Hamlet Siddhartha and Little Gidding

Shakespeare's Hamlet and Herman Hesse's Siddhartha meet the words Eliot's "Little Gidding" One of T.S. Eliot's most famous poetic protagonists, that of J. Alfred Prufrock, may lament that he is not Prince Hamlet, only a fool like Yorick or Polonius of the tragedy that bears the prince's name.

But a closer examination of Shakespeare's play highlights the fact that the noble Prince Hamlet, is not really so noble at all, but begins the play in a state of adolescent moodiness, mourning his dead father, even though in the words of his uncle Claudius "your father lost a father, and your father lost his." Hamlet begins the play, not a young anointed king-to-be but a man angered at the limited, fleshy nature of human existence as well as the dissatisfactory reconstruction of his own family.

Hamlet sees falseness wherever he goes. He sees his mother whom once followed like "Niobe, all tears" his father's funeral procession, now wed again, and to "mine uncle." ("Hamlet," Act I, Scene 2) Hamlet perceives not simply personal animosity in these acts and attitudes, but a reflection of a larger human social evil, namely the purposeless of existence, where a good king's memory can be easily erased and forgotten.

Thus the intense dissatisfaction within Hamlet exists not only with the court and his family but also with the general nature of human life, a "stale promontory," Hamlet famously states to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Later, contemplating Yorick's skull in the graveyard before the suicide Ophelia's funeral, he realizes that even Caesar's existence, not only his father's ended in death and dust. It is this fact that spurs Siddhartha the Buddha to form his philosophy of "Let be," in Hamlet's words, or nonattachment to worldly achievement and success.

Eliot's Fourth Quatrain "Little Gidding." echoes these two adolescents' respective senses of anger with the nature of their personal lives and the meaningless of the larger human condition. There are, as often in Eliot's poetry, literal illusions to events in Shakespearean tragedy.

"If you came at night, like a broken King," writes Eliot in "Little Gidding." But the thought of this supposed king is ultimately revealed only "a shell" or a "husk of meaning" much like how the seemingly unerring purpose of revenge in Hamlet does not come to drive the hero, as he increasingly becomes buffeted by events and his will is worn down. Hamlet kills Claudius at the end, but there is no catharsis or final revelation, only the protagonist's own demise.

Before these deaths occur, however, one of the most famous scenes in Hamlet's tragedy takes place in the middle of the play, when Hamlet is actually unable to kill Claudius at prayer. Hamlet makes excuses for this, saying that he must wait until he can catch his usurping, adulterous uncle when he is not at prayer, so that Claudius will go to hell rather than heaven, unlike Hamlet's own father in purgatory. However, this excuse seems rather self-justifying, and T.S.

Eliot later makes use of the image of the penitent man, praying, in a way that adds additional existential weight to Hamlet's refusal. The speaker of Little Gidding notes, upon observing an individual at prayer, remarks "you are not here to verify, / Instruct yourself, or inform curiosity / Or carry report. You are here to kneel / Where prayer has been valid.

And prayer is more/Than an order of words, the conscious occupation / Of the praying mind, or the sound of the voice praying." Claudius admits to the audience himself that his "words fly up," but his heart and his desires remain below, in other words, he cannot repent enough to give up what he has gained with his evil actions. He is all sound and order of words, but lacks intent. Words are, Claudius.