Laiz Gabrieli Lapim da Costa 201213861 3ALENTI

Essay on Hamlet
Hamlet as a Renaissancist man
Hamlet is one of the most important and controversial works of William Shakespeare,
often said to be the Tragedy of Inaction. Even nowadays theres a lot of debate on every
aspect of the play, but most people seem to agree that Hamlets downfall is to be
blamed on his passive behavior. The key to understand this characteristic of Hamlet is
to understand that hes not a pessimist man, as many seem to think, but a
Renaissancist one. That is, hes torned by two lines of thought, one that is emotional,
and other that is rational. Were Hamlet essentially skeptic, he would not suffer when
confronted with reality for he wouldnt understand the optimist view of life and of the
world. The torment that divides his mind keeps him in a constant state of hesitation,
preventing him from either taking action against his uncle or committing suicide.
In his first soliloquy we find Hamlet in his most depressed moment. He hadn't met the
ghost of his dead father yet, but he misses him and cannot stand the fact that his
mother had got married so shortly after the king's death. Hamlet's pain here is so great
that he contemplates suicide. He even summons up God and laments his decision to
"fix his canon 'gainst self-slaughter". (Act1, Scene 2, Page 5) But analyzing the first
lines of said soliloquy we see that religious fear is not the only thing stopping him from
actively taking his own life.
Hamlet

Oh, that this too, too sullied flesh would melt,
Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew,
Or that the Everlasting had not fixed
His canon 'gainst self-slaughter! O God, God!
How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable
Seem to me all the uses of this world!

(Act 1, Scene 2, Page 5)

Suicidal ideation is undoubtedly present in Hamlet's mind, as we can see in the
quotation above, but at the same time he seems too passive and unwilling to attempt on
his own life. He has the suicidal thoughts, but not a trigger that would lead him to the act
itself. He desires to disappear, to melt, in a way in what he could not be blamed or
judged by God and the people.
The next soliloquy in which suicidal thoughts can be pointed begins with the most
famous quote from the play, if not from Shakespeare entire work.
Hamlet

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 moreand by a sleep to say we end
The heartache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir totis a consummation
Devoutly to be wished! To die, to sleep.
To sleep, perchance to dreamay, theres the rub,
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause. Theres the respect
That makes calamity of so long life.

(Act 3, Scene 1, Page )

Here Hamlet has been through a lot already. He'd heard from his father's ghost the truth
about his death, had learned that the man had been killed by his own brother, and had
seen the guilt in Claudius' face while watching the play. He now is not tormented by pain
and bitterness alone, but rage and desire for revenge also reside in his mind. Most of all
he feels that it is his duty to avenge his father, the deceased King, and bring
righteousness to Denmark. But this seems a burden too great for him to carry and he
again cry for the end of suffering through the end of his life. But now he acknowledges
his fear: not only to be doing wrong before God's eyes, but also not knowing what
comes after death.
With these two examples we can already illustrate what was said in the beginning of this
essay and start to see Hamlet not as a pessimist character but as a deeply troubled
man haunted by his own philosophy and by reality. Before his father died he'd been in
contact with humanism, probably, and had seen the world as a good place and the
people living in it as God's best creation. After the death this same world seemed to him
useless and tiring, not only because of the mourning, but also because of his mother's
premature wedding. We can see it in the excerpt below.
Hamlet
I have of latebut wherefore I know notlost all my mirth, forgone all custom of exercises, and
indeed it goes so heavily with my disposition that this goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a
sterile promontory; this most excellent canopy, the airlook you, this brave overhanging
firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden firewhy, it appears no other thing to me than
a foul and pestilent congregation of vapors. What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason,
how infinite in faculty! In form and moving how express and admirable! In action how like an
angel, in apprehension how like a god! The beauty of the world. The paragon of animals. And yet,
to me, what is this quintessence of dust!

(Act 2, Scene 2, Page)

This is the certainly one of the brightest moments in the play, and also the saddest.
Here it's clear that Hamlet believes in the beauty of the world and of Human kind,
proving that he himself can see all this greatness, only that now these ideas are
overshadowed by the clouds of reality floating over him. It's interesting to note that
shortly before saying what was previously quoted, Hamlet said "I could be bounded in a
nutshell and find myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams."
With this answer he intended to make his friends understand why he thought of
Denmark, and the world for that matter, as a prison. This again shows how he knows
that what he's been feeling is the result of everything that has happened to him and
probably not what he would be feeling if he were his natural self.
As we can see, Hamlet is far from being a skeptical man, just as many men of his time.
He's a man of faith who finds himself confronted by reality but instead of accepting he
reacts with questioning, as a philosopher. What keeps him from doing the things that he
intended to do is not pessimism, but faith and doubts, and what makes him hesitate is
this questioning and over thoughtful nature of his self. He surely passes through many
changes, but his essentials are not those of a cynic man with no faith.