Theme of Revenge in Hamlet

William Shakespeare's The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark begins and ends with death. The play begins with the ghost of Hamlet's dead father, haunting the battlements and urging his son to avenge his foul murder; the play ends with the death of Hamlet himself. The play also famously is driven by a quest for death, namely the desire of Hamlet to avenge his father's murder. But much as Hamlet burns in hatred for his uncle, the play also shows acute consciousness of the fact that violence merely begets more violence. Even though Hamlet's revenge may be justified, particularly after Claudius seeks to take Hamlet's life through secretly poisoning Laertes' sword, the act of murdering anyone, justly or unjustly, will never have a good end. Although the play suggests that revenge may be morally necessary (even Hamlet doubts this at times), revenge is never something glorious, only bloody.

Hamlet is aware of the horrible nature of revenge early on in the play. While he says that the ghost only confirmed what he suspected about Claudius, he also mourns: "The time is out of joint: O. cursed spite, /That ever I was born to set it right!"(I.5). He acknowledges his responsibility to mourn his father's death but simultaneously wishes he had never been born to do so. Instead of immediately trying to kill Claudius, Hamlet instead procrastinates, pretending to be mad and then testing the likelihood of Claudius' guilt using a play. Hamlet even is leery about killing Claudius when he sees the king praying. "Up, sword; and know thou a more horrid hent:/When he is drunk asleep, or in his rage" (III.3). This self-justification suggests Hamlet's reluctance to engage in physical violence, except when he is irate and half-mad himself. Hamlet does eventually strike out in the scene in his mother's closet, but accidentally kills Polonius, rather than the king. Scholars have endlessly debated why Hamlet takes so long to kill Claudius and one obvious explanation is that he simply does not want to and is aware of the fact that if he kills Claudius, more deaths will simply follow. Revenge does not end the cycle of death, it only begins it.

Hamlet's feelings about the pointlessness of violence are further illustrated when he sees Fortinbras, the Norwegian leader fighting for a contested piece of territory. In the words of one of Fortinbras' soldiers, "We go to gain a little patch of ground/That hath in it no profit but the name" (IV.4). Unlike Hamlet, who is very wary about engaging in violence when he is composed, Fortinbras thinks nothing of fighting for a small patch of land. Hamlet tries to use this sight to whip himself into more revengeful thoughts but he also show little admiration for Fortinbras who: "Makes mouths at the invisible event,/ Exposing what is mortal and unsure . . . for an egg-shell" (IV.4). Hamlet is conscious of the fact that violent anger and a desire to seem powerful will result in the deaths of many people, even though he still feels bound to avenge his father (despite the fact that Claudius does not seem to be a particularly bad or incompetent king).

Throughout the play, it is not only Hamlet who suffers the effects of rebounding violence. Polonius is shown spying on his own children in an attempt to increase his reputation in the court. Eventually, he is accidentally killed by Hamlet when he is spying. Hamlet says, "I do repent: but heaven hath pleased it so, /To punish me with this and this with me, /

That I must be their scourge and minister" (III.4). Hamlet does not glory in Polonius' death but rather views it as a punishment, that he is now a murderer and did not even mean to kill the man he murdered. Polonius' death also fulfills the sense of circularity in the play, of getting one's just desserts. Polonius is killed while spying as he lived while spying. This sense of fulfillment for one's meddling is further exemplified in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, who, upon being charged to bear a letter to the King of England telling him to kill Hamlet instead meet their death. Hamlet says: "For 'tis the sport to have the engineer/Hoist with his own petard" (III.4). But yet again these vengeful deaths, particularly that of Polonius', simply create more bloodshed and do not bring about any moral conclusion.

Of course, the greatest irony of the play is that Hamlet is murdered by the son of the man he accidentally killed. Hamlet admits that Laertes has just as much of a grievance against him as he does against Claudius. "For, by the image of my cause, I see/The portraiture of his" (V.2). The audience naturally sympathizes with Hamlet more because of his articulate nature as a character and the fact that he has been its guide throughout the drama on stage. But from the perspective of an outside observer, Hamlet and Laertes are equally wronged. The only difference is that Laertes has no compunction about seeking revenge and eagerly conspires with Claudius to poison Hamlet with the tip of his sword in a duel. Regardless of the rightness of Laertes' violence, yet again, the desire for death begets more death.

The ultimate result of Laertes' attempt to seek revenge on Hamlet is not simply the death of the man who killed his father but the death of the entire court. Ironically, learning that he is about to die and Claudius has inadvertently killed his mother as well as his father, Hamlet finally gains enough courage to kill the king in public. Fortinbras invades the palace and realizes that he has unexpectedly acquired the Danish kingdom without a fight, thanks to the death of the entire royal court. Ironically, he pays homage to Hamlet with a soldier's funeral honors, although Hamlet expressed contempt for fighting, including Fortinbras' quest. "The soldiers' music and the rites of war/ Speak loudly for him" (V.5). While Hamlet's final vengeance to some extent stops the bloodshed, this is also because there are simply no more principal characters left to kill involved in the court's drama.

Of course, Hamlet would note that the ultimate origin of the cycle of deaths at the court began with Claudius' murder of his brother. At the beginning of the play, things seem to have returned to normal after his father's death, except for Hamlet, who is in mourning. Yet it is possible to argue that if Hamlet had left things as they were and ignored the ghost, that the Danish court, if not Hamlet, would have been better off -- Polonius would not have been killed, Ophelia would not have gone mad, and Gertrude and Laertes would not have lost their lives. Also, Fortinbras would not have been able to so easily invade the kingdom. But the play does not suggest that murder can be ignored, as the presence of the demanding ghost indicates. Once again, death inevitably yields more death, and many people suffer as a result, often unjustly, but there is still a need for revenge.

Thus the play Hamlet suggests that revenge may be necessary, but it is not necessarily just nor does it bring about a better society. The madness and suicide of the innocent Ophelia is perhaps the best example of this, given that Ophelia was blameless for the death of Hamlet's father but suffers greatly. Ophelia loves Hamlet but is forced to abandon him by her father. She loses her mind after her father is killed and eventually kills herself. The fact that she is a suicide and should not be buried in consecrated ground is debated in the play and there is an obvious parallel between Ophelia and Hamlet's father, given that Old Hamlet's greatest regret is not that he was murdered, but that he was unable to make a full confession of his sins before his death. "No reckoning made, but sent to my account/With all my imperfections on my head" (I.5). Just as the first king died in a manner which was unnatural and unholy, so did Ophelia. " . . . her death was doubtful; /And, but that great command o'ersways the order, / She should in ground unsanctified have lodged" (V.1).

Hamlet's actions once again simply compound the evils that his father's death caused rather than alleviate them, even on a cosmological level. His revenge generates the death of another man's father, and another soul dammed to wander in purgatory. But Hamlet is not to blame; rather he is trapped in a society and in a theological system that demands revenge. He tries to escape it but ultimately fails, even though he resists his role throughout the narrative, much as he loathes his uncle. Death prevails at the end of Hamlet because it is the inevitable result of seeking revenge.

Works Cited

Shakespeare, William. The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. Shakespeare Homepage.

Web. 14 May 2017.