“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. 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 regarding 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.
“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.
To address the question, all of Shakespeare’s tragic heroes are developed in essentially the same way. First the writer derives an interesting character, who need not necessarily have features that present themselves as flaws but, rather, possesses interesting quirks, which largely define them. Second, Shakespeare places these characters into the situation most disagreeable with their nature and, using their actions and discomfort, examines the depths of human nature and, ultimately, forces the audience’s examination of themselves. Othello, struggling against racism, was put into a situation of self doubt. Macbeth, a man of great material ambition, was given the chance to take all that he wanted.
However, that is not to say that the final tragedy of the play is always contributed to equally by both the hamartia and the conflicts within the worlds which the characters inhabit. I will argue that the balance is distributed exactly oppositely in “Hamlet” and “King Lear”. The credit for the tragedy of “Hamlet” belongs firstly to his hamartia and secondly to his surroundings, “King Lear” being the opposite.
King Lear’s flaw itself is perhaps the best piece of evidence to support this. He is selfish. He is too much in the habit of being beloved by his daughters. Yet it is the best kind of selfishness, he derives a joy from the happiness and love of his daughters (I i 8 “Now, our joy/ although our last, and least”). It is a selfishness characteristic of a loving soul, who is happy through the happiness of others. This flaw, coupled with the verity and habit that sovereignty have given him change his desire to be beloved into a right and disobeying it treason. The banishment of Cordelia and Kent, the empowerment of the sycophantic Goneril and Regan, results.
And yet, much of Lear’s downfall is contributed to not by his flaw but by what takes place after the hamartia has made all of the changes it ever will. At any rate, the fundamental clash in the play is not a warring within the self as it is in Hamlet but rather a battle between the differing philosophies of the generations. King Lear and Gloucester are symbolic of respect for authority and loyalty. As a result the returns of characters that sympathise with them (Kent, Cordelia and Edgar) act as outposts of hope and, finally, the concluding powers that bring the play back to a state of order. Goneril, Regan and Edmund are directly opposed to any idea of loyalty or authority or respect or order. They are destructive, propelled by greed and true selfishness they eventually consume each other. The reason that this split in philosophies is so important is that it necessitates action and problems in the world outside of Lear. These problems act inwardly on Lear but also radiate outwards, having an effect on almost all parts of the play. Thus very little of the play cannot be seen in light of this idea of splitting, including all of the play’s tragedy. Holistically, the world in which Lear is set is best seen as a collection of metaphors for this splitting. This may arguably include the split between what Lear did and what he should have done as a father. In this way the tragedy of Lear is far more a result of the setting, and other characters actions that it was of Lear’s flaw itself.
Putting Lear’s madness into context is essential to understanding its intended implications.
I concede that his madness was genuine insanity but he displays no tendency to this kind of thinking beforehand. Indeed on severing himself from Goneril he remarks “Ha! Let it be so: I have another daughter” and while he weeps and curses he shows no outward sign of losing his senses. King Lear remains articulate throughout his chastising of Goneril. It is only later, when disorder of the Kingdom is precipitated further with his being severed from both his daughters that the madness creeps in. And even then, it appears firstly as an anticipation of madness coupled or sat closely beside some comment on disorder, breaking or a lacking.
II iv 216 “I prithee daughter, do not make me mad
I will not trouble thee, my child; farewell
We’ll no more meet, no more see each other”
II iv 282 “I have full cause of weeping,
But this heart
Shall break into a hundred thousand flaws,
Or ere I’ll weep. O fool! I shall go mad!
III iv 11 “When the mind is free
The body’s delicate; this tempest in my mind
Doth from my senses take all feeling else
Save what beats there- filial ingratitude”
The above is testament to the main clash; that of differing generational views and power. However, there is another imbalance: that of the injustice after this midway turning point in the play. The Mock trial that Lear conducts after taking shelter from the storm helps him to mitigate his wrath and attempts to restore order, which is synonymous with sanity. It is also a move away from his desire for revenge and a movement towards a more moderated Lear. As such it is likely an expression of betterment in Lear.
Perhaps the greatest symbol if chaos is nothing, loss of identity plays a central role in this extended metaphor. Again we find that those who are subject to this expression of disorder also suffer madness.
I iv 200 “now thou art an O without a figure. I am better than thou are now; I am a Fool, thou art nothing”
Lear begins to doubt exactly who he is upon the insistence of his daughters that he dismiss some of his train. He begs of them to “reason not the need” and adds that “beggars are in the poorest things superfluous”. It is telling that on seeing Poor Tom he asks “Is man no more than this?” In short the rapid change in his needs forces him to consider what true “need” is.
III ii 70 “The art of our necessities is strange,
And can make vile things precious”
Madness here is of no more note than the inherent contradiction between “precious” and “vile”; “necessities” and “strange”; the storm or a King living out of doors.But rather they are all part of the same metaphor. An image of disorder, that reaches its climax with Lear’s realisation of the true qualities and needs of man. This is fittingly lulled back to normality and conclusion with the symbolic restoration of order in Lear’s mock court.
Conversely, Hamlet’s flaw is central to the movement of the play. And where “King Lear” relies on what might be called an improbability, the King’s rash behaviour at the opening scene, “Hamlet” moves from beginning to end in a logical manner. Yes the outside world is implicated in his fate in so far as someone else killed his father but this is the situation that Hamlet finds himself in at the beginning. His father’s death is no more responsible for Hamlet’s final actions than it was for his initial ones – that is to say not a great deal. In any case, this death does not even occur within the time of the play and so it is difficult to put a case for this being an influence on the world in which Hamlet exists, since he never is in a world with his father.
Looking to the colourful images and moving speeches with regard to things that are actually much less grand provides some clue as to Hamlet’s true nature. When actors appear he becomes fascinated with the idea of summoning emotion and guilt stricken over not avenging his father’s murder. He refuses to kill Claudius when he is praying, lest he go to heaven. A simple conversation with his friends Rosencrantz and Guildenstern turns into a marvelling at his own depression christening man a “quintessence of the dust”. Indeed this perpetual contemplation often double backs on itself. There is perhaps no better example of this than Hamlet’s to be or not to be soliloquy. This, in and of itself, is a masterful crafting and a beautiful speech which touches upon thoughts that still puzzle us to the present day. However, the speech does not exist in and of itself but rather as part of the movement of a play and should be considered within such a context. It should be noted, for example, that before Hamlet gives this speech he has seen his father’s ghost walk, others have spoken with him on seeing the ghost walk. It is therefore, both strange and of great importance to his character that it be noted he considers the likelihood of the existence of heaven and hell, especially so late on in the play.
III i 78 “But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover’d country, from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others we know not of?”
This is blatantly inconsistent with the happenings of the play; a traveller has returned and delivered a message! It is less inconsistent with Hamlet himself. It is in Hamlet’s nature to spend a lot of time pondering over interesting, if largely irrelevant, intellectual or practical intricacies. His grounding is not really in emotions. Perhaps a grain of consistency might be maintained if it was to be argued that, since Hamlet’s encounter with the ghost of his father was an emotional one, of and tied to the grief of loosing his father, it is of less value than Hamlet’s ponderings. They will always be upper most in his mind because that is where his natural tendencies lye.
Hamlet’s flaw then, is that he has no concept of a balance between reality itself and contemplation over it. He is and becomes more and more trapped behind his own thoughts. The longer he ponders them, the more ornamental they become, the deeper he becomes absorbed in them and the further he gets from attachment to them or their associated realities. This aspect of Hamlet’s character has doubtless contributed to his preservation in that it has allowed him to be held up for centauries as someone with great imagination and fascination for life generally. Yet Hamlet is by no means a character that can be relied on to make a decision in a limited amount of time.
It is thusly that Shakespeare creates the tragic Hamlet, firstly by the forming of a great thinker, secondly by placing such a character in a position where the thing most opposite to his nature (thinking quickly and lightly) is exactly what is required.
The fulfilment of this tragedy takes the form of a slow movement of Hamlet’s understanding of his position. Hamlet’s flaw is overcome just before the end when he comes to understand the horror of death through Claudius’s attempted murder of him. This growth in Hamlet is evident in his description of his plotting to turn his execution on Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.
V ii “Our indiscretion sometime serves us well
When our deep plots do pall; and that should learn us
There’s a divinity that shapes our ends,
Rough hew them how we will”
This seems contradictory of an earlier Hamlet but is in fact suggestive of a movement to a Hamlet that accepts the ambiguity of the finer details. A movement away from, for example
II ii “I’ll have grounds more relative than this”.
Propelled by the experience of fearing his own sudden death. It is with this new lesson in mind that the he comes to understand the need for immediate action, and the inevitable acceptance of ambiguity that V ii gives. There is no better example of this than
V ii “There is a special provi-
dence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, ‘tis not to
come; if it is not come, it will be now, if it be not
now, yet it will come. The readiness is all”
The flaw of Hamlet is resolved and he is ready to face the end.
What is most important about this chain of events is that it involves no one other than Hamlet. He influences the action and moves the tragedy forward. Yes other characters do have freedom and movement but they do not truly affect the tragic hero. It could be argued that the deaths of the Queen, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern were tragic in and of themselves but they contribute nothing to the fatal flaw of Hamlet himself. The Queen dies once Hamlet is resolved that “the readiness is all” and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are the mechanism for Hamlet’s reaching resolution. Claudius’s deception with Laertes is truly of little consequence since Hamlet has understood that a confrontation with the King is inevitable and may as well be now, if not, it is to come. In short the play is very consistent throughout in so far as Hamlet’s flaw begins as something internal to his character and remains as untouchable through out.
To conclude, it is sometimes true that the tragedy of Shakespeare’s characters is derived from the world in which they find themselves. This is certainly the case with King Lear. Whilst he begins as a character who is overly needy towards his daughters this is not the driving force behind his tragedy. Had he not been in a world with evil daughters it is unlikely that there would have been much tragedy at all. Indeed, much of his suffering, including his madness can easily be seen as a metaphor for the broader point that the play makes; the force of differing views between generations. In this way King Lear’s tragedy is almost entirely a product of his surroundings and not of his own flaw, which is largely insignificant.
Hamlet, on the other hand provides evidence to the contrary. It is possibly arguable that the death of his father is a contributory factor to his tragedy and so he is influenced by situation. As before, this is as true at the beginning of the play as it is at the end and so it would be very difficult to make a case for this being the cause of Hamlet’s tragedy. It is more likely that it is Hamlet’s inherent thoughtfulness and tendency to think too much on trivialities which is to blame. This is certainly a cause of his isolation and his becoming increasingly removed from reality. It also seems clear that the movement through and eventual conquering of his flaw is something that is done independently of any other character in the play. It is part of his own learning through his experiences.