At the end of my last post, I indicated that Hamlet has a biblical precedent for his play ploy: Nathan’s story about the sheep when confronting David in II Samuel. Hamlet doesn’t handle this prophetic office as well as he should, but it made me think about Hamlet’s role as a prophet.
Meditating on Hamlet as a prophet made me think harder about Hamlet’s status in literature (“the modern man” as novelist Hugh MacLennan dubbed him) and as a representative man of both the Renaissance and Reformation.
The symbolic offices for man, according to the Bible, are embodied in the roles of KING, PRIEST, and PROPHET. My conclusion is that Hamlet displays a distortion of each function. He has the potential in the play to demonstrate the power of each role. Through his ethical waywardness, he avoids the necessary responsibility required by each function. The commentary I offer on these roles in what follows is deeply indebted to James Jordan’s analysis in Through New Eyes.
The KING is supposed to understand the world and transform it aesthetically through political and spiritual authority. Hamlet, however, rejects the responsibility of kingship; he should, after all, have become king after his father’s death. Instead, he settles for aesthetic restructuring (through his playacting) before he understands the world properly. Remember that the first comment to Hamlet is that he fails to understand the way the world works: namely, the fact that fathers die. His clothes and melancholy mood are symptomatic of someone who has not reconciled himself to the natural order of things. In his dealings with women and his rash temper, he displays an immature understanding of redemption. His advice to Gertrude in Act 3 demonstrates a rationalistic approach to sin that is not at all in keeping with Hamlet’s Reformation schooling. His play-with-the-play aptly, then, only makes his situation more confused. He gets banished in its wake, not elevated. Claudius still reigns, and Hamlet is an outcast.
The PRIEST is supposed to recognize and protect boundaries. Religiously, a priest must identify enemies then safeguard the house of God and appropriate forms of worship. Politically, the priest must recognize then safeguard the nation from invaders. Hamlet chooses to recognize and protect the boundaries of sexuality in both Ophelia and Gertrude. Yet, he fails to consider the religious limits regarding revenge. It is God’s purview to execute revenge for Hamlet Senior’s death, not Hamlet’s. If Hamlet were to take responsibility as a member of the state (that is, to take on the king’s responsibility), he would have the right as God’s authorized agent to judge Claudius’s actions. At the end of Act 3, Hamlet can identify Claudius’s guilt, but he can’t justly do anything about it. Additionally, Hamlet ignores Fortinbras, despite Horatio and the night watchmen expressing concern about an invasion in the play’s first scene. Hamlet is a myopic priest indeed.
Finally, Hamlet should be the PROPHET who counsels with and delivers messages from God. With whom does Hamlet take counsel in this play? Most famously, the ghost. The true prophet communes with God and then relays the decision of that divine council to the people. On the other hand, Hamlet shares the ghost’s message only with Horatio. He essentially keeps silent. His defining aesthetic signature is the soliloquy, speeches where he takes counsel with himself. His primary counselor is tainted. The ghost is either a demon (if Hamlet examines the ghost through the lens of Protestant theology) or a misleading spirit. Even if the ghost is the lingering spirit of Hamlet’s father, it’s advice to commit revenge is overtly against the Bible. The ghost gives terrible advice! Hamlet does not appear to have consulted scripture or theological counsel for his dilemma. Through three acts, the results of that failure are plain.
In my interpretation, Hamlet’s speech to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern takes on greater importance. Summarizing Psalm 8, Hamlet says:
What a piece of work is a man! how noble in reason!
how infinite in faculty! in form and moving how
express and admirable! in action how like an angel!
in apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the
world! the paragon of animals! And yet, to me,
what is this quintessence of dust?
Hamlet himself could embody the fully mature man of God: the kingly, priestly, and prophetic roles outlined in scripture. Instead, he offers distorted versions of each position with tragic consequences.
Experiments in Criticism 