Hamlet’s Consciousness :

‘Conscience does make cowards of us all’

In the last article we noted Prufrock's acknowledgment that he was “not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be”. Rather, he went on to say, he was “an attendant lord, one that will do To...Advise the prince....an easy tool, Deferential, glad to be of use, Politic, cautious, and meticulous: Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse; At times, indeed, almost ridiculous—Almost, at times, the Fool.”

This description perfectly fits Polonius, father of Ophelia, the sycophantic lord chamberlain in 'Hamlet'. If we need further confirmation we have only to remember Prufrock's earlier comment: “I should have been a pair of ragged claws Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.” For Hamlet actually suggests to Polonius that “like a crab, you could go backward” - a reference, no doubt, to Polonius' propensity for compromise.

Yet the nonentity Polonius has one of the most famous speeches in the play. It has been quoted almost as much as the soliloquies of Hamlet himself. Over the centuries it has been recited solemnly by fathers to sons and by schoolmasters to schoolboys. I am referring, of course, to Polonius' “precepts” to his son, Laertes, who is about to travel abroad. Here are the choicest: “The friends thou hast, and their adoption tried, Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel;...Neither a borrower nor a lender be; For loan oft loses both itself and friend, And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry. This above all: to thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man.”

M I Kuruvilla Kuruvilla impressed upon us the importance of understanding Shakespeare’s use of language in order to understand the meaning of ‘Hamlet’. Remembering that lesson, one realises that it is in the language of a literary work that we should primarily seek the objective correlative to its emotional content

The question is, how could such seemingly noble sentiments have been put by the playwright in the mouth of such an obnoxious character as Polonius? And the next question that arises is whether this is not further proof of Eliot's judgment that Shakespeare fails to provide an objective correlative to the sentiments expressed in 'Hamlet'? It was only when M I Kuruvilla put the speech in context for us that we understood the subtlety of Shakespeare. Polonius was actually giving his son a recipe for self-preservation and self-advancement, precepts for the sort of success that he believed he had achieved himself.

Kuruvilla impressed upon us the importance of understanding Shakespeare's use of language in order to understand the meaning of 'Hamlet'. Remembering that lesson, one realises that it is in the language of a literary work that we should primarily seek the objective correlative to its emotional content. Eliot himself, notwithstanding his demand for 'objects, situations and events', seems to acknowledge this is citing 'Macbeth' as a successful example of objective 'equivalence'. “You will find that the state of mind of Lady Macbeth walking in her sleep has been communicated to you by a skilful accumulation of imagined sensory impressions.”

And just so is the state of mind of Hamlet to be understood. The play is not a collection of eloquent soliloquies by the protagonist around which a plot of sorts has been weakly wrapped. The expressions of Hamlet are full of meanings that are intensely relevant to the play's progression and its denouement, making it the tragedy that it is and him the tragic hero that he is.

Taking the first soliloquy, before the Ghost has apprised him of Claudius' villainy: “O, that this too too solid flesh should melt, Thaw and resolve itself into a dew! Or that the Everlasting had not fix'd His canon 'gainst self-slaughter! “ This is not a suicidal intention but a mere death-wish. It is not surprising in one whose natural adoration of his mother has turned to aversion due to her hasty remarriage with her brother-n-law. This does not only seem a betrayal of her late husband; in enabling Claudius to ascend the throne she has herself deprived her son of his natural right to the succession. Nature itself seems to have been violated. The world seems “an unweeded garden, That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature Possess it merely.” The imagery of unwanted, uncontrolled growth convey Hamlet's incipient disgust with life and his sense of helplessness.

When we come to the great soliloquy - “To be, or not to be” - much more has happened. The Ghost has called for revenge, Hamlet has begun to feign madness to avoid suspicion, this has made the queen feel guilty and Claudius suspicious, his childhood friends seem to be spying on him, the player's passionate recitation of a bereaved queen's grief has stung him with a sense of his own inaction, but he is also fearful that the Ghost might really be an evil spirit bent on causing mischief. Above all there is a sense of the excessive responsibility that Providence seems to have cast upon him - “The time is out of joint: O cursed spite, That ever I was born to set it right!” Now the prospect of death is real because undertaking a regicidal course at this stage would be plainly suicidal.

“To die: to sleep; No more; and by a sleep to say we end The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation Devoutly to be wish'd.” That the death-wish is now genuine can be seen in those last five words which convey the sense that death perfects and sanctifies life. But Hamlet's mind keeps working. Despite the attraction of the “quietus” that suicide might make for one, “the dread of something after death, The undiscover'd country, from whose bourn No traveller returns, puzzles the will..”. No doubt being God-fearing, as his expressions show, he is influenced by the prevalent religious belief that suicide would entail post-mortem torment. And so he concludes:

“Thus conscience does make cowards of us all; And thus the native hue of resolution Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought, And enterprises of great pitch and moment With this regard their currents turn awry, And lose the name of action.” These words are the key to understanding Hamlet the character and Hamlet the play.

The word 'conscience' at the time had not yet undergone the semantic process of 'restriction' whereby it has come to mean the inner sense of right and wrong, one's internal judge. Along with this modern sense it retained, according to the context, the sense both of 'consciousness' and of 'self-consciousness'.

All of which seem to be implied in Hamlet's meaning here! We remember Harold Bloom's statement that 'Hamlet's' subject is not revenge or bereavement but “Hamlet's consciousness of his own consciousness, infinite, unlimited, and at war with itself.”

Hamlet's tragic flaw in the Aristotelian sense is his 'conscience' in the expanded sense of Shakespeare's time. He is not only conscious of the implications as then understood of suicide or a violent death without absolution.

His consciousness of the baseness of human nature has been heightened by the further evidence of villainy and betrayal before him. He is conscious too of the need to chastise his mother and bring her to remorse so as to be worthy of the mercy the Ghost has prescribed be shown her. “Once more, good night: And when you are desirous to be bless'd, I'll blessing beg of you.”

But Hamlet is also self-conscious about his apparent lack of personal courage as brought out in an earlier soliloquy: “O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I!...But I am pigeon-liver'd, and lack gall To make oppression bitter, or ere this I should have fatted all the region's kites with this slave's offal:” And finally, he is troubled by his conscience on the moral rightness of avenging his father and himself by his own hand as well as for seeming to fail in his filial duty. Truly it is 'a consciousness at war with itself' whereby the impulse of 'resolution' is stymied by a surfeit of 'thought.'

This was expected to be the final article on 'Hamlet', but we have still to demonstrate how the character and the play satisfy the requirements of a tragic work of art. It is hoped to address this in one last article.