The Critical Essay Contest

Fourth Year Undergraduate

The Puzzled Will: Philosophical Ambiguity in Hamlet

English 472

Ryan O'Connell

79 Mishnock Road, West Greenwich, RI 02817

401-533-2118, OConnellr93@gmail.com

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The Puzzled Will: Philosophical Ambiguity in Hamlet

The curious dissonance established in Hamlet by repeated and intermingled validations of

Protestantism, Catholicism, Stoicism, and the Senecan revenge ethic has long produced and

disabled critical attempts to logically unify these opposed devotions. If the ghost is an innocent,

temporary resident of Purgatory, why does it invoke Senecan drama with a hellish demand for

vengeance? If Hamlet expresses in his doubt of the ghost’s legitimacy what Stephen Greenblatt

labels a “distinctly Protestant temperament” (240), why then does the reject the Anglican

moderation of mourning to instead “persever/ In obstinate condolement” two months after the

his father’s passing (1.2.93)? Moreover, if the prince can reconcile his ambiguous Christianity

with a pagan duty to seek vengeance for his father’s murder, why does the Catholic “canon

'gainst self-slaughter” exclude the “antique Roman” (1.2.133, 5.2.183), Seneca’s brave and noble

escape in death:

At whatever point you leave off living, provided you leave off nobly, your life is a whole.

Often, however, one must leave off bravely, and our reasons therefore need not be

momentous; for neither are the reasons momentous which hold us here. (Epistles

LXXVII.)

The prince is, however, faced with a momentous incentive to continue living which Seneca could

not have predicted: the Christian belief in damnation for suicides. Nonetheless, this apparent

negation of Stoic philosophy in act one is later complicated by Ophelia's drowning, as well as by

Horatio's thirst for poison in the play's final scene.

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Analysis of these curiosities does not ultimately lead to a determination of either the

play’s, or Shakespeare’s, ideological preferences. Hamlet reflects the philosophical instability of

Elizabethan England and as a result does not evaluate and choose between either Christian

denomination, nor does it prioritize either form of Senecan ideology. Even after Hamlet speaks to

his father’s ghost, “[doomed only] for a certain term to walk the night” (1.5.10), he ponders

“[the] undiscovered country from whose bourn/ No traveller returns” as if he has forgotten their

meeting (3.1.81-82). He hesitates to execute Claudius in the prayer scene for fear that the king

would be sent “To heaven” (3.3.77-8), which suggests, through his failure “to recognize the act

of kneeling as unreliable evidence of prayer, [that he has] lingering memories of the old religion”

(Watson 481). One act later the prince reconfigures himself as a “Protestant polemicist” against

the Catholic mass, alluding parodically through the rotting of Polonius the corpse to the

“Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation” (4.3, Greenblatt 240-41). While they do not lead to the

clear cut answers that criticism might prefer, these questions and contradictions suggest that

Shakespeare has purposefully characterized his Danes as philosophically bewildered to mirror

the uncertainties of philosophical devotion and adherence that the Elizabethan audience, and

particularly the crypto-Catholic members of that audience, would have considered familiar.

While contemporary criticism accepts parallels between Seneca’s tragedies and Stoicism,

Robert Miola demonstrates that “Renaissance writers commonly oppose Stoic philosophy to

passionate action as a contrary ideal” (53), and that Hamlet is no different. Miola points to the

clear differences Shakespeare draws between his ghost and those that inspired it: the poet’s

replacement of “the usual Senecan inventory of Hades' torments[,...] references to Ixion,

Sisyphus, Tityus, and Tantalus” (34), with a “[pointed refusal] to tell the secrets of his prison-

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house”; a “strangely moral posture” from which the ghost “laments the fall of [its] ‘most

seeming virtuous queen’ [1.5.46]”, and a bitter regret over “missing the sacraments before his

own death, ‘Unhous’led, disappointed, unanel’d’” (77). Shakespeare draws the inspiration for his

ghost from Senecan tragedy, but complicates its “origins and purpose” by combining its

traditionally pagan call for revenge with an undeniably Catholic allusion to Purgatory. The

relationship between spirit and prince is further complicated by Hamlet’s doubt, and its

resonance with both Senecan and reformationist metaphysics. Miola explains that, while

Hamlet’s consideration that the ghost could be a “goblin damned” or “the devil” certainly

suggests a reformationist perspective (1.4.21, 2.2.576), it “also grows naturally from the common

dubitatio of Senecan irati. Shakespeare seizes upon the momentary doubt of, say, Clytemestra or

Medea, and transforms it into a pervasive, anguished questioning that probes the validity of the

supernatural imperative and the morality of revenge action itself” (35). Christopher Star thinks

similarly, writing “[The Senecan] irati, or those wholly in the grip of passion[...] do indeed

waver and are beset by fear, [shame], and conflicting feelings, [but] they all have the means to

fight these psychological problems” (75). Hamlet certainly embodies and expands the scope of

this kind of Senecan doubt, since throughout the play he shifts regularly between seemingly

incompatible desires to enact passionate revenge against Claudius, and to learn the practice of

Horatio’s Stoic apatheia which, it seems, would justify the “self-slaughter” he desires.

By comparison, Horatio appears surprisingly consistent in his devotion to a pseudo-Stoic

philosophy, but even his resolve is tested and complicated. He is a scholar who, Marcellus

informs us, can “speak to [the ghost]” (1.1.27), and despite his eventual self identification as

"antique Roman" (5.2.283), Horatio here accepts the Catholic belief in Purgatory because of

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what he witnesses, and what he hears about the ghost from Hamlet. At the play’s close Horatio’s

triumphant self-actualization as Stoic through voluntary death is negated by Hamlet's Catholic

demand that he mourn his prince by retelling his story despite the "pain" of living in the "harsh

world" (290). Even in his dying words Hamlet can be read as shifting between revenger and

Stoic, for following his passionate execution of Claudius, he begs Horatio to “absent [himself]

from felicity a while” by forgoing his noble suicide (289). The word “felicity” subtly suggests

the prince might harbor a Stoic belief that Horatio’s suicide would not condemn his soul to Hell.

David Beauregard argues that “[the] Catholic tradition, stemming from Aquinas[...] to

Suarez in the sixteenth century, allowed for tyrannicide under certain conditions” (93), but

though his argument is tempting, it is clear at the end of the play that Hamlet’s Senecan revenge

is incompatible with the Christianity of Elizabethan England and fictional Denmark. An

explanation can be found in the debate between Low and Greenblatt on Purgatory, where Low

argues that the Reformationist denouncement of Purgatory, functioning as an unconscious first

step toward modern society’s “autonomous individualism” (443), necessarily produced a

separate but “essential paradigm of modernity[:...]killing the father.” Low defines the phrase as

signifying “an attack on patriarchal tradition” which, “for the great majority of Shakespeare’s

contemporaries who were still Christian” (446), promised “complete autonomy from the past.”

One of the state's greatest motivations for denouncing Purgatory and prayer for the dead was

greed, as the erasure of these traditions from communal conscience and memory made possible

the confiscation of funds willed by the dead to the endowment of prayers, masses, indulgences,

elaborate funerals, or other “practices of popular piety” which Christians hoped might expedite

their ascension to Heaven (452). Hamlet’s “Thrift, thrift, Horatio. The funeral baked meats/ Did

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coldly furnish forth the marriage tables” touches very close to such a stately appropriation of

funerary funds (1.2.179-180). Of course it is Claudius who kills Hamlet’s father, but despite the

ghost’s injunction to be remembered, Hamlet never prays for his father’s soul, nor does anyone

pray for Ophelia’s in the wake of her suicide. Instead of remembering his father in Catholic

terms, Hamlet focuses rather on seeking vengeance for his death:

He does not forget his father, he remembers him—insofar as he is capable. Unwittingly

Hamlet implicates himself, as all the younger generation are unwittingly implicated, in

the hidden crime committed by the fathers. That crime, paradoxically, was to kill the

fathers. (Low 465)

Even if Hamlet’s execution of Claudius were justified from a Catholic perspective, he should

expect damnation, or at least a sentence in his father’s prison-house, for his implication in the

suicide of Ophelia, and the deaths of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern against whom he also

committed the “most horrible” crime of “dispatch[ing…]/ Unhouseled, dis-appointed, unaneled”

(1.5.80, 75, 77). Indeed, a purgatorial fate is strongly suggested by Hamlet’s description of his

passing as an “arrest” by the “fell sergeant Death” (5.2.278-79). It is at least clear that the

prince's failure to pray for his father’s soul will not be corrected in the parallel mourning of his

death by Horatio. He will purchase no indulgences, nor posthumous endowment of prayers or

masses to expedite the possible ascension of his friend's spirit to Heaven.

Ophelia’s suicide is not without its own Senecan echos, just as her preceding madness is,

like Hamlet’s, not entirely without reason. She dies disgracefully offstage and is provided an

equally disgraceful funeral which, in spite of the thorough unlawfulness of her apparent suicide,

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“we [the audience] feel is unfair” (Hollernan 74). James Hollernan and Barbara Smith suggest

similarly that the morality of the play works in opposition to the churlish priests’ perspective that

Ophelia’s death is “doubtful” and therefore deserves less than the “maimèd rites” that “great

command” has forced him to provide (5.1.209, 202, 210). Hollernan looks to the ways in which

Ophelia’s mad scene suggests a coherent preservation of Polonius’ even more thoroughly

suppressed funeral rites. He argues that Ophelia’s songs “[recount] his death, [recall] his aged

appearance” and “[create] his funeral procession” through the images they invoke of her

weeping by his graveside (83), and “[providing] him with a prayer-epitaph (‘God 'a' mercy on his

soul!’). Her “distribution of flowers” and later “[prayer] for the souls of all Christians” likewise

suggest to Hollernan a completion of Polonius’ rites (83). Where Hollernan focuses on the play's

corruption of ritual, Smith argues through Freud’s conception of unconscious intentions that

there are “plausible reasons embedded in Ophelia’s unconscious for the action she [takes],” as

her madness is “the outcome of a neglected, fearful psyche confronted by impossible demands

and unbearable emotional trauma” (108). Whether Ophelia seeks her death by drowning

consciously or unconsciously, it is clear that she succeeds where Horatio only considers

“[leaving] off bravely” (Epistles LXXVII.).

Ophelia’s death, like Hamlet’s, also serves more to complicate the relationships between

philosophies than to clarify them. The Stoic ideology that would justify such a brave exit is

denounced by the aforementioned restriction of her funeral rites, and echoed parodically through

the competition between Hamlet and Laertes that occurs at Ophelia's funeral. Miola demonstrates

that “Laertes’ hyperbole at Ophelia’s grave[...] echoes Hercules’ outburst in Seneca’s Hercules

Furens” through his allusions to the mountains Ossa, Pelion, and Olympus (43). Hamlet’s direct

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invocation that follows shortly after, “Let Hercules himself do what he may” (5.1.276), makes

explicit Shakespeare’s recognition of the Senecan inspiration. Miola summarizes the

protagonists’ similarities, such as their common goal to “face a tyrant and usurper” (44), and

their shared madness. The glaring differences between the two are the Hercules does not hesitate,

but “rapidly disposes of Lycus off-stage[,...] conquers Hell and finally—in Hercules Oetaeus,

that is—wins a place in the stars” (44). Hamlet “ends up with a soldier’s funeral” (44), but as we

have already seen, it is left unclear where his soul departs to, or if it can be assumed to live on at

all. Ophelia’s funeral not only brings Stoicism into conflict with Elizabethan theology and

Senecan drama, but also brings Catholicism and Protestantism back into conflict with each other.

Greenblatt, for example, reminds us that “[What] is at stake is not only the communal social

judgment upon Ophelia, suspected of suicide, but also the communal ritual assistance given to

the dead” (246). What Greenblatt describes in much the same as Low: “requiem masses and

other 'charitable prayers' designed to shorten the soul's purgatorial suffering and hasten its ascent

to Heaven” (Greenblatt 246). The play portrays traditional Catholic practices and rituals as

strained but lingering memories, and there are no answers in the past—in the drama or prose of

Seneca—as to whether those memories should be forgotten. As Miola suggests, “To Hamlet[,

unlike Seneca,] nature seems rather a complex and contradictory mystery than a self-evident

pattern of what is true and real in human experience” (56). The ambiguity of theological “truth”

between contemporary Protestantism and Catholicism causes Hamlet, Ophelia and Horatio to

look backward to an ancient philosophy that taunts and misleads them with its simplicity.

Greenblatt raises the specific question of whether Hamlet’s “Senecan revenge plot” can

occupy the same place as the “purgatorial system” which Shakespeare has woven throughout it,

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adding that “[sticking] a sword into someone’s body turns out to be a very tricky way of

remembering the dead” (225). As we have seen, Low’s opinion is that as the play progresses,

Hamlet appears to forget the truth of the “undiscovered country” which he faces in his early

dialogue with the ghost in act one (3.1.81), and that he unconsciously replaces the traditional

Catholic obligation to pray for his deceased father with the traditionally pagan duty to avenge

that father’s murder. Where Low considers Hamlet’s duty to seek revenge to be the only thing

holding together his memories of the ghost and his father, Greenblatt provides ample evidence to

demonstrate rather that Hamlet’s memory of the ghost’s origin is not so weak. For example, Low

suggests that Hamlet’s vow to “trip [Claudius] that his heels may kick at heaven” implies that he

“seems not to remember why his father three times condemned his uncle’s deed as ‘horrible’

(Hamlet 3.3.93, Low 459). Greenblatt, on the contrary, points to Hamlet’s dilemma over whether

he will be "revenged / To take [Claudius] in the purging of his soul, / When he is fit and seasoned

for his passage" (3.3.84-86). He sees the prince’s use of the word “purging,” as suggesting “links

[between] prayer in this world (and the preparation or seasoning of a soul for the ‘passage’ to the

other world) to the purgation that may or may not follow” (232). Greenblatt records several other

passages that express Hamlet’s Catholic consideration of “a middle state between Heaven and

Hell” (233), such as his oath by Saint Patrick (1.5.140), which Low also acknowledges but

quickly dismisses as an isolated example of “Hamlet's thoughts [straying] momentarily” (460).

Greenblatt, however, goes on to demonstrate for the first time how Hamlet's words “[hic] et

ubique” in act one “are specifically connected to a belief in Purgatory” (Hamlet 1.5.158,

Greenblatt 235). He explains that the phrase, “here and everywhere,” can be used to represent

“the omnipresence of God” (234), or as a Catholic prayer of remembrance for the dead: “God's

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mercy and forgiveness[...] on behalf of all those souls here and everywhere[...] who rest in

Christ” (234).

Greenblatt’s analysis is ultimately no more successful in conclusively identifying

Hamlet’s theological affiliations than Low’s or any other critic’s, but he affirms that “whether the

apparition is ‘Catholic’ or ‘Protestant,’[...]whether it comes from Purgatory or from Hell[,...]the

many players in the long-standing critical game have usefully called attention to the bewildering

array of hints that the play generates” (239). Low considers that “[as] the play ends, Hamlet and

Laertes repent and generously forgive each other” but maintains that this is still not enough

evidence to align the prince definitively with a single philosophical perspective. He rests his

analysis on the conclusion that Shakespeare consistently “[refuses] to define Hamlet’s religion”

(464), but stresses that for both Elizabethan England and fictional Denmark, “The focus [has]

turned from community and solidarity, with the dead and the poor, toward self-concern and

individual self-sufficiency” (466). Seneca uses revenge plots partly to “diminish the individuality

of revengers, depicting them as parts of a larger historical design that encompasses other crimes

and generations” (Miola 35), but when Hamlet resigns himself to fate in the moments preceding

the fatal duel, he relinquishes himself from that revenger role. By so “directly [challenging] the

dramatic models [he] evokes and imitates” (Miola 67), Shakespeare seems at first to negate

Seneca's influence in the play; the prince's decision to resign himself to fate is quickly undone,

however, as Claudius' murder plot unravels and Hamlet again resolves to execute him viciously.

Curiously, it is only after Hamlet’s “Horatio, I am dead” (5.2.280), the prince’s self-identification

in terms which Greenblatt states “are most appropriately spoken by a ghost” (229), that Horatio

identifies himself as a Stoical “antique Roman” (5.2.284). Although Horatio does not get to

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complete his noble self-sacrifice, Hamlet’s suggestion that his friend need only “Absent

[himself] from felicity a while” (5.2.289, my emphasis), does not imply that his consideration of

suicide is morally unacceptable or even ill-advised. Rather than finally clarifying the play's

philosophical ambiguities, Hamlet’s dying proposition to his friend seems meant to preserve the

uncertainties between Stoicism, Senecan revenge ethic, and Christianity. In this final scene

neither Hamlet nor Horatio appear to consider the possibility that the prince could face

damnation or purgation, nor that the act of suicide could have consequences. Finally, despite his

Stoic lack of fear, the reasons for Horatio to live on a while longer ultimately are momentous,

for he survives not only to repair Hamlet’s reputation but also to repair Denmark alongside

Fortinbras.

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Works Cited

Beauregard, David. “'Great Command O'ersways The Order'.” Catholic Theology in

Shakespeare's Plays. Cranbury, NJ: Associated University Presses, 2008. 86-108. Print

Greenblatt, Stephen. "Remember Me." Hamlet in Purgatory. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP,

2001. 205-57. Print.

Hollernan, James V. “Maimed Funeral Rites in Hamlet” English Literary Renaissance 19.1

(1989): 65-93. Wiley Online Library. Web. 16 November 2014.

Hui, Andrew. “Horatio’s Philosophy in Hamlet.” Renaissance Drama 41.1 (2013): 151-71.

JSTOR. Web. 13 November 2014.

Low, Anthony. “Hamlet and the Ghost of Purgatory: Intimations of Killing the Father.” English

Literary Renaissance 29.2 (1999): 443-67. Wiley Online Library. Web. 3 December

2014.

Miola, Robert S. "Hamlet."Shakespeare and Classical Tragedy: The Influence of Seneca.

Oxford: Clarendon, 1992. 32-67. Print.

Seneca, Lucius Annaeus, and John W. Basore. "EPISTLE LXXVII." Seneca in Ten Volumes.

Cambridge, MA.: Harvard UP, 1968. 171. Print.

Shakespeare, William, and Stephen Greenblatt. "Hamlet." The Norton Shakespeare. New York:

W.W. Norton, 1997. 1683-784. Print.

Smith, Barbara. “Neither Accident nor Intent: Contextualizing the Suicide of Ophelia.” South

Atlantic Review 73.2 (2008): 96-112. JSTOR. Web. 3 November 2014.

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Star, Christopher. “Soul-Shaping Speech.” The Empire of the Self: Self-Command and Political

Speech in Seneca and Petronius. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press,

2012. 74-76. Print.