Tales of revenge have been popular for centuries. The hero of the revenge tale is seen as a righteous vindicator who balances the scales after the villains gain an advantage through their nefarious deeds. While seemingly justified, more often than not the hero must also suffer an undesirable fate to complete the act of revenge: “Although revenge may be for the moralist of the sixteenth century…a theme of profound ethical concern, for the hero of the tragedy it is a fate that, while morally inescapable, is also morally suicidal” (Mercer 6).
This scenario, which has been repeated countless times in various tales of revenge, has no better representative than in Shakespeare‘s Hamlet. In the play, revenge is the driving factor, and all of the major characters are negative because of it. We can examine the various aspects of Hamlet’s revenge plot to gain greater insight into what the play says about the necessity of and the consequences of revenge.
Hamlet is as famous for his hesitations as he is for his quest for revenge. The reason for his hesitations throughout the play is how incredibly sure he felt that he had to be to carry out such an act. As mentioned, the act of revenge would inevitably have negative repercussions upon himself and those around him. The only character in the play to claim to have first-hand knowledge of the murder of Hamlet’s father and who speaks aloud about them to another character is the ghost of Hamlet’s father.
Hamlet seems to recognize that he cannot simply carry out such an act only upon the command of a ghost. He does not even know the full intentions of the ghost: “Several critics have recognized that Shakespeare could not have intended a spirit of health, released from Purgatory by divine will, to corrupt his son by commanding bloody revenge” (Prosser 138). The audience of the play would have recognized the morally compromised position that the ghost was asking Hamlet to put himself into, and as such Hamlet’s insistence on gaining some sort of further proof of his uncle’s actions would seem the only reasonable thing to do.
Other characters in the play have motives for revenge as well. The most obvious character seeking revenge is the ghost. The ghost’s desire for its death to be avenged is the entire motive behind Hamlet’s revenge plot. Hamlet was simply disturbed by the death of his father and his mother’s quick marriage, but Hamlet’s meeting with the ghost pushed him into full-on revenge. We can consider the ghost’s reasoning behind his insistence on Hamlet’s actions.
The ghost would have, being in purgatory, know what sort of long-term consequence this would have for his son. Having been murdered seems to have removed all human reasoning from him; the ghost would have known that he was sending his son to most certain doom, either in a literal or spiritual sense. We must, however, consider the ghost to be telling the truth, considering the actions of Claudius throughout the play, such as when he claims he cannot pray to be forgiven for his sins: “Oh, my offense is rank, it smells to Heaven/It hath the primal eldest curse upon’t/A brother’s murder. Pray can I not/Though inclination be as sharp as will” (3.3.36-39).
Hamlet’s main ploy to ensure the veracity of the ghost’s information and to enact his revenge plot is to use deceit. To hide his intentions and carry out his plans, he pretends to have gone insane. This puts the other characters ill at rest because of Hamlet’s erratic behavior, and they are not sure of the intentions of his actions as they do not know whether or not he is simply insane. Furthermore, he enacts a play that is identical to the events relayed to him by the ghost to see if his uncle, Claudius, acts in a way that gives away his guilty conscience: “He poisins him i’ the garden for his estate. His name’s Gozango. The story is extant, and written in very choice Italian.
You shall see anon how the murderer gets the love of Gozango’s wife” (3.2.272-275). Claudius does react to the play in a way that indicates to Hamlet that he is guilty, but at the same time, this ploy of Hamlet seems to be overly elaborate and hardly profound evidence of Claudius’s guilt. Hamlet could have taken a more direct route in attempting to verify the ghost’s story, and he could have perhaps even forced a confession out of Claudius. However, this is the difficulty with the use of deceit; when everybody is being so deceitful, it is difficult to figure out the true master of the situation. As such, this deceit only seems to get in the way of Hamlet’s revenge plot.
Hamlet’s use of deceit is made all the more difficult by the fact that most of the other characters attempt to use deceit as well to realize their goals as well. This is true of none more so than Claudius: “In this play, the hypocrite par excellence is Claudius (De Grazia 162). As Hamlet states: “One may smile, and smile, and be a villain” (1.5.108). Though he is guilty of his brother’s murder, he plays the innocent at the beginning of the play.
Knowing that Hamlet is at the very least acting suspicious, he resorts to getting Ophelia to let him eavesdrop on a conversation between herself and Hamlet in the first act, has Rosencrantz and Guildenstern spy on Hamlet and attempts to have them escort Hamlet to his death in the third act, and finally, he plans with Laertes to fix the fencing match with a poison tip foil and a poisoned drink. It is Queen Gertrude, who seems innocent of having taken any part in the murder of her husband, who is the victim of this deceit as she accidentally drinks the poisoned drink.
Considering that almost every major character in the play is involved with some sort of subterfuge, it’s not surprising for instance that Polonius ends up accidentally getting killed by Hamlet as he’s hiding behind the curtain. The play seems to go so far as to be stating that nobody will be able to discern any actual truth or gain any knowledge or advantage when so many people are engaged in so many acts of deceit. With so many characters being so duplicitous throughout the play, it is hardly surprising at all that so many characters suffer undesirable fates.
We need to consider the final repercussions of the plot to take revenge on one character for the death of another character. By the end of the play, Hamlet, Claudius, Polonius, Laertes, Ophelia, and Gertrude, every single major player in the action of the play, is dead. In the revenge plot for one character, a total of six characters end up dead. In conclusion, we can consider who was ultimately responsible for the deaths of so many characters. Initially, we might state that Polonius initially set the action of the play in motion by murdering his brother the king. This feels rather a disincentive, however, as he was only responsible personally for the death of one person.
He might have set the events in motion, though he did not commit the deeds the led to the death of the other characters. Next, we can consider the ghost to be responsible for the deaths of so many characters. Being a ghost, he did not personally take part in the physical actions of the play. Though he charged Hamlet with his revenge, we still can’t leave the ghost responsible for actions he did not commit. We ultimately need to hold Hamlet accountable for most of the deaths.
He personally, though accidentally, killed Polonius, and as such he was indirectly responsible for Ophelia’s suicide. Furthermore, the loss of his father and sister made Laertes feel as though he needed to take revenge upon Hamlet as well. This ultimately ended in the death of both Laertes and Hamlet through the duel. Gertrude also ends up dying because she accidentally drinks the poison intended for Hamlet.
Finally, Claudius is killed as well, which is the only death, considering that he was, in fact, guilty of his brother’s murder, which seems in the slightest bit justified. Considering that there were other options, such as possibly forcing a confession out of Claudius since he seemed to have such a guilty conscience over his deed. The needless deaths of so many characters as the result of the need for revenge seem to say one thing: revenge is simply not worth the risk to one’s moral well-being and can only result in even more deaths. This is a revenge play that seems to be against the entire idea of revenge.
Works Cited
De Grazia, Margreta, Hamlet Without Hamlet. Boston, Cambridge University Press, 2007.
Hunt, Marvin, Looking for Hamlet. New York, Palgrave McMillan, 2007.
Mercer, Peter, Hamlet and the Acting of Revenge. Iowa City, IA, University of Iowa Press, 1987.
Prosser, Eleanor, Hamlet, and Revenge. Stanford, CA, Stanford University Press, 1967.
Shakespeare, William, Hamlet. New York, McMillan, and Co., 1913.