“King Lear”, centres itself on the division of a kingdom between three daughters of Lear. Before they are gifted with any land they must first orally acclaim and quantify their love for their father. This leads to the banishment of Cordelia the one honest and loving daughter of Lear and the rise of, and eventual take over by, Lear’s remaining and sycophantic offspring. Lear goes mad as his daughters reveal their true natures and ingratitude, turning him away from their homes. This plot is mirrored by the subplot of Gloucester’s sons. On of whom, Edgar, is forced to flee and feign madness to prevent his capture or killing because of the deceptions of his overly ambitious brother, Edmund.
“Hamlet”, is an examination of the pain a son suffers when his father is murdered by his uncle. Shakespeare looks in detail, at the nature of procrastination and the torments that Hamlet suffers after his father’s ghost begs him for revenge. Hamlet is portrayed as a tragic hero; a character more sinned against than sinning. Despite his best efforts to act honourably, he is confused by his mother’s marriage to his uncle, lost as to what should be done regards the ghosts commands and tormented by his own lack of action. These troubles frequently manifest themselves in Hamlet through what appears to be madness. His sweetheart, Ophelia, is driven mad by the occurrences in Denmark, including Hamlet’s murder of her father, Polonius.
In order to have a full understanding of villainy in “Hamlet” and “King Lear” it is necessary to accept that there are two forms; the passive, that is to say deception, and the active, that is to say obvious acts of cruelty or evil. Such subtle distinctions can often give great insight into the direction or nuances of characters. These divisions must be remembered with one other important fact in mind; the basic instincts of human perception. It goes against the grain of mortals’ arrogance to suggest in a play that a character may be purely evil and embroidered with intelligence, wit, cunning, grace or any other feature that the audience would look on and call merit. Human nature is compelled into a state of admiration when these “virtues” are encountered. And so Shakespeare is driven to compensate for what the audience cannot ignore by involving some redeeming feature in any villain’s character. These features reassure that such qualities cannot be possessed and not instil good on their holder or at least that the evil was understandable through them. Shylock had the loss of his daughter, Macbeth the victory of battle and Claudius has his guilt, his intelligence and attempt to save his wife from being poisoned. Shakespeare thus stops guilt turning to incomprehensible monstrosity. That he could approach the exposure of this restrictive peculiarity in Iago is testament to his genius.
With all of the above in mind it seems most reasonable that Claudius, Hamlet, Laertes, Regan, Goneril and Edmund are examined not as villains but as adding to Shakespeare’s portrayal of villainy.
It was not without forethought that this very problem of apparent incoherence between admirable features and villainy is addressed by Edmund’s immediate introduction. He is afterall, an intelligent, articulate, determined and powerful young man. There would seem to be something lacking to the audience if Edmund just took a notion to remove his father and brother from power. Therefore, Shakespeare provides motive for Edmund’s bitterness as soon as line eight
I i 8 “His breeding, Sir, hath been of my charge: I have
so often blushed to acknowledge him that now I am
brazed to it.”
Thus Edmund’s very conception is reduced to a jocular matter. Gloucester worsens the situation by prolonging the discussion. He provides more evidence that Edmund might have legitimate grievances against his father. These do not have to be proportional to Edmund’s later actions they simply have to be present for Edmund’s later atrocities to be believed. Gloucester continues
Line 22 “…there was good sport at his making!, and the
whoreson must be acknowledged. Do you know this
noble gentleman, Edmund?”
A fine way indeed for Edmund to be introduced to an earl! The final line before The King enters is more telling still.
Line 31 “He hath been out nine years, and away he shall
again”
This precipitates the offensiveness of the above in its entirety. Firstly it removes any doubt that this might be a regular friendly familiarity as Edmund has not spent much time at his father’s house at all and cannot be so familiar with him. Secondly it implies a want of the father to see the son “away again”. By these methods then the villainy of Edmund is made believable and almost understandable. Certainly it cannot be claimed that Edmund wronged others solely as a result of an inherent evil.
This makes way for Goneril and Regan. There is no addition of good to their evil until much later in the play. This is made possible by dealing with Edmund early. That considered the state of Edmund is revised again towards the end of his life. It is ingenious that, in this revision, Shakespeare also addresses the problem of redeemable features of the sisters
V iii 139“Yet Edmund was belov’d
The one the other poison’d for my sake,
And after slew herself”
Highlighting his own initial grievance, his feeling unloved, while almost exonerating the sisters by painting them as having a sense of selflessness about them. One has died because she loved him and one having taken her own life, through guilt.
The characterisation in “Hamlet” is a little less mechanical which is likely a result of the character differences being slightly more subtle.
Portrayal of villainy in “Hamlet” is more successful than in Lear. This is not because a finer balance is stuck between good and evil in characters. Rather, it is as a result of the finer grades of villainy and its reality. The play requires this extra depth in this area because Hamlet is not portrayed as the same as Claudius but does commit terrible acts. The audience must, therefore, distinguish between who is being a villain because they are one and who is being cruel to be kind. Take Claudius for example, he is certainly passively a villain. He deceives and twists truths so that he might gain. The killing of his brother is done passively. This way he does not acquire his desired situation by staring evil or consequences straight in the face but by some third way. His attempt to kill Hamlet is done through the mechanism of Laertes. And yet, his acts are not all together different than Hamlet’s. By the end of the play Hamlet has killed more people than Claudius, and with just as little reason. The main difference is in the type of villainy, Hamlet never commits this when alone and there is always honesty in it. Claudius reeks of superficiality from the out. His first speech (I ii) introduces the subtlety of Claudius’s villainy.
“Yet so far hath discretion fought with nature,
That we with wisest sorrow think on him
Together with remebrance of ourselves.
Therefore our sometime sister, now queen,
Th’imperial jointress to this warlike state,
Have we, as ‘twere with a defeated joy,
With an auspicious and a dropping eye,
With mirth in funeral and with dirge in marriage,
In equal scale weighing delight and dole,
Taken to wife. Nor have we barr’d
Your better wisdoms, which have freely gone
With this affair along.”
Claudius is very articulate and this gives an impression of his being a successful King confident in his role. It also provides a better feature that the audience might weigh against his faults. However, the subtleties of his speech hint at a more controlling, manipulative man. What he wishes that his audience think is spaced between meaningless qualifications.
Since he has not long killed him Claudius does not want to think of his brother, but rather himself “with remembrance of ourselves”. He has “taken to wife”. And he wishes that the populous will freely go “with this affair along”. The speech between these actualities is purely oxymoronic and insinuates the hypocrisy of his character. He claims to be crying and smiling at the same time, that he has weighed equally delight and depression and that his joy has been subdued by his sadness. Always Shakespeare puts opposites as qualifications. Illustrating that, even in his talents, Claudius is not honest.
The difference between Laertes and Claudius when killing also provides good evidence of this subtle distinction between villainous acts. As with Claudius’s praying scene it is the guilt of the act that troubles him most, not the act itself. Indeed the king’s aside upon the queen’s death of “It is the poisoned cup. It is too late.” shows itself as such. It echoes Claudius’s earlier attempt at prayer where he struggles to repent because he continues to enjoy the benefits of his villainy.
III iii 56 “My stronger guilt defeats my strong intent,
And, like a man to double business bound,
I stand in pause where I shall first begin,
And neglect both.”
In short Claudius is troubled by the guilt after he commits a crime but would do so again if it came to it. He feels as bound to the wealth of things he now enjoys as to his guilt. He would risk killing his wife again if it meant a chance to kill Hamlet.
Laertes on the other hand is troubled by the idea of killing and displays some of the procrastination that Hamlet does.
V ii 300 “And yet it is almost against my conscience”
Laertes’ honesty about his poisoning Hamlet and revealing the King’s treachery help to paint him as an honest villain. His talk of justice also gives a feeling that he understands the idea of repentance; he is willing to surrender what villainy has gifted him.
V ii 312 “Why, as a woodcock to mine own springe, Orsic.
I am justly kill’d with mine own treachery.”
Then, upon Hamlet’s killing of the King
333 “He is justly serv’d.
It is a poison temper’d by himself.”
Being in the heat of an act and fearing for his life, it is Claudius’s character not to repent but to preserve himself. So he dies asking for help, not forgiveness. This omission would have damned him to hell in the eyes of an Elizabethan audience.
It is, therefore, the intent and the character that lie behind the villainy which say most about how evil it is. Claudius is perhaps the most evil of all the characters explored because he seeks to gain what he wants through pre-meditated villainy. This is planned in such a way that no one is to be able to point to him and say villain. The thought and escapism that are part of this give him an air of cowardice that is similar to Edmund’s. Claudius is made the richer by the subtle differences that exist between him and characters like Hamlet and Laertes. They do themselves commit acts of evil. But the feeling the audience receives is that they are not themselves villains. This is precisely because their villainy is of an honest kind and is presented to the audience through their own perspective, every stage honestly explained, every step shown to be not for their own gain but for some other reason.
Perhaps the reason that “King Lear” appears to be more mechanical in its portrayal of villainy is because it lacks the contrast between those who commit evil for their own ends and those who choose the lesser of two opposing evils.
While Edmund’s evil is similar to Claudius’s Shakespeare makes excuses for him early on and makes sure that he is redeemed at the end of his life. He is not damned to hell or dishonest to the last like Claudius. But the characteristics of Edmund, Goneril and Regan are more alike than Claudius, Hamlet and Laertes. There is no contrast between why villainy is committed in Lear.
There is however, a contrast in how it is committed. The audience has a tendency to hate deception more than it does acts of evil. If the character can remain honest to something, then there seems always a hope that they might be redeemed. This has to do with the idea of perfect evil being almost impossible to portray, which was dealt with earlier. If a character has resilience, determination and more importantly consistency it follows, or so the audience perceives, that there must be some good about them. The reason therefore, that Edmund requires obvious motivation or excuse for his deeds, is not that they are much worse than Goneril or Regan’s, they mirror them, but that they are preformed through deception. Shakespeare divides the villainy of two forms between his two threads of what is essentially the same story. The passive villainy is Edmund’s and the active belongs to the sisters.
These divisions in “King Lear” do lend the play a certain child like feeling of separation between those who are good and those that are evil. The contrast, for example, between the saintliness of Cordelia and the devil that seems to posses her sisters is very strong. The reason, arguably, that ambiguity in Hamlet has fascinated for so long is precisely because he captures something of the reality of the victory of justice. It is hardly ever as straight forward as good guys win bad guys loose. Yes, it was an ill judgement on the part of Lear to hand over power to his two evil daughters. But can that fault really balance the evil of his daughters? Can it really be compared to the perpetual moral examination of and continuing advancement by Hamlet towards acts that he despises Claudius for? The reason that “Hamlet” ’s portrayal of villainy is greater than in “King Lear” is because it paints evil as something that must be undertaken in order to preserve justice, a sense of order or simply calm. And in doing so forces the audience to examine what evil must be done by good people in the name of beliefs. In short, villainy in “Hamlet” is most successful because it points to the audience and asks of them what they would undertake should they believe it to be right; it fulfils the nature of all tragedy in that it forces self examination.