the individualization of shakespeare's characters through imagery

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SHAKESPEARE SURVEY Hamlet's speeches often contain popular sayings and proverbs. "Let the gall'd jade wince", he tells Claudius, "our withers are unwrung" (HI, ii, 257), i.e. the matter does not concern us. "While the grass grows...", says Hamlet (in, ii, 359). This is equivalent to the Ukrainian proverb: "While the sun rises the dew can eat your eyes out." He calls himself 'John-a-dreams' (11, ii, 603), which is something like our saying "Oh, Vanka, you loafer!" Good handwriting did him "yeoman's service" (v, ii, 36) when he tampered with Claudius' letter to the King of England (the English infantry, the most reliable part of the army, was made up of yeomen). Hamlet calls his hands "these pickers and stealers" (in, ii, 349). "If the rest of my fortunes turn Turk with me", says Hamlet, i.e. if fate robs him and turns him into a beggar (in, ii, 292). "If thou knews't our purposes", says Claudius, to which Hamlet replies "I see a cherub that sees them" (iv, iii, 51), i.e. I do know somewhat. Paraphrasing the Bible, Hamlet says: "man and wife is one flesh" (iv, iii, 55). All these were evidently current expressions among the people, well known to the groundlings. Hamlet called the important official Polonius a 'fishmonger' (11, ii, 174), which, in the rough language of the taverns, evidently meant a procurer (Hamlet insinuates that Polonius is selling Ophelia). The following expressions are unquestionably like sayings and proverbs in tone. "Would I had met my dearest foe in heaven" (1, ii, 182). "Nay, then, let the devil wear black, for I'll have a suit of sables" (in, ii, 138). "A knavish speech sleeps in a foolish ear" (iv, ii, 25). "A man's life's no more than to say 'one'" (v, ii, 74). Hamlet's text is full of the simplest, most prosaic and, if we may say so, banal figures of speech. "I do not set my life at a pin's fee" (1, iv, 65), which is equivalent to the Russian "I value my life at less than a grosh". Hamlet says that his thanks are "too dear a halfpenny" (n, ii, 288). "Why, what an ass ami!" he exclaims (11, ii, 619). "Two thousand souls and twenty thousand ducats will not debate the question of this straw" (iv, iv, 26), Hamlet says of the war started by Fortinbras. And, in the same scene: "to find quarrel in a straw" (iv, iv, 52), i.e. in trifles. In Hamlet's words, Fortinbras' army risks all "for an egg-shell" (iv, iv, 53), i.e., for the sake of that which is not worth a penny. He compares people like Osric to foam; "do but blow them to their trial, the bubbles are out" (v, ii, 202). There are many allegorical figures in Hamlet's speeches, as in all Shakespeare's work, in regard to which we hardly have the right to apply the term 'poetic' in the sense of individual poetic invention. We are dealing here with a whole people's manner of thinking at a definite period in its development, with a style that has found reflection in folklore and in popular riddles. Hamlet does not say "O, women, nonentity is your name!" as Polevoy translated, modernizing Hamlet's language; what he says is "Frailty, thy name is woman!" (1, ii, 146). This suggests an allegorical figure of inconstancy who is called Woman. The following images are of the same type. "Murder, though it have no tongue, will speak with most miraculous organ" (n, ii, 630). "Let the candied tongue lick absurd pomp" (in, ii, 65). "If his occulted guilt do not itself unkennel in one speech" (m, ii, 85). "For in the fatness of these pursy times virtue itself of vice must pardon beg, yea, curb and woo for leave to do him good" (m, iv, 155). When Hamlet calls imagination the "mind's eye" (1, ii, 185), we see an image of the 'Soul', with a face and eyes, as it used to be depicted in medieval 'icons'. Iconographic images also suggest themselves when Hamlet says that "heaven's face doth glow; Yea, this solidity and 98 Shakespeare Survey Online © Cambridge University Press, 2007
INDIVIDUALIZATION OF SHAKESPEARE'S CHARACTERS compound mass, with tristful visage, as against the doom, is thought-sick at the act" (m, iv, 48). "While memory holds a seat in this distracted globe", says Hamlet, indicating his head (1, v, 96). The phrase "holds a seat" implies comparison of man's psychological function to a king's council in which each function, memory included, "holds a seat", i.e. is a member. Comparison of man to a state, so widespread in the Middle Ages, was very familiar to Shakespeare (cf. Coriolanus, 1, i, 101), just as was comparison of the state with the cosmos (Troilus and Cressida, 1, iii, 85). All this use of allegory, typical of medieval thinking, is reflected in Shakespeare's language, and, consequently, in Hamlet's. The latter grieves over the death of the May-Day hobby-horse, over the disappearance of the old medieval revels. In the language of the common people, in Shakespeare's language, in Hamlet's language, these 'hobby-horses' were still alive. If Hamlet speaks of these things more often, perhaps, than do Shakespeare's other characters, the reason lies in Hamlet's closeness to the common people. Hamlet's letter to Ophelia—"To the celestial and my soul's idol, the most beautified Ophelia" (11, ii, 109)—which Polonius reads to the King and Queen, is astonishing for its artless simplicity, as is the image "stars are fire" occurring in Hamlet's halting love verses. Hamlet himself admits, in this same letter, that "I am ill at these numbers; I have not art to reckon my groans". In the milieu to which Hamlet belonged, the court, this was something of an exception, which likewise sets Hamlet negatively, so to say, apart from this miheu. It must be remembered that his was the period of the cult of the sonnet. Hamlet's letter to Horatio (iv, vi, 13) is striking for the same artless simplicity—in an age of the cult of epistolary style and high-flown prose. Hamlet's poetic fantasy may be illustrated by his comparison of a cloud to a camel, a weasel and a whale (ni, ii, 400), the artless simplicity of which brings to mind folk-tales for children. The following image likewise echoes folk-lore: "Be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as snow", Hamlet tells Ophelia (in, i, 142). This carries us away to the world of images connected with the English popular ballad. The metaphor "the rose of innocent love" is also of this type. It is characteristic that Hamlet combines this metaphor with one purely realistic: he tells Gertrude that her act "takes off the rose from the fair forehead of an innocent love, and sets a blister there" (HI, iv, 42), hinting at a prostitute branded on the forehead. The following image also echoes the ballad: before his duel with Laertes Hamlet asks him to believe that "I have shot mine arrow o'er the house, and hurt my brother" (v, ii, 257), i.e. accidentally committed a grave crime—a plot which might have served as the material, and perhaps did serve as such before Shakespeare's time, for a popular ballad. The poetic vein in Hamlet's imagery is close to the popular ballad. At first glance some of Hamlet's images seem stilted, but in reality they are so common that they may safely be classed as 'fossilized' images, in other words, as stock sayings. "In the very torrent, tempest, and, as I may say, the whirlwind of passion, you must acquire and beget a temperance", Hamlet tells the actors (in, ii, 6). This "as I may say" is very characteristic here. "Wings as swift as meditation or the thoughts of love" (1, v, 29) also belongs to this class. Possible exceptions are "the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune" (in, i, 58) and "to take arms against a sea of troubles" (in, i, 59) from the "To be, or not to be" monologue. Quite probably, however, they too belong to the 'fossilized' images. In that case "slings and arrows" simply means 'blows', while "sea of troubles" is identical with "many troubles". This is all the more probable in the case of "sea of troubles", since only by regarding it as a 'fossilized' image can we eliminate the sharp violation of metaphoric unity which caused some commentators 99 7-2 Shakespeare Survey Online © Cambridge University Press, 2007
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