Julia Zhu

Death, Actually?

            Hamlet Prince of Denmark is a play about confusion. As the plot develops, the blurring of fact and fiction is overtly expressed by the characters themselves—Ophelia in her distraction declares, “Lord, we know what we are but/know not what we may be” (IV.5.43-44); Hamlet, who kills Polonius and drives Ophelia to suicide, still insists, “Was’t Hamlet wronged Laertes?  Never Hamlet/....Hamlet does it not.  Hamlet denies it” (V.2.211, 214); upon his death, the Prince of Denmark has no victories to boast of, but laments, “What a wounded name,/Things standing thus unknown, shall I leave behind me!” (V.2.27-28).  Thus it may seem that the play must open with relative stability, but even without suicides, regicides, insanity, and adultery, William Shakespeare manages to make clear that “something is rotten in the state of Denmark” (I.5.90).  His use of the words “dead” and “death” at the beginning of the play is particularly powerful in both its repetition and its incongruity.  Shakespeare uses the finality that “death” is supposed to connote to highlight the lack thereof and the latent incertitudes that will eventually surface.

            Hamlet opens at midnight on the castle battlements.  Marcellus, a sentinel, describes a ghost he has seen the past two nights that appears “at this dead hour” (I.1.65).  While “dead” in this context denotes “profoundly quiet or still” (OED Online, 3rd ed., s.v. “dead,” A.II.18), Shakespeare also uses it ironically, as Marcellus is speaking about a ghost, something that is inherently not (quite) dead.  Furthermore, by referring to midnight as a “dead hour” Shakespeare emphasizes the mystical powers of midnight as a time when the worlds of the dead and alive blur.  This description raises the possibility that even an event as absolute as death carries no certainty.

            Horatio further explores this issue.  Terrified by the sight of the dead king, Horatio remembers the night that Julius Caesar died, when “the graves stood tenantless and the sheeted dead/did squeak and gibber in the Roman streets” (I.1. 115-116).  Horatio refers to the dead, “that which has ceased to live; in that state in which the vital functions and powers have come to an end, and are incapable of being restored” (OED Online, 3rd ed., s.v. “dead,” A.I.1), and yet calls them “tenants”, saying they “squeak” and “gibber”.  Horatio’s words not only vividly highlight the insubstantiality of death, but also point to a larger reversal of order.  Shakespeare’s reference to the Roman dead upon the murder of Caesar foreshadows the chaos that will ensue because of old Hamlet’s death.

            The chaos that follows is revealed when Hamlet encounters the ghost of his father.  Hamlet, “[shaken] with thoughts beyond the reaches of our souls” (I.4.56), repeatedly refers to the ghost as a “dead corpse” (I.4.52) and “hearsèd in death” (I.4.47).  Hamlet’s words mark a turning point, when the disorder following the King’s death is finally brought to the surface.  The repetition of “death” and “dead” also serves as an emotional climax, conveying a son’s horror and pain at seeing the body of his dead father.  Above all, these words are the first of many on an issue that haunts Hamlet, and most likely his audience: What is death, and conversely, what does it mean to live?  Hamlet’s numerous references to his father’s death not only emphasizes the incongruity of the situation, but also reveals Hamlet’s disbelief and incomprehension.

            Subtlety is at once the genius and the weakness of Hamlet—one might argue that nuances are what makes this play Shakespeare’s masterpiece, or that these nuances eventually drowns the plotline.  However, at least in the first act, Shakespeare’s powerful usage of the words “dead” and “death” creates the perfect ominous atmosphere in which “deaths put on by cunning and forced cause,/And...purposes mistook/ fall’n on th’ inventors’ heads” (V.2.366-367) later unfold.