Shakespeare & His Great Dane

"Call me what instrument you will, though you can fret me, you cannot play upon me."

Photo by Ahmed Adly on Unsplash

“Call me what instrument you will, though you can fret me, you cannot play upon me.” — Hamlet, Act III, Scene 2, Lines 401-402.

Hamlet. I suppose it’s about time I got around to one of Shakespeare’s most quintessential plays. Although procrastinating to tackle Hamlet is pretty apt. IYKYK. But truthfully, I’ve procrastinated because of the complexity of this play. Or, should I say, plays.

There are several versions of Hamlet and they are all strikingly different. There is the first quarto version published in 1603 that is significantly shorter than the others (although still too long to be performed in ‘two hours traffic of our stage’). Some have hypothesized that this version was created from someone watching the play and taking notes, and is therefore a ‘bad quarto.’ The second quarto version was published in 1604-1605, and some suggest that it was published by Shakespeare’s company to supplant that ‘bad quarto.’ And finally, there was the version printed in the First Folio in 1623. Oddly, the second quarto and the First Folio also differ significantly, and editors usually meld to the two to create the versions printed for public consumption. Oh, and there’s also a hypothetical ‘Ur-Hamlet’ of unknown authorship that is either Shakespeare’s earliest draft or his source, but we’ll leave more discussion of that to people with Shakespeare degrees.

Regardless of the version (or fusion of versions) one chooses, the play still must be cut down for performance. Significantly cut down. Hamlet is Shakespeare’s longest role (even edited) and his longest play. I assure you, you’ve never seen a complete version of the play performed. No one has that kind of patience. Instead, directors, actors and dramaturgs must analyze the play, determine which of the many important questions raised by the play they wish to interrogate, and cut accordingly.

So what are these questions? Well, surely you’re familiar with the most famous — ‘To be or not to be?’ Hamlet’s discussion of why one continues living even when life seems joyless. But also — Is the ghost really Old Hamlet? Is purgatory real (both sides use this to argue Shakespeare was or was not Catholic)? When are we justified in killing for revenge? What duties to sons owe their fathers? What was the relationship between Hamlet and Ophelia? Did Ophelia kill herself? Was Ophelia mad? Is Hamlet?

Just to name a few.

So yeah, this play is complex. The character is complex. And that is one of a multitude of reasons it endures.

The Shake-Scene

The play begins on the spooky battlements of the castle Elsinore in Denmark where the night watch are jumpier than a cat in a room full of rocking chairs. Exactly what you want from the people guarding the castle from invaders. They’re soon joined by Horatio whom we’ll learn is a school friend of Prince Hamlet. He’s been brought in because these scardy-guards are convinced that the ghost of the recently deceased king, also named Hamlet, has been haunting the battlements. Horatio is understandably skeptical… until the ghost shows up and everyone soils themselves (although that stage direction does not appear in the text). Even so, the ghost will not speak to them, so Horatio suggests they tell young Hamlet.

We meet this second Hamlet in our next scene. The new king — Claudius — is holding court. He handles several matters of business. The first involves a potential invasion by a Norwegian force led by ‘young Fortinbras’ who is seeking to reclaim land lost to Denmark by his now-deceased father. This subplot is usually trimmed substantially for production, so I’ll merely note that young Fortinbras, like soon-to-be-discussed Laertes, acts as a foil for Hamlet as they both seek to fulfill the duties they believe they owe their fathers.

Speaking of Laertes, he is the next matter of business for Claudius. He says he’s come home for the king’s coronation but wants leave to return to school. Claudius ensures Laertes’s father — Polonius — blesses this request, and then grants it.

And finally, we meet young Hamlet. Claudius greets him as ‘my cousin Hamlet, and my son,’ which highlights that Claudius, Hamlet’s uncle, has married Hamlet’s mother. Hamlet makes some puns (he loves puns), and his mother Gertrude begs him to stop his mourning already. Claudius calls it ‘unmanly grief’ and then tells him he (unlike Laertes) can’t go back to school. So basically, everyone is super loving and supportive in this semi-incestuous family. And, once everyone else has left the stage, Hamlet tells us that he wishes he would melt away or that God would ok suicide. He praises his father and bemoans that his mother would replace him with his unworthy uncle. We also learn, if we hadn’t already guessed, that Hamlet is a bit dramatic. He begins by saying his father’s only been dead two months, and, by the time the soliloquy is over, he claims it’s under a month. Basically, even before the ‘madness’, he’s not a reliable narrator.

Horatio enters and Hamlet makes more clever jibes about his mother’s quick marriage to his uncle. And then Horatio drops the bombshell: He thinks he’s seen Hamlet’s father’s ghost. Hamlet tells him to lead the way!

Meanwhile, lucky Laertes is packing to leave this hotbed of unresolved emotional issues but decides to sow more on his way out. He talks to his sister, Ophelia, and warns her not to fall for Hamlet’s playa’ ways. Their father, Polonius, overhears this conversation and Ophelia’s fate is sealed. Polonius, the chief blowhard of the court, gives long-winded but sage advice to his son (‘To thine own self be true’), and straight trash advice to his daughter (don’t believe Hamlet’s vows of love and don’t give him the time of day). More on that later.

Horatio brings Hamlet to where he’d seen the ghost the night before, and, sure enough, he shows up. The ghost tells Hamlet that he was murdered by Claudius and is doomed to purgatory because he hadn’t been to confession recently enough (this is part of the Catholic v. Protestant debate to the extent you wish to dive further). He demands that Hamlet ‘revenge his foul and most unnatural murder.’ Hamlet agrees. Hamlet then makes the people with him swear to not divulge what they’ve seen, and tells them he plans to pretend to be crazy to throw off suspicion. I’d suggest you make a mental note of this plan and compare it to the actions of Laertes later on in the play (yes, he comes back).

Later, although we don’t know how much later, Ophelia goes to her father Polonius to describe a weird interaction with Hamlet where he seemed distraught. Polonius assumes it’s because he’s told Ophelia not to talk to Hamlet, and rushes off to tell his bestie Claudius. And this, ladies and gentlemen, is why you should not get in the middle of your children’s amorous relationships.

Presumably Hamlet’s feigned (?) madness has been going on for some time, because Claudius and Gertrude have called in Hamlet’s childhood friends, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, to spy on him and tell them why he’s acting so strangely. Hamlet immediately sees through this ruse and messes with them until they tell him that a theater troupe is on its way. At this, Hamlet, the incurable drama queen, is ecstatic. The players come in and he peppers them with questions and insists they do a tight five. One player performs a monologue of grief and cries real tears. Seeing the amount of emotion the actor can fake, Hamlet berates himself for not having taken revenge for his father. And then he comes up with a plan. The players will perform a scene that matches the way the ghost described Old Hamlet’s murder, and, if Claudius reacts, it means he’s guilty.

I’d like to take a moment to discuss Hamlet’s delay. The issue of why Hamlet waits is one of the defining questions for the actor and director in a production. Perhaps he’s too erudite. Or perhaps he fears the ghost is really a demon in his father’s form. Or, perhaps, he doesn’t have the stomach for violence. Regardless, this inability to act is what defines Hamlet. If it were Othello (who we’ll get to eventually), Claudius would’ve been dead before the end of Act I.

Meanwhile, Polonius has gone to Claudius with his theory that Hamlet is lovesick for Ophelia, and they decide to dangle her like bait in front of him and watch from their hiding spots to see how he reacts. A very mature plan for the King of Denmark and his grown-up bestie. This of course goes terribly. Hamlet realizes that Polonius and Claudius are watching and behaves like a madman, truly traumatizing Ophelia and demanding she ‘get thee to a nunnery.’ And before we carry on, I need to bring out my soapbox and novelty skull. This is the scene with ‘To be or not to be,’ not the graveyard scene. As he enters, before he spots Ophelia and their charade ensues, he asks the audience this quintessential question. Amidst his punning and playwriting, and attempts to mastermind revenge on his uncle, he expresses that, if he could be assured that the afterlife were preferable, he would choose death.

But he bounces back. He preps the players for their big debut. He tells them not to overdo it and not to improvise (possibly a veiled critique of company member William Kempe, possibly a universal directorial note for the ages). Everyone enters and Hamlet is cruelly suggestive to Ophelia, because the poor girl hasn’t been traumatized enough. And then the play begins and, at the moment that mirrors the murder of Old Hamlet, Claudius flips out, stops the play, and storms off. DRAMATIC. Hamlet takes this as confirmation of Claudius’s guilt and is finally ready to frickin’ do a murder already. But first he has to go and talk to his mother because apparently she was deeply offended by his behavior during the play.

However, on his way to his mother, fate intervenes and gives Hamlet the perfect opportunity for revenge. Claudius is alone, unarmed, and praying. Hamlet has proof of his guilt and the opportunity to take revenge. But he hesitates. His father is in purgatory because he was murdered without being able to confess his sins. He won’t kill Claudius mid-prayer only to send him to heaven. He leaves and Claudius tells us, the audience, that he cannot be absolved of the sin of killing his brother (yes! he confessed) because he still has all he gained from that sin (i.e. the crown and that hottie Gertrude). So yeah, Hamlet totally could’ve killed him and sent him to hell but he overthought it. Perhaps Shakespeare is saying something about religious doctrine here but I’ll let you draw your own conclusions.

And now the wheels really do come off.

Hamlet goes to see his mother and berate her for sullying his father’s memory by marrying his uncle. She repents this wrong doing. The ghost (possibly) shows up. Only Hamlet can see him this time. And then, in a fit of passion, Hamlet stabs at the person hiding behind a curtain in her bedchamber, assuming its Claudius, and ends up killing Polonius. At this point, there is an argument that Hamlet’s madness becomes real (again, directorial choices). Gertrude tells Hamlet that Claudius plans to send him to England, and Hamlet leaves dragging Polonius’s body with him.

Hamlet hides Polonius’s body and won’t tell anyone where it is — super sane, I know. He’s then sent to England, and, once gone, Claudius reveals he plans to have Hamlet killed there. On his way to England, Hamlet runs into young Fortinbras (in a scene I don’t think I’ve ever seen staged) and makes explicit the mirroring of the characters.

Back at Elsinore, Ophelia has also gone mad (understandably so), and Laertes has returned with a posse shouting that he should be king. Laertes is ready to throw hands and nearly kills Claudius, but is stopped when he sees the heartbreaking state of his sister. Claudius convinces Laertes to calm down and work with him instead.

Meanwhile, that little scamp Hamlet has escaped his exile to England, caught a ride with some pirates, and is headed back to Denmark. He even went ahead and set up his childhood friends Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to be executed in his place because… loyalty?

Claudius learns Hamlet is returning alive, and schemes with Laertes to kill him. They’re going to plan a duel (basically a play with swords), and Laertes is going to put poison on his sword tip (don’t tell Freud) and Claudius is going to put a poison pearl in his goblet (because sometimes a pearl is just a… yeah). Gertrude interrupts their planning to tell them that Ophelia has drowned. Interestingly, she goes into a lot of detail for someone who apparently made no efforts to stop this poor girl from drowning. Seriously, no one could jump in and help?

Hamlet lands in Denmark and joins up with his mate Horatio. They’re hanging out in the graveyard, as all good goths do, and chatting up the gravedigger (a finalist for my favorite Shakespearean character). It is at this point that Hamlet picks up the skull and speaks fondly of Yorick who had been a court jester when Hamlet was a child. He’s interrupted from his darkly humorous graveside stand-up when he notices Claudius, Gertrude, Laertes, and a priest enter. He wonders who the funeral is for. Awkward…

The priest gives abbreviated rites to Ophelia because of the suspicious nature of her death (if it was deemed suicide, the priest wouldn’t give her rights at all, but the King and Queen intervened). Laertes, overcome with grief at having lost his last family member, leaps into the coffin. Hamlet the ever-dramatic leaps out from where’s he’s hiding to accuse Laertes of grieving only to make Hamlet look bad, and then claims his grief is more than that of forty-thousand brothers. Ugh, boys. Am I right? Claudius keeps Laertes from killing Hamlet, and Hamlet exits in a flourish. Claudius promises Laertes that Hamlet will die.

Hamlet gets talked into the duel and everybody dies. Oh, you want more detail? Fine. Hamlet gets the first hit, so Claudius puts the poison pearl in the cup and bids him to drink to his success. Hamlet declines, too intent on showing up Laertes. Instead, Gertrude drinks to her son. Claudius makes a lackluster attempt to stop her, but can’t have himself found out. Laertes then scratches Hamlet with his poisoned sword. They swap foils, and Hamlet more grievously wounds Laertes with the poison tip. The queen swoons. Laertes swoons. The queen says she is poisoned. Laertes confesses the plot. Hamlet cuts Claudius with the poisoned sword and forces the poisoned wine down his throat. Laertes and Hamlet swap forgiveness. And… you guessed it… everyone dies.

Except for Horatio who is left to explain to Fortinbras, whose invasion has brought him to the castle, all that happened.

It just goes to show, gentlemen, don’t sleep on your revenge, and ladies, don’t take dating advice from your dad.

Speak the Speech, I Pray You

Bring Shakespeare’s words into your own life by:

• Confronting your emotionally-manipulative mother-in-law (happy holidays);

• Censuring a toddler who thinks a tantrum will get them that stuffed animal; and

• Laying down the law to your roommate who won’t take the hint:

Additional Resources

• Find a copy of the entire play here.

• Check out some Hamlet-inspired stories such as the novel ‘Ophelia’ by Lisa Klein or the play ‘Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead’ by Tom Stoppard.

• Check out Making Shakespeare: The First Folio via your local PBS affiliate or the streaming app. It has a great discussion of the versions of the play as well as considerations in staging the play.

• Watch a film adaptation of the play! Comparing different adaptations is a wonderful way to deepen your appreciation for how versatile the works are. Personally, I fell in love with the works when my high school English teacher compared the adaptations with Kenneth Branagh and Mel Gibson. David Tennant’s adaptation with Sir Patrick Stewart is also splendid and available for streaming here.