ACT 1 SCENE IV.
The platform.
Enter Hamlet, Horatio and Marcellus
HAMLET.
The air bites shrewdly; it is very cold.
HORATIO.
It is a nipping and an eager air.
HAMLET.
What hour now?
HORATIO.
I think it lacks of twelve.
MARCELLUS.
No, it is struck.
HORATIO.
Indeed? I heard it not. It then draws near the season
Wherein the spirit held his wont to walk.
[A flourish of trumpets, and ordnance shot off within.]
What does this mean, my lord?
HAMLET.
The King doth wake tonight and takes his rouse, Claudius likes to drink, a sign of weakness, which illustrates Hamlet’s bitterness toward his stepfather
Keeps wassail, and the swaggering upspring reels; The purpose of wassailing is to awake the cider apple trees and to scare away evil spirits to ensure a good harvest of fruit in autumn. Wassailing typically took place on the Twelfth Night of Christmas: i.e., a reference to things being not what they appear to be, or a reference to Olivia, who vowed to remain in mourning for her dead husband for 7 years. Seems unlikely since Twelfth Night was written long after Hamlet, but perhaps the idea for it was already in Shakespeare’s mind.
And as he drains his draughts of Rhenish down,
The kettle-drum and trumpet thus bray out
The triumph of his pledge.
HORATIO.
Is it a custom?
HAMLET.
Ay marry is’t;
And to my mind, though I am native here,
And to the manner born, it is a custom
More honour’d in the breach than the observance.
This heavy-headed revel east and west
Makes us traduc’d and tax’d of other nations:
They clepe us drunkards, and with swinish phrase Is this why Fortinbras thinks he can win back the lands lost by his father? Because Denmark is no longer ruled by a competent warrior but by a weak, incompetent drunkard.
Soil our addition; and indeed it takes
From our achievements, though perform’d at height, It makes us look weak
The pith and marrow of our attribute.
So oft it chances in particular men
That for some vicious mole of nature in them,
As in their birth, wherein they are not guilty, inherited defect, or fate. Original sin harkening back to the Garden of Evil and Eve’s seduction by the serpent?
Since nature cannot choose his origin,
By their o’ergrowth of some complexion, character flaw
Oft breaking down the pales and forts of reason; rejection of reason and embracing pleasure leads to one’s downfall, like Faustus and Adam
Or by some habit, that too much o’erleavens
The form of plausive manners;—that these men One apple spoils the whole bunch.
Carrying, I say, the stamp of one defect, One small sin can lead to greater sin and create a snowball effect leading to even greater sin
Being Nature’s livery or Fortune’s star,— One mistake or defect of character can lead to a man’s ruin or perhaps his damnation. But what about confession and acts of attrition? Does he mean that they can lead to a man’s ruin if he does not atone for sins?
His virtues else,—be they as pure as grace,
As infinite as man may undergo,
Shall in the general censure take corruption
From that particular fault. The dram of evil The smallest amount of evil can lead to eternal damnation despite one’s good qualities. Warning to himself to be careful not to commit a sin, even a small one. This could be problematic since man should not be vengeful. He should leave it to God or the courts and not take revenge on his own. Is he referencing his own defect, his moral failure to take revenge for his father, or his moral failure when he does take revenge for his father? Doth all the noble substance of a doubt
To his own scandal.
HORATIO.
Look, my lord, it comes!
Enter Ghost.
HAMLET.
Angels and ministers of grace defend us!
Be thou a spirit of health or goblin damn’d, Is it evil? Has it been sent by the Devil to lure Hamlet into giving up his immortal soul and then, if successful, all of Denmark, like England, was considered damned by the Pope when it became Anglican under Henry VIII?
Bring with thee airs from heaven or blasts from hell,
Be thy intents wicked or charitable,
Thou com’st in such a questionable shape
That I will speak to thee. I’ll call thee Hamlet,
King, father, royal Dane. O, answer me!
Let me not burst in ignorance; but tell
Why thy canoniz’d bones, hearsed in death,
Have burst their cerements; why the sepulchre, Orestes and Electra wish that Agamemnon could rise from the grave and help them punish Clytemnestra and Aegisthus in Libation Bearers.
Wherein we saw thee quietly inurn’d,
Hath op’d his ponderous and marble jaws
To cast thee up again! What may this mean,
That thou, dead corse, again in complete steel, Why have you broken out of your coffin and appeared to me in armor?
Revisit’st thus the glimpses of the moon, Are you trying to drive me mad?
Making night hideous, and we fools of nature
So horridly to shake our disposition
With thoughts beyond the reaches of our souls? The reach of our souls: heaven or hell, the afterlife.
Say, why is this? Wherefore? What should we do?
[Ghost beckons Hamlet.]
HORATIO.
It beckons you to go away with it,
As if it some impartment did desire
To you alone. The ghost wishes to isolate Hamlet, but why? To impart a secret only Hamlet can hear, or to tempt him into sin, and it would be easier to accomplish if Hamlet were alone?
MARCELLUS.
Look with what courteous action
It waves you to a more removed ground.
But do not go with it.
HORATIO.
No, by no means.
HAMLET.
It will not speak; then will I follow it. It’s the only way it will talk to me.
HORATIO.
Do not, my lord.
HAMLET.
Why, what should be the fear? Why should I be afraid?
I do not set my life at a pin’s fee; I no longer value my life, contradiction of how earlier he would not commit suicide because it was against the Church’s teachings.
And for my soul, what can it do to that, Is not afraid for his soul, but maybe he should be.
Being a thing immortal as itself?
It waves me forth again. I’ll follow it.
HORATIO.
What if it tempt you toward the flood, my lord, Tempt? To damnation or to death or to insanity?
Or to the dreadful summit of the cliff
That beetles o’er his base into the sea,
And there assume some other horrible form It does that anyway and doesn’t need to turn into a hideous beast.
Which might deprive your sovereignty of reason,
And draw you into madness? Think of it. Is this where Hamlet gets the idea to feign madness?
The very place puts toys of desperation,
Without more motive, into every brain Beware, your desperation may lead to your ruin
That looks so many fathoms to the sea
And hears it roar beneath.
HAMLET.
It waves me still.
Go on, I’ll follow thee.
MARCELLUS.
You shall not go, my lord.
HAMLET.
Hold off your hands.
HORATIO.
Be rul’d; you shall not go.
HAMLET.
My fate cries out,
And makes each petty artery in this body
As hardy as the Nemean lion’s nerve.
[Ghost beckons.]
Still am I call’d. Unhand me, gentlemen.
[Breaking free from them.]
By heaven, I’ll make a ghost of him that lets me.
I say, away!—Go on, I’ll follow thee. Despite pleas to restrain himself Hamlet is ready to rush headlong into the unknown is this because he is suicidal and no longer cares for life. Does that same rashness cause him to rush into damnation or is he just acting in the heat of the moment and once out of the Ghost’s presence, his becomes more circumspect in his actions and decides not to act rashly on the advice of a supernatural being that could or could not be evil? In other words, are his actions in the heat of the moment?
[Exeunt Ghost and Hamlet.]
HORATIO.
He waxes desperate with imagination.
MARCELLUS.
Let’s follow; ’tis not fit thus to obey him. Do his friends desire to protect Hamlet because he is their friend, or because he is the future king?
HORATIO.
Have after. To what issue will this come?
MARCELLUS.
Something is rotten in the state of Denmark. Something rotten is what you find in your vegetable bin if you don’t periodically clean it out. It certainly doesn’t rise to the level of a plague like in Oedipus. A plague is when you have to drag your loved ones from your home and abandon them unburied on the side of the road because you can’t leave them in your house to infect the rest of the family and are too weak to bury them yourselves. Therefore, the two are not comparable, and IMO this is further proof that Hamlet is not based on Oedipus. And if it’s not based on Oedipus, how does Hamlet end up with an Oedipal Complex? The answer is simple: the character of Hamlet is based on a character with an Oedipal Complex, it just isn’t Oedipus, and that really only leaves only one character that it could be: Electra.
HORATIO.
Heaven will direct it. Heaven will take care of it and Hamlet.
MARCELLUS.
Nay, let’s follow him.
[Exeunt.]
OTHER REASONS WHY HAMLET IS NOT BASED ON OEDIPUS:
· There’s too much good stuff in Oedipus for Shakespeare not to steal some of it (In fact, he did steal it. I think he took away the incest, moved it to Scotland, and called it Macbeth. There’s the prophecy and Lady Macbeth’s guilt, which is similar to Jocasta’s guilt. Both women commit suicide because of their inability to live with their guilty consciences, Oedipus, like Macbeth, is blind to his own hubris, which ultimately destroys him.)
· Nothing that happens to Oedipus happens to Hamlet. No one predicts that Hamlet will kill his father and marry his mother. Hamlet’s father isn’t a pederast. By order of his father, Hamlet is not taken from his home and ordered to be abandoned on a mountainside. Hamlet is not taken to a neighboring kingdom. Hamlet is not adopted. Hamlet does not learn that he is fated to kill his father and marry his mother, and not wanting to fulfill the prophecy, leaves home, which ultimately causes it to happen. Hamlet does not kill his own father! Hamlet does not marry his mother. Hamlet does not have any children. Hamlet does not consult with a seer or a prophet. Hamlet does not blind himself rather than face the truth of his actions. Jocasta knowingly commits suicide; Gertrude does not. Oedipus does not die; Hamlet does.
· Most importantly, Hamlet and the Orestia have the same plot, but it is not the same plot as Oedipus. It’s not even close. In the Orestia, a warrior king spends years in battle. He wins the war, kills his enemy, and returns home expecting to spend the rest of his days in peace, surrounded by his loving family, but shortly after his return, he is killed by a close and trusted member of his family, and thus it falls upon the shoulders of his only son to avenge his murder.