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The plays
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as melancholic and neurotic, as having an Oedipus complex, as
being a failure and indecisive, as well as being a hero, and a perfect
Renaissance prince. These judgements serve perhaps only to show
how many interpretations of one character may be put forward. ‘To
be or not to be’ is the centre of Hamlet’s questioning. Reasons not to
go on living outnumber reasons for living. But he goes on living,
until he completes his revenge for his father’s murder, and becomes
‘most royal’, the true ‘Prince of Denmark’ (which is the play’s subtitle),
in many ways the perfection of Renaissance man.
Hamlet’s progress is a ‘struggle of becoming’ – of coming to terms
with life, and learning to accept it, with all its drawbacks and challenges.
He discusses the problems he faces directly with the audience, in a
series of seven soliloquies – of which ‘To be or not to be’ is the fourth
and central one. These seven steps, from the zero-point of a desire not
to live, to complete awareness and acceptance (as he says, ‘the readiness
is all’), give a structure to the play, making the progress all the more
tragic, as Hamlet reaches his aim, the perfection of his life, only to die.
. . . we defy augury: there is a special providence in the fall of a
sparrow. If it be now, ’tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will
be now; if it be not now, yet it will come - the readiness is all.
Since no man owes of aught he leaves, what is’t to leave betimes?
(Hamlet)
The play can thus be seen as a universal image of life and of the
necessity of individual choice and action. No matter how tortured or
successful a life will be, the end is death, and, to quote Hamlet’s final
words, ‘the rest is silence’.
Shakespeare’s plays became ‘darker’ or, according to some critical
views, are ‘problem’ plays, in the years immediately before and after
Queen Elizabeth’s death and the accession of James VI of Scotland as
King James I of the United Kingdom in 1603. But when viewed in
theatrical terms – of character and action, discussion and debate – the
‘problem’ areas can be seen as examinations of serious social and moral
concerns. The balance between justice and authority in Measure for
Measure is set against a society filled with sexual corruption and
amorality. The extremes of Puritanism and Catholicism meet in the
characters of Angelo and Isabella. The justice figure of the Duke is, for