Hamlet Fatal Flaw

THAT OLD BLACK MAGIC: THE TRAGIC FLAW
Contrasting Hamlet with Macbeth clarifies one major reason why Prince Hamlet’s tragedy raises so many questions. Macbeth’s “tragic flaw” is clearly excessive ambition. He says that he is ambitious more than once, and Lady Macbeth adds ample support to that interpretation of Macbeth’s character. Her domination of her husband in the play exploits that flaw. We English teachers all know that a tragic hero must fall from the effects of a major character flaw (plus outside forces), and Shakespeare knows well how to play this game. But in Hamlet he makes his protagonist more intriguing by making it more difficult for the audience to decide what Hamlet’s flaw might be. Hamlet introduces the idea in Act1, Scene 4, when he speaks of the “vicious mole of nature,” “the stamp of one defect” that can bring a person “otherwise as pure as grace” to “his own scandal” (24-38). The ghost of the dead King Hamlet appears immediately and informs Prince Hamlet that his father was murdered by the king’s brother, Claudius, now king and married to the queen, Hamlet’s mother. Of course Hamlet’s resentment of the marriage of Claudius to Gertrude is one of the first things we learn about the prince, but the major thrust of the play focuses more on why Hamlet “fails” to exact the revenge demanded by the ghost. Hamlet asks this question multiple times, giving possible reasons that range from “bestial oblivion” to over-intellectualizing, from cowardice to lack of honor (“O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I!”). This element of the play is emphasized by the actions of other characters. Hamlet’s strategy for finding the truth (his pretended madness) causes other characters simultaneously to delve in their own analyses—attempts to explain Hamlet’s behavior. Ophelia, Polonius, Claudius, and Gertrude each offer interpretations that range from love (“mad for thy love?”) to grief for his father’s death and resentment of his uncle’s and mother’s “o’erhasty marriage.”
Part of my approach to the play is certainly traditional. Its primary focus is to attempt to explain Hamlet’s tragic flaw. I find it beneficial to introduce my students to a variety of critical interpretations with the following handout, which includes several inserts in a lighter tone to get them to think about the handout on more than one level:
Is Shakespeare giving us a philosophical or a psychological argument in Hamlet and its tragic hero? Does Hamlet fail to act in time because the world is arguably beyond our effective comprehension? because he has a particular psychological problem, such as an Oedipus Complex? or because his character is too weak for the task--he is a coward, a ditherer, or a dullard and dolt? [Editor's note: The observant in the crowd will notice that this lesson contains either two or three sentences at this point. The first starts with the word "is," the second with the word "does." Is the next sentence, which begins with the word "editor" in the possessive form, part of "the lesson" or is it the beginning of a second lesson--perhaps something about sentences and paragraphs, or punctuation, or positioning editor's notes, or how to end a sentence inside brackets!] Is Hamlet a strong character or a weak one? How does the Laurence Olivier production present him and explain his delays? How does the Mel Gibson Hamlet play? How do you explain them? [Editor's note: Why is the above paragraph written in present tense?] [Editor's note: Should any or all of these editor's notes appear as footnotes rather than insertions?] [Editor's note: Does the author of the note appear to believe his audience is capable of learning more than one thing in one day?] [Editor's note: How many lessons are here? How many sentences? How many editors?!]
HAMLET'S TRAGIC FLAW: Is Hamlet's distress understandable? Why does he fail to act until too late? Some of the most important interpretations of Hamlet's tragic flaw are:
Goethe: The great German poet argued that Hamlet is not brave enough. He lacks the "right stuff." The dramatic situation is like an acorn (the problem) planted in a cracked vase (Hamlet). As the problem grows, Hamlet becomes less sound.
A.C. Bradley: This famous Shakespeare scholar said that Hamlet suffers from melancholia or is merely mentally deranged.
Ernest Jones: The Freudian interpretation--Oedipus complex. He still has a childish sexual fixation on Gertrude. Thus, his attitude toward Claudius is ambivalent; he is grateful to Claudius for removing his "rival" for his mother's affections (King Hamlet) but must also resent him as his new father-figure.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge: Hamlet's delay is caused by "the effect of a superfluous activity of thought." He thinks too much because he is too elevated for this world, has too fine a character.
A more general interpretation is that Hamlet does not have a flaw. He is merely waiting for the ghost to be proven honest or not. In this he may be seen as a twentieth century existentialist hero. He is faced with a problem whose answer may lie beyond the limits of human reason--or in fact may not have an answer. It is this limitation, and the uncertainty it produces, that makes Hamlet "unstable."
Helen Gardner: Hamlet is a true revenge play: In a typical revenge play the protagonist must kill the slayer of his relative or friend in the most terrible way possible.
a. The hero faces a predicament not of his own making.
b. The villain provides the means for the vengeance (Claudius suggests the duel).
c. The avenger conceives a plot and puts it into action.
d. Usually the hero descends to the moral level of the man being punished (a mild
irony) with a terrible revenge scheme (Hamlet may not do this).
e. The denouement of Hamlet shows a "profound" irony: Claudius plans Hamlet's death, but both he and his queen die. The tragedy here does not lie in the unfitness of the hero for his task. He, according to Gardner, has no flaw. The flaw is in the task itself (is it beyond any man?) or in the nature of the world (is perfect justice impossible in the world?). The task itself is one only a hero would feel called upon to undertake--like charging the machine gun nest to save your buddies, raising children, teaching English.
Productions of the play generally use one or more of the above interpretations to present Hamlet’s character. (Both the Laurence Olivier and the Mel Gibson Hamlets are products of Ernest Jones’ argument that Hamlet suffers an Oedipus Complex.) Although I have shown both of these films and the Kenneth Branaugh version in their entirety—at different times—the Mel Gibson film is the shortest (135 minutes) and perhaps the most accessible for the students. Scenes ranging from the opening scene to the poison-duel resolution could be chosen for contrast, but I prefer Act 3, Scene 4, where Hamlet kills Polonius and the ghost appears. This scene is the play’s climax and involves whatever interpretation of the tragic flaw the actor chooses. A scene that could be chosen just to show contrasts in staging is Act 3, Scene 3, where Claudius is attempting to pray.
A study of Hamlet’s tragic flaw certainly does not exhaust the attractions of this play. Other characters die—are their deaths justified? King Hamlet has called upon his son for revenge, but the biblical imagery within the play surely reminds us that revenge is the province of the divine and raises the question, is the Ghost’s very request somehow wrong? (Hamlet initially questions the prudence of heeding the ghost’s demand.) Why do Gertrude and Ophelia so willingly give in to the authority of the males? Should Hamlet’s friends Rosencrantz and Guildenstern die for helping the king and queen? Does Polonius deserve to die when hiding behind the arras?
SHAKESPEARE’S THEMES
An equally direct approach to the play is possible through a study of Shakespeare’s themes. This can be the basis for a closer study of the language Shakespeare chooses for his text. In Macbeth Shakespeare makes use of an idea Alexander Pope will later call the Great Chain of Being. Everything that exists has a place in an orderly universe that ranges from the lowest being (Aristotle identified it as “unformed matter”) to the highest (God). Man’s immoral acts upset that chain and cause disruptions in Nature. (A twentieth century Hollywood movie, Shane, may make use of that idea in the fight scene between Shane and his host—both good men—when they clash over who will face the bad gunman in town. The sky outside the cabin grows dark, apparently because good men are fighting each other rather than evil, and clears again when the victorious Shane rides to the gunfight.) In a much more exaggerated fashion Shakespeare has the unnatural acts of Macbeth disturb the heavens and cause animals to behave unnaturally (horses are reported to eat each other on the night the king is killed). Hamlet alludes to this concept only once, when talking of Rome, Julius Caesar, and the “sheeted dead” that roamed the streets in the days before Caesar’s assassination. In Hamlet Shakespeare explores the idea in a more “realistic” manner. The kingdom is disturbed politically and morally. Denmark is preparing for war, a ghost appears early in the play, and the king and queen are united in an incestuous relationship!
Other religious ideas dominate the play. The king’s death, related in the play by the ghost, invokes the Garden of Eden of Genesis. The king is asleep in the “orchard” (garden) and is supposedly bitten by a snake when Claudius poisons him. The act of brother killing brother recalls another story from Genesis, Cain killing Abel, which Claudius echoes in the famous prayer scene (3.3). This echoes in Hamlet’s declaration that the world is “an unweeded garden” and is part of the background that heightens Hamlet’s reasoning when he is debating whether to kill Claudius as he is “praying” and is significant in the drama’s distinctions between appearance and reality.
The method Claudius chooses to kill his brother provides a central metaphor for the kingdom being “poisoned”; poison and its effects provide much of the most effective language in the play, from “unweeded garden” (1.2.135) and “Something is rotten in the state of Denmark” (1.4.90) of Act 1 to the poisoned pearl of Act 5. But the dramatic uses of poison are even more striking. From the murder of the king to the “poisoned” plot of Laertes and Claudius, from the poisoned mind of the mad Ophelia to the poisoning of Hamlet and the death of Claudius by poisoned sword and poisoned pearl, Shakespeare has wonderfully illustrated the consequences of the ambitious murder of Kind Hamlet by Claudius.