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By Root 5677 0

tortured Hamlet is portrayed so engagingly that we may overlook just how far Shakespeare has shown him turning into a ruthless monster; so that half way through the story, in the scene where Claudius is on his knees, we have the equally rare spectacle of two protagonists, Claudius and Hamlet, who in reality have become as dark as each other: except that Hamlet is not even manly enough to carry out his dark purposes, unless he is acting on impulse. And to understand just why Shakespeare has wanted to place his characters in this extraordinary situation we must step back from the personal drama of the play, to see how he intends this to be only the central focus for a much more general picture of human nature.

Hamlet: The wider picture

A common misunderstanding about Hamlet is reflected in that familiar cliche that something is like `playing Hamlet without the Prince of Denmark, implying that, without Hamlet, there would be nothing left of the play. It may be the longest stage part in English literature. But not the least fascinating aspect of this story is the extent to which it is not just about the personal problems of its central figure.

Shakespeare is continually at pains to emphasise that his real preoccupation in this play goes much wider than just what is going on in the mind of one individual. As we learn soon after the start of the story, it is not just in Hamlet's mind that `the time is out of joint. There is `something rotten in the state of Denmark' itself. The whole kingdom is sick. Even Elsinore stands for much more than just one little kingdom on the edge of Europe. It has infinitely less to do with the real, geographical Denmark than, say, Julius Caesar's Rome has to with the real Rome, or the `history plays' with a real England.

Elsinore just happens to be the place on which the spotlight is shining. But we are made continually aware of the rest of the world stretching away into the darkness in all directions. Norway to the north, Paris and Wittenburg to the south, England to the west, Poland to the east: all play their part in the overall story, and in no other of Shakespeare's plays are we made so continually aware of a fever of activity going on off-stage. Right at the start we learn (in a speech inserted by Shakespeare at the last minute, and obviously intended further to underline some general point about the play as a whole) that a major `crisis' has arisen between Denmark and Norway, and that the people of Denmark are preparing for war. So frenziedly is the country arming that `the night is made joint labourer with the day', `Sunday is so no longer divided from the week'. Throughout the play, from the first act to the last, the warlike tramp of armies is continually heard off stage. The little court of Elsinore is thus simply a brightly-lit microcosm, reflecting the general state of the world.

It is against this vast, dark, restless background that Shakespeare focuses on just one human crisis in particular: on the catastrophic events we see unfolding in Elsinore. And if there is one thing above all which marks out the unhappy little group of people we see thrown together in the Danish court it is the way they are all plotting against and spying on each other.

There is scarcely any play of Shakespeare's in which someone does not in some way attempt to trick or deceive someone else, whether it be Iago tricking Othello with the handkerchief or all those heroines in the comedies who appear in male disguise. But no play contains anything like so many plots and stratagems as Hamlet: at least nine in all. Scarcely has Polonius seen off Laertes to Paris than he is sending Reynaldo after him to spy on his moral conduct. When Hamlet's old friends Rosencrantz and Guildenstern turn up, they are immediately recruited by Claudius to spy on Hamlet. When the troupe of actors arrives, Hamlet himself immediately sets up the evening's entertainment as his trick to `catch the conscience of the king'. Polonius and Claudius set Ophelia to waylay Hamlet as he is walking in the palace, then settle behind a pillar to