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By Root 5377 0

not for a moment question his right to do so, because the giant is portrayed as nothing but a monstrous personification of human egotism. The giant is unmistakably dark, the hero is light, When Perseus slays his stepfather Polydectes, by showing him the head of the Medusa, this seems wholly justifiable, because Polydectes is a cruel, heartless tyrant. It is the same when Aladdin slays his `stepfather' and `uncle' the Sorcerer. It is the same when Nicholas Nickleby's wicked Uncle Ralph, his dead father's brother who has stolen his inheritance, is finally caught out and hangs himself. It is the same when all the countless other dispossessed sons who teem through storytelling manage to overcome the monstrous `Dark Father' to claim their birthright. But, quite deliberately, Shakespeare varies this pattern. The inspiration for Hamlet's decision to kill his usurping stepfather comes only from the Ghost, who is unrelievedly dark. The result of obeying that temptation is that Hamlet himself becomes overwhelmed by the darkness in his own nature. Clearly the course the Ghost is urging on Hamlet is one he should not follow. So what is Shakespeare trying to tell us?

The clue lies in the nature of what the ghost is urging Hamlet to do. `Old Hamlet' is not lovingly asking his son to do something which might directly further `young Hamlet's' own welfare. His sole concern is vengeance for his own death. Having been guilty in life of the `foul crimes' for which he is now being punished, he is still locked entirely into the world of his own ego and is now instructing his son to commit an equally heartless crime in turn. And what Shakespeare gradually develops from this original core is a picture of a human world in which almost everyone is similarly trapped by the ego, as no one is more acutely aware than Hamlet himself. `We are arrant knaves all,' he says to Ophelia, `believe none of us: `Use every man after his deserts, and who should 'scape whipping?' Every human being, he implies, is as much in a state of sin as everyone else. `What news?' Hamlet asks Rosencrantz. `None, my lord, but that the world's grown honest.' `Then is doomsday near' replies Hamlet, `but your news is not true'. Only two figures in the story are not tainted with this relentless, universal curse of egotism. One is the `faithful Horatio, whose role is simply to be Hamlet's loyal friend. The other, of course, is Ophelia, representing the shining, selfless `light feminine', which is why she becomes shut out from a world where this is simply not understood, and why Hamlet tells her to retire to a nunnery, since if she does not she will only become a breeder of yet more sinners.

In this respect Ophelia plays much the same role as the heroine in Antigone, where the city of Thebes under the Tyrant Creon is, like Elsinore, a microcosm of a world oppressed by the harsh, loveless masculine value, with its talk of honour and vengeance. Thebes too has resounded to the tramp of armed men, with Eteocles and Polynices locked in the egocentric rivalry which was to bring both to their deaths, leaving Antigone as isolated as Ophelia in representing the life-giving feminine value which everyone else lacks (even though Antigone is `active' and Ophelia 'passive'). Antigone, like Hamlet, concludes on a stage strewn with corpses, brought about by heartless, vengeance-obsessed, `eye for an eye' masculine morality. Appropriately Hamlet ends with the sound of military drum beats, as Fortinbras arrives to see the `dismal sight' of the court of Elsinore reminding him of a battlefield. He orders that Hamlet should be honoured with `the soldier's music and the rite of war, and the play closes on the line `Go, bid the soldiers shoot, followed by the noise of cannon-fire. `Young Hamlet' may have failed to succeed `Old Hamlet'. But now the warlike `young Fortinbras, who had succeeded his uncle `Old Fortinbras; has, with the approval of Hamlet's dying breath, succeeded also to the throne of Denmark. Despite this fearsome illustration of what the loveless pursuit of the one-sided masculine value must