Context

Protestant vs Catholic Church

• Uncertainty and confusion surrounding the nature of his father’s ghost - ‘majestical’ or ‘guilty’ (contrasting adjectives underscore enigmatic nature). For contemporary Elizabethan audiences, this ‘ghost’ would have elicited similarly conflicting opinions, as Hamlet is a product of the Reformation, written at the end of the 16th century after which Protestantism (headed by Martin Luther) was eclipsing Catholicism. Protestants broke away from the Catholic Church, as well as the sceptical humanism of the late Renaissance, which held that there were limits on human knowledge​

• Protestant: evil spirits were on watch for an opportunity to corrupt a human soul from the path of righteousness. Ghosts were believed to be a deception of the devil​

• Catholics: concept of purgatory was important to Catholics. They believed ghosts were the spirits of the departed who returned in order to disclose a crime, and that it was a religious duty to help them find rest​

• Catholic church denied in favour of Martin Luther (from University of Wittenberg), who started the move towards Protestantism​

• this dichotomy of conflicting interpretations not only reflects competing schools of thought in Elizabethan England, but also Hamlet’s contradiction between …

Renaissance

• The Renaissance marked a shift towards Humanism, emphasising the exploration of individual potential and complex human characters. Hamlet's indecision, existential questioning ('to be or not to be') and emotional turmoil illustrates the Renaissance interest in psychological depth – the ability to think freely​

• 'Hamlet' is rich with references to classical antiquity, a hallmark of Renaissance literature. The play includes allusions to Greek and Roman stories, and Hamlet's contemplation of revenge parallels classical themes of vengeance found in ancient tragedies​

• Hamlet is arguably the type of the perfect Renaissance man, the ideal to which noblemen of the period aspired (personified by figures such as Leonardo Da Vinci or Sir Walter Raleigh), who had to be a poet, courtier, scholar, soldier, philosopher and lover. These attributes were believed to raise man to his highest level physically, intellectually and spiritually, to make him a paragon of all the manly virtues and a 'rose of the fair state'. Hamlet is deeply disappointed and cast down by the failure of others to live up to this ideal because of their limitations caused by foolishness, ignorance or corruption. 

Societal doubt

• 'Hamlet' was born into the culture of Western Europe, whose every thought - literary or non-literary - is shaped by the Platonic presumption that the reality of anything is other than its apparent self. Hamlet is almost obsessed with this idea, saying it outright 'seems, madam? Nay, it is; I know not 'seems' - drives his suspicion​

• Argument that Shakespeare's strength lies in a highly economical rhetoric that continually forces the audience to perceive both similarity and difference at once. Paradoxically, every intellectual conjunction is also a disjunction: opposition contains shared qualities that are simultaneously the means of uniting them. Parallel grammar creates structural and metrical likeness, binding the lines together. The first two ‘doubts’ are consistent in their exploration of disbelief – for example ‘doubt that the sun doth move’ as a culturally accepted truth post Copernican and Galilean theories. However, the anaphora of ‘doubt’ in the third line syntactically unites the lines yet simultaneously separates them: disbelief that ‘truth to be a liar’ is a logical necessity, therefore ‘doubt’ here must mean ‘believe’ or ‘incline to believe.’ The concept of ‘doubt’ ironically becomes a site of contradiction, reflecting Hamlet’s epistemological uncertainty. However, as a doubter, Hamlet cannot be considered idiosyncratic; his intellectual anxiety was widely shared by the socio-cultural climate of late Elizabethan England, with emerging Renaissance ideas of uncertainty, the Reformation and Humanist concerns over the instability of knowledge.

Humanism

• An intellectual and cultural movement that emerged during the Renaissance period. It explains the world in terms of human reason and natural law without relying on religion, myth or the supernatural​

• Hamlet's constant anxiety about the difference between appearance and reality, as well as his difficulties with religion (the sinfulness of suicide, the unfairness that killing a murderer whilst praying would result in sending him to heaven) can be seen as directly influenced by Humanist thought.​

• Hamlet invokes and attempts to conduct himself according to humanist ideals – he values education, admires Horatio's reason and balance, sees himself as a 'scholar'​

HOWEVER​

• 'For virtue cannot so inoculate our old stock but we shall relish it' - assaults Ophelia with language based on the concept of original sin. This directly contradicts humanism, exposing that we are fundamentally corrupt and that no education or virtue can repair this. This sounds less like a Renaissance humanist and more like Protestant theology that emphasises human depravity​

• Omar Alsaif: Shakespeare presents Hamlet as a Renaissance humanist whose faith in Stoicism, education and moral reason collapses under the pressure of political corruption and Protestant ideals of human depravity – leaving him ideologically unhoused in a world where no belief system fully works. 

Great Chain of Being

• The Elizabethans inherited from medieval theology the concept of a hierarchical chain of being.  This descends from God, Angel, King, Man, Woman, Animal, Vegetable, Mineral​

• This belief in divine order exposes the societal objection to women ruling men. It also explains why it was believed that failure to apply reason reduced humans to the animal state of being, governed by appetite and instinct. In Shakespeare, a human who falls below the level of man into the realm of bestiality is labelled a monster. ​

Microcosm-macrocosm

• The microcosm/macrocosm medieval theory influential in Shakespeare’s time was that the king, ruled by reason, was the head and centre of the body politic (i.e. the state). If he gave way to passion or misjudgement, the consequences would ripple outwards like a stone throw into a pond, causing a breakdown of normal relations at every level – family, court, state. ​

• At the time, a king was believed to have a ‘divine right’ to rule – that is, to have been appointed by God and to be superior to normal mortals. Therefore, the killing or usurping of a king was considered a grave offence which attracted devastating consequences for the whole country.​

Aristotelian tragedy

• Aristotle's Poetics was the first attempt to define the characteristics of tragedy and its effect upon the spectator​

• The action is focused on a single character (protagonist)with a high reputation who is not wholly evil but is not wholly good and whose fall is not due to deliberate wrongdoing.​

• The protagonist’s excessive human pride, self-belief or self-importance (hubris) leads to the error of judgement and fatal flaw (hamartia) which brings about their downfall.​

• There is a moment of recognition (anagnorisis) when the protagonist recognises his error of judgement.​

Unconventional nature of Shakespearean tragedies

• Wallace: Shakespeare's tragedies are unconventional, which is perhaps influenced by the social climate of the late 16th and early 17th century Renaissance England, which saw changes in religious, political and philosophical thinking​

• Ways in which Hamlet is unconventional in comparison to a Classical Tragedy​
  - Plot is driven by delay rather than swift action, undermining the classical belief that reason leads to virtue and action. Instead, Hamlet's thoughts obstruct action​
  - Moral certainty collapses: conventional tragedy assumes gods and moral order are ultimately just, whereas in Hamlet the Ghost may be truthful or demonic, and revenge may be justice or sin​

• Reflects social changes such as the reformation, with the collapse of Catholic moral unity and competing Protestant ideologies , and Renaissance ideals promoting introspection over action​

Revenge tragedy

• A sub-genre of tragedy that flourished during the Elizabethan and Jacobean eras. The genre of revenge tragedy introduced a significant rendering that distinguishes itself from the classical depiction of Greco-Roman tragedies. Included Machiavellian villains, supernatural elements, mad characters, graphic depictions of mutilation/death, plays within plays ​

• Protagonist of revenge tragedies is typically a noble character driven to deceit and cunning in order to avenge a terrible wrong​

• Bradley: The main feature of a Shakespearean tragedy is that the protagonist was a high-ranking figure that experienced a dramatic misfortune resulting in death​

• Mack: Madness allows freedom of speech, but that these insights might be dismissed as merely fiction or nonsense​

O’Toole: Hamlet cannot be a tragic hero as he does not descend from the top of fortune’s wheel to the bottom. He is, rather, at a low ebb when we first see him, and remains on the same plans throughout the play

Is revenge necessary? (Goethe and Plato)

• Goethe's sentimental theory: Hamlet is 'without strength of nerve' to constitute himself as a hero. Too sensitive and tied up in his own emotions to be an effective revenger​

• However, this critique is falsified in soliloquy, for Hamlet's need to 'have grounds more relative than this. 'Hamlet's uncertainty is not necessarily a negative force in the play – an element of his own psyche needed for him to become an effective revenger in a Renaissance period characterised by a fledgling law system​

• Hamlet never promises his father that he will get revenge, instead he states ‘now to my word, it is ‘adieu adieu, remember me,’ I have sworn’t’. ‘Sworn’t’ suggests that the only promise Hamlet ever makes is to remember his father (not necessarily to revenge). The Greek philosopher Plato once suggested that the best way to honour the dead is to ‘keep them alive in the minds of the living’ - the idea that the greatest gift Hamlet can give is a promise of his memory

Attitudes towards suicide

• The church believes that suicide meant being in a state of ‘unsound mind’, proving that the victim had fallen into the sin of despair, and therefore a lack of belief in Christ’s mercy

• Suicide was considered to be self-murder and therefore counter to God’s will (biblical commandment ‘thou shalt not kill’, viewed as a form of self-murder) and human prerogative (until 1960 it was a criminal offence, and an unsuccessful attempt could result in arrest)