Over the past several posts, I have commented on the dimensions of ethics and law addressed in Hamlet.
At the level of plot, the play is about whether or not a son should avenge his father.
Hamlet’s decision has ramifications for society’s three institutions: family, church, and state. Hamlet feels bound to handle his father’s murder himself because a) it was his father who died, and b) it was his uncle who profited from the murder. Yet to engage in an internecine blood feud would be to revert to a pagan form of tribal justice. Religiously, Hamlet should know that vengeance is the Lord’s, not his. He attends school in Wittenburg, the birthplace of the Reformation. Hamlet knows the prohibitions against suicide and the doctrine of eternal providence. He should know that it is not in his purview as a son to avenge his father’s murder. If there’s an institution that should take care of Claudius’s sin, it’s the state. But throughout the play, Hamlet refuses to accept the responsibility of a prince. Denmark’s political system is corrupt, and Hamlet does nothing to help fix it.
My conclusion is this: Shakespeare wants us to see Hamlet as a failed prophet. A mature prophet is a council member with God who brings a covenant lawsuit against God’s people when they have transgressed his law. A mature Hamlet would complete this task. But Hamlet grossly exaggerates the importance of the family and only takes council with the ghost, an adviser who directly contradicts scripture. Ironically, Hamlet’s double in the play is Polonius, the man Hamlet goes out of his way to ridicule and who he accidentally kills. Yes, Polonius is a blowhard prophet who himself delivers poor counsel to the king and cannot care for his own family, much less the state. Yet Hamlet is no better, and Hamlet’s mistakes are such that they lead to the entire state’s demise.
The play’s theme then is this: Christian ethics demand a reformation of the family, state, and church. The “something rotten” in the state of Denmark must include the absence of a prophet to know and declare the state’s sins publicly and call for repentance. Luther nailed his 95 theses to the wall of a Wittenburg church in full view of the Catholic authorities. Hamlet cannot reform the ethics of the family without also addressing the church (where are the Denmark priests?) and the state. When he fails in this task, the results are tragic.
Experiments in Criticism 