As we all know, Hamlet is full of problems. There are some really big problems that are central to the play, for example: Why does Hamlet delay his revenge? Is the ghost really the ghost of Old Hamlet? Does Hamlet actually go mad, is he just pretending--or a little bit of both?
There are also a lot of little problems, narrative and textual questions that are a result of having multiple editions of Hamlet. For example, does Hamlet talk about his too too SOLID, too too SULLIED or even too too SALLIED flesh?
But the kinds of problems I want to talk about lie somewhere in between: they're not central to the play as a whole, but they're persistently troubling and once you see them, they're impossible to ignore.
1. Who watches Ophelia drown and why don't they save her?
In 4.7, Gertrude tells Laertes that Ophelia has drowned:
There, on the pendent boughs her coronet weeds
Clambering to hang, an envious sliver broke;
When down her weedy trophies and herself
Fell in the weeping brook. Her clothes spread wide;
And, mermaid-like, awhile they bore her up:
Which time she chanted snatches of old tunes;
As one incapable of her own distress,
Or like a creature native and indued
Unto that element: but long it could not be
Till that her garments, heavy with their drink,
Pull'd the poor wretch from her melodious lay
To muddy death.
This is a very vivid description of a slow, lingering death. In fact, it's so vivid that the image has been painted and used in cinema many times, for example, by John Everett Millais:
And more recently, in Lars von Trier's brilliant film Melancholia:
But how does Gertrude know that it happened like this? If she was the person watching Ophelia drown, why didn't she try to save her? If it was someone else, why didn't they? And why don't any of the other characters in the play seem to notice?
2. How old is Hamlet?
Throughout the play, we're led to believe that Hamlet is a pretty young man. He's a college student and unmarried; Laertes says he's still "in the youth of primy nature." All the clues lead us to believe that he's about twenty. But then in the gravedigger speech, we learn that the gravedigger started his job "the very day that young Hamlet was born" and that he's been doing it for "thirty years." So in this scene, we learn that Hamlet is thirty. Did Shakespeare change his mind? If he was thirty all along, why is he still in college? And why isn't he married?
3. Why are there so many birds in the play?
Ms. Barrios and I discussed this problem briefly the other day: to begin with, there are a lot of hawks and allusions to hawking, a medieval and Renaissance sport in which one trained hawks to catch smaller birds. Hamlet tells Rosencrantz and Guildenstern that he is "but mad north-north-west: when the wind is southerly I know a hawk from a handsaw." "We'll e'en to't like French falconers," Hamlet tells the players, and Horatio uses the falconer's cry "illo, ho, ho my lord" to which Hamlet replies, "Hillo, ho, ho boy! Come, bird, come." Claudius' comment that Hamlet has returned after being sent to England "checking at his voyage" is also drawn from falconry, as is "pitch" in the phrase "enterprises of great pitch and moment."
It's not just hawks, though. There's a reference to a rooster ("The bird of dawning"), a lapwing ("This lapwing runs away with the shell on his head"), a sparrow ("there's a special providence in the fall of a sparrow"), and a very strange comparison involving a basket of birds and an ape ("Let the birds fly, and, like the famous ape, / To try conclusions, in the basket creep, / And break your own neck down"). Does this leitmotif reveal something about the kind of world these characters inhabit? If so, what?
Please feel free to post more problems, questions, ideas or even solutions in the comments below!
There are also a lot of little problems, narrative and textual questions that are a result of having multiple editions of Hamlet. For example, does Hamlet talk about his too too SOLID, too too SULLIED or even too too SALLIED flesh?
But the kinds of problems I want to talk about lie somewhere in between: they're not central to the play as a whole, but they're persistently troubling and once you see them, they're impossible to ignore.
1. Who watches Ophelia drown and why don't they save her?
In 4.7, Gertrude tells Laertes that Ophelia has drowned:
There, on the pendent boughs her coronet weeds
Clambering to hang, an envious sliver broke;
When down her weedy trophies and herself
Fell in the weeping brook. Her clothes spread wide;
And, mermaid-like, awhile they bore her up:
Which time she chanted snatches of old tunes;
As one incapable of her own distress,
Or like a creature native and indued
Unto that element: but long it could not be
Till that her garments, heavy with their drink,
Pull'd the poor wretch from her melodious lay
To muddy death.
This is a very vivid description of a slow, lingering death. In fact, it's so vivid that the image has been painted and used in cinema many times, for example, by John Everett Millais:
And more recently, in Lars von Trier's brilliant film Melancholia:
But how does Gertrude know that it happened like this? If she was the person watching Ophelia drown, why didn't she try to save her? If it was someone else, why didn't they? And why don't any of the other characters in the play seem to notice?
2. How old is Hamlet?
Throughout the play, we're led to believe that Hamlet is a pretty young man. He's a college student and unmarried; Laertes says he's still "in the youth of primy nature." All the clues lead us to believe that he's about twenty. But then in the gravedigger speech, we learn that the gravedigger started his job "the very day that young Hamlet was born" and that he's been doing it for "thirty years." So in this scene, we learn that Hamlet is thirty. Did Shakespeare change his mind? If he was thirty all along, why is he still in college? And why isn't he married?
3. Why are there so many birds in the play?
Ms. Barrios and I discussed this problem briefly the other day: to begin with, there are a lot of hawks and allusions to hawking, a medieval and Renaissance sport in which one trained hawks to catch smaller birds. Hamlet tells Rosencrantz and Guildenstern that he is "but mad north-north-west: when the wind is southerly I know a hawk from a handsaw." "We'll e'en to't like French falconers," Hamlet tells the players, and Horatio uses the falconer's cry "illo, ho, ho my lord" to which Hamlet replies, "Hillo, ho, ho boy! Come, bird, come." Claudius' comment that Hamlet has returned after being sent to England "checking at his voyage" is also drawn from falconry, as is "pitch" in the phrase "enterprises of great pitch and moment."
It's not just hawks, though. There's a reference to a rooster ("The bird of dawning"), a lapwing ("This lapwing runs away with the shell on his head"), a sparrow ("there's a special providence in the fall of a sparrow"), and a very strange comparison involving a basket of birds and an ape ("Let the birds fly, and, like the famous ape, / To try conclusions, in the basket creep, / And break your own neck down"). Does this leitmotif reveal something about the kind of world these characters inhabit? If so, what?
Please feel free to post more problems, questions, ideas or even solutions in the comments below!