destroyed.

While the final duel in Hamlet has significance for the plot, it also functions as an effective correlative for Hamlet's internal duel. By assenting to it, despite warnings from Horatio that it constitutes a plot on his life, Hamlet dares to submit himself to the winds of fate with a stoical mind. To argue that he simply gives up, committing a kind of intentional suicide, is to gut the ending of its purpose of illustrating Hamlet's discovery of his proper role.⁴ The change in Hamlet's outlook following his return from England can be interpreted as marking a movement away from the skeptical misanthrope of the early part of the play to the more subdued and rational believer of the ending. This change of “part” is significant for two reasons. Hamlet indulges heavily in the theatrical metaphor illustrated in the observation that “All the world's a stage.” In the passing action of the play we see Hamlet playing numerous parts: scholar, madman, fool, avenger. None of these roles can be said to truly represent him, and yet they are all, to some extent, part of his character. Shakespeare takes pains to demonstrate that the Hamlet who enters into the fight with Laertes is then better suited to play the avenger's part than at any other time in the action. To follow the language of the theater, moreover, Hamlet has also chosen to give up his usurped role as director of events or of characters' thoughts and deeds. There are no more mousetraps, no sermons to Gertrude and Ophelia, no more worrying over the ultimate destination of souls. Hamlet has decided to be a simple “actor,” leaving the direction of events to Providence. This decision results in Hamlet changing places with Claudius, allowing himself to be a victim of the king's plotting.⁵ Thus, when Hamlet moves against Claudius he strikes not as an avenger but in self-defense; his act loses the taint of personal revenge and takes on the savor of justice. He can enter into the pit of hell and defy the devil without losing that peace of mind reflected in this insight: “Since no man of aught he leaves knows, what is't to leave betimes?”

For the other main characters, the final scene has a different meaning. As the director of his own mousetrap, Claudius hopes to put an end to his fears. Like Hamlet he seeks peace of mind, but his actions as a plotter ironically place him in the frenzied state Hamlet was in after he first saw the Ghost. Forced by circumstances not only to act against Hamlet but also to entrap the enraged and dangerous Laertes, Claudius returns to the poison he used so effectively in seizing the crown and queen. He characteristically works by indirection, using Laertes's anger as bait to set his trap. The appearance of Osric recalls Polonius's foolish obsequiousness at the arrival of the traveling actors, and Hamlet enjoys toying with this “son” of the old counselor in much the same way as he had with Polonius. Osric is also a caricature, a bad actor, whose manner imitates the style of Hamlet's play-within-the-play. Now, however, the bad actors have taken over rule of the court completely; only a violent purging will restore the state to order and glory.

The closing duel, with its many instances of trickery and spying, might be called Claudius' mousetrap. In Sir Laurence Olivier's film of the play (1948), both the play-within and the final scene are introduced with the same procession and music; the similarity is so striking that one believes the same piece of film is being reprojected.⁶ The slightest reflection will in fact yield many parallels between the two situations. In both scenes Claudius and Gertrude, along with the rest of the court, constitute the audience for action that is rigged; both performances involve treachery, poisonings, and king-murders; Gertrude is ignorant of the meaning of both events, in the latter instance paying for her ignorance with her life; and Claudius discovers in both scenes that his villainy will have to be answered. While Hamlet lets his advantage slip away after the play-within, he doubles the stroke of vengeance in the end by forcing Claudius to drink poisoned wine and by stabbing him. Like the ending of Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy, the finale of Hamlet is an instance of fiction that suddenly and terrifyingly becomes reality.⁷

The play-ending duel should also bring to mind the one between Hamlet's father and old Fortinbras, which Horatio describes at the play's opening (I.i. 80-95). While the fathers' fight was conducted according to the conditions of medieval chivalry, with prizes of land clearly designated, the Hamlet-Laertes duel has the appearance of a court entertainment staged for the pleasure of a decadent collection of courtiers. The lesson is obvious: under Claudius the honor attached to knightly contests has been debased, and the result is a corrupt and sickened body politic. Fortune's Wheel has turned; dwarfs have replaced giants. Such a comparison is also important because young Fortinbras, whose restlessness Horatio claims resulted from the death of his father, will at the play's close enter to take the crown his father could not win. Thus the conventional return to order and rule is tinged by the irony of Fortinbras—the “ghost” of his father—emerging as the ruler of Denmark. Here too is the legacy of Claudius' ambition, which led him to send ambassadors to old Norway rather than take the field against this avenging son. Yet with the arrival of Fortinbras, we are also meant to see him as “a delicate and tender prince,” in Hamlet's own words, a figure who revives the nobility of conduct that Hamlet's father and his peers were praised for.

While Claudius hopes to rid himself of the carbuncle in his blood that Hamlet represents, Laertes enters the lists for the purpose of avenging Polonius' murder and Ophelia's suicide. Laertes is, in a sense, the avenger Hamlet wishes to be throughout most of the play. But as Shakespeare makes clear the “passionate actor” of the avenger's part can be easily controlled by a wiser, machiavellian Claudius. One might claim, if this were a heavily moralized Johnsonian melodrama and not a tragedy, that Laertes represents an object lesson in the pitfalls of seeking direct and unlawful reprisal against one's enemies. Even though Laertes believes he is restoring his family's honor and acting in Denmark's best interests, he in fact becomes Claudius' killing instrument. Like his father, he emerges as another victim of the struggle between Hamlet and Claudius by proving too anxious to do the king's bidding. Like his father as well, he will not die an innocent: he furnishes the poison for the rapier points.⁸ Yet Laertes wins our sympathy when he speaks out against Claudius upon discovering the depth of his treachery: “The king, the king's to blame.” His act of forgiving Hamlet of his father's murder stands out against the background of slaughter as both a noble and inspiring gesture.⁹

Gertrude's role in the finale might best be described as that of the sacrificial lamb. Hamlet has taught her to look into her heart, where she sees black spots, but in drinking the poisoned wine she gives no sign that she does so to escape from a torturing conscience. Nor does the text offer any hint that she drinks in order to save her son, as Olivier tries to suggest in his film version. There is in fact something disturbingly and characteristically blind about Gertrude's behavior. She qualifies as a sensualist even in this final toast. Looking back on her hasty marriage to Claudius and her seemingly willful blindness to his flaws, we are tempted to conclude that she honestly believes the toast she gives—“The queen carouses to thy fortune, Hamlet”—testifies to new-found sanity in her son and a reconciliation between son and husband. Recalling her comment on the Player Queen's declarations of loyalty—“The lady doth protest too much, methinks”—we realize that Gertrude is simply incapable of the kind of womanly virtue and courage Hamlet expects of her. She would never protest too much, with a pun on overacting, simply because she, like her son, is all too human to be capable of performing in an idealized role. It is her death, however, that seals Claudius' fate. Now all of the court, which is the audience for this “play” as it was for the earlier Murder of Gonzago, can see the horrible evidence of the king's treachery. Here is the situation Hamlet had hoped for following his play-within, and now that he has it he can act quickly and appropriately. Gertrude's death is the one consequence Claudius had failed to count on in his foolproof plot, and it acts as the major spur for Hamlet's actions. While his throttling of Claudius takes place in answer to his father's plea, Hamlet is moved as deeply by his love for his mother, whose death, unlike his father's, he unwillingly witnesses. In a sense Hamlet is now freed to act out the part he has been trying to play throughout. Ironically, his mother's and not his father's death moves him to play it to the hilt.¹⁰

Two other figures have significant roles in the final scene, Horatio and Fortinbras. The former has been performing as observer of the duel, as he did in the play-within scene, and as he has done throughout the play. His significant act, to be performed after the play's close, is to confirm Hamlet's claims about the Ghost and to explain the method behind Hamlet's apparent madness. He must repair Hamlet's “wounded name,” a duty that nicely suits the emerging mood of soldierly virtue established by the sound of drums. We should also note that Hamlet's story is not told on stage but deferred to a more suitable time. This decision marks an advance in Shakespearean design that can be clearly seen by comparing the close of Hamlet with that of Romeo and Juliet, where Friar Lawrence's long recounting of the star-crossed lovers' tale tends to shift the focus away from the impact of tragedy to the moral pointing of storytelling.

Horatio's character is likewise important because it reflects a stoical philosophy that seems to have influenced Hamlet's behavior after his return from the sea adventure. The patience and acceptance revealed in the hero's “readiness is all” speech (V.ii.219-226) mark a significant change in attitude from the one which led him to contemplate suicide at the play's opening.¹¹ His father's death and mother's marriage, when combined with the deception of Polonius, Ophelia, and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, had in fact transformed Hamlet into a misanthrope and misogynist. Horatio's loyalty and friendship prove to Hamlet that not everyone has deserted him; and these qualities appear to issue from Horatio's philosophy as much as from his person. By having his hero take on the stoical outlook of his friend, Shakespeare casts the murder of Claudius in a mold that more closely resembles the form of justice than that of misanthropic revenge. Such elevation gives this ending a quality of righteousness that is lacking in the ending of Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy, which it in many ways resembles. It is precisely because Hamlet has come to behave more like his trusting and noble friend that we feel even more deeply the tragedy of his loss.

Fortinbras, on the other hand, represents the decisive, “heroic” personality Hamlet identifies with his father and with the character of the proper avenger. Yet while Fortinbras is certainly an avenging son, his claim is the weakest of the three. His father, unlike Hamlet's or Laertes', died in honorable fashion in a fair, chivalric fight; the land he lost to Denmark was part of the pre-duel agreement. Yet we have noticed out of the corner of our eye throughout the play that Fortinbras needs little reason to act boldly and defiantly. Claudius had tried to control this upstart through the efforts of his counterpart, Old Norway, hoping he would prove to be as resourceful as Claudius believes he is in controlling Hamlet. But Fortinbras keeps one step ahead of his uncle-enemies, finally asking for permission to travel through Denmark to confront his Polish enemies. While Hamlet marvels at the will of this daring prince, who appears to be ready to cast away his life for a small patch of ground, we must be aware that Fortinbras may have other motives for travelling through Denmark. He seems to combine courage and craft, the lion and the fox, in his nature, even though we only glimpse his character in flashes.¹² Fortinbras restores the soldierly ideal that is identified with the age of Hamlet's father; he is also the doctor come to cure Denmark of the machiavellian sickness that has brought it low. We must likewise regard him as the inheritor of a throne he has not had to raise a sword to win. Standing side by side at the close, Horatio and Fortinbras represent the stoical and martial types, the two aspects of character that were not allowed to develop in Hamlet in Claudius' stifling climate of intrigue, corruption, and poison. (Although Fortinbras has been cut from Olivier's film, Horatio performs the role Shakespeare obviously intended for him by leading a procession of bearers up the steps of the castle, with the accompaniment of drum beats, to place Hamlet's body on the highest platform.) As Fortinbras declares, “The soldiers' music and the rite of war / Speak loudly for him.”

2

While such an ending is arresting in its own right, Shakespeare takes care to enhance its effect by recalling parallels with the opening. The court audience, for example, is in the position of frightened viewer of events that seem to be directed by supernatural forces. They see a “ghost” in the figure of an avenging Hamlet assassinating the king. Like his father's ghost in the opening scene, moreover, Hamlet does not reveal the reasons for his actions; this responsibility rests with Horatio, who attempted an explanation for the spirit's appearance in the opening. In another parallel, Hamlet's request of Horatio—“If thou didst ever hold me in thy heart, Absent thee from felicity awhile, … To tell my story”—echoes Hamlet's father's request of his son. Neither father nor son has been given the satisfaction of telling the whole story of Claudius's villainy; Horatio, like Hamlet in the play proper, is in the end the sole witness to events that have mystified others in the court. Again recalling the theatrical metaphor, we understand that Shakespeare develops the theme of appearance and reality by posing situations in which two distinct audiences perceive different realities in events played out before them.¹³

We have already noted the points of comparison and contrast between Horatio's account of the duel involving Hamlet's father and Old Fortinbras and the play's final duel. The contrast is particularly instructive of the decline of martial values that Fortinbras' emergence partly retards. This theme of chivalry decayed has not received much attention from critics of Hamlet, yet its significance bears directly on the conflict between Hamlet and Claudius. Claudius has not only murdered Hamlet's father; he has also stifled honor and single-combat as a means of settling disputes. In setting a machiavellian model for kingly conduct, e.g., trying to control Fortinbras through Old Norway, using his influence with the English king to destroy Hamlet, Claudius invites others to follow his lead. Polonius, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, and Osric are all spawned from the same swamp of deceit and intrigue, and that swamp was created by Claudius. One would never expect to find Claudius involved in single-combat, a fact that contributes to Fortinbras' easy victory in the end. Ironically, Horatio's rationalization for the Ghost's appearance—that Denmark fears invasion from Norway—proves to be true when Claudius fails to successfully meet and throw back the Norwegian forces. In an important contrast, Shakespeare shows us that while Hamlet's father lived comfortably in a suit of armor, Claudius is a creature used to court robes, a master of entertainments and deceptions.

The ritual tension created by the Ghost's appearance and disappearance in the opening is repeated in the three-stage duel at the end. Shakespeare employs incremental repetition in both scenes to provide considerable suspense and excitement. The Ghost makes two appearances in the first scene, establishing the basis for the third and decisive meeting with Hamlet. We expect the third encounter to be crucial precisely because the triadic device is so much a part of mythic formulas of storytelling. In the final duel, Hamlet touches Laertes twice, after which a breathing space allows time for Gertrude to drink the poisoned wine. As the participants struggle for the third time, Laertes wounds Hamlet, after which they scuffle and exchange rapiers. This combination of repetition and confusion recalls the mood that prevailed in the opening scene, where the audience is made up of Horatio and the members of the watch. Both scenes strongly suggest the presence of supernatural forces taking a hand in human affairs. Indeed, Hamlet speaks to the audience in the final scene as if they have seen a ghost: “You that look pale and tremble at this chance” (1. 336).

As in the opening scene Horatio occupies the position of informed witness. Both the soldiers and Hamlet call upon him to tell their stories in an impartial manner. Although he seeks the peace of death in the end, Horatio places loyalty to his prince over personal solace in granting Hamlet's request. This thematic point is important precisely because the other time we have seen it demonstrated was in the opening scene. Rather than telling Claudius about the war-like form of Hamlet's father, Horatio went instead to Hamlet. This act has always puzzled certain of my students, especially because it is Horatio who declares that the Ghost has come to warn them of imminent invasion. Should not the king be the first to know of this threat? After examination of his motive, it becomes clear that Horatio perceives in Hamlet the quality of royalty that would be followed. His response is almost instinctual, but it prepares us for Hamlet's assessment of Claudius' defects as a king, and for Horatio's behavior in the final scene.

Probably the most critical link with the play's opening, and with a major theme in Hamlet, is the hero's death and proposed burial. By killing Hamlet's father in his sleep, Claudius deprived him of the chance to confess his sins and thus to rest quietly in his grave. Forced to wander as a ghost, Hamlet's father seeks to “restore” his good name and to find a proper home for body and soul. The motif of huggermugger burials and disturbed graves is subsequently developed in the action. Polonius dies without confessing his many sins, requiring his hasty interment, according to Claudius, because extended obsequies might incite the people against Hamlet or, more precisely, against him. Ophelia, driven mad by Polonius's sudden death and Hamlet's cruel rejection, commits suicide and must be buried without full rites. In the gravedigger scene, moreover, Yorick's grave is wantonly disturbed, launching Hamlet into a reminiscence that leads him to contemplate the leveling power of death. More important, the gravedigger scene, which ends with Hamlet and Laertes quarreling over Ophelia's grave, enforces the lesson that because the bones of the dead may be easily disturbed a more secure home must be found for the soul. Hamlet's “The readiness is all” speech serves as a text on the importance of discovering inner peace by coming to terms with the harsh conditions of life. Hamlet's death and noble burial end the cycle of troubled rest that began with his father's murder. The solemn final funeral, accompanied by trumpets and drums, does not simply restore order; it returns the values of the soldier to a kingdom whose best members were overcome by the shadow of Claudius' ambition. Taking Hamlet's “dying voice,” Fortinbras, literally “force in arms,” inherits a Danish throne in part restored to its former stature by Hamlet's delayed but no less decisive act.

3

The language, imagery, and effects of V.ii describe a similar movement from politic practice to soldierly nobility. Of particular note is Hamlet's realization of the slippery nature of plotting and knavery. He opens the scene by recounting for Horatio his actions following the discovery of the letter from Claudius to the English king. Hamlet has outwitted his uncle by altering the death sentence so that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern take his place on the chopping block. Such an alteration reminds us of his adjustments to The Murder of Gonzago, where the nephew Lucianus (not the brother) is made the killer of the king. (The final scene could thus be described as a fulfillment of the “prophecy” delivered in the play-within.) But this alteration and the one that sends his friends to their deaths do not succeed in hoisting the true “enginer” on his own petard. Instead, Hamlet has only eliminated figures who, like Polonius, are agents of Claudius' villainy. The trick also smacks of Claudius' method of operation, forcing us to recognize that the hero now rejoices in machiavellian tricks that we have identified with his opponent. Hamlet may write off this deed to the indiscretion that “sometimes serves us well when our deep plots do pall” (l. 8-9), but we find it difficult to rest easy with a conscience that can so readily dismiss the deed. In addition, Hamlet tells Horatio that he has fastened the new letter with his father's seal, a detail that points to a further perversion of the family's name. Hamlet coolly dismisses the deaths of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern with a hollow-sounding aphorism: “ ’Tis dangerous when the baser nature comes / Between the pass and fell incensed points / Of mighty opposites” (l. 60-62). This statement looks backward and forward; it is a kind of summing up of the plot. Polonius and Ophelia have stepped between Hamlet and Claudius, and, according to the sense of the metaphor, they have paid for their intrusion into the contest with their lives. Even before the entrance of Osric, another figure of baser nature, we are prepared to receive the final confrontation of Hamlet and Claudius as a dueling match in which “innocent” victims must also fall.

Of greater importance to the poetic and thematic texture of this final scene—and the play—is Hamlet's observation that “There's a divinity that shapes our ends, Rough-hew them how we will” (l. 10-11). This figure draws a sharp contrast between divine and human craftsmanship. Not only has the hero realized his own limitations in directing Claudius' demise, he has also admitted to the existence of a design or order in nature that approximates justice. To follow the language of the theatrical metaphor, Hamlet assents to the will of another “director” and satisfies himself with the less influential but important actor's part.¹⁴ This same divine director has also been an audience to the “bad acting” of the main characters and will now step in, following the convention of deus ex machina, to stop the succession of jumbled, confused “scenes.” Having Hamlet assess the situation in this language underscores the essential unity of dramatic art and reality, confirming the claim that “all the world's a stage.” Claudius' deed is punished in a fashion suitable to the theater world; his mask is torn away and he is revealed to all as an imposter. Finally, it is intriguing to note that Fortinbras bursts in with “Where is this sight?”, almost as if he has arrived too late to see the performance of a great tragedy.

In summarizing Claudius' evil career for Horatio, Hamlet asks a question in language that bears on another important strain of imagery in the play: “And is’t not to be damned / To let this canker of our nature come / In further evil?” Hamlet thus concludes that his purpose must be that of the doctor come to cure the rotten sickness in the state of Denmark. The deed of murder he will commit is given a purging quality, which to some extent also justifies its horror and violence. Though Hamlet may not fully realize it, he too must die because the disease has tainted his blood. The murders of Polonius and of his friends cannot be lightly dismissed, even though they may be traced to Claudius' designing hand. So Hamlet is seen as both curing and succumbing to the disease, which also strikes Laertes and his mother. The irony of the situation is enhanced by Claudius' act of placing the union in the cup of wine, thus mimicking the actions of the physician. Gertrude instead of Hamlet drinks this “health,” thereby revealing to all the destructiveness of the king's cure. Shakespeare would fully develop the contrast between true and false king-doctors in Macbeth, where the English king is described as having the power to cure with a touch, while Macbeth, like Claudius, destroys everything that he touches.¹⁵ Completing the doctor-disease motif, a dying Hamlet looks to Horatio to perform the physician's duties by telling his story and thus healing Hamlet's “wounded name.”

Mirror imagery serves to establish the reflexive quality of the closing scene. Hamlet declares about Laertes that “by the image of my cause I see / The portraiture of his.” Hamlet had earlier made a comparison of faces when he forced Gertrude to regard the differences between his Hyperion father and the satyr Claudius.¹⁶ Here he employs the mirror image to reveal that he now realizes Laertes too is forced to seek revenge for a father's murder. Discovery of this truth about Laertes signals Hamlet's maturity; he understands that he is not the only son bearing up under the burden of custom. But Laertes should not, therefore, be his enemy. The mirror distorts rather than resolves the conflict, with the result that brother is set against brother. This disjointed relationship is further corrupted when Laertes, after hearing Hamlet's genuine apology for having shot his arrow “o’er the house / And hurt my brother,” holds fast to his plan to keep his “name ungored.” Laertes knows the swords are poisoned and that the duel is rigged, yet he fails to respond nobly and rightly to Hamlet's gesture. His name has already been gored by assenting to play a part in Claudius' devious interlude. By contrast, Hamlet's magnanimity and free nature help to underscore his hero's role in this final movement of the tragedy. He may stand alone, but his isolation reveals that no other character shares the mirror of nobility with him.

The image of a distorted mirror also draws attention to a central motif of Hamlet: situations in which “purposes mistook” fall on the heads of the inventors. Although Hamlet has both invented schemes (the trapping of Claudius) and been the target of them (the voyage to England) he has managed throughout to escape the consequences of these plots. In the final scene the trap set for him is baited so well that the king (and we in the audience?) believe there is no way to slip it. Claudius convinces himself, in the language of the theater, that he alone directs the scene and that he alone knows how it will turn out. When chance or divine purpose distort the image, Claudius must exchange places with his victims, becoming ironically the “father” hunted out and murdered by his “sons.” In a play that has dwelt at some length on the topic of unnatural relationships, the destruction of Claudius confirms the significant transition back to relationships that more faithfully mirror those in nature.

4

There are other details of the final scene of Hamlet that illustrate the process of a return to order. The structural design of V.ii follows a favorite Shakespearean pattern rightly called a diptych by Mark Rose.¹⁷ In the first half of the scene (1-226), Hamlet exults in outwitting Claudius at the same time as he rationalizes the murders of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. He then engages in another fencing match of wits, this time with Osric, whose foppish nature makes him prey to the same tricks Hamlet used on Polonius. Hamlet's skill in these instances of witplay has made him perhaps overconfident about confronting Claudius and Laertes, but the final speech of this section, ending with “Let be,” conveys a sense of his new-found stoicism. While the first half of the diptych is marked by conversation that is sometimes witty, often sarcastic, the second half (227-338) bristles with noise and action. The settings shift from private walks to the public court. Much of the action in the court scene is violent and confused, threatening to Hamlet; in the first half he was firmly in control, but now other forces pull the strings. The contrast emphasizes the hero's growing isolation in a world actively engaged in covering real motives with an appearance of games and festivity. But in the transition from foolish play with Osric to more serious play (the stage directions use the word “play” to describe the encounter) with Laertes, we have reason to believe in the progress of events toward honor and nobility. Even though the main part of the scene is dominated by images of Claudius' victims falling like duckpins, the final half resounds with the steady, measured beats of a march. The impression of a return to “soldier's music” is reinforced at the critical moment of Hamlet's death, when sound effects and not just words make the thematic point. Horatio's “Now cracks a noble heart” is followed immediately by the sounds of a drum whose steady beat announces the arrival of Fortinbras at court.¹⁸The succession of one noble heart by another takes place without missing a beat. While this effect tends to go unnoticed by literary critics, audiences are genuinely moved by the stately impact of this noble noise, which also relieves the cacophony of trumpets, drums, and cannon shot that were heard after each hit during the duel. Like the doctor figure in other Shakespearean plays (see especially Cerimon in Pericles), Fortinbras's martial music applies a cure to rotten Denmark's discord; the final peal of ordnance, shot off as Hamlet's body is carried away, signals an end and a new beginning.

The appearance of Fortinbras likewise breaks the spell of the “castle as prison” that has prevailed throughout the play. It is the final stage in a process that began with the appearance of another armed visitor, Hamlet's father, at the play's beginning. This release is part of a denouement that on the surface seems to be bloody and disordered—“proud Death's feast,” in Fortinbras's words. Yet Hamlet's character has been fulfilled in the scene, achieving the tragic dimensions it did not have throughout the action. This tragic quality is part heroic and active, part reflective and philosophical. Most important, it reveals signs of acquiescence to a power beyond itself: Hamlet believes in a Providence whose plan he willingly chooses to be a part of. We realize too that a form of justice has been done in the end; Claudius, Gertrude, Laertes—all perish fittingly as victims of their own schemes or blind passion. Man has once again been shown the limits of his power and understanding, a lesson that the theatrical metaphor nicely illustrates by revealing a “director” whose authority is only glimpsed by the principal “actors.” By the end of the scene we also appreciate the fittingness of the duel as a device to represent the internal duel Hamlet has been waging with his conscience. Having won that duel, a victory that is confirmed by “The readiness is all,” Hamlet does not have to prove himself in the actual duel. This paradoxical truth gives the final scene of Hamlet a philosophical quietude that the noise and confusion cannot disturb.¹⁹

Notes

1. Bertrand Evans believes that Claudius is a victim of “sweaty haste, his mind pushed beyond its rational limits.” But Claudius shows only cool calculation in his handling of Laertes and in sending Osric to invite Hamlet to the duel. Overreaching seems to be the result of pride and not fear in Claudius' case. See Shakespeare's Tragic Practice (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1979), pp. 104-105.

2. All quotations are from Sylvan Barnet, gen ed., The Complete Signet Classic Shakespeare (New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1972).

3. V.iii.70.

4. This seems to be the position of Lily B. Campbell, Shakespeare's Tragic Heroes: Slaves of Passion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1930), pp. 141-147. She sees Hamlet as possessed by grief, which blinds him to the realities of Claudius' invitation. For a different view of his state of mind, see Derek Traversi, An Approach to Shakespeare (New York: Doubleday and Co., Inc., 1956), pp. 104-105.

5. Wendy Coppedge Sanford, Theater as Metaphor in “Hamlet” (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1967), pp. 18-21.

6. See Alan Dent, ed., Hamlet: The Film and the Play (London: World Film Publications, Ltd., 1948).

7. Hieronimo is a fatal participant in the last scene play-within, in which the King's son is slain with a real, not a stage-prop, knife. Although he does not create a formal play-within in the dueling scene, Shakespeare achieves many of the same effects—surprise, shock, the sensation of art becoming reality—Kyd achieves.

8. IV.vii.137-146.

9. For an informed discussion of the similarities and differences between Hamlet and Laertes, see Herbert R. Coursen, Jr., Christian Ritual and the World of Shakespeare's Tragedies (Lewisburg, Pa.: Bucknell University Press, 1976), pp. 145-147.

10. This idea is not understood by critics who claim that there is no difference in Hamlet's state of mind when he kills Claudius. That he is prepared (“The readiness is all”) for unforeseen consequences when he fights Laertes, however, is clear. That he has no other choice but to act after Gertrude's death and Laertes' confession is also clear. See Thomas McFarland, Tragic Meanings in Shakespeare (New York: Random House, Inc., 1966), p. 57.

11. For an intelligent tracing of the pattern of change, see Theodore Spencer, Shakespeare and the Nature of Man (New York: The Macmillan Co., 1943), pp. 107-109.

12. See especially II.ii.60-68 and IV.iv.1-29.

13. Anne Righter, Shakespeare and the Idea of the Play (London: Chatto and Windus, 1962), p. 147, argues that all audiences become one in the final scene.

14. Sanford, p. 22.

15. The chalice of wine is also a central prop in the banquet scene (III.iv) of Macbeth. There too the wine is spilled before the pretender king (Macbeth) can consecrate his “right” to rule. See Coursen, pp. 349-351.

16. III.iv.54-68.

17. Mark Rose, Shakespearean Design (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1972), p. 124.

18. V.ii.370.

19. Harry Levin, Shakespeare and the Revolution of the Times (New York: Oxford University Press, 1976), p. 49, argues that reestablishment of order cannot palliate the horror of tragic events. In his view, tragedy can be nothing other than pessimistic. As this analysis of the final scene demonstrates, the change in Hamlet's personality and philosophy underscores not only the possibility but the existence of optimism in the world of the play. A world from which Claudius has been expunged is surely on its way back to health, albeit in the control of Fortinbras.