Undiscovered Countries: Hamlet, Death and the Beauty of the Silence

As many readers of this space are aware, I had my dance with death three years ago -- which is chronicled and referenced in previous posts. It was an experience -- in reality one of many, that I am not in any great hurry to repeat. Ever since then, I have been on a journey to find meaning in that experience, to try and understand why I was spared a one-way ticket to that Great White Light (or whatever other afterlife your religion or culture professes, dear reader). As part of my reflective journey I turned to literature, and there can be no better chronicler of the human condition than the Great Bard, William Shakespeare.

As everyone probably knows, Hamlet is the tale of a young and lonely Prince struggling with the grief of his father’s death, “O God, God, / How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable / Seem to me all the uses of this world!” The premise of the play is grief, and its initial themes are bereavement and loss. I think this is the reason for its unwavering popularity and why it has only become more of an object of fascination over the centuries. The dark seductions of death are irresistible, especially when set against a backdrop of despair. It is in our nature to be drawn to the most fundamental of human fears, the eternal question of the “undiscovered country”, what lies after death.

Yet when the ghost of Hamlet’s father appears, the play expands to encompass not only loss, but murder, suicide, jealousy and vengeance. From what is arguably the most famous speech in the English language, “to be or not to be”, to the most famous image of all time, Hamlet in the graveyard with the nameless skulls, the play channels our most passionate emotions and forces us to consider the nature of death, the very conscience itself, and the consequences of unbridled vengeance. Shakespeare wrote it at the time of a great tragedy in his life, the death of his 11-year-old son, Hamnet, and the intensity of the play is partly due to this familiarity with the graveyard and with burying one’s brightest hopes.

Aside from the key themes of loss and bereavement that run through the heart of the play, there are also those of death and the afterlife, and the morality of murder and suicide. Hamlet struggles with the concept of the afterlife throughout the play, and it becomes something that tortures him incessantly. He is constantly held back from rash action by his conscience, by his morality, and the more this makes us like him, the more it makes him loathe himself. Emo? Angst?

The question is, why to this day does Hamlet remain so relevant? I think it is because it begins with the untimely death of a loved one, and all the pain and heartbreak that comes with the realization that though your world has been shattered, everyone else’s simply continues. Grief is a ghastly immovable thing, especially at the sharp end, it feels engulfing, intractable, but it is an emotion of such raw power that everyone can relate to it in their own way. We know it’s a tragedy and so Hamlet must have a terrible fate, so when the Ghost appears the journey towards that fate begins, “But soft, behold, lo where it comes again!” Surprisingly, at least to the modern reader, this fundamental supernatural element would not have shocked the Elizabethan audience as the human and spirit worlds were seen as permeable, there were no doubts, at least by the majority, that ghosts existed.

There were actually four options; the devil himself, a projection of the imagination of someone deluded or deranged, the result of imposture (locals confecting the illusion of a ghost), or the ghost could be a wandering soul returned to enact vengeance for justice. Some productions portray it as a fragment of Hamlet’s imagination, but for others it is the genuine ghost of the old King. Essentially it tells Hamlet that his Uncle Claudius really murdered the King and that he must “revenge his foul and most unnatural murder”, as “the serpent that did sting thy father’s life / Now wears his crown.”

So, Hamlet is burdened with the task of avenging his father, one that is made all the more difficult by the dark and dangerous world he lives in, Denmark’s courts of intrigue, deception and corruption. And this atmosphere is felt by everyone, the air is lousy with it, as the soldier Marcellus so poignantly remarks, “Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.” The theme of spying then emerges as Claudius sends Rosencratz and Guildenstern, Hamlet’s ‘friends’, to spy on him when he begins to feign madness. Polonius also embarks on his own spying, convinced the Prince’s madness is down to his lovesickness for Ophelia, “Still harping on my daughter… A is far gone, far gone… Though this be madness, yet there is method in’t”. With these layers upon layers of surveillance we are constantly on edge, never quite sure which side everyone is on and who is overhearing what for what end.

I’m convinced that Shakespeare intended Hamlet to work out quite quickly that he is being watched, as he ensures his Uncle is convinced he is mad, therefore giving himself the time and opportunity and disguise to figure out exactly what to do. After all, the spies are everywhere.

In this building chaos, we see Hamlet’s true thoughts and feelings emerge from the turmoil through his masterfully lucid and poignant soliloquies. And one of these has become the most famous speech in all of literature, when the troubled Prince asks himself the question that every single person considers at one time or another in their life: what is the point? To have these questions that every individual confronts privately to be so publicly confronted in a voice of such control, such thoughtfulness, such poignancy, is extraordinarily powerful. As Hamlet is alone, posing this question so explicitly, the audience inevitably begins to consider it and we try to come up with our own answers:

“To be, or not to be – that is the question;

Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer

The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune

Or to take arms against a sea of troubles

And by opposing end them. To die, to sleep –

No more – and by a sleep to say we end

The heartache and the thousand natural shocks

That flesh is heir to. ’Tis a consummation

Devoutly to be wished. To die, to sleep –

To sleep – perchance to dream. Ay, there’s the rub.

For in that sleep of death what dreams may come

When we have shuffled off this mortal coil

Must give us pause. There’s the respect

That makes calamity of so long life.

For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,

The’oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely,

The pangs of despised love, the law’s delay,

The insolence of office, and the spurns

That patient merit of th’unworthy takes,

When he himself might his quietus make

With a bare bodkin? Who would fardels bear,

To grunt and sweat under a weary life,

But that the dread of something after death,

The undiscovered country, from whose bourn

No traveller returns, puzzles the will,

And makes us rather bear those ills we have

Than fly to others that we know not of?

Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;

And thus the native hue of resolution

Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought,

And enterprises of great pitch and moment

With this regard their currents turn awry

And lose the name of action. Soft you now,

The fair Ophelia! – Nymph, in thy orisons

Be all my sins remembered.”

And so, Hamlet becomes a deeply personal character as he channels all this emotion and addresses probably the greatest fear of our species: death. There’s something about it that transcends faith and affiliation. We can always identify with moments of crisis, but it is so resonant and powerful because it deals with the desire to simply escape, to give up. Indeed, it is powerful to ask these questions even now but in Shakespeare’s time it was revolutionary. Suicide was utterly forbidden, illegal, something that if someone was accused of they would be exiled from society and executed, a stake through the heart. And yet here is a man rationally considering his options, actually considering suicide. The only thing that appears to hold him back is “the rub”, a greater fear and a greater source of sorrow and despair, “the dread of something after death.” This speech of perfect iambic pentameter flows beautifully from one idea to the next, and we can almost see straight into Hamlet’s mind as he bares his soul in this most eloquent and elegiac of moments.

It is after this heart-rending soliloquy in which he laments and curses the fact that we always talk ourselves out of our passions with cold reason, that Ophelia enters and he unleashes on her a bitter tirade of his disillusionment with love and marriage: “Get thee to a nunnery. Why wouldst thou be a breeder of sinners? . . . What should such fellows as I do crawling between earth and heaven? We are arrant knaves all. Believe none of us.” He is so distraught here his speech has disintegrated into prose, whether that is because of their intimacy, informality, his distress or a mixture of all three. He compares himself to some “crawling” creature and echoes her brother’s hypocritical warnings as he urges her to flee to a nunnery and a life of abstinence to avoid the sinfulness of sexual desire and its undesirable consequences: “If thou dost marry, I’ll give thee this plague as thy dowry: be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as snow, thou shalt not escape calumny.” In other words, no matter how hard we women try we’ll always at some point be branded as a slut.

With the arrival of a troupe of actors to entertain the court, Hamlet formulates a plan to expose the King’s guilt, determined to get proof before he does anything rash. Remember, all this time he is still feigning madness. He asks the actors to perform the tale of Gonzago, a King murdered by the brother who marries his wife and steals his crown, “Thy natural magic and dire property / On wholesome life usurps immediately.” And he carefully watches Claudius’ reaction. When the King storms out of the room in a rage, reacting so passionately, it is the moment Hamlet realises his worst fears are true, “Why, let the strucken deer go weep, / The hart ungalled play. / For some must watch, while some must sleep. / Thus runs the world away.” Then comes one of the most powerful moments of the whole play, when Hamlet stumbles upon his Uncle praying and has the choice to murder him right there. Claudius echoes the desperation and horror of Macbeth as he murmurs, “What if this cursed hand / Were thicker than itself with brother’s blood, / Is there not rain enough in the sweet heavens / To wash it white as snow?” As Hamlet raises the knife above his head, in that heartbeat he believes he will do it, but is once again talked out of it by his own morality, fears and humanity.

This makes him all the more likeable but makes him like himself less and less, “Why, this is hire and salary, not revenge.” I think when it comes down to it, Hamlet is a truly good person. But he is being put through such a trial here, broken by his father’s death, honor-bound to avenge him, and utterly alone in a world plotting against him. And yet he still has the moral strength and goodness of heart to question his actions, to instinctively recoil from cold-blooded murder. In his desperation to avoid reason and act on impulse, he reasons with even greater maturity and virtue. Ultimately, it is honor that is his undoing, as it so often is for the virtuous.

And what an undoing it is, arguably one of the bloodiest endings to a literary work. Hamlet poses such powerful questions about the morality of revenge and the morality of killing, but himself slips dangerously out of character, impulsively lashing out in his rage and killing Polonius while he confronts his mother. It is perhaps then as he looks down at the corpse that he realises nothing will ever be the same again, that he has started on the path to his own destruction. As much as I found myself disgusted with old Polonius and his arrogant interference in his daughter’s life, his attitude of utter superiority and domination, he does have some moments of rather poignant wisdom. For instance, he remarks, “Tis too much proved, that with devotion’s visage / And pious action we do sugar o’er / The devil himself.” In other words, people feign devotion to God to hide their sins, a shrewd foreshadowing of modern-day scandals which rock many denominations of the Christian church. But the King interprets almost with glee that such deception is indeed possible.

It is in the notorious graveyard that Hamlet comes face to face with mortality. He struggles to come to terms with the fact that these skulls were once living breathing people, and so is forced to consider what life really is, what it means, when we are merely reduced to bones, and then ash and dust. He holds Yorick’s skull, the King’s jester, and poignantly remembers how he used to kiss those lips and ride on his back. On discovering the freshly dug grave is actually for Ophelia he is thrown into a rage of despair, exacerbated when Laertes jumps into her final resting place and cradles her corpse, “Now pile your dust upon the quick and dead / Till of this flat a mountain you have made / T’o’ertop old Pelion or the skyish head / Of blue Olympus.” Hamlet bursts from where he has been concealing himself in heartbroken fury, crying, “I loved Ophelia. Forty thousand brothers / Could not with all their quantity of love / Make up my sum. What wilt thou do for her?” And the extent of his passion is exposed. Though he appears to feel no guilt in contributing to her death for me this is the most passionate we see him at, and after this moment he seems to fade in strength and spirit. I think he truly loved her. But that’s probably me just being a hopeless romantic, for he does later admit to Horatio that “the bravery of [Laertes’] grief did put me / Into a towering passion.” After all, as mentioned previously it is his honour that cripples him as he rages at Laertes’ pathetic attempt to “outface” him.

So, Laertes challenges him to a duel, of course following Claudius’ plan to poison the tip of the sword as well as Hamlet’s refreshment. Hamlet, instead of finally acting, gets involved in this rash wager, surrendering to his fate. It is a telling contrast between the two characters that Hamlet refrained from murdering Claudius while he was praying but Laertes vows to cut Hamlet’s throat “i’th’church!” Claudius eggs him on, “Revenge should have no bounds.” That’s a hell of a philosophy. Meanwhile, as Hamlet prepares he reaches an attitude of resignation and a sort of wonderful serenity. There is almost a sense of inner peace, and the oriental concept of fatalism. And so he speaks some of the most moving lines in the whole play, “There is special providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, ’tis not to come. If it be not to come, it will be now. If it be not now, yet it will come.”

In the course of the duel, his mother drinks the poisoned chalice, both Hamlet and Laertes are slashed by the poisoned sword, and Hamlet slashes Claudius and compells him to drink. This massacre happens in the very last scene so after so much deliberation Hamlet achieves his vengeance more by accident than by design. He has had little control over any of it. What is most striking is that he actually asks for Laertes’ forgiveness, suggesting a definite mental change. He has reconciled with the idea of death, no longer fearing the supernatural. He does blame his actions on his madness but the guilt at assuming full responsibility would no doubt destroy him. And so, his morality is hindered by the strength of his honor, “Let my disclaiming from a purposed evil / Free me so far in your most generous thoughts / That I have shot my arrow o’er the house / And hurt my brother.”

But it is in his very last speech with his dying breaths that he finally faces death and the question of the “undiscovered country”, staring into the afterlife. And almost with relief he has an eerie awareness that there is nothing, just a void, “the rest is silence.” The fact that this realization gives him such a powerful feeling of calm and peace is truly moving, and so refreshing. We should not be afraid of the void, we should welcome the beauty of the silence. The sheer poignancy of the scene is in his plea to Horatio for his story to be told, for the play to be performed and performed again.

It can therefore be said that Hamlet's life is not in vain. It does not end in silence.