the individualization of shakespeare's characters through imagery

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SHAKESPEARE SURVEY Hamlet speaks of the perfect man with enthusiasm. Yet he expresses this dream of his in concrete, substantial words. He does not say "what a miracle of nature is man" or "what a marvellous creation is man", as his words are usually translated into Russian, but: "what a piece of work is a man!" (n, ii, 323). Construction images occur several times in Hamlet's role* He calls the earth a "goodly frame" (n, ii, 317), the sky "this majestical roof fretted with golden fire" (in the same monologue): precisely a roof, and not a vault. Other images of this class are as follows. Hamlet regrets that he is not made of pure metal (n, ii, 602). When Gertrude asks him to sit beside her he replies, indicating Ophelia: "Here's metal more attractive" (ni, ii, 117), i.e. a magnet. He tells Gertrude that his words will wring her heart "if it be made of penetrable stuff; if damned custom have not brazed it" (ni, iv, 36). Images which may be termed 'technical' are also to be found in Hamlet's role. "Adieu. Thine evermore, most dear lady, whilst this machine is to him, Hamlet", be writes to Ophelia (n, ii, 124). It is characteristic also that he calls the laws of thinking "the pales and forts of reason" (1, iv, 28). "For 'tis the sport", he says, referring to his enemies Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, "to have the engineer hoist with his own petar" (ni, iv, 206), adding that he "will delve one yard below their mines." We repeat: Hamlet's imagery is for the most part substantially concrete. He compares virtue with wax that melts in the fire of "flaming youth" (in, iv, 84). He calls his own head a "distracted globe" (1, v, 97). He compares the cracked voice of a boy actor playing female roles to a cracked gold piece unfit for circulation (n, ii, 446). According to him, if he had killed Claudius while the latter was praying it would have been "hire and salary, not revenge" (in, iii, 79). He does not say "who would bear life's adversities", but "who would fardels bear, to grunt and sweat under a weary life" (in, i, 76). He does not say that art ought to copy nature, but that art should "hold, as 'twere, the mirror up to nature" (in, ii, 26), i.e. again makes use of a definite object to give expression to his thoughts. Hamlet tells Gertrude that he will "set you up a glass" (in, iv, 19). He compares the air and the sky to a canopy (m, ii, 298). In his words, Fortinbras' soldiers are ready to "go to their graves like beds" (iv, iv, 62). He does not say "the external expressions of woe", but "the trappings and the suits of woe" (1, ii, 86). He resorts to definite objects even to express his most hidden and complex feelings and ideas. He could have been, he says, "bounded in a nut-shell, and count myself a king of infinite space" (n, ii, 264). He likens his soul to a pipe which Rosencrantz and Guildenstern try to play with clumsy fingers (in, ii, 354). He calls death "the undiscover'd country, from whose bourn no traveller returns" (ni, i, 79), an image typical of an age of geographical discoveries, when many set out across the seas in ships in search of new lands and treasures and frequently failed to return. Dying, Hamlet declares that "this fell sergeant, death, is strict in his arrest" (v, ii, 325). All these images are concrete, substantial. Typical of the tangible substantiality of Hamlet's style is the fact that looking at Yorick's skull, he does not say "here is where the lips were", but "here hung those lips" (v, i, 177). Among Hamlet's images is a definite set relating to nature and to gardening and agriculture. "O, that this too, too solid flesh would melt, thaw, and resolve itself into a dew!" he cries (1, ii, 129). The world is "an unweeded garden that grows to seed" (1, ii, 135). He compares the earth to "a sterile promontory" (11, ii, 297), again a realistic image. His father died unshriven, "his crimes broad blown as flush as May" (in, iii, 81). He asks his mother not to "spread the 94 Shakespeare Survey Online © Cambridge University Press, 2007
INDIVIDUALIZATION OF SHAKESPEARE'S CHARACTERS compost on the weeds to make them ranker" (m, iv, 150). He compares Claudius to " a mildew'd ear" (m, iv, 64). Hamlet also makes use of images relating to food and the process of digestion. He says that his mother "would hang" on his father "as if increase of appetite had grown by what it fed on" (1, ii, 144). Gertrude's marriage followed close upon the funeral of her first husband: "the funeral baked tfieats did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables" (1, ii, 180). Hamlet avers that some people have the bad habit "that too much o'er-leavens the form of plausive manners" (1, iv, 29), i.e. that some people overdo their attempts to please. He calls a play that has not pleased the populace "caviare to the general" (11, ii, 425), i.e. too refined a delicacy. He speaks of putting the king "to his purgation" (m, ii, 293). In another passage he says that kings, like common people, are eaten in the grave by worms; the worm is eaten by a fish, the fish by a beggar, and thus, says Hamlet, a king "may go a progress through the guts of a beggar" (iv, iii, 34). Hamlet also uses images having to do with the human body. He likens a moral defect in a man to a mole (1, iv, 24). Self-deception is like a film forming over an ulcer "whilst rank corruption, mining all within, infects unseen" (m, iv, 147). Wars, he says, are caused by inner abscesses (iv, iv, 27). Most of Hamlet's comparisons and metaphors are simple, lucid, comprehensible and concretely substantial. He has no use for euphuism. No wonder he mocks Osric's flowery style (v, ii). He dislikes all showy externals, "the trappings and suits". "Seems, madam! nay, it is; I know not 'seems'", he tells Gertrude (1, ii, 76). He strives to understand life to the end, to approach it directly and face to face. All his thoughts are concentrated on man's earthly existence. It is therefore no wonder that his speeches abound, as we have seen, in the names of real objects and phenomena. Hamlet has a clear view of reality and things; they wear no "romantic veil" for him. Hamlet is very observant. He sees right through people. He divined Claudius' criminal nature even before the apparition of the Ghost ("O my prophetic soul!" he exclaims upon learning from the Ghost who killed his father—1, v, 40). He immediately realized that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern were concealing something from him. Ophelia's embarrassment when Claudius and Polonius are listening behind the arras does not escape his keen eyes. He recognizes Horatio's disinterested honesty. Hamlet is an observant man, a man of realistic mentality. At the same time, however, Hamlet is a dreamer. Comparison of Hamlet with the author of Utopia naturally suggests itself. We may note here that Thomas More was also a realist. One had to see all the ugliness and imperfection of real life to hate injustice as Thomas More and Hamlet hated it, to refuse to accept this injustice and create a dream. Hamlet dreamt of the perfect man as passionately as did the author of Utopia of the perfect human society. The gulf between dream and reality, the impossibility, at that time, of bridging this gulf plunged both of them into deep sorrow. Hamlet admired man, the nobility of his reason, his infinite faculty, but in the same breath he said that "man delights me not" (n, ii, 309). He called death felicity and said it was hard to breathe "in this harsh world" (v, ii, 361-2). Hamlet's images are often rather coarse. He compares Claudius to a toad, bat, and gib (in, iv, 190). He says that he should long since "have fatted all the region kites with this slave's offal" (n, ii, 614). His ironic question "How now! a rat?" (ni, iv, 23) suggests a comparison of Claudius to a rat (he had thought that it was Claudius behind the arras, and not Polonius). The 95 Shakespeare Survey Online © Cambridge University Press, 2007
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the individualization of shakespeare's characters through imagery

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