Hamlet – and the Ghost of Freud

by J. E. G. Dixon (September 2014)

 

Hamlet Made Simple by David P. Gontar (Nashville & London, New English Review Press, 2013).

 

 

It is a little over one hundred years since Freud published his interpretation of Hamlet, immediately acclaimed as a work of genius. It has cast a pall over much Hamlet commentary since. Freud’s theory was demolished 50 years ago by Bachofen¹ but that did not deter one Dr. Eugene Mahon from publishing “A Parapraxis in Hamlet” in 1998.²

Webster has recourse to a later disciple of Freud, a French psychiatrist named Jacques Lacan:

For Lacan, to understand this configuration requires an elaboration of Freud’s original interpretation of the play. What Freud thought so correct and obvious in Hamlet proves more complicated. Why, for example, should his Oedipal desire for his mother not lead him to kill Claudius swiftly? We see him … with two tendencies; the one over-riding tendency which is doubly commanded him by the authority of his father and the love which he bears him; and the second of wanting to defend his mother, and of wanting to keep her for himself, which ought to make him go in the same direction and kill Claudius. Therefore two positive things, this is a curious thing, will give a zero result.

In her attempt to resolve this dilemma the author writes, “The problem is Hamlet’s relation with desire. His desire is preoccupied with his mother’s desire.” We are simply taken back to square one, and we will move on to her co-author.

Simon Critchley has recourse to the philosophers who have commented on Hamlet. As everyone knows—or most people familiar with Hamlet claim to know—Hamlet’s problem is his procrastination, his inability to take action to avenge his father’s murder. Critchley states the problem thus:

For some, and it is a popular view that goes back at least to Goethe, Hamlet is a man who simply cannot make up his mind: he waits, hesitates, and is divided from himself in his “madness”… In this view, Hamlet is a creature of endless vacillation…

Thought and action seem to pull against each other, the former annihilating the possibility of the latter.

Critchley does not mention Coleridge, but according to A.D. Nuttall, “Coleridge saw Hamlet as a man paralysed by excess of thought.” But why is he so sure that thought can inhibit action, let alone annihilate it? Where is the reflection on the possibility that Goethe and Hegel, of all men, would know from experience that thought leads to action; that, on the contrary, the whole purpose of thought is to act. Thought that does not inspire action is not thought: it is wool-gathering and fantasizing, like Lennon’s Imagine.

Critchley refers to Hamlet’s “evident impotence” as “the most indecisive character in world literature.” And then: “Where Oedipus begins knowing nothing … Hamlet knows everything from the get-go. What is revealed [by the Ghost] is that this knowledge does not lead to action but its opposite.”

Critchley then turns to Hegel, who

… asserts that in the portrayal of individual characters Shakespeare stands “at an almost unapproachable height,” making his creations “free artists of their own selves.” As such, Shakespeare’s tragic characters are “real, directly living, extremely varied” and possessing a “sublimity and striking power of expression.” Yet—and here comes the dialectical underside of this claim—creatures like Hamlet lack any resolution and capacity for decision. They are dithering figures in the grip of “a two-fold passion which drives them from one decision or deed to another simultaneously.” In other words, … they are vacillating characters inwardly divided against themselves. Upheld only by the force of their conflicted subjectivity, characters like Hamlet or Lear either plunge onward or allow themselves to be lured to their avenging deed by external circumstances, led along, that is, by contingency (p. 84-85).

These two conflicting assessments of character provide the key to the dilemma — not to Hamlet’s dilemma but the academic’s attempt to resolve it.

Freud saw only unconscious instinctuality, as represented in what he called the id.

Psychoanalysis destroys the unified whole of the human person, and then has the task of reconstructing the whole person out of the pieces. This atomistic view is most evident in Freud’s hypothesis that the ego is made up of ‘ego drives’.

Possessed of such an atomistic, energistic, and mechanistic concept of man, psychoanalysis sees him in the final analysis as the automaton of a psychic apparatus.³

Is not such a view of man a far cry from Shakespeare’s? Hamlet accepts the task laid upon him in the sure knowledge that he, and he alone, can accomplish it; that he will be called upon to make decisions affecting the lives of others; and that he is equal to the task. For he, like Shakespeare, believes in free will.

Where does this leave Critchley and Webster and “The Hamlet Doctrine”? What is the Hamlet Doctrine?

My view is that Shakespeare would not agree for one instant, for two reasons: one, Hamlet sees his father’s murderer finally done in; and two, he dies content to know that a virtuous ruler, Fortinbras, replaces a corrupt ruler. There is a third reason, which we will come to later.

In the end this book has little of interest or value for the actor, the director, the theatre-goer or the student of Shakespeare.

* * * * *

Hamlet Made Simple puts us in a very different exegetical frame — original, stimulating, even provocative, as all good criticism and interpretation should be. Professor Gontar’s book comprises eighteen essays, of which the last gives the book its title.

This essay in its turn is subdivided into eight sections, in which are analysed the essential problems posed by the drama: the authenticity of the Ghost, and hence the import, and even legality, of the task imposed by him on Prince Hamlet; the origin and cause of Hamlet’s rage, directed mostly against Gertrude and Claudius; and the question of the delay: Hamlet, having ostensibly sworn to avenge his father’s death immediately, seems to tarry and procrastinate endlessly, until events  contrived by others presents the opportunity, which he seizes with both hands.

To those is added a fourth: why does Claudius become King of Denmark instead of Hamlet, the rightful heir? That “this undead ambassador is the prime mover of the play, the enigmatical figure which sets in motion the wheels of tragedy,” this reviewer agrees unreservedly. That Hamlet accepts the Ghost’s self-identification as his father also seems beyond question. Yet Gontar casts a serious doubt on this claim. He writes, “it is when we turn to the ghosts’s own words that our doubts should coagulate and turn to accusation. Evil stares us in the face. For this foul pilgrim is

Doomed for a certain term to walk the night,

And for the day confined to fast in fires

Till the foul crimes done in my days of nature

Are burnt and purged away.”

Gontar comments: “Grant that Claudius poisoned Hamlet the Dane. A simple accurate statement of the accused can hardly achieve so great a rehabilitation that his entire story should be credited.”

Let us go back to the accusation made by the Ghost: “The foul crimes done in my days of nature.” Unless I am particularly obtuse, I understand Gontar would have us believe that “the foul crimes” amounts to a self-accusation, to crimes that he had himself committed. It seems to me, rather, that they refer to others’ or to another’s deeds. The reason why the Ghost is “confined to fast in fires” is that he, King Hamlet, was murdered “unhousel’d, disappointed, unanel’d” — that is, not having received the holy sacrament, unprepared, and not have received extreme unction. Moreover, the most he says of his personal defects is summed up in the two statements: “Cut off even in the blossom of my sins” and “With all my imperfections on my head” (I, v, 76-79).⁴ His self-confessed sins and imperfections do not amount to “foul crimes.” These significant lines are not quoted by Gontar.

What now of the task the Ghost imposes on Hamlet? The answer to this question will set the investigator on either the right or the wrong path of his inquiry. Our author makes the following statements: the Ghost “suborns a gentle prince to regicide.” And: “He is immediately thrust upon a path of reprisal.” And: The Ghost is “deputized to enlist the Prince’s services in his quest for vengeance.” And: “Say the ghost seeks revenge not as a poultice for Purgatorial pains, but in spite of them, heedless of the consequences” (pp. 378 et seq).

Note the terms he uses: regicide, reprisal, vengeance, revenge. Note further that these are terms used by our author: he does not quote the actual words spoken by the Ghost. So we are not sure, in reading Gontar, of the precise nature of the task he imposes on Hamlet.

The further problems — namely, that of Hamlet’s rage, and the elucidation of his delay in executing his father’s injunction — are intimately related by Gontar. But in brief, what makes Hamlet so furious with his mother? And having sworn immediate revenge, why does Hamlet tarry? Gontar answers first, that Hamlet’s rage at his mother expresses his unconscious suspicion that he might be, not the offspring of King Hamlet, but, on account of his mother’s chronic infidelity, the bastard son of detested Claudius, and genetic inheritor of his faults and flaws. Secondly, Gontar says Hamlet hesitates to kill the king because he is Hamlet’s own father.

I am not convinced that the second conclusion necessarily follows from the first. But we must admire the author’s creative and imaginative solution to the puzzle. Or is it more fanciful than realistic? The reader will have difficulty in finding any textual evidence for it.

On the question of rage, there is a simple answer, which Claudius himself divined, and which he took so seriously as to conspire with Rosencrantz and Guildernstern to take Hamlet to England and do away with him: “I like him not, nor stands it safe with us / To let his madness rage” (III, ii, 1-2).

The question of the succession is also an unusual one, and is worth more than a casual glance. One would expect that the Prince, being the king’s son, and only son — as we the playgoer and reader are led to believe — would automatically become king on his father’s death, no matter how long it took him to return to Denmark from Wittenberg. But Claudius does instead. How? And why? There is “an unstated pediment: he is the bastard son of Claudius.” And: “if it were generally understood that Hamlet was the bastard son not of the King but of the King’s brother by the King’s wife, his chances of inheriting the throne would be nil” (p. 399-400).

At least there is an admirable consistency in Gontar’s thesis. But we have, methinks, already protested that there is little, if any, textual evidence, directly or by inference, for this interpretation. We will make “Hamlet … Simple” simpler.

Does Hamlet covet the throne? There is no evidence to suggest that he does. Gontar quotes Hamlet’s reply to Rosencrantz’s inquiry into Hamlet’s malaise: “I lack advancement.” What does he mean by “advancement”? I suggest that it does not mean “promotion” or “succession,” as Gontar interprets it. I think it means, rather, “progress,” that is, progress in his quest. What quest? Why, his quest not for reprisal or revenge, but, as we shall see, for justice.

* * * * *

At the time of King Hamlet’s murder, the Prince was studying at Wittenberg, — and he rushed home the minute he was apprised of the treasonous crime. The long time it takes Hamlet to find a way to bring Claudius to justice — the famous question of the “delay” — is not the central problem, although it points the way to it. It is unfortunate that Freud’s theory and the sycophancy of his disciples have deflected criticism from the discovery of the path that leads to a truer understanding. In my view no one will come close until they have jettisoned that intellectual baggage and opened their minds to the likelihood that Shakespeare’s tragedies, and none more than Hamlet, are first and foremost steeped in the conviction that man is a moral being with both the capacity to distinguish between good and evil and the freedom to choose between them, and aided and sustained by a moral code recognized by all.

When Hamlet returns home from Wittenberg he is immediately confronted by the ghost of his father, King Hamlet, in that eerie and memorable scene in which the ghost reveals (a) that he was murdered, (b) how he was murdered, (c) by whom, and (d) why.

But, howsoever thou pursuest this act,
Taint not thy mind, nor let thy soul contrive
Against thy mother aught; leave her to heaven …

These very words are quoted by Critchley and Webster, but the sole lesson they draw from it is the injunction laid upon him not to pursue his mother, who is an innocent party (except in the mind of Freud, et al). “Taint not thy mind”: these words are attached to the preceding injunction, that is: in exacting vengeance and pursuing justice.

From this moment on, it is Hamlet’s inner resolve that he somehow contrive that Claudius be exposed publicly as the murderer of his father, and that justice not only be done but be seen to be done. This alone would suffice to explain the delay, “the law’s delay,” in bringing the vile felon to book. In the end it is a higher court, that of Providence, that sees justice done. Hamlet is the mere agency, but the one indispensable agency, both willing and reluctant at the same time.

Is Hamlet upset, disturbed, out of sorts? Oh, no! He is outraged at his mother’s unseemly haste in sharing Claudius’s bed. He is distraught at the prospect of having to find means of proving Claudius’s guilt to the public. He is beside himself with anguish at the thought of Claudius’s treacherous crime in murdering his father, and his own brother, for the fell purpose of usurping his crown and lusting after his wife. He is incensed at the sight of his country going to rack and ruin in the hands of such a villain. He is driven almost mad with frustration by his thinking that does not lead to decisive action. Above all, he is almost beside himself in the knowledge of his father’s torment in the fires of hell, dying as he did “unhousel’d, disappointed, unanel’d,” and will not be saved until justice is done.

These things combine to nearly drive Hamlet out of his mind.

One marvels, not so much that Hamlet tends to go mad, but that he is so much in control of himself. He is, it seems to me, kept largely on an even keel because he never loses sight of the compelling urge to protect his father’s, and his own, good name, their reputation for uprightness in their public and private lives.

But who is this “everyone” — or, as the stage direction has it, “All”? They are the people who matter, the important people, the people listed in the Dramatis Personae: Courtiers, Officers, Lords and Ladies, who had anointed Claudius king. Hamlet’s greatest fear has been realized: his public killing of Claudius, which they have just witnessed, is seen as an act of personal revenge committed in order to usurp the throne. Hamlet, knowing he is dying, says to Horatio: “Report me and my cause aright / To the unsatisfied.” The “unsatisfied” are precisely those “All,” those who are “not satisfied in respect of information or knowledge.”   

A few moments later, in his dying words, he imposes this task upon his good and faithful friend:

Oh God! Horatio, what a wounded name,
Things standing thus unknown, shall live behind me.
If thou didst ever hold me in thy heart,
Absent thee from felicity awhile,
And in this harsh world draw thy breath with pain,
To tell my story.

The all-compelling grand subject of the drama, I conclude, is not the delay itself — the delay is but an effect of the cause; and not Hamlet’s seemingly endless procrastination, but the rejection of personal revenge and the faith placed by Hamlet in the workings of an official, impartial and retributive justice. “In the early sixteenth century it was commonly felt that God did in fact look after the necessary acts of retaliation and that when he did so he used human beings for the purpose.”⁶

It will be recalled that we have twice mentioned that Hamlet was a student at Wittenberg when his father was murdered. Why Wittenberg? For the reason that Wittenberg was the home of Martin Luther. And the moral tone and moral laws by which Hamlet acts, and the theology in evidence in the play, are consistent with the doctrines of Luther. And of course with the Protestant church of England.

On a final note, the student of Shakespearean anachronisms will have noted that Lutheranism became the state religion of Denmark in 1536, about 300 years after the action depicted in the play.

_______________

1. Quoted by Erich Fromm, The Forgotten Language (New York, 1951), p. 201.

2. In “The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child” (Yale University Press, vol. 53, 1998, pp. 276-281).

4. The Tragedies of Shakespeare ed. W.J. Craig (Oxford, OUP, 1956). Gontar uses a text which shows slightly different line numbering.

6. A.D. Nuttall, Shakespeare the Thinker (New Haven and London, Yale University Press, 2007), p. 203.

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