Sam Martin

It’s Getting Hot, and I Smell Something: “Fire” in Hamlet

            The driving force behind the plot in Hamlet is the title character’s “fiery” determination to revenge his father’s death.  The word “fire” takes on many different, but related meanings throughout the text of the play.

            The first time we see “fire” is in reference to the fading of the ghost of Hamlet’s father: “Awake the god of day, and at his warning, / Whether in sea or fire, in earth or air, / Th' extravagant and erring spirit hies / To his confine” (I.i, l. 133-6).  Here, fire is “one of the four ‘elements’” (OED 2nd ed. s.v. “fire” 1b) of which all the world was supposedly composed.  Fire, though, here comes to have a double meaning as Hamlet later tells his son that he is in fact burning in hell, awaiting his death to be avenged.  This leads to yet another sense of fire, the flame that is lit in Hamlet by the knowledge of his father’s murder, and which drives him to revenge.  The part of him in which the fiery element resides is clearly what will dominate him for the rest of the play.  Polonius, as always, doesn’t quite get it.  He counsels Ophelia against yielding to Hamlet’s advances, saying “These blazes, daughter, / Giving more light than heat, extinct in both / Even in their promise as it is a-making, / You must not take for fire.” (I.iii, l. 117-20).  Polonius believes that Hamlet is lacking in “A burning passion or feeling, esp. of love or rage” (OED 2nd ed. s.v. “fire” 13a).  While Hamlet may or may not be lacking in love, he is not short on rage, as I discussed earlier.  It is his “Ardour of temperament; ardent courage or zeal” (OED 2nd ed. s.v. “fire” 13c) that drives him to vengeance.

            What is so interesting to me is not just that “fire” is employed in so many ways, but that they are so closely linked by the plot.  The definitions all intertwine to give us an intriguing lexical development as the play progresses.

Works Cited

"fire." Oxford English Dictionary. 06 Apr. 2006
"William Shakespeare: The Complete Works." The University of Chicago Library. 06 Apr. 2006