Aleks Prigozhin

Fashioning a Tragedy: “Fashion” in Hamlet

                      In this essay, I would like to call attention to the importance of the word “fashion,” with its several connotations, to the understanding of William Shakespeare’s Hamlet. The conflict between the two main meanings of “fashion,” between “ shaping and shape, helps to shed some light on the underlying substance of a play that concerns itself frequently with the questions of identity, show, and craft, mainly within a court setting. Perhaps it is surprising that, in most cases, the word is uttered about, for, or by Hamlet himself. Considering the fact that “fashion” is invoked by several different speakers with different meainings provides the word with some explanatory power in considering both the character of Hamlet and the play as a whole.

          In the first instance in which the word is used, Laertes attempts to define Hamlet’s actions. Warning Ofelia that Hamlet’s love is not serious, Laertes advises her to “hold it a fashion and a toy in blood” (I.iii.6). He is using the word to connote “visible characteristics, appearance” (OED, 2nd ed. s.v. “fashion,” 2a). He suggests that Hamlet’s behavior is nothing but a show; however, this reading of his behavior is, in fact, wrong. The use of “fashion” continues to recur later in the play, as a mini-dramatization of one of its main themes: the conflict between appearances and reality, as well as the difficulty of distinguishing between the two.

          In the same scene, Polonius and Ophelia use, and represent, two conflicting connotations of the word to refer to Hamlet. While Ophelia, sees fashion merely as a “mode of action” (OED, 2nd ed. s.v. “fashion,” 6a): “he hath importuned me with love/In honourable fashion”(110-111), Polonius’ reply, “Ay, fashion you may call it”(112), insists on seeing “fashion” as “form as opposed to matter,” (OED, 2nd ed. s.v. “fashion,” 2b),  both meanings encountered in the time period between 1576 and 1614 though now obsolete.

          In lamenting Hamlet’s apparent madness, Ophelia reemploys the conflict that first appeared in her dialogue with Polonius, describing Hamlet as the “glass of fashion and the mould of form” (III.i.156). This is historically the first use of  the word to connote, “conventional usage in dress, mode of life, etc., esp. as observed in the upper circles of society” (OED 2nd ed. s.v. “fashion, 9a).  On a rather direct level, it is interesting to note that a mould, or form, unlike the casts made from it, doesn’t have to be hollow inside.  Hamlet’s status as the form, as the true “fashion,” surprisingly confirms his earlier claim: “I know not ‘seems’” (I.ii.76). Unlike the courtiers such as Polonius, he is not merely a cast of something or someone else. Although it could be argued that he is, in a sense, a copy of his father, Hamlet adheres to that model from within, rather than merely being a cast.

          Hamlet is conscious of deceit inherent in “fashion” and is good at it, unlike the courtiers, who accept the distinction between an outer “seems” and an inner “is” without shame or a thorough consideration to its effects. When Claudius suspects Hamlet’s madness to be a ploy, he calls his behavior an effect of an inner force, a “…matter in his heart,/Whereon his brains still beating puts him thus/From fashion of himself…” (III.i.176-178). A force beating from within puts Hamlet out of his true shape, out the way he ought to appear. His inner world aches to express itself. Perhaps, other characters may experience similar feelings. However, whereas ambition guides courtiers to be out of shape with themselves, Hamlet’s situation mainly shows the effects of conscience. His famous “hesitation” may, in fact, be a consequence of a force that allows him to establish guilt and innocence almost undetected. Without a conscience keen on examining the problem of outward appearances, Hamlet would not have been able to appear convincingly mad; neither would he be able to see through the “fashions” of others to their true core.