This
paper attempts to explain the magnet-like quality of
Hamlet, the ability of the play to attract almost
endless critical attention. The contention of this paper
is that one of the basic issues explored by Hamlet
is the nature of reality and that this is largely what
makes the play what it is. It theorizes that the play
represents several levels of reality-the Ghost, the
characters in the play, the "mad" characters-all
operate within the layers of reality. It argues that
Hamlet establishes the fundamental principle
that all these forms of reality carry within themselves
a core of unreality. There are several passages in this
play that establish this perspective. The play demolishes
the concept of a unified, monolithic reality, which
is shared by all, and instead presents the spectator/reader
with a number of levels of reality of varying solidity.
Bringing in the ancient Indian term maya and
the ancient Greek term mimesis, the paper also
discusses the concepts of representation and reality
with reference to the play and attempts to demonstrate
that Hamlet blurs the borderline that separates
reality and representation. It would be mistaken, the
paper holds, to confine Hamlet within the rubric
of nihilism. The exploration of reality that is Hamlet
does not suggest that everything is nothing but that
everything is something and also that that something
is, ultimately, nothing.
Hamlet
has attracted more exegetical attention than any other
book in the world, with the exception of the Holy Bible.
Even today, some four centuries after it was written,
it continues to attract criticism and comment. Hamlet
contains great poetry. It is a highly charged revenge
play. There are complex problems of plot and character
in it. Its imagery is powerful. It is rich in intertextuality.
It possesses a remarkable capacity to move, disturb
and overwhelm the spectator/reader. But all this, even
all this, does not fully explain, to use the Freudian
phrase, "the mystery of its effect". Hamlet
would not be the play it is-though this has not,
to my knowledge, been so far recognized-if it did not
deal with what is perhaps the first and the most fundamental
of all questions: the question of reality.
To
say that Hamlet opens brilliantly to utter a
cliche that a schoolboy would be ashamed to mouth. But
the fact is that Hamlet does open brilliantly
with the electrifying dead-of-night scene set on the
battlements of the castle of Elsinore and the appearance
of the Ghost before Barnardo, Marcellus and Horatio.
Is the Ghost real? The Ghost is real because these characters,
and later, Hamlet see it. But the reality of the Ghost
is a severely circumscribed reality. The Ghost is able
to haunt the world inhabited by the characters in the
play only during night. At the crowing of the cock it
has to fade away. In Act 3, Scene 4, it is visible to
Hamlet but not to Gertrude. Thus, though the reality
of the Ghost cannot be questioned, the Ghost is certainly
less real than Hamlet and Gertrude and the other characters
in the play who are visible to all, who are not blind
and who are not compelled to disappear at the approach
of dawn. |
