Hamlet's Absent Father 9781400868858

Table of contents :
Cover
Contents
Preface
1 Psychoanalysis as a Critical Method for Hamlet
2 Freud's Misleading Hunch About Hamlet
3 The Problem of Delay
4 The Absent Father and His Son
5 The Vain Search for a Strong Father
6 Mother Mistress Man
7 To Be or Not to Be Born
8 Managing the Unconscious
9 Conclusion
Appendix A King Hamlet and the Sonneteer's Friend Remembered
Appendix B Shakespeare's Smiling Villains as Transformed Men
Appendix C Polonius and John Donne's Busy Old Fool
Notes
Index

Citation preview

Hamlet's Absent Father

Avi Erlich

HAMLET'S ABSENT FATHER

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS Princeton, NewJersey

Copyright © 1977 by Princeton University Press Published by Princeton University Press, Princeton, NewJersey In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press, Guildford, Surrey All Rights Reserved Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data will be found on the last printed page of this book Publication of this book has been aided by a grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation This book has been composed in VIP Baskerville Printed in the United States of America by Princeton University Press, Princeton, NewJersey

For Frederick Crews

PREFACE

THIS study of Hamlet assumes that a fiction to some degree taps the unconscious mind of its creator, that artists spin out fantasies over which they have limited conscious con­ trol. Though the literary critic finds it difficult to identify and describe the unconscious determinants of art, he must nevertheless undertake this task if he wants to set his sub­ ject in its full context. That fact is, however, that though critics acknowledge the impact of the unconscious on dreams and other human fictions, they largely ignore its role in literary fictions. On the other hand, psychoanalysts who try to call our attention to the influence of the uncon­ scious tend to ignore the conscious craft of the artist. In this study, I try to describe the ways in which Shakespeare's conscious and unconscious creativity weave together to de­ termine the form and content of Hamlet. By viewing the play as the product of Shakespeare's whole mind, I can suggest substantial revisions, based on textual evidence, of the psychoanalytic account first put forward by Freud and Ernest Jones, who looked at little of the play's detail. I can also supplement the accounts of literary critics and suggest solutions to some of the knottiest problems they have found in the play. Though literary critics pay lip service to modern psy­ chology's understanding of the powerful incest motif in Hamlet, they tend to ignore the unsavory details of the play and of their psychology, thus transmuting Hamlet into what they would like it to be. I hope, therefore, that I need not apologize for yet another study of the play, for I think we are closer to the beginning than the end of an attempt to understand the ways in which the play grips our uncon­ scious, our imagination, and our intellect. Harold C. Goddard, in a preface to his The Meaning of Shakespeare (1951), made a similar remark about our yet VLL

PREFACE

unripe understanding. His book, out of step with the critical fashion of its period, never quite gained entry into the canon, but its grasp of both large and small aspects of Shakespeare's craft continues to command and repay at­ tention. A rarity among psychological critics, Goddard could bring to bear a massive amount of detail; he was thus much on my mind as I wrote this book. But his "modern psychology" was intuitive, brilliant but makeshift, invoked when convenient and ignored when unseemly. He was vo­ ciferously anti-psychoanalytic. In many ways this book is a response to Goddard, a welcoming of his refusal to follow his colleagues into "objective" criticism, and a quarrel with his tacit assumption, shared by many, that psychological criticism need not be grounded in a rigorous psychology. Of course psychologies are often more rigid than rigor­ ous. Moreover, a literary critic must remember that he may be deploying a perfectly sound psychology in the wrong place. Even the psychologists themselves, including Freud and Jones, have invoked their insights only to misread a text. On the whole, psychologists have not been any better at criticism than critics at psychology. And yet there are few literary questions that are not also psychological. This book, then, is also a response to those psychologists and critics who failed in each other's work but did their own work well. They have given me a history of commentary on Hamlet rich enough to make worth while another attempt at a synthesis of literary and psychological insight. It is a pleasure to thank friends and colleagues whose thinking has been very helpful to me. Jonas Barish, Sylvia Bonnell, Norman Holland, Murray Schwarz, and David Sundelson read the manuscript and made valuable sugges­ tions. Muriel Dance thoughtfully improved two complete revisions. Leslie Epstein, Melanie Kask, Eric Golanty, Robert Mendelson, Richard McCoy, Steven Robman, Richard Schotter, and Marsha Wagner contributed simply by being careful listeners and good friends. Dr. Joseph Lifschutz discussed psychoanalytic theory with me. I made much use of Stephen Booth's brilliant sense of ShakeVlll

PREFACE speare's English, though not always in ways he would ap­ prove. Frederick Crews's profound understanding of psy­ choanalysis and artistic creativity was indispensable; I thank him heartily for the education he gave me. My daughter, Shala Erlich, shared her young under­ standing of families, fathers, princesses, dreams, ghosts, monsters, even Hamlet. Without her it would have been difficult to write this book. NOTE All quotations from Shakespeare, unless otherwise noted, are from Sylvan Barnet, ed., The Complete Signet Classic Shakespeare (New York: Harcourt, 1972).

CONTENTS

vii

PREFACE ONE TWO THREE FOUR FIVE SIX SEVEN EIGHT NINE APPENDIX A APPENDIX B APPENDIX C

Psychoanalysis as a Critical Method for Hamlet Freud's Misleading Hunch about Hamlet The Problem of Delay The Absent Father and His Son The Vain Search for a Strong Father Mother Mistress Man To Be or Not To Be Born Managing the Unconscious Conclusion King Hamlet and the Sonneteer's Friend Remembered Shakespeare's Smiling Villains as Transformed Men Polonius and John Donne's Busy Old Fool

3 19 43 51 99 152 178 207 260

275 280 287

NOTES

291

INDEX

3° 1

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Hamlet's Absent Father

ONE

PSYCHOANALYSIS AS A CRITICAL METHOD FOR HAMLET

I "SHAKESPEARE is at this moment strolling down the Strand and might tell one, if one plucked him by the sleeve . . . what he meant by Hamlet." So many critics having tried to pluck out the secret of the world's most famous play, so many theories about it that sound only almost right, so many more that sound as if they could not be right except for the suspicion that the secret might be, so long in being discovered, precisely the unexpected; such unabated puzzlement—no wonder Virginia Woolf1 dreamed she might hear directly from the author the truth at its most spectacular, the simple, obvious truth of a Columbus who looked at the same old facts and knew what no one else knew but what everyone could be taught to accept, the kind of truth that can be immediately convincing even if it is casually delivered on the Strand. It is not likely that this is the kind of truth at the heart of Hamlet. But we can recognize that no elucidation of the play's manifest themes is going to satisfy us, that we are in­ deed looking for a secret, that this secret has something to do with the man who created the play and once walked the Strand, that there must be some relationship between the secret of the play and the secret of the human mind. In fact, the play forces us to recognize this. All critics of Hamlet eventually try to explain whatever difficulties they may find in it by relating the play to some psychological framework, some model of the secret mind, be it healthy or pathological. There are critics, like T. S. Eliot, who insist on a fundamental psychological problem with the play that existed in Shakespeare's mind: "So far

PSYCHOANALYSIS AS A CRITICAL METHOD

from being Shakespeare's masterpiece, the play is most cer­ tainly an artistic failure. . . . Hamlet, like the sonnets, is full of some stufiF that the writer could not drag to light, con­ template, or manipulate into art." Thus the few critics who take Eliot's line use psychology to explain Hamlet as a fail­ ure in Shakespeare's ability to sublimate.2 On the other hand, the majority of critics wish to rescue the play, but they also wheel out a psychology that focuses not on the problems of the author but those of his characters. For instance, Harold C. Goddard has an ingenious in­ terpretation of Hamlet's twitting Polonius into seeing a cloud first as a camel, then a weasel, and finally a whale: "Since the cloud doubtless resembled none of the three in any marked degree, what Hamlet pretended to see in it was the result of free association on his part. But free associa­ tion is a basic method of modern analytical psychology for bringing to the surface the contents of the unconscious mind. A camel, a weasel, and a whale! A camel—the beast that bears burdens. A weasel—an animal noted for its combined wiliness and ferocity and for the fact that it can capture and kill snakes (remember the royal serpent!). A whale—a mammal that returned to a lower element and so still has to come to the surface of it occasionally for air, not a land creature, to be sure, nor yet quite a sea creature. What an astonishing essay on Hamlet in three words!"3 Thus Goddard makes use of "modern analytic psycholo­ gy" to recognize and address this curious instance of "free association." It should not be supposed that Goddard is any great follower of this psychology, for in the same essay he condemns it roundly; but it serves his critique of Hamlet's descent from bearing burdens to savagery, so he uses it here. Our acceptance of this intelligent but ad hoc bor­ rowing from psychology is natural, part of our everyday experience. But it should be noticed that neither Eliot nor Goddard has bothered to explain the relationship of "art" and the unconscious material that they respectively think that Shakespeare could or could not manipulate into meaning.

PSYCHOANALYSIS AS A CRITICAL METHOD

Though we are comfortable with Eliot's and Goddard's psychologizing, we should not be, at least not until we more accurately understand the dynamics of the creative process they imply. According to Goddard, Shakespeare is consciously using the troubled Hamlet's associations on clouds to write an "essay" on regression from bearing trouble to drowning humanity in the lower element of revenge. But can we be sure that conscious control belongs to the playwright while the frenzy belongs solely to the playwright's character? Surely free association picks up more chaotic material than Goddard's interpretation implies, and are not some of these associations going to be just as unconscious on Shakespeare's part as they are on Hamlet's? Perhaps not, perhaps art is the one human activity that can be subjected to perfect conscious control. Perhaps, as Goddard implies, Shakespeare's controlled involvement with plays has no connection with Hamlet's maniacal use of his play. But this is not the considered opinion of modern psychology, and if we are going to transmute our psychology as we borrow it, we should at least acknowledge this. This is not to say that Goddard's interpretation is wrong. On the contrary, it seems quite plausible as far as it goes. But it gives us a strange vision of a dramatic character using free association to write a conscious essay for his au­ thor, cuts us off from the conflicts that churned in Shake­ speare's mind before they were poured into Hamlet along with conscious control, dehumanizes the creative process into a mechanical separation of serene artists and troubled characters. Is it not likely that "cloud-camel-weasel-whale" represents a phonic progression that Shakespeare was using to control his own free and troubling associations, free in more realistic and subtle ways than Goddard chooses to use, troubling in that they really do represent the repressed? I think it is likely. But how are we going to discover the complex processes that joined the I from "cloud-camel-weasel" with the w from "weasel" to form "whale"? How do we explain the presence of just these ani-

PSYCHOANALYSIS AS A CRITICAL METHOD

mals, for there are other beasts of burden (if that, as Goddard suggests, is the only meaningful category for "camel")? And since there is some textual difficulty here, as there is almost everywhere in Hamlet, dare we speculate about weasels if Shakespeare could have had ouzles on his mind? And what about the fact that when Shakespeare has Antony free-associate on clouds in Antony and Cleopatra, he gives an entirely different sequence of images.4 Though beset with all these problems, let us pursue Shakespeare's free associations for a moment as a lesson in the difficulties of psychologizing. First, let us have the pas­ sage before us: POL. My lord, the queen would speak with you, and presently. HAM. Do you see yonder cloud that's almost in shape of a camel? POL. By th' mass and 'tis, like a camel indeed. HAM. Methinks it is like a weasel. POL. It is backed like a weasel. HAM. Or like a whale. POL. Very like a whale. HAM. Then I will come to my mother by and by. [Aside.] They fool me to the top of my bent.—I will come by and by. POL. I will say so. (in. ii. 382-394) Notice that there are two preliminary steps in Hamlet's free associations that Goddard neglects, presumably be­ cause they do not contribute to his thesis. Replacing the series camel-weasel-whale in its context, we find the previ­ ous link "cloud"; this, in turn, is associated to Hamlet's mother, or, more precisely, to Polonius' playing messenger for Gertrude. That Gertrude is the important beginning to the sequence is underscored by Hamlet's returning to "mother" with a pseudo-logical "then" after he finishes with "whale." Now let us try making of this what we can by seeing what associations these words have in other con­ texts.

PSYCHOANALYSIS AS A CRITICAL METHOD

Shakespeare's protean clouds—not his incidental clouds but those which he loads with meaning—usually represent unreliable fortune, changeable and fickle love, betrayal, falseness, stained worth. Thus, for example, a betraying lover is bitterly and cynically forgiven in Sonnet 35 because even "Clouds and eclipses stain both moon and sun, / And loathsome canker lives in sweetest bud." When Shake­ speare uses "camel" with any intensity he means it as a form of depreciation, alluding to the dumb beast of bur­ den to be sure, but mainly to dumb brutish men. Thus Pandarus emphasizes the inferiority of Achilles to Troilus: "Achilles? A drayman, a porter, a very camel." And Thersites curses the bully Ajax: "Mars his idiot! Do rudeness; do, camel; do, do." Shakespeare's weasels tend to appear as likenesses of vicious men and women who suck the value out of life; thus the melancholic Jacques describes himself this way: "I can suck melancholy out of a song as a weasel sucks eggs." Whales, more than they are Goddard's regressors to a lower element, are great gluttons, and, in AWs Well, rapacious consumers of virgins: "I knew the young count to be a dangerous and lascivious boy, who is a whale to virginity, and devours up all the fry it finds." Suppose we hold these associations up to Goddard's formalistic reading of the camel passage in Hamlet? Now we have before us material more compatible with Hamlet's agitated mood after the play scene and with the troubled aspect of Shakespeare that, according to Eliot, was pro­ jected into Hamlet. But whatever interpretation we can wrestle from this material is going to be very chancy, neces­ sitating many detours through other plays and poems. But Hamlet is about King Hamlet, a hero like the Achilles of the Iliad but also a brute warrior commanding revenge like the camel Achilles of Troilus ', about Gertrude, a cloud-stained "weasel" who sucks the life out of her son instead of nourishing him (remember that the free associations are provoked by Gertrude); about the all-consuming nature of the whale's gross sexual appetite. Shall we say that these are the things that Shakespeare is trying to whittle down to

PSYCHOANALYSIS AS A CRITICAL METHOD

"whale" not as symbol but rather as euphonious condensa­ tion of sounds from cloud, camel, and weasel? Shall we say that a disgust with supposedly heroic males like King Ham­ let and supposedly virtuous women like Gertrude make Shakespeare and his character Hamlet resort to the pleas­ ing qualities of poetic sound in order to control this dis­ gust; that in the camel passage Hamlet is still trying to con­ trol what he failed to control in the play scene, namely the brutality and lechery involved in his father's death; that word play helps Hamlet dissipate an unpleasant association between the weakly messenger-boy Polonius and his father who also proved ultimately weak? We can say all this— modern psychology means us to concern ourselves with similar psychodynamics if we are going to discuss free association—but we are going to have a hard time being convincing. No wonder Goddard used his own safe and re­ stricted version of what free association is. Nor are we yet finished with the embarrassing conse­ quences of trying to use modern psychology in our in­ terpretation of art. We need to know exactly how Shake­ speare is involved in Hamlet's free association, for, accord­ ing to the modern psychology, involved he must be. Free association is a technique used in clinical practice to get at the full nuances of the unconscious thoughts that help de­ termine a patient's behavior. Over the course of his analysis the patient will offer thousands of associations to an idea or image, and these will be much more likely to form a recog­ nizable mosaic than Hamlet's (and Shakespeare's) five iso­ lated tiles, mother-cloud-camel-weasel-whale. Even with the associations in the other plays and poems we do not have much to work with. Like Walter C. Langer, a psycho­ analyst who wrote a clinical study of Hitler for the United States government from a wartime distance, we must do a lot of filling in for the analysand who is not present. It does not altogether help that Langer's study of Hitler has stood the test of time and accumulating evidence, for the applica­ tion of psychoanalysis, or any other modern psychology,

PSYCHOANALYSIS AS A CRITICAL METHOD

under conditions for which it was not designed, is never going to be entirely satisfying. Look what happens if we insist on reading a pattern into Shakespeare's mind from the tokens he has given us. We proceed on the grounds that there must be some uncon­ scious logic to Shakespeare's free associations, that we want to know what it is, and that we will just have to do our best with limited evidence. Let us uncomfortably guess that Shakespeare has stopped with "whale" because it best ex­ presses and defends against the unconscious idea that oc­ cupied him. Let us desperately guess that "whale" is work­ ing towards his own name "Will," a not quite completed pun to be distinguished from the conscious punning on "Will" in Sonnets 134-136. Why should we guess this, other than our need to guess something? "Whale" is not that close to "will" (but see the OED for the interrelationships be­ tween "will," "wale," and "whale"). "Will" does occur rather incidentally three times in the next four lines, but that does not provide a convincing link. If we could establish that "whale" is the culminating association because it simul­ taneously represents the sexual gluttony of the whale that needs to be controlled, the poet Will who is trying to do the controlling, and the poetic process of playing with sounds (w and I) that provides the technique of control, then we would be able to account for one small detail of Shake­ speare's poetry. But we can establish no such thing. Though this desperate application of free association is, to my mind, closer than Goddard to what psychologists try to do in much better circumstances, it is also embarrassingly inadequate because of all the necessary guesswork. Perhaps, since it is so difficult to apply psychology intact to literary studies, we should leave it alone. This is the rec­ ommendation of many. But the fact is we do not leave it alone, especially in our criticism of Hamlet. John Dover Wilson warns us that we are "greatly mistaken" to try to understand Hamlet either in terms of Timothy Bright's sixteenth-century psychology or Freud's twentieth-century

PSYCHOANALYSIS AS A CRITICAL METHOD

version, thai Hamlet was not composed out of a psychologi­ cal recipe book of any kind.5 I do not think that Freud and Bright would equally view the creative process as subject to understanding through fixed recipes, but let that pass; what is more important is that Wilson, like Goddard and every other critic, makes forays into Freudian psychology even against his own advice, uses what he finds tasteful and ignores what is unseemly. It is inconsistent to warn against the dangers of psychologizing and then compound matters by psychologizing after our own idiosyncratic tastes. But that is what Wilson does (we all do). Consider two passages, admittedly separated by many pages, but from the same book. The first is from Wilson's account of Ham­ let's first soliloquy: "Hamlet is thinking aloud. He speaks as in a dream. But the dream is a nightmare, the full meaning of which we do not realize until the last three lines. His mind turns and turns upon itself in its effort to escape giving birth to the 'monster in his thought too hideous to be shown'; and at the exclamation 'Let me not think on't' he seems for a mo­ ment to batten it down beneath the hatches of conscious­ ness. But the writhings begin again, and the stream of im­ ages continues to flow as uninterruptedly as before, until there comes the second pause—this time in the middle of a sentence—and the dreadful thought is born at last with sib­ ilants hissing like a brood of snakes: to post With such dexterity to incestuous sheets. "This incest-business is so important that it is scarcely possible to make too much of it. Shakespeare places it in the very forefront of the play, he devotes a whole soliloquy to it, he shows us Hamlet's mind filled with the fumes of its poison, writhing in anguish, longing for death as an es­ cape."6 Note the reliance on such Freudian concepts as repres­ sion (Hamlet's need to batten incest down "beneath the hatches of consciousness"), obsession (being led to despair

PSYCHOANALYSIS AS A CRITICAL METHOD

because one cannot get an idea out of one's head), and the tyranny of incest over the mind. The second passage is from Wilson's discussion of Ham­ let's "sore distraction": "Its immediate origin cannot be questioned; it is caused, as we have seen, by the burdens which fate lays upon his shoulders. We are not, however, at liberty to go outside the frame of the play and seek remoter origins in his past his­ tory. It is now well known, for instance, that a breakdown like Hamlet's is often due to seeds of disturbance planted in infancy and brought to evil fruition under the influence of mental strain of some kind in later life. Had Shake­ speare been composing Hamlet to-day, he might conceiva­ bly have given us a hint of such an infantile complex. But he knew nothing of these matters and to write as if he did is to beat the air. We may go further. It is entirely misleading to attempt to describe Hamlet's state of mind in terms of modern psychology at all, not merely because Shakespeare did not think in these terms, but because—once again— Hamlet is a character in a play, not in history. He is part only, if the most important part, of an artistic masterpiece, of what is perhaps the most successful piece of dramatic il­ lusion the world has ever known. And at no point of the composition is the illusion more masterly contrived than in this matter of his distraction."7 This time Wilson thinks that because Hamlet is a fiction we had better not describe his "state of mind in terms of modern psychology at all." Well then, he should not have described it this way before, because Hamlet was equally a fiction then. Freud suited Wilson's purposes in the earlier passage, and he did not mind using him because he did not have to deal with modern psychology's unpleasant dis­ covery that repression, obsession, and deep conflicts about incest stem from "an infantile complex." If Hamlet is about the things Wilson says it is about, then those things pre­ sumably got into the play as a result of Shakespeare endow­ ing Hamlet with poetic versions of his own infantile expe­ riences; that is, this would be the logical conclusion based

PSYCHOANALYSIS AS A CRITICAL METHOD

on the psychology that Wilson appropriates, if he appro­ priated it whole. Finding that the play has a powerful incest theme, Wilson cannot ignore modern psychology; but, finding infantile complexes disturbing, he makes up a specious reason for not considering them. Yes Hamlet is a fiction; but, according to Freud, fictions like dreams make it even more likely that infantile material will appear. If we cannot refrain from psychologizing let us at least do it as best we can under circumstances that are, as we saw in the camel passage, difficult enough without our introducing makeshift psychologies. I would like, then, to turn forthrightly to psychoanalysis; only psychoanalytic critics have unashamedly tried to interpret Hamlet in the light of what is known about the workings of both the conscious and unconscious mind. While psychoanalysis is by no means a perfect science of the human mind, it does comprise, I think, what Dr. Charles Brenner calls "by far the most important contribu­ tions that have been made to human psychology to date."8 It also seems to be the only psychology that focuses on the same materials as literary criticism. Even a casual reading of psychoanalysis reveals an enterprise doggedly trying to understand why we create fictions in our dreams, in our distortions of reality, and in our artistic creativity. As Lionel Trilling remarks, "Indeed, the mind, as Freud sees it, is in the greater part of its tendency exactly a poetry making organ."9 Not everyone, of course, will altogether accept these claims, and, given the present state of our knowledge, there is no iron-clad reason why they should. Moreover, critics who rely on psychoanalysis for their psychological interpretations of Hamlet have been just as guilty as any in neglecting the play's poetic detail. But it would be a mistake for literary critics to ignore entirely the one science that is exploring the unconscious mind, especially if it turns out that art is to some important degree an expression of un­ conscious fantasy. I intend the following study as a contri­ bution to the growing certainty that the creation and con-

PSYCHOANALYSIS AS A CRITICAL METHOD

sumption of art calls upon our most secret selves, that psy­ chological difficulties, including the complexities of the un­ conscious mind, are part of our line-by-line experience of poetry in general and Hamlet in particular. II Since there is some objection to psychoanalysis as a critical methodology, I had better face the most general problems now; in later chapters I will meet specific objections to specific interpretations. There are several issues that vex psychoanalytic criticism, and, since I cannot allay them, I can only state my position on what I take to be the two most important ones.10 The first is whether or not it is meaningful to treat liter­ ary characters as if they have fantasy lives made up of the secrets of the unconscious. When I bestow fantasies on Hamlet, I do not mean to suggest that he has an uncon­ scious. Hamlet's fantasies are no more his than the lines that express them. I see all the fantasies in the play, Ham­ let's as well as other characters', as generated from a single nexus of conflict that we can identify as more or less Shakespeare's, depending on how much distortion we wish to attribute to conventions of culture, literature, and lan­ guage. No matter what the distortion, there is only one un­ conscious center to the play. Though Shakespeare cer­ tainly had the genius to endow different characters with autonomous conscious motivation, I doubt that any writer can provide more than one center of unconscious motiva­ tion, no matter how complicated the conflict is. Hence it is not surprising to me when I find Hamlet's fantasies echoed or neatly reversed by other characters. The fantasies are there because Shakespeare, like every other human being, fantasized, and literature, like dreams, offers an opportu­ nity to express unconscious material; these fantasies are richer and more persistent and better adapted to art than anyone else's because (this is where psychoanalysis gives out) Shakespeare was Shakespeare. I will often speak of

PSYCHOANALYSIS AS A CRITICAL METHOD

something suspect like "Hamlet's unconscious fantasies," but I hope the reader will recognize this as my shorthand for "the unconscious fantasies with which Shakespeare has endowed Hamlet." I will sometimes use this more clumsy formulation when it seems that the reader may mistake my intentions and wrongly think of Hamlet as a collection of real people, each with his own independent mind. The reader is perhaps relieved to find that Hamlet does not have an unconscious, but he may also be suspicious of my certainty that someone's unconscious is at issue, that Shakespeare could have let more than he consciously meant into his highly controlled play. Since Shakespeare himself believed that one reveals more than one realizes through metaphor, imagery, and a thousand nuances of language, it should not be too difficult for me to find com­ mon ground with the majority of readers by starting from Shakespeare's interest in the psychology of the uncon­ scious and moving from there to speculation about uncon­ scious determinants in his own work. Take as a typical Shakespearean exploration of psychological processes the following passage from Measure for Measure', here the puri­ tanical Angelo thinks he is talking only about the workings of justice in the case of the sexual offender Claudio, but in fact he is also revealing something of his own uncertainly repressed sexuality: 'Tis one thing to be tempted, Escalus, Another thing to fall. I not deny, The jury, passing on the prisoner's life, May in the sworn twelve have a thief or two Guiltier than him they try. What's open made to Justice, That Justice seizes. What knows the laws That thieves do pass on thieves? 'Tis very pregnant, Thejewel that we find, we stoop and take't Because we see it; but what we do not see We tread upon, and never think of it. You may not so extenuate his offense For I have had such faults; but rather tell me, When I, that censure him, do so offend,

PSYCHOANALYSIS AS A CRITICAL METHOD

Let mine own judgment pattern out my death, And nothing come in partial. Sir, he must die. (ii . i. 17-51) The hypocrisy here is blatant, but perhaps Shakespeare's greater interest is in the ways in which a hypocritical man betrays himself. Angelo's likening thieves to jewels is curi­ ous, to say the least. He cannot possibly mean that he finds criminals valuable and attractive, but that is nevertheless what he suggests. More specifically, he cannot consciously mean that he finds Claudio's sexual crime attractive, but that is what he implies. He cannot mean that we have to "stoop" in order to seize the criminal, unless he is uncon­ sciously thinking of joining the criminal in his lowly but jewel-like activity. He cannot mean that the criminal who escapes justice is the one tread upon, unless he is thinking of "tread" in its sexual sense: Claudio is being punished for treading his mistress, and she goes free. In fact, sexuality is not far from Angelo's mind at all times in the play, and it would not be surprising if he were unwittingly referring to the female "jewel," to the attrac­ tions of the sexuality he is shortly going to act on. He speaks about "guilt," admits that he has "such faults" as Claudio's, but denies just how active his imagination is. At this point in the play, he is striving to repress his impulses and his guilt, so he has to express these in an oblique way, projecting them onto Claudio, disguising them in meta­ phor and analogy. Everyone, I think, will agree that Angelo's analogy of the jewel is inappropriate to his con­ sciously intended theme, that Shakespeare has deliberately made this apparent so that we will examine the uncon­ scious processes that underlie and undermine the thinking here. However, not everyone will agree that Shakespeare him­ self is as unguarded as Angelo, that Shakespeare too re­ veals more than he thinks. But it would be strange if Shakespeare were interested in the ways the unconscious expresses itself but had no unconscious himself or a very silent one. If this book were about Measure for Measure, I

PSYCHOANALYSIS AS A CRITICAL METHOD

would go on to discuss the fantasies that Shakespeare as­ signs to all his characters in this play, the coherence of these fantasies in their preoccupation with sexual guilt, and the possible motivations that Shakespeare may have had for combining this guilt with a plot that deals with father figures who are ambivalent, weak but tyrannical, absent but domineering. I am dealing, however, with Hamlet, where there are similar fantasies. But if the reader can follow me from Angelo's (or Hamlet's or Polonius') secret self to Shakespeare's secret self, it will make the going easier; if, though, he chooses to restrict his focus to the psychology of characters and not the character's author, I think we will still have much in common: our interest in Shakespeare's revelation of the inner self. The second vexing question that I wish to discuss here concerns the habit that psychoanalytic criticism has of going back to events that take place before the opening of a play (or other work). Sometimes there is an easy justifica­ tion for this, as in the case of Hamlet's birth; the events of the day on which Hamlet was born are actually discussed in the play, and since this must be significant no one would want to exclude his birth from an explication of the play on the simple grounds that it does not occur in the play (though Hamlet's birth is part of a broad theme of birth and conception, it is almost never discussed by nonpsychoanalytic critics except to fix his age). More often, though, psychoanalytic criticism finds itself talking about such things as Hamlet's "infantile complexes" with no obvi­ ous justification, thus provoking a spate of objections. When I engage in such activity it is because I find the traces of what seems to be a childhood experience in the text itself, though perhaps in no obvious way. For instance, I assume that the demonological situation of the play's opening in which the Ghost is away but only ambiguously away, threatening to return, has an analogue in some real experience that could occur in this world (otherwise it would be meaningless); I assume this experi­ ence must be quite anxiety-ridden and infantile or it would

PSYCHOANALYSIS AS A CRITICAL METHOD

not express itself in the disguised and unreal world of demonology. When I try to pinpoint what this experience might be, I find I have the whole weight of psychoanalytic evidence behind me when I speculate that the ambiguously present Ghost-father must have something to do with an ambiguously strong reality-father. It seems to me that ghostliness in the play expresses, among other things, the psychological attributes of absence; a ghostly father is an absent father, one who was present only ambivalently to Shakespeare the child. Furthermore, I think it likely that Shakespeare the adult picks up the conventional ghost of the Elizabethan stage in order to project onto it fantasies from his own childhood, thus transforming the ghost into a unique character unlike any of his predecessors; Shakes­ peare then creates a second character, Hamlet, to deal with these "infantile" fantasies. I thus talk about Hamlet the child because there is something of Shakespeare the child in the play. This kind of assertion is not going to be accepted easily, but I think it is confirmed by much else in the play. For the present I ask the reader to agree only that the irrational and the suprarational events in the play must have some connection with the phenomena of this world, and that this connection may have something to do with the remnants of infantile experiences expressing themselves in Shake­ speare's adult fantasies. After all, the relationship between a father and a son is an organic one, dating back to the day the son was born, and there is no reason to expect that this relationship is anything less than the total experience it has been through. I, for one, assume that a play about two adult men who are father and son cannot avoid being en­ dowed with the lifelong experience of the author that al­ lows him to know what the words "father" and "son" mean. But still the burden lies on the critic to show as clearly as possible that the traces of infantile experience really are present in the conscious art of an adult. There is much room for disagreement here, for even if the reader accepts the idea that a poetic text may express unconscious fan-

PSYCHOANALYSIS AS A CRITICAL METHOD

tasies woven out of infantile material, he may still balk at the specific analysis of what those fantasies are. I can only try to justify as best I can why I think a cluster of images or a pattern of language involves the expression and man­ agement of certain fantasies. What we need is a style of psychoanalytic criticism that can assume that artistic creativity involves the whole mind but that does not presume to have perfect insight into this creativity, conscious or unconscious. We need not follow the anti-psychoanalytic critics who want to ignore the un­ conscious because it is, by its very nature, seen through a glass darkly, nor do we need to follow some psychoanalytic critics who delude themselves into believing that they can correct, for all, the filterings of the dark glass.

TWO

FREUD'S MISLEADING HUNCH ABOUT HAMLET

I IN DEVELOPING their psychological theories of Hamlet, Freud and Jones paid little attention to the poetry of the play; thus literary critics who have wished to object to the psychoanalytic interpretation have sometimes felt it neces­ sary to take their quarrel into the realm of psychology and kill the enemy in his own camp. Norman N. Holland has surveyed these few (and, incidentally, very sketchy) forays by his literary colleagues and he is not impressed with the results: "It is a litde surprising that there should be any literary critiques of this kind, that is, attacking the FreudJones analysis of Hamlet, not from a literary but a psycho­ logical point of view. With all due respect to my literary col­ leagues, it seems to me they are somewhat out of their depth, psychologically speaking. Surely criticisms of a psy­ choanalytic diagnosis as such are the province of the ex­ pert—in psychoanalysis."1 Holland notwithstanding, I am about to call into ques­ tion the strict accuracy of Freud's and Jones's account of Hamlet's psychological conflict. One cannot leave the poetry to the critics and the psychology to the analysts if one wants to be true to the fact that literature is at once a tissue of words and a creation of the human mind—unless one expects that he can get a reading of a play by shuffling together the critics and the analysts after they have each had their say. Moreover, it seems to me that psychoanalytic criticism would now be less controversial and more useful if critics had helped the analysts adapt their psychology to literary studies. But, as it turned out, the analysts broke the ground themselves, and the new territory was sufficiently confusing to cause them to make blunders not only in liter-

FREUD'S MISLEADING HUNCH ary theory but also, surprisingly, in the application of their own psychology. We must therefore survey what the psychoanalysts have said about Hamlet to benefit from their insight, learn from their mistakes, and, hopefully, to get ourselves on the right path. My plan here is to state the Freud-Jones view of Hamlet and my reasons for feeling that it, as well as such elabora­ tions of it as Eissler's, needs revision, to suggest the kinds of revisions I will be arguing later in detail, to support my ar­ gument by referring to non-psychoanalytic literary critics, and to show that though these literary critics are in many ways closer to the truth of the play than Freud is, it is nevertheless the Freudian method that best promises solu­ tions to the play's knottiest problems. II Most critics recognize the Freudian account to be in­ adequate as a complete criticism or a complete psychology of the play,2 but nobody, I think, has clearly questioned it in its own terms as far as it does go. For the sake of brevity I quote Holland's summary of the argument Freud offered in The Interpretation of Dreams and elsewhere; Holland praises Freud's "elegance of logic": "The basic issue of the play Freud and Jones say (and so, they point out, do many literary critics) is: Why does Ham­ let delay? . . . Freud puts and answers the question rather neatly, (i) Critics, by and large, have been unable to say why Hamlet delays. (2) Clinical experience shows that every child wishes to murder his father and marry his mother. (3) Clinical experience also shows that this childish wish persists in the unconscious mind of the adult, and that wish and deed seem the same there. (4) Were Hamlet to punish Claudius for murdering his father and marrying his mother, he would have to punish himself as well. Therefore, he delays. (5) The wish in question is uncon­ scious in all of us, and that is why the critics could not say why Hamlet delays."3

FREUD'S MISLEADING HUNCH This seems to me to be all very sound except for the logic in step 4. If we assume that Hamlet's punishing Claudius would be punishing himself, it is not self-evident that this should keep him from killing Claudius. If Hamlet has un­ consciously identified with Claudius as the perpetrator of the oedipal crime that he himself wished to commit, pre­ sumably this identification has been made to satisfy only part of his psyche's needs, that is, to satisfy a repressed im­ pulse from his childhood. As Freud puts it: "Hamlet is able to do anything—except take vengeance on the man who did away with his father and took that father's place with his mother, the man who shows Hamlet the repressed wishes of his own childhood realized."4 But then Freud goes on, rather carelessly I think, to imply that the natural and only way for Hamlet to handle this identification is to refrain from punishing Claudius and to wallow in the guilt-ridden self-reproaches of his conscience: "Thus the loathing which should drive him on to revenge is replaced in him by self-reproaches, by scruples of conscience, which remind him that he himself is literally no better than the sinner whom he is to punish." It seems just as logical to argue that because Hamlet has iden­ tified with Claudius, his conscience, far from being inhib­ ited, must punish Claudius. If Hamlet feels guilty for wishing to commit Claudius' crime, why not mitigate that guilt by killing Claudius? This would make the identification with Claudius a successful defense mechanism, in that the conflict between wish and inhibition would be resolved in the outer world without damage to the self. Claudius would bear the brunt of Ham­ let's problems. "Identification is frequently used for pur­ poses of defense," explains Dr. Charles Brenner: "The ego can and does use as a defense anything available to it that will help to lessen or avoid the danger arising from the demands of an unwanted instinctual drive."5 And Freud himself explained that a man, trying to defend himself against a forbidden impulse, might be especially interested in punishing another man for committing just the crime he

FREUD'S MISLEADING HUNCH himself secretly wished to commit.6 From Shakespeare, Freud could have drawn the example of Prince Hal, a man who must kill the person whose forbidden patricidal im­ pulses he has identified with; the plot of Henry IV: Part i, calls for Hal to kill Hotspur at the very moment he is iden­ tifying with the regicide-bent rebel ("all the budding hon­ ours on thy crest/ I'll crop to make a garland for my head"). Thus, using Freud's own line of reasoning, one could argue that Hamlet has good psychological reason for kill­ ing Claudius. I find, in fact, that the analysts James Clark Moloney and Laurence Rockelein have in collaboration specified "important psychological reasons" for Hamlet to go straight for Claudius' throat: "First, he would have wished unconsciously to display how he, the stout-hearted prince, would have saved the King had he been present at the murder. For the psychological intent of revenge is to prevent a crime in retrospect. . . . Secondly, Hamlet would have killed Claudius to deny to himself his own uncon­ scious desire to have killed the King, to erase from his mind the crime he committed in fantasy; and thirdly to pose as the vindicated man, to flaunt his innocence before the world."7 Attributing an Oedipus complex to Hamlet is thus no explanation for delay, because an Oedipus complex may make one act with abnormal celerity. Unfortunately, Moloney and Rockelein do very little with this insight and proceed to substitute one oversimplified idea for another. Since Hamlet's identification with Claudius could not have kept him from killing his uncle, Moloney and Rockelein rather reductively conclude that it must have been Ham­ let's fear of growing up that caused his indecision. I will return to the question of Hamlet's growing up and to the problem of delay, but here I want to explain why Moloney and Rockelein can account for so little of the de­ tail of Hamlet. Their limitation stems, I think, from their being locked into Freud's idea that Hamlet's motivation can largely be understood through his identification with

FREUD'S MISLEADING HUNCH Claudius. Even though they seem to contradict Freud, they see Hamlet's three possible motives for killing Claudius all centering around "his own unconscious desire to have killed" his father. In short, Freud and Moloney and RockeIein focus similarly on Hamlet's identification with Claudius, and this identification, I am going to show, is not very important. Hamlet's most important identification is, as in most men, with his father. Contrary to Freud, I am going to argue that Hamlet has a highly specific conflict deriving not so much from his de­ sire to have killed his father but rather from his lack of a strong father. I will try to show that Hamlet wants his father back more than he wants to have been the one who killed him, that he is unable to acknowledge this because it means accepting that his father was finally weak and vic­ timized. On the conscious level, Hamlet must pretend that his father was strong and good, a "radiant angel," but on the unconscious level he has incorporated an image of a weak father who "steals away." This results in ambivalence, indecision, and a secret wish that his father kill Claudius himself and thereby give his son a clear model of purpose­ ful action in the world. This is a complex argument that will take us through much of the fine structure of the play, but before I begin to advance it in detail we must finish hearing from the psychoanalysts, among whom Ernest Jones is preeminent. Although Jones asserts that "Hamlet's attitude towards his uncle-father is far more complex than is supposed," he too oversimplifies Hamlet's identification with Claudius: "He of course detests him, but it is the jealous detestation of one evil-doer towards his successful fellow. Much as he hates him, he can never denounce him with the ardent in­ dignation that boils straight from his blood when he re­ proaches his mother, for the more vigorously he de­ nounces his uncle the more powerfully does he stimulate to activity his own unconscious and 'repressed' complexes. He is therefore in a dilemma between on the one hand allow-

FREUD'S MISLEADING HUNCH ing his natural detestation of his uncle to have free play, a consummation which would stir still further his own horri­ ble wishes, and on the other hand ignoring the imperative call for the vengeance that his obvious duty demands. His own 'evil' prevents him from completely denouncing his uncle's, and in continuing to 'repress' the former he must strive to ignore, to condone, and if possible even to forget the latter; his moral fate is bound up with his uncle's for good or ill. In reality his uncle incorporates the deepest and most buried part of his own personality, so that he cannot kill him without killing himself." (Jones's italics.) 8 It is probably true that Hamlet's "uncle incorporates the deepest and most buried part of his own personality," but it is not true that killing that projected part of his personality is tantamount to "killing himself." It is not self-evident that he should "strive to ignore" his uncle's crime; he could punish his uncle and thereby punish that aspect of himself which he repudiates, thus sparing himself much guilt. Again, he delays not because he identifies with Claudius but in spite of his identification; this idea eludes Jones not because it is absent from his psychology, but because he too is blinded by Freud's misleading hunch. Such is the power of masters over disciples. It is easy to call Freud and Jones into question because they overgeneralized, failed to take into consideration all the complexities that riddle any great work of art. In all fairness to Freud, though, I should say that he never thought he had done anything else but make a beginning to the analysis of Hamlet. He never claimed to be elucidat­ ing the specific nature of Hamlet's oedipal dilemma or the specific nature of his identification with Claudius. Indeed, the first time he sketched his famous theory, in a letter to Fliess in 1897, 9 he was not sure Hamlet fit his general theory at all. Jones, however, must take more responsibility for giving the impression that psychoanalytic criticism can point only to the lowest common denominator in human experience in the most imprecise manner. Critics have justly complained that Jones has neglected ninety-five per-

FREUD'S MISLEADING HUNCH

cent of the play, that one can often hardly tell, except for the names of the characters he refers to, what play he is talking about. In many ways Jones has done psychoanalytic criticism a disservice, for, as his own dream analyses prove, psychoa­ nalysis can specify unconscious content in rich and conver­ gent detail, and can show how the unconscious content of Hamlet is just as unique as the play is unique. Worse than stressing the wrong aspect (Claudius) of the play, Jones stressed the wrong (because too superficial) way of specify­ ing the play's unconscious fantasies. Oedipus complexes are universal only in an abstract sense; they are as different as plays are different. And, of course, the ways the mind deals with unconscious pressures, including the Oedipus complex, are as various as people. Hamlet represents a complicated attempt to deal with a very specific kind of oedipal crisis, one that has to do with an absent father, a ghostly father. The psychoanalyst K. R. Eissler finally called attention to the importance of father figures in Hamlet and thus brought a welcome break from the Freud-Jones emphasis on Claudius. However Eissler makes the same tactical error of oversimplification that Jones does: "The Ghost, we learn, was an absolute ideal; Polonius is a dotard; Fortinbras was killed in a duel; Fortinbras' brother is sick and bedridden; Claudius is a criminal. The five men of the older generation thus represent various kinds of fathers that sons may have: ideal, senile, dead, sick, and criminal. The play includes, by and large, all the major variations; the Ghost and Claudius being at opposite ends of the spectrum."10 Thus Eissler tries to make the play into a textbook dem­ onstration of all the possible conflicts that sons have with fathers, and, more detrimental to psychoanalytic criticism, he leaves himself open to the charge that the implied un­ conscious determinants of art have their locus not in a con­ flict that is interesting because it is particular, but rather in a conflict that is so general that it explains very little. We

FREUD'S MISLEADING HUNCH

wonder how one writer with one father managed to get into conflict with all these "various kinds of fathers." Of course sons see their fathers in different and ambiguous lights, but this is the result of having a unique relationship with one father. It turns out, I think, that these difiFerent fathers are, to some extent at least, only the product of Eissler's didactic imagination. As a complete "spectrum," his list is very un­ convincing. Except for Claudius, all the fathers are weak or dead or both. The Ghost "was" an ideal but the fact is that he is absent now, and his son must get along without him; from Hamlet's point of view his father's final vulnerability must be more significant than his exploits on the ice in Po­ land. Rather than providing a spectrum, the play's fathers offer an intense portrayal of the consequences of having to live with the image of a father who is, no matter what his manifest strengths, finally weak. It seems clear to me that Hamlet's highly specific conflict is with this ambiguous father. Ill Let me try to describe what psychoanalysts might have had to say about Hamlet if Freud had not, in his attempt to show only that the play contained oedipal material, misled them into focusing restrictively on the identification with Claudius. I put the matter this way because I want to show that psychoanalysis is a flexible method of interpretation independent of the practitioners who unfortunately have applied it to Hamlet as a rigid dogma. For the present I will confine myself to general remarks about how the play por­ trays Hamlet's relationship to his father and will reserve most of my analyses of specific passages for later chapters. My intention here is only to raise the issue of Hamlet's need for a strong father. In spite of the fact that King Hamlet had certain strengths he also seems to have had his weaknesses. From Hamlet's point of view, his father was weak in that he was

FREUD'S MISLEADING HUNCH

murdered, suddenly made absent. We are also given a clue that King Hamlet was much absent when Hamlet was a child. The gravedigger tells us that "King Hamlet over­ came Fortinbras" on "the very day that young Hamlet was born—he that is mad and sent into England." Erratically associating the conditions of Hamlet's birth and madness, the gravedigger is close to the truth; what he gives us, I think, is a distorted fantasy of a child in intimate relation­ ship with his mother while his father was elsewhere. As the warrior Hamletwas presumably away often, young Hamlet had ample occasion to develop a close relationship with his mother and hence an aggravated Oedipus complex. But the reader will object that though in the sources Hamlet's father was a pirate, our present text does not specify how much time King Hamlet was away from the castle, and we have no license to speculate on the matter. But it is my conviction that the ambiguity of King Hamlet's absence, as it is emphasized at the play's opening, should be given much psychological weight. Hamlet is a play about a man whose father is absent but not altogether absent, and it also seems to be a play about a man whose mother is tantalizingly available to other men and to incest. That King Hamlet was away when Hamlet was born seems a small but important projection of these facts back onto Hamlet's in­ fancy, during which Gertrude was apparently solely his. Hamlet was, however, able to repress successfully this early intimacy with Gertrude, but only until his father's death and his mother's hasty remarriage dredged up by as­ sociation the infantile appraisal of the father as disposable and the mother as available. Feeling it unnecessary to wait a decent interval before she remarries, Gertrude demon­ strates just how weak the bond was between her and her son's father, just how available she is to incest (for that is what her marriage to her brother-in-law signified to Shakespeare's audience). There is unconscious method to the gravedigger's rather disrespectful way of talking in one breath of Hamlet's birth and his madness: the unconscious content of the events of Hamlet's birth is the same as the

FREUD'S MISLEADING HUNCH madness of his adult conflict. More precisely, the ambigu­ ous father who was both strong (he "overcame" Old Fortinbras) and absent to the infantile Hamlet is similar to the Ghost, who is both terrifyingly present and woefully absent to the adult Hamlet. The father from Hamlet's infancy is also the same as his ambiguously incorporated father, his conscience, his superego that, in the adult Hamlet, shows strong intent but weak effect. Thus one reason for Ham­ let's not being strong enough to kill Claudius is the fact that his father, his model and namesake, was also not strong enough to kill him. (I am aware that I am perhaps being too subtle with the gravedigger, but, as Hamlet says to Horatio, the gravedigger is subde, equivocal yet "absolute," and I can only assume that for Shakespeare there was, con­ sciously or unconsciously, some such subtle point as I make here.) If Hamlet saw his father as neither strong enough to force him to repress definitively his incestuous wishes nor weak enough to allow him gratification, if Hamlet con­ tinued, as it seems likely, to see Gertrude as seductive, then he might defend himself against the recurrence of trou­ bling incest fantasies by wishing away the adult situation that recalls them. He might wish away the ambiguity of his father by denying the father's mortality, resurrecting him, and fantasizing this remade father as strong enough to put an end, once and for all, to oedipal competition, strong enough to punish his oedipal murderer. And this is exactly what Hamlet does. Before the Ghost appears to Hamlet, we hear that he has been brought back to life in his son's "mind's eye," and Hamlet even tells us that he wishes his father strong enough to punish Claudius, tells us in a speech that has so bewildered us just because we are deaf to what he has dredged up from his secret self to virtual con­ sciousness: Now might I do it pat, now 'a is a-praying, And now I'll do't. And so 'a goes to heaven, And so am I revenged. That would be scanned. A villain kills my father, and for that

FREUD'S MISLEADING HUNCH I, his sole son, do this same villain send To heaven. Why, this is hire and salary, not revenge. Ά took my father grossly, full of bread, With all his crimes broad blown, as flush as May; And how his audit stands, who knows save heaven? But in our circumstance and course of thought, 'Tis heavy with him; and am I then revenged, To take him in the purging of his soul, When he is fit and seasoned for his passage? No. Up, sword, and know thou a more horrid hent. When he is drunk asleep, or in his rage, Or in th' incestuous pleasure of his bed, At game a-swearing, or about some act That has no relish of salvation in't— Then trip him, that his heels may kick at heaven, And that his soul may be as damned and black As hell, whereto it goes. ( H I . iii. 73-95) Here in the prayer scene Hamlet is, more than anything else, anxious to see Claudius punished, not by himself but by God, the universal father figure. If we take God as a standin for King Hamlet, the father figure who concerns Hamlet most in the matter of Claudius' punishment, then we hear Hamlet unconsciously wishing that his father were able to do his own revenging. In this regard, "hire and sal­ ary" deserves more emphasis than it gets. At least two meanings of this phrase are possible. One is supplied by Thomas Caldecott's gloss: killing Claudius would be "a thing for which from him I might claim recompense."11 Caldecott's emphasis on "him" (Claudius) is meant to wrench us away from the other possible interpretation of the phrase, that Hamlet is thinking of himself as hired and salaried by his father. In this second view, Hamlet would be saying that if he were to kill Claudius and send him to heaven, he would be behaving like a hired assassin who carries out only the letter of his commission and is not con-

FREUD'S MISLEADING HUNCH cerned, as a loving son would be, with the spirit of the commission. If Hamlet does think of himself as a hired assassin, then it follows that he thinks of his father as a hirer of assassins, as a man who must find a mercenary because he cannot carry out his own dirty work. Since it would be mad for Hamlet to blame his dead father for the inability to act, "hire and salary" can, on a rational level, mean only what Caldecott says it means. But Shakespeare has not been at pains to make his rational meaning clear (as Caldecott's need to explain proves), nor is Hamlet being particularly rational; thus the possibility of an irrational meaning is left open. Just as Hamlet wants to see God the father as the crucial punisher, he also would like his own father to be able to punish, and he implies that his father has abdicated this responsibility by hiring and salarying his son. This reading becomes all the more probable when we realize that alternative phrases for "hire and salary" were available to Shakespeare, that both the First Quarto's "a benefit and not revenge" and the Second Quarto's "base and silly" would have avoided ambiguity if Shakespeare had wanted to avoid ambiguity. Most literary and psychoanalytic critics justifiably see Hamlet's reasons for not killing Claudius here mainly as a hastily conceived rationalization for his inability to act,12 but I do not think it has been seen how specifically Hamlet betrays the reason for that inability. By deferring the kill­ ing of Claudius, Hamlet can fantasize a situation in which the crucial punisher, God the Father, can be counted on; now is not a good time because God would be handcuffed by His own rules and, according to Hamlet's tortured the­ ology, He would have to pardon Claudius. Hamlet needs a God and a father who is not so tolerant of "incestuous" criminals. Nor do I think that the critics have noticed how closely the prayer scene is related to Hamlet's "let be" at­ titude at the end of the play. His profession of belief in a "divinity" that shapes our ends can be a convenient subli­ mation for someone in desperate need of a strong father.

FREUD'S MISLEADING HUNCH Hamlet does not act in the prayer scene, I think, because he unconsciously wants his father to act. He desperately needs a strong father who, like his putative God, will damn Claudius to hell. The strength of Hamlet's need to see Claudius not only punished but damned has made a long sequence of critics, including Samuel Johnson,13 recoil in horror at the Prince's lack of Christian concern for the salvation of all souls. Eleanor Prosser shows us that there is no religious or dramatic convention of revenge, though critics have tried to make one up, to exonerate Hamlet from his blasphe­ mous malice.14 Prosser argues that we, like Shakespeare's audience, must deplore Hamlet's fall in the prayer scene into the Ghost's malign influence. I agree. But we cannot stop here, for Hamlet's fall is not only moral but also psy­ chological. He is brutal as part of a mental strategy that compels him to fabricate a vengeful God as a compensation for his father, a man who had no opportunity to take re­ venge. Thus we who intuitively feel that Hamlet does not consciously mean his malice, that he is rather a victim of his unconscious strategies, forgive him, Johnson and Prosser notwithstanding. We can explain both our horror and our forgiveness by recognizing Prosser's helpful statement of the moral situation as only half the case. Let us look further at the other half of the case: Hamlet's psychological need to restore his father, erase his weak­ nesses. Just as Hamlet tells us in the prayer scene that he wishes for a strong father, he also tells us about the in­ adequate father that he actually did have. According to Hamlet's fantasies, his father is not only a victim of Claudius but also a potential victim of God. He died with "all his crimes full blown" and it is likely that his "audit" is still heavily against him. The supposed "radiant angel" is, in Hamlet's mind, clearly in trouble, and so too is Hamlet, if he, as he must to some degree, models himself after his father. With no strong father to rely on, Hamlet is having trou­ ble according any real likelihood to his vivid vision of a

FREUD'S MISLEADING HUNCH

punished Claudius. Wavering between the conviction that he is the "sole" man to punish Claudius and the delusive wish that his divine father will soon punish Claudius, he is not, as Freud and Jones would have it, worried, even in fantasy, about punishing himself, at least not in this speech. Otto Rank feels that Hamlet, in wanting to catch Claudius in the same sinful state as Claudius caught his father, in wanting to duplicate his father's death, is expressing a pat­ ricidal wish;15 it is precisely to guard against his own patri­ cidal tendencies that Hamlet wishes his father strong enough to punish the patricidal Claudius. If Hamlet were himself to punish Claudius, he would be openly admitting that the Father in heaven, that his father, has not punished and will not be able to punish; hence he delays, waiting for a father who will be strong in the end, even if the end is not until the day of judgment. Perhaps it is King Lear, Shakespeare's most ambivalent father figure, who best expresses this plea for a father or a God who unambiguously punishes incest. What is implicit in Hamlet is made explicit in King Lear: Let the great gods That keep this dreadful pudder o'er our heads Find out their enemies now. Tremble, thou wretch, That hast within thee undivulged crimes Unwhipped of justice. Hide thee, thou bloody hand, Thou perjured, and thou simular of virtue That art incestuous. (HI . ii. 49-55) Every boy may wish to kill his father, but, more important­ ly, every boy needs a strong father to make him give up his incest fantasies and go on to be a strong man like his father. Freud repeatedly argued that a son's identification with a strong father is necessary for the successful dissolution of the Oedipus complex. Without this identification the son would be doomed to acting out versions of the oedipal triangle in his adult life.16 So even if Hamlet's inability to

FREUD'S MISLEADING HUNCH form a moral and rational plan to punish Claudius results from his identification with his incestuous uncle, this sig­ nals a primary failure in his ability to identify with an un­ ambiguously strong father. Hamlet thus pleas, as Lear does on the heath, for a great god to punish the "incestu­ ous" wretch. I thus place great significance on Hamlet's desire to have God punish Claudius. Many accounts of the prayer scene try to explain Hamlet's decision not to kill Claudius in terms of his conscious desire to select a more suitable op­ portunity, thus neglecting the fact that this opportunity, under God, is the only one that Shakespeare gives him. Hamlet is not a real person selecting among many possible occasions to kill Claudius, but rather a character who is imagined as seriously contemplating murder on only one very ambivalent occasion. We tend to forget that in an imagined scene such as this, a God needs as much interpre­ tation as a ghost. Let me consider two more aspects of Hamlet's soliloquy in the prayer scene that shed light on his need for a godly, not a ghostly, father. The first concerns the nature of the punishment that Hamlet wishes God to visit on Claudius. This punishment seems to involve archaic castration im­ agery deriving from the unconscious. Though psycho­ analysts are well prepared to suspect that this may be true, literary critics are not, and I had better be careful about the way I argue for the presence of castration imagery in the play. Here I am forced to rely on a speculative interpreta­ tion of the significance of Claudius' soul to Hamlet, but in other places in the play I will have better evidence. Why is Hamlet so savage about Claudius' soul? The soul, which in good men soars up to heaven in beatific felicity and in bad men sinks "damned and black" into hell, the soul, that de­ tachable part of the human being which in the Middle Ages was only debatably granted to women, seems to be a rarefied phallus, subject to either heavenly pleasure or hel­ lish transformation. That Hamlet wishes his father to cas-

FREUD'S MISLEADING HUNCH

trate Claudius ("that his soul may be as damned and black/ As hell whereto it goes") will be a corollary to my larger ar­ gument that Hamlet is searching for a strong father. But, it may be objected, Hamlet wishes to catch Claudius in sin and punish him; how can he be wishing that his father do the punishing? This brings us to the last aspect of the soliloquy that I want to discuss. Hamlet's desire to catch Claudius "in th' incestuous pleasure of his bed,/ At gaming, swearing," recalls Polonius' perverse need to catch Laertes at "gaming," "drinking, fencing, swearing, quarreling,/ Drabbing." Though some critics may have heard this echo, they have not, as far as I know, called attention to it. I think this is so for the simple reason that it does not seem to mean anything. One could argue that it is Shakespeare's way of consciously preparing for the association between Claudius and Laertes, two gamers and sinners who will later pool their talents. This, however, seems forced, and it neglects the half of the echo that associates Hamlet and Polonius as two voyeurs wishing to catch someone in bed. If I am right about the prayer scene's being a plea for a strong father, then Shakespeare's (probably unconscious) evocation of the dotard Polonius here represents the rising to the surface of the very thing that Hamlet wishes to exor­ cise. Hamlet wishes to see a strong father punish the sexual villain Claudius, but the image that Shakespeare brings to our mind is that of Polonius, who is far from controlling his son's sexuality. And since it is, according to psychoanalytic evidence, usually sons who are voyeuristic to their fathers, not the other way around, Polonius' voyeurism makes me feel that Shakespeare is unconsciously equating impotent sons and impotent fathers. King Hamlet is an ambiguously weak and ineflFectual (victorious and victimized) father, and Polonius becomes, in addition to Hamlet's theologically handcuffed God, the unconsciously logical standin for this father. (I will have more to say in later chapters about Hamlet's identification with Polonius and other weak fathers.)

FREUD'S MISLEADING HUNCH This psychoanalytic reading "makes sense" of our echo, but it also has the disadvantage of distorting Hamlet's stated wish to catch Claudius in sin (though by persuading Gertrude a few moments later to stay out of Claudius' bed he minimizes his chances) into a wish for a father figure to do the catching. But the distortion seems to be in the hys­ terical, conflict-ridden nature of the scene, not in the faults of psychoanalytic criticism. For Hamlet, at once horribly logical and wildly sadistic, is not talking simply of catching and punishing Claudius himself. He also wants the aid of a punishing God, who, unfortunately for him, is inextricably bound up with the weak Polonius. If the prayer scene represents a wish for a punishing father, the Ghost's earlier demand for an avenging son is obviously a different version of this fantasy. I think we can relate these two versions by considering the prayer scene as a conflict-ridden wish and the Ghost's demands as a dis­ guise (via reversal) of this wish. But since according to psy­ choanalysis anything can be disguised as its opposite, how do we know which is the wish and which the disguise? I think we can be quite certain on this score. For there is something very strange about the way Shakespeare dramatizes potent King Hamlet's impotent demand for re­ venge. The Ghost, appearing in the very armor in which he "smote the sledded Polacks," impresses everyone who sees him as most capable of murder. Horatio, Marcellus, and Bernardo prepare to use weapons against him in the first scene, and later, in i. iv, Horatio warns Hamlet that the Ghost could lead him to immediate death. So convinced are Horatio and the guards of the imminent danger that they try to bar Hamlet from following the murderous ap­ parition. Shakespeare, in one sense, thus seems to turn the conventions of revenge tragedy upside down, for a clear implication of the first and fourth scenes of the play is that we are presented with a ghost who can do his own murder­ ing (compare, for example, the harmless Ghost of Andrea in The Spanish Tragedy). Before we ever hear the Ghost ask Hamlet to avenge his death, we are made to feel that the

FREUD'S MISLEADING HUNCH Ghost has come to eflFect his own business, whatever that may be. "Young Hamlet" is not even mentioned until the very end of the first scene. Of course, ghosts never do their own avenging on the stage; Shakespeare has forced his au­ dience to attribute an ability to act where, finally, there is none. As Shakespeare deflects our idea of who will be the revenger in the play from Hamlet Senior to Junior, we see a wish for an avenging father disguising itself before our very eyes by turning into a revenge tragedy convention, a father's demand for a revenging son. The disguise is neces­ sary because the Ghost, who looks as if he can avenge him­ self, really cannot; convention gives us and Hamlet the ex­ cuse of ignoring the Ghost's weakness. To those who justifiably feel that "disguised-as-itsopposite" is a chancy principle to invoke in order to view the frightening Ghost as weak, I can say that it does ac­ count for an interesting problem formulated by a critic who, on this question, sticks almost obtusely to the surface level of the text. I refer to Richard Flatter, who notes that when Shakespeare begins a play with minor characters dis­ cussing someone who has not yet appeared, this someone turns out to be the "chief character." The discussions of Horatio, Marcellus, and Bernardo, however, prepare us not for the hero but for the Ghost. To Flatter, "it seems somewhat strange that just in this play Shakespeare should have deviated from his normal and well established method, thus misleading his audience into assuming that now, after those preparations, it must be the chief charac­ ter who makes his entry. The Ghost who enters instead will be taken by no one to be the real hero. All the same, a cer­ tain incongruousness remains."17 From this "incongruousness" Flatter rather simplistically derives King Hamlet's "principle of justice" (p. 9) as the hero of the play (thus ignoring the fact that this principle of justice is polluted by ethical discrepancies). I would de­ rive a more subtle conclusion: Hamlet and the play wish the father's principle of justice were the hero of the play. That Shakespeare encourages us to misapply the role of

FREUD'S MISLEADING HUNCH hero to the Ghost is precisely my point. The Ghost seems strong, Hamlet wishes he were strong; but he is not. Since the "revenging son" as a conscious idea in Hamlet's mind is used as a mask for an unconscious wish for a "re­ venging father," it provides at best only minimal motiva­ tion for action in the real world. Hamlet cannot act on it. He waits for a father who really is as strong as the Ghost seems to be. IV By shifting our emphasis from Hamlet's identification with Claudius to his ambiguous image of his father, we align a psychoanalytic reading of the play with the general trend of twentieth-century criticism, with such diverse critics as John Dover Wilson, Harold C. Goddard, and G. Wilson Knight. To these critics, Hamlet sees his father as both strong and weak in a moral rather than a psychological sense. All agree that King Hamlet is not as morally strong as he appears, that he has many weaknesses in addition to his tendency to be absent. Here is some of Goddard's commentary on the ambivalent father that Hamlet must heed: "The Ghost one moment calls himself (by inference) 'a radiant angel' and his brother 'garbage' and the next mo­ ment he is complaining that his murderer cut him off 'even in the blossoms of my sin,' with no chance for confession, 'with all my imperfections on my head.' We remember, too, Horatio's 'And then it started like a guilty thing,' and Ham­ let's astonishing admission—or slip—in the prayer scene: He took my father grossly, full of bread, With all his crimes broad blown, as flush as May. Foul crimes, all his crimes, blossoms of sin, a host of imper­ fections: how out of keeping with a radiant angel! . . . Plainly the contradictions of the Ghost are the doubts in Hamlet's own mind, and the fanatically ideal portrait he draws of his father, based though it may be on his boyish

FREUD'S MISLEADING HUNCH ideal, is his attempt to push the weight far out on the con­ scious side to counterbalance the deep distrust on the un­ conscious side."18 And Dover Wilson: "And the audience of whatever school [i.e., those believing in either Protestant ghosts, or Catholic ghosts, or no ghosts at all], would be swayed hither and thither in their opinion, as Hamlet himself was swayed, by the events of the ghost scenes. Like him they would wonder what to think before the vision appears; like him they would be overwhelmed by its apparition and ac­ cept it as the genuine spirit of the dead king while it is ac­ tually before their eyes; like him too they would be left baffled and bewildered by the cries from the cellarage. At the end of the first act, the Elizabethan audience could no more be certain of the honesty of the Ghost and of the truth of the story it had related than the perplexed hero himself."19 And Knight: "But the father, that king, is dead. So, clearly the ghost is also Death. . . . The spirit is indeed 'questionable'—in every sense. He certainly tells a tale which enlists our sympathy. He is morally justified by all the laws of man. Hence he is vividly shown as a thing of darkness. In the play the dark forces are given ethical sanc­ tion: but this alters not their darkness."20 I think these critics right to put emphasis on the moral ambiguities of the Ghost, "with all his sins broad blown," and I am using them to challenge the Freud-Jones empha­ sis on Claudius. However, I am being a bit unfair to them in that I hope to explain the moral ambiguities they adduce better than they themselves by reference not to Freud's sketchy criticism but to his very rich psychology. It is my contention that moral ambivalence is the meas­ ure of a more primary psychological ambivalence that Hamlet feels for his father. Elizabethan demonology may have provided for devils to impersonate fathers, but it is our modern conviction that devils and ghosts appear only where men psychologically make them appear. Wilson speaks about the "dramatic ambiguity" of the hybrid ghost, who seems to be a composite of what Catholics, Protestants,

FREUD'S MISLEADING HUNCH and skeptics thought about spirits, as if the dramatic am­ biguity of ghosts were interesting in itself, as if Shakesspeare were exploring ambivalence in general instead of the ambivalence in the relationship between a father and a son. And by the time Knight (I will come to Goddard in a moment) gets through talking about the Ghost we forget that he is first and foremost a father, not a "thing of dark­ ness," who is confusing his son. We forget that demonology must finally mean something, that the presence of a ghost in any play, but especially in Shakespeare's plays, demands a psychological explanation that goes beyond citation of theatrical and demonological conventions. When we go through sixteenth-century literature on ghosts, both dramatic and spiritual, we find, according to Prosser's persuasive account, plenty of evidence that the Ghost is only a devil impersonating Hamlet's father; Ho­ ratio, Bernardo, and Marcellus think that the Ghost "usurps" the figure of King Hamlet, is only "like" the former majesty of Denmark, is a "thing," an "it" that, in Prosser's words, acts "like a devil" because Shakespeare "wanted his audience to notice it acts like a devil."21 But in spite of the Ghost's devilishness, Hamlet, who himself sus­ pects that the Ghost is no honest spirit, insists on making him into his father. The Ghost's ambiguity grips Hamlet's imagination and provides a screen on which Hamlet can project his questionable feelings for his father: Thou com'st in such a questionable shape That I will speak to thee. I'll call thee Hamlet, King, father, royal Dane. (i. iv. 43-45) Hamlet is going to name the Ghost after his father (or after himself) whether or not the Ghost is his father. Prosser convinces us that we should see a devil, that Hamlet should see a devil; but Hamlet sees a father and a version of him­ self, a namesake. And Hamlet is right. There are no devils in the world, only projections from our own troubled imag­ inations. But, it may be objected, there is an objective ghost who is

FREUD'S MISLEADING HUNCH seen by the doughty skeptic Horatio, and by Bernardo and Marcellus. This seems to be true, despite W. W. Greg's fa­ mous article to the contrary.22 But if we treat the Ghost as primarily objective, then we have only Horatio's point of view, and to Horatio the Ghost is no more than a symptom of social and political problems. Hamlet is the only one on whom the Ghost makes a permanent psychological impact, and to account for this we need psychology, not morality or spiritualism. The objective Ghost is a red herring, irrele­ vant from the moment we realize that Shakespeare is exploring the subjective ghost of Hamlet's imagination. Prosser and Wilson, finally, account for what Horatio could have or should have made of the Ghost, not what Hamlet made of him. Thus by translating the critics' interest in the Ghost's amoral ambiguity back into psychological ambivalence, I think we come closer to the energies that roil in Hamlet. My argument, then, is directed both against the psychoanalytic critics who overemphasize the Claudius-Hamlet relation­ ship and against the literary critics who try to turn psychol­ ogy into moralism. Goddard is useful to me here not only because he em­ phasizes the play's father-son relationship but also because he, in asserting that the play's moral intricacies are infin­ itely richer than any Freudian interpretation, wishes to re­ verse my priorities by subsuming the play's psychological implications under its morality: "Here is the greatest character in all literature—or so at least many have called him. . . . But to Freudian analysis all that is apparently nothing. And when it has done its prob­ ing work what is revealed? Not a genius who made an ef­ fort to transcend the morality of his time with thoughts be­ yond the reaches of his soul, but a mind reduced to its most infantile impulses. . . . "That these drives are present deep down in Hamlet as they are in all of us need not be denied. That Hamlet was ultimately overthrown by his instincts may not only be granted but should be insisted on. But the fact of interest is

FREUD'S MISLEADING HUNCH

that he was conquered only after a protracted struggle. About this the Freudians have practically nothing to say. Jones does indeed speak of Hamlet's 'desperate struggle' against Fate. But when we search his essay for an account of that struggle it turns out to be nothing but the struggle of a trapped animal. . . . "To the Freudians, Hamlet's hesitation comes from a lit­ eral jealousy of his father and a literal love of his mother. He wants to kill his uncle because he recognizes him as a rival for the possession of his mother. But he also does not want to kill him . . . because he would thereby be convert­ ing himself into an image of the father whose life was dedi­ cated to violence and whom he therefore unconsciously hates—and at the same time into an image of his mur­ derer-uncle. Hence he hesitates. Logically the one argu­ ment is as good as the other. But poetically and prag­ matically there is simply no comparison between them, so much more creative and enlightening is the second. . . . "How much more illuminating to translate all this about Hamlet's 'love' and 'hatred,' about his 'father' and 'mother,' from crudely sexual into symbolic terms. . . . We see him in the play fluctuating between . . . his two 'fathers.' One, his sun and the source of his inspiration . . . ensures the con­ tinuity and, in so far as it is justified, the uplifting of life. This father Hamlet worships. The other is a type of that authority and violence that the racial father always repre­ sents and that his own father as renowned warrior (pirate in the original version) specifically incarnates. This father, however unconsciously, Hamlet abhors."23 I quote Goddard at length because I find him a most sen­ sitive and most eloquent critic of Shakespeare, and because I think he is, even here, right. No one interested in psycho­ analysis should casually dismiss these remarks; rather, he should meet them, offering the kind of criticism that re­ lates our most intricate moral dilemmas to a living mind that is at least as rich and subtle as its dilemmas. Goddard is right to reject Jones's emphasis on a mind stocked primar­ ily (or most relevantly) with "infantile impulses," but he is

FREUD'S MISLEADING HUNCH

wrong to assume that psychoanalysis cannot describe the "protracted struggle" against these impulses, wrong to mystify (as good psychoanalysis would not) Hamlet's strug­ gle as the calling upon "thoughts beyond the reaches of his soul," even more wrong to imply that Hamlet's "effort to transcend" is born, as if ex nihil, out of something else than his own awesome impulses. At its best psychoanalysis can describe the intricate web of unconscious desire and fear that engenders and inter­ penetrates, necessitates and subverts, our attempts at moral transcendence. It is just when Goddard has to assert, without psychoanalysis, this connection between the un­ conscious mind and the moral mind that he sounds least convincing: "the father whose life was dedicated to vio­ lence and whom he therefore unconsciously hates." By what psychological process Hamlet acquired that "there­ fore," or why he must "unconsciously" hate, Goddard does not tell us. I do not think he could answer these questions without recourse to some psychological system more pre­ cise than that which hovers between his lines, nor could any other critic who relies on a makeshift theory of the mind. Goddard claims that between the symbolically moral read­ ing and the psychoanalytic reading "there is simply no comparison," but a comparison, in fact a synthesis, is what his own incipient psychologizing needs. And because our minds already and automatically translate, as Goddard puts it, "from crudely sexual to symbolic terms," we need a criticism that works the other way around, that unravels the symbols we use to transform our complex (not crude) sexuality into morality, that shows why we need such a finely tuned morality in the first place. In arguing for the importance of setting Hamlet's rela­ tionship with his father in a psychological context, I will try to keep Goddard's criticism in mind. But I will insist that Hamlet's being too much the son ("I am too much in the sun" is his sarcastic, revealing pun on Claudius' calling him "son" early in the play) is not merely a moral situation.

THREE

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I TAKE the following as the central fantasy of Hamlet: "My father is not weak; he is strong enough to punish the oedipal villain Claudius and to provide me with a model of strength; even though he was killed by Claudius, he is still strong enough to return to earth in a seemingly powerful way; I will wait for him to prove that he is not really weak, not really absent; I will not kill Claudius because that will prevent my father from taking just the opportunity he needs to redeem his strength; meanwhile, I will scour my surroundings and my imagination for a substitute heroic father, one who is not like King Hamlet in his garden, not like Old Fortinbras or Old Norway, not like Polonius or Priam, victims all." Shakespeare assigns this fantasy to Hamlet and to other characters as well. But do not mistake me. Hamlet's inability to act is, as Freud would have said if he had written on the play with any claim to completeness, overdeter mined, and I would like in this chapter to specify a few other tenable psycholog­ ical explanations for Hamlet's delay and relate them to this fantasy. My point here is not that delay is the only thing of interest in the play but that Hamlet's psychological state, in all its aspects, seems to have King Hamlet at the center. In­ deed, my own "explanation" of Hamlet's hesitation, his need to wait until his father proves he can do his own re­ venging, is only secondary to my more general argument concerning the search for a strong father. However, since "delay" has been such a crucial issue in the criticism of Hamlet, I should perhaps explain more precisely how I see the relationship between the delay that so many readers have found in the play and the search for a strong father that I claim to find. In my account of the play, it does not really matter

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whether or not Hamlet is delaying killing Claudius; what is important is his (and the play's and Shakespeare's) need to have the father kill Claudius and his need to search for a strong substitute father. This search would necessitate the appearance of delay, but if there was nothing that directly made delay part of the play's material, I would not even have to mention it. However, there is such material, and I do have to include this in my argument.To those who do not believe that there is delay in the play, I could cite em­ phatic passages that pointedly focus on the "tardy" son, but that has already been done many times,1 without satisfying the question. Let me, then, simply make the issue of delay a subsidiary aspect of my argument. This emphasis is especially necessary because some wellintentioned, anti-psychoanalytic critics think they can rid themselves of Freudian readings if they can only divest the play of the delay that Freud was trying to explain. Consider Ruth Nevo: "The question that has dominated the criticism of Hamlet has turned into a pseudo problem what is in fact the basic donnee of the play; and though it has produced psychoanalytic excursions as brilliant and plausible as Er­ nest Jones's, it is ultimately as fruitless and unprofitable as an inquiry into the causes in nature that breed hard hearts would be to the criticism of King Lear."2 Nevo, in a manner typical of many literary critics, is in­ dulging in pseudo-praise and pseudo-dismissal of Ernest Jones's "brilliant and plausible" but finally "fruitless" study. Perhaps it was Jones's fault for following the critics into "delay" and saying so little about the poetry of Hamlet, but that should not license a critic to dismiss both delay and psychoanalysis in one disingenuous breath. For all his fail­ ures as a critic, Jones was at least aware that a donnee could not be as neutral as Nevo claims if it captured the imagina­ tion of Shakespeare and the world; and he was also aware, though he did not demonstrate it, that psychoanalysis has much to say about matters other than delay. Nevo's culti­ vated insensitivity to psychoanalysis blinds her into making what is for her a rare, foolish statement about Shake-

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speare; I cannot imagine why she thinks "the causes in nature that breed hard hearts" are irrelevant to King Lear, for they are at the very center of that play. But that is another story; the point here is the obvious but much ignored fact that psychoanalysis cannot be made irrelevant to Hamlet by merely ridding the play of delay. Having said so much, let me try to give further explana­ tions for Hamlet's delay while subsuming the whole ques­ tion under the play's preoccupation with ambivalent father figures. One additional way to account for Hamlet's delay was touched on by Freud in his remark about Hamlet's guilt. Just as misery loves company, so does guilt; Hamlet may avoid killing Claudius not so much because he would thereby kill himself but because he would thereby deprive himself of sharing his own oedipal guilt with another like-minded villain. Otto Fenichel notes that "persons who either have done something about which they feel guilty or wish to do such a thing are searching for another person in the same situation; they feel greatly relieved if they suc­ ceed in finding anyone who has done the same deed."3 Al­ though Hamlet's "prophetic soul" told him, even before he met the Ghost, that his uncle committed foul play, he does nothing with this insight; apparently he derives satisfaction from just thinking about Claudius as guilty. Even after his meeting with the Ghost, Hamlet invests all his energy in testing and relishing Claudius' guilt and very little energy in devising revenge. Punishing Claudius does not seem to excite Hamlet nearly as much as does a vicarious involve­ ment in his guilt. But this is so, I think, not so much because Claudius' crime fascinates Hamlet but because, in testing for Claudius' guilt, he is in an indirect way really testing for the truthfulness of his father, the possible "guilty thing" (as Horatio calls him). Hamlet in this view would be more in­ terested in validating his father than in wallowing in Claudius' guilt. At any rate, Shakespeare is not interested in the ambiguity of Claudius' guilt (he lets the audience

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know, and he gives Hamlet the "prophetic soul" to guess, the truth), but he is interested in the ambiguity of the Ghost's moral strength, in the ambiguity of the father. A further psychological cause for Hamlet's delay is summarized and scorned by A. J. A. Waldock (who does his best to persuade us not to talk about delay at all): "We are forever discovering new causes for Hamlet's in­ action. Professor Nicoll the other day discovered one more. He suggests that a chief cause was Hamlet's ambition or rather, his fear of his ambition: more precisely, his sincer­ ity. The King speaks once of Hamlet's 'pride'; Hamlet him­ self makes a remark to Rosencrantz about 'lacking ad­ vancement'; he declares, again, to Ophelia that he is 'proud, revengeful, ambitious'; and later (V.ii.65) refers to the King as one who has 'popp'd in between the election and [his] hopes.' Hamlet, then, has a strongly ambitious spirit, distrusts it, and fears that if he murders his uncle it may be, deep in his heart, for his own ends. So, he delays. Surely it will not do. Those few wisps of suggestions, artifi­ cially put together, make in the total design a threat that is absolutely invisible. Nothing is more obvious than that such an idea was never in Shakespeare's head. No, it seems pretty clear that we can find out no more secret motives. We persist in digging for them; what happens usually is that our spade goes through the other side of the drama." 4 Nicoll was indulging himself in some of the spontaneous psychologizing that I spoke of earlier, and Waldock was right to be suspicious. But Hamlet does say, with consider­ able self-accusatory vehemence, that he is "proud, re­ vengeful, ambitious." Since this cannot refer to Hamlet's manifest motives, it must refer, assuming it refers to some­ thing, to "secret motives." Had Nicoll argued that Hamlet, in distrusting his secret "ambitious spirit," shows the am­ bivalence of an oedipal son wishing to usurp his father's kingdom, he would have been able to explain why Hamlet harps to Ophelia (Waldock says Hamlet "declares"—it is hardly the right word) on ambition in grossly sexual lan­ guage with two father figures ominously present. Waldock

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can state, by fiat, that it is "obvious" that this "ambition" is not a subject in Hamlet's or Shakespeare's head, but a whole body of psychoanalytic evidence can show that it is a subject in everyone's head. Let us admit Hamlet's ambi­ tions into the play, for they are already there. And, once we admit the ambition, we can see the need for a strong father to control that ambition. Thus if we follow Nicoll even with a grain of salt from Waldock, we come back again to the secrets of fathers and sons. Another explanation for Hamlet's delay is that Hamlet has made it all up: he just thinks he is delaying when he really is not. Robert Reed feels that Hamlet is doing his best to determine whether the Ghost is reliable and what punishment would be suitable for Claudius (not while praying) and that all we need to explain is why Hamlet thinks he is "tardy."5 This approach has the advantage of accommodating those critics like Waldock who claim that though Hamlet talks of delay the audience never really feels him delaying. And Reed's idea does seem to have some truth in it: Hamlet is a trifle too eager to ask the Ghost in the closet scene whether he has not come to chide his tardy son. Now why would Hamlet need to think of himself as de­ laying if he really is not? Although Reed does not say so, it is as if Hamlet makes himself tardy so that his father will have to assert himself, as if he is testing to see if his father is really there. Since his father is not there, it seems possible that Hamlet lashes himself with this conscience in order to simulate in his own mind a strong father, that he has vi­ sions of his father in Gertrude's chamber not necessarily because an objective Ghost is there, but because a projec­ tion from his own mind is the only way he can regain an image of a strong father. Reed may be right about Hamlet irrationally seeing himself as a procrastinator, and we may explain this irrationality as an attempt on Hamlet's part to unleash his superego and thereby revive his father. Getting his superego, incorporated father, to chide his tardy son is the next best thing to getting his real father to punish

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Claudius, for this, to some degree, proves his father strong. Otto Rank6 has a compelling theory of Hamlet's delay. Hamlet cannot kill Claudius because Claudius' death would open the way for Hamlet to commit the crime that Claudius has demonstrated to be all too possible. Though killing Claudius would be, as I argue, a vicarious selfpunishment for a vicariously committed crime, it would unfortunately also make Gertrude available. Claudius is the last barrier between Hamlet and the terrors of incest. "My mother stays," says Hamlet as he leaves Claudius alive in the prayer scene. Hamlet would thus have good motiva­ tion to view Claudius' opposition as sweet. And, in fact, this is the case: "O 'tis most sweet/ When in one line two crafts directly meet," says Hamlet to Gertrude, and he may have her in mind, with at least a small amount of unconscious sexual innuendo, as the "one line" (he has just been speak­ ing "daggers" to get her out of Claudius' bed). Only with his mother safely dead can Hamlet stop delaying and dis­ pense with his uncle, the necessary impediment to incest. This theory, too, calls our attention to Hamlet's father. For Hamlet's need to keep Claudius alive is in conflict with a much more powerful mental force, the need to reestab­ lish his own and his father's dignity, to which Claudius' very breathing is an affront. Claudius, both enticing model for the oedipal crime and threatening barrier against it, illustrates an aspect of Hamlet's conflict; the fail­ ure of the fabricated father, the "radiant angel" who con­ stitutes the defense against this conflict, points to Hamlet's tragedy. Let me return to Moloney and Rockelein for one last ex­ planation of delay. These analysts agree that Hamlet needs to preserve Claudius as a living deterrent to incest, but they also think this is so because Claudius is necessary to Hamlet for the more general reason that Hamlet needs to be someone's child, that he is afraid to grow up and take on the risks of the adult politics and sexuality that destroyed his father.7 To kill Claudius may mean to become the king, and the king must face the terrors of a queen and the dan-

THE PROBLEM OF DELAY

gers of war. Hamlet would thus rather be a "schoolboy" out of harm's way. Moloney and Rockelein ignore the fact that Hamlet is not afraid of danger; that he is afraid of being a man only insofar as this would preempt his father from being a man. Thus Hamlet can swashbuckle with the pi­ rates but he cannot take his father's burden on his own shoulders. Because these analysts are so anxious to show that Hamlet refuses to grow up, they distort much (taking Polonius' and Laertes' evaluation of Hamlet's integrity at face value) and neglect the most obvious implication of their argument. That is, if Hamlet still needs to be the child, it is because he still needs to work out his relationship with his parents. To do this he needs his father back. If Hamlet sees Claudius as a "protective figure shielding Ham­ let from the challenge of growing up" (p. 94), it is only be­ cause he needs to see his real father that way. These five additional causes for Hamlet's delay—his sharing of guilt, his inability to face his secret ambition, his hope to revive his father in his unstable superego, his fear of at last making the road clear to his mother, his refusal to grow up—thus all seem to be facets of the same complex revolving around an unfulfilled need for a strong father. Alas, King Hamlet. "Alas poor ghost!" The following five chapters will try to support the many claims I have made in the first three. Chapter Four will offer a close analysis of Hamlet's relationship with his father as we see it on stage; I will pay particular attention to the "tables" soliloquy in which Hamlet expresses the nature of the bonds he sees existing between him and his father. Chapter Five will support my contention that Hamlet por­ trays not only one ambiguously strong-weak father but also a whole series of such father figures. I will analyze Hamlet's over-vehement entanglements with Polonius, his curious sympathy for Priam, and his love for Yorick, as well as such father figures as Old Fortinbras, Old Norway, Achilles, and Adam from "The Scripture." I find good grounds for in­ cluding, to some extent, Horatio, Lamord, and Osric

THE PROBLEM OF DELAY

among these fathers. Chapter Six will focus on the women in the play and on the themes of conception, birth, and matricide; I hope to show that the play's fantasies about women and mothers are closely related to the fantasies about fathers. Chapter Seven, a detailed analysis of the "To Be" soliloquy, will provide some of my documentation on this score. Chapter Eight will define a neglected problem of the play that I think is central. In Hamlet (as well as other plays, notably King Lear) Shakespeare puts a marked em­ phasis on writing, on letters, books, and other documents. I will relate this writing to Hamlet's interest in art and, in the light of the psychoanalytic reading I am advancing, I will describe the play's action partly as a dynamic sequence of written documents that are analogues to a sequence of un­ conscious defense strategies. I will try to show here how the play works with its fantasy material; psychoanalytic criticism sometimes makes a work of art seem too much like a gal­ lery of static fantasy figures. The failure of Hamlet's art will be compared to the failure of his striving, unconscious mind to fabricate a strong father.

FOUR

THE ABSENT FATHER AND HIS SON

I KING Hamlet was absent on the day his son was born. His ghost is also absent for most of the play, present and yet not present. When the Ghost does appear, he commands with the power of the resurrected, yet supplicates with the impotence of the murdered. Imposing and imposed upon, terrifying yet pitiable, he is an ambiguous figure who both comes to renew his son's sense of purpose and, ultimately, to crush him. Prince Hamlet inherits his father's name as well as his double nature of strength and weakness, and, as the Ghost fades away in Act One, the son expresses this terrible burden in his second soliloquy. His words are as charged with undefinable energy as they are tantalizingly particular in imagery and stage business. The carefully de­ veloped metaphor about the "tables" of memory, the fol­ lowing production on stage of literal tables, or notebooks, and the jotting down of the now famous aphorism about the smiling villain all seem to be pointing to a specific in­ terpretation that will be necessary for understanding the rest of the play. But what interpretation? The "tables" soliloquy is, then, my starting point for the business of this chapter, an analysis of the ways in which Shakespeare imagines the relationship between Hamlet and son. I am going to spend a lot of time on this soliloquy, trying to show that, contrary to appearances in Freud's or Jones's analyses of the play, psychoanalysis can give a word-by-word analysis of poetry. My one operating hy­ pothesis, that poetry always contains to some degree un­ conscious fantasies, makes it dangerously possible that I will find fantasies that are not there, but at least it is a cor­ rective to the possibility of ignoring fantasies that are there. The test of the hypothesis is, for me, "do the fantasies dis-

THE ABSENT FATHER AND HIS SON

covered form a coherent pattern that meaningfully relate to the manifest concerns of the passage under scrutiny?— and do these fantasies help us understand our experience of the poetry?" In the case of the "tables" soliloquy, I find that the fantasies are indeed coherent, and that they not only offer insights into the passage at hand but also con­ dense practically all the unconscious themes that haunt the rest of the play. From the "tables" soliloquy, I will be look­ ing back along the lines of the play's fantasies to the Ghost's story, and ahead to the Ghost's ambiguous appearance in Gertrude's closet. II Let us begin with this passage: O all you host of heaven! O earth! What else? And shall I couple hell? O fie! Hold, hold, my heart, And you, my sinews, grow not instant old, But bear me stiffly up. Remember thee? Ay, thou poor ghost, whiles memory holds a seat In this distracted globe. Remember thee? Yea, from the table of memory I'll wipe away all trivial fond records, All saws of books, all forms, all pressures past That youth and observation copied there, And thy commandment all alone shall live Within the book and volume of my brain, Unmixed with baser matter:· Yes, by heaven! O most pernicious woman! 0 villain, villain, smiling damned villain! My tables—meet it is I set it down That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain. At least I am sure it may be so in Denmark. [Writes.]

So, uncle, there you are. Now to my word: It is "Adieu, adieu, remember me." 1 have sworn't. (i. v. 92-112)

THE ABSENT FATHER AND HIS SON

I find that in the matter of Hamlet's writing in his tables the critics have, for once, hardly quarreled, for they have not had much to say. For the most part they either agree with Grebanier,1 who claims that these are only metaphoric tables in question, that Hamlet writes nothing and that the "tables" imagery is only the accident of a distraught brain, or they agree with Malone,2 who notes that Hamlet is sim­ ply following the notebook habit of the Renaissance and that he signifies nothing special by looking to his tables at this time. Whether one sees these tables as merely metaphoric or merely conventional amounts to much the same thing. One may as well do what Laurence Olivier does in his film version (1948)—cut this tingling moment from the play. Two critics, however, have made partial attempts at in­ terpreting the tables, and I think it worth while to hold their comments up to each other. One is a highly respected literary critic, the other a well-known psychoanalyst. By training, the one is looking for conscious motivation, the other for unconscious fantasies. Neither, I am afraid, of­ fers a very satisfactory reading of the passage, but there is a strange concurrence between them that seems to promise that a synthesis of their methods will bear fruit. A. C. Bradley devotes an appendix3 to defending Ham­ let's production of the tables against those who call it ab­ surd. He explains that a man in Hamlet's state, fearing his mind will dissolve, would naturally seize his tables or any other instrument to help do what the Ghost admonishes, that is, remember. "He is, literally, afraid that he will forget—that his mind will lose the message entrusted to it": "A time will come, he feels, when all this appalling experi­ ence of the last half-hour will be incredible to him, will seem a mere nightmare, will even, conceivably, quite van­ ish from his mind. Let him have something in black and white that will bring it back and force him to remember and believe. What is there so unnatural in this, if you substitute a note-book or diary for the 'tables'?" Hamlet's tables are then naturally "suggested to him by

THE ABSENT FATHER AND HIS SON

the phrases he has just used, 'tables of my memory,' 'book and volume.' " But one may well ask why Hamlet chooses these phrases? The use of tables to jot down interesting ob­ servations and scraps of poetry was certainly commonplace enough in the Renaissance, but since Shakespeare has done his best to make Hamlet's practice of this custom as spontaneous and bizarre as possible, he must be calling our attention to something about the basic reflexes of Hamlet's mind; the motivation for the tables seems more uncon­ scious than conscious. No matter how the phrases came to Hamlet, it seems wrong to regard him as consciously trying to prop up his memory with the tables, as if he could be feeble-minded about this of all experiences. But, as we consider the second half of Bradley's account, let us keep in mind the explanation that Hamlet will "lose the message." Assuming that the tables are to insure remembering, Bradley asks, "why should he write that par­ ticular note and not rather his 'word,' 'Adieu, adieu! re­ member me?" Bradley's answer to this question again in­ volves the idea of loss. That the message Hamlet writes has nothing to do with the Ghost, says Bradley, is partly the product of Hamlet's propensity for a "grotesque jest" when under pressure and partly an attempt to insure secrecy in the event the tables are stolen: "Possibly, too, he might re­ member that 'tables' are stealable, and that if the appear­ ance of the Ghost should be reported, a mere observation on the smiling of villains could not betray anything of his communication with the Ghost." Now this explanation is just the kind of nonsense with which Bradley sometimes spoiled his otherwise brilliant work. I do not see why the phrase about the smiling villain would be less incriminating than the even more cryptic "remember me"; but the fact is that the possibility of the tables' being stolen is not a concern of the play and specula­ tion on this point is simply irrelevant. Bradley is just casting about for an explanation for a difficulty that has no obvious solution. Reduced to its essentials, Bradley's argument runs something like this: "Hamlet whips out his tables to

THE ABSENT FATHER AND HIS SON

avoid losing the Ghost's message; he writes the message he does in case the tables are lost; there is something gro­ tesque about this." Since this argument is not very clear or convincing, I am left only with what are mainly Bradley's free associations to the passage: the sense of loss and grotesqueness. Since Bradley usually demonstrates himself a careful and deep reader of the play, I think it would be a mistake to consider his free associations as nonsensical as the explanations in which they are embodied. In fact, I hope to show that Bradley's associations are very close to the latent fantasies that Shakespeare has woven into his poetry here. My second critic of the soliloquy is Dr. Robert Fliess. In his reference to Hamlet's tables, he is not primarily inter­ ested in explicating our soliloquy but in illustrating a point of clinical theory. But we may be able to use his psychologi­ cal observations to unravel the literary questions involved. Fliess's discussion involves three steps: (i) a patient will sometimes identify his spoken words with the voice of his superego, his internalized, oedipal father whom he fears; (2) he will attempt to neutralize his fears by reducing his spoken words to inanimate written words; (3) writing can thus be a way of killing off the oedipal father, and this is what Hamlet is doing: "It appears to me that the last line ["So, uncle, there you are . . ."] . . . addresses the oedipal father-object as killed."4 But even if writing can be a way of killing the inter­ nalized paternal voice (Fliess cites clinical evidence), these general formulations raise more questions than they an­ swer. Why does Hamlet need to kill his superego? If Ham­ let's writing is a punishment of a superego-father, exactly what punishment is involved in the aphorism about the smiling villain? Certainly it must make a difference how Hamlet chooses to portray his uncle. Furthermore, as long as Hamlet is displacing and disguising parricide by writing, why does this displacement have to go the long way around via Claudius? Writing something down about the Ghost would presumably kill the superego-father just as effi-

THE ABSENT FATHER AND HIS SON

ciently and (assuming the right aphorism) just as disguisedly. Though Fliess wishes only to demonstrate an association between writing and the management of one's superego, and though he does not answer the questions that need answering if we take Hamlet and not the superego to be our main concern, he does provide us with an interesting clue that may help us to interpret our passage. Hamlet writes, according to Fliess, not only because he fears his superego and wants to silence it, but because he fears its loss and wants to preserve it: "The spoken word under certain con­ ditions is—as are feces in the anal phase—conceived of as part of the speaker (=speaker's body). Its loss is feared— as is its re-entry—and it must therefore—as must excre­ ment—be inspected. Both inspection and defense against re-entry take the form of the transformation of the 'ani­ mate' or spoken into the inanimate or written word" (p. 137). If this is so, then Bradley's idea of the loss of the father's message receives some eerie confirmation in Fliess's idea of the loss of the incorporated father. Since Hamlet has lost his father, it would not be strange if there were indeed latent fantasies about the loss of a father with which Fliess and Bradley were in tune. Though these critics seem to be responding to some­ thing, they have not got us very deep into the imagery of the soliloquy. They have, I hope, demonstrated that no in­ terpretation of the passage's manifest referents is going to satisfy us, and that no interpretation of a single (possibly) latent referent will be able to organize all the elements of the speech. Keeping Bradley and Fliess in mind, I would now like to consider a variety of unconscious fantasies that the "tables" soliloquy seems to suggest. Ill 1. Hamlet pictures his father's "commandment" en­ shrined in his mind, where it "all alone shall live." This seems a fantasy of the father introjected as a voice of con-

THE ABSENT FATHER AND HIS SON

science, a superego, the commanding voice as distin­ guished from the "baser" mob of instincts. Hamlet wishes to replace base matter with the golden voice of "heaven." However, though he wishes so fervently to distinguish this voice of conscience from the other voices of his mind, he proceeds to transform his father's message into an aphorism about the smiling villain that is not different from other "saws," indicating, I think, that he is having difficulty maintaining a mental image of an ideal father who would be able to give his life moral direction. By de­ moting the status of his father's message to another saw just as he is enshrining it, Hamlet betrays, in hyperbolic language, a simultaneous need to honor and to reject his father-superego. As we saw Fliess intimating, Hamlet has in some sense lost control of his superego. This psychologi­ cal state revolving around the incorporated father's am­ bivalence has an objective correlative in the father that the audience can see. The Ghost is, as we saw in Chapter Two, theologically ambiguous, double-talking in his revenge ethic (recommending murder even though it is "in the best" "most foul"), and generally suspect as the strong father and husband who was nevertheless either a cuckold or just soon forgotten. Hamlet's tendency to demote, even to kill off, this am­ biguous father also finds a highly condensed expression just before our soliloquy. Wrily and angrily, Hamlet warns Horatio that he will kill anyone who hinders his approach to the apparition of King Hamlet: "I'll make a ghost of him who lets me." "Let," of course, means to hinder, but it also carries its modern meaning to allow, thus leaving the line ambiguous, a situation that commentators usually clear up by simply ruling out the latter, seemingly irrelevant mean­ ing. This editorial legerdemain, however, still does not ac­ count for the jesting allusion to the making of dead fathers. If we permit the ambiguity to remain, and it is appropriate to Hamlet's frenzy, one reading of the line is "I'll make a ghost, a dead father, of any authority figure who allows me to do so, who is so weak that he encourages me to take ad-

THE ABSENT FATHER AND HIS SON

vantage of him." On the other hand, "let" leads us to this opposite reading: "I'll make a dead father of any authority figure who hinders me when I'm in a passion." In both readings, patricide is barely disguised by jest. Hamlet un­ consciously hates the father who allowed himself to be killed, the father who allowed Claudius access to Gertrude; he also hates the father who ambiguously hindered his own access to his mother. But he does not hate his father in general, nor does he really want to kill him. He wishes to kill off only the weak father who ambiguously "let" him and to honor the majestic father who is even now waiting for him on the battlements. But, as we see in the "tables" soliloquy, Hamlet has difficulty maintaining the majesty of his strong father in face of the simultaneous need to kill off his weak father. 2. The incorporated "commandment" living "all alone" in Hamlet's mind, as strange as this may seem, also sounds like a pregnancy fantasy, displaced upward. If Hamlet sees himself as his father's mistress and even impregnated by him, this would allow him to dispense with his mother whom he sees as threatening: "O most pernicious woman." Psychoanalysis tells us that this kind of fantasy is possible (I will quote a clinical example in a moment), but on what basis can we assume that this is what we are dealing with here? Is there any compelling reason to interpret the metaphor of a father's commandment living in a son's mind as a representation of a baby living in the son's body? The Renaissance could use the word "pregnant" to cover both these ideas, but the evidence for the one implying the other here cannot be conclusive. I do think, though, that we can follow a line of argument that is plausible and, if correct, illuminating. Hamlet is dis­ traught. He is speaking in images whose meanings must have something to do with the feelings that are bothering him. These feelings include the pity of learning just how vulnerable his father was, the horror of the murderous in­ cest in which Gertrude was involved, the fear that this new knowledge will dissolve his manliness, that he will grow "in­ stant old." By imagining himself pregnant by his father, he

THE ABSENT FATHER AND HIS SON

would be devising a strategy that would take care of the sudden psychological bombardment he has been through: his father's vulnerability would be denied, for King Hamlet would now be potent again; his mother's behavior could be ignored because she would be replaced by Hamlet himself; his own manliness, though temporarily sacrificed to the image of himself as a pregnant woman, would be guaran­ teed by new life that he would bear within him. The main objection I can raise to this interpretation, other than its being generally uncertain, and all interpreta­ tions of this passage are that, is that it is not decorous to endow the Prince with such bizarre fantasies. But the Prince is disturbed, and our interpretation should reflect this. And this is by no means the only time Hamlet is seen as a woman or as pregnant (later we explore such passages as Gertrude's likening Hamlet to a pregnant dove). Since the interpretation fits well with psychoanalysis, with the de­ tails of this passage, and, as we shall see, with other details in the play, let us keep pursuing it in a tentative spirit. Gertrude is obviously seductive, and, since a seductive mother aggravates her son's oedipal conflict, it would not be surprising to Hamlet to wish her out of the picture, just as he later, in another moment of intense mental anguish, desperately banishes Ophelia from the world. In the "ta­ bles" soliloquy, Hamlet, pregnant with the motive power of his own future action, can imagine himself mother to him­ self and eliminate from his mind the mother whose incest has caused him so much distress. Since the pernicious woman is also associated with the destruction of her hus­ band, Hamlet would have a second reason to substitute himself for his mother as his father's wife; he would not be pernicious, he would not harm his father (I will speak later about the vexing question of the nature of Gertrude's responsibility for King Hamlet's death). Otto Fenichel comments on this version of the Oedipus complex: "We speak of a negative Oedipus complex in a boy when love for the father prevails and the mother is hated as a disturbing element in his love for the father. . . . A man patient with a very strong and ambivalent father

THE ABSENT FATHER AND HIS SON

complex had the following dream: Ί got a long letter from my father. He wrote me that somebody had died. Finally, he asked me whether I would marry him.' " "In general, boys with a special development of the nega­ tive Oedipus complex have repressed phallic strivings to­ ward the mother and mobilized pregenital aims toward the father instead."5 This wish to be married to or impregnated by a father figure is not confined to neurotic patients. It is part of our religious tradition, and part of our fantasy life. We can use the "negative Oedipus complex" as a mental strategy de­ signed to please a powerful God or father. John Donne has a fantasy similar to Hamlet's in his Holy Sonnet xiv; he begs God to marry and "ravish" him. Fenichel's patient, Donne, and Hamlet can all be seen as propitiators of a po­ tentially jealous and wrathful father figure. Fenichel says his patient had a "father-complex," but this kind of label is of course not sufficient as literary analysis. We want to know what Hamlet's rejection of his mother and his fantasy of being pregnant have to do with his father-complex and what writing has to do with it all. I shall argue that where Donne imagines himself raped by God as a way to pro­ pitiate a strong father, Hamlet imagines himself impreg­ nated by King Hamlet as a way to fabricate a potent father who in real life was as weak as he was strong. I shall argue that writing is also a way of recreating King Hamlet in the image of the strong father that Hamlet needed but did not have. 3. Hamlet seems overanxious to get rid of everything in his mind "that youth and observation copied there." A pos­ sible unconscious pun on the word "saws" may further in­ dicate that Hamlet has seen something that he wishes he had not. On the conscious level, Hamlet calls his former observations "trivial fond records," but the double adjec­ tive sounds like too much protesting, thus revealing uncon­ scious conflict. Because he is so desirous to forget, we may suspect that his memories are painful, shocking, anything but trivial.

THE ABSENT FATHER AND HIS SON

We get a clue about what Hamlet wishes to suppress, about the nature of "all forms, all pressures past," when these terms turn up again in Hamlet's advice to the players. The "purpose of playing" is "to hold, as 'twere, the mirror up to nature; to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure." (iii . ii. 21-24) Here "form and pressure" is associated with something seen (in a mirror), with something feminine ("her own fea­ ture," "her own image"), something masculine ("his form"), with a "body." In short, I think I can show that Hamlet is dealing with a sexual fantasy in the second soliloquy as well as in the scene with the players. "Play" allows more re­ pressed elements to surface in the latter scene, where the mixing of masculine and feminine pronouns has an aura of repressed sexuality that no reference to grammar can al­ together explain away. In the "tables" soliloquy the fantasy expresses itself more obliquely. The word "copied," for in­ stance, may have been selected for its muted echo of "couple." In both places the word "pressure" brings along such sexual associations as Mercutio's Mab, This is the hag, when maids lie on their backs, That presses them and learns them first to bear, Making them women of good carriage, (Ris1J. i. iv. 92-94) and Lucio's marriage, Marrying a punk, my lord, is pressing to death, whip­ ping, and hanging, (Meets, v. 1. 524-525) and Iachimo's voyeurism, under her breast— Worthy the pressing—lies a mole. (Cym. 11. iv. 134-135)

THE ABSENT FATHER AND HIS SON

I think, then, that what Hamlet is so anxious to forget are memories of troubled sexuality, presumably, if they are from his "youth," memories of parental sexuality. Very plausibly we are, through Hamlet, dealing with Shakespeare's primal scene, his first, frightening glimpse or intuition of adult sexuality, long repressed since child­ hood. According to psychoanalysis, a child wishes to oblit­ erate his primal-scene memories in order to preserve in his own mind the exclusive relationship he thinks he has with his mother. For a child to discover that his mother is un­ faithful to him at night behind his back is a painful and dis­ illusioning experience, making adult sexuality seem hel­ lish. Hamlet evokes this idea of sexuality by wondering whether he should "couple hell," i.e., whether he should include hell with his other invocation and, unconsciously, whether he should give vent to his fantasies of coupling. Shakespeare, I think, has Hamlet wish to obliterate his early memories because they are sexual, in general frightening. I think there is also a specific reason for this repression. Hamlet wishes to forget that his father was unmanned during a sexual encounter with Gertrude. A child may sometimes think of sexuality as one partner sadistically "doing something" to another, and he may even fear that this "something" involves the castration of his father whose penis is absorbed by the mother.® If Hamlet does think of his father as unmanned, then his rhetorical question about coupling hell could carry this unconscious meaning: "Is it possible to couple with my father, a repre­ sentative from hell, because he suffered in my imagination a hellish castration and is now a woman?" Let me explain why I think castration fantasies are operative in the primal scene of our passage (I know I have not established for certain that there is a primal scene here, but let us see how much we can explain by assuming, on the evidence that we do have, that there is). Horatio earlier as­ sociates the Ghost with "the dead waste and middle of the night." I cannot help hearing an echo between this line and Hamlet's later ribaldry with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern

THE ABSENT FATHER AND HIS SON

about living in Fortune's "waist, or in the middle of her favors." The Ghost, it seems, is associated in Shakespeare's imagination (if we follow the analysts' hypothesis that such echoes are always significant) with a dead waste and middle and a dead waist and middle, with castration. Perhaps Shakespeare disguised a fantasy of an infantile son witness­ ing his father's castration at night by having an adult son encounter a victimized, nocturnal ghost of his father. The Ghost himself unconsciously testifies to Gertrude's having absorbed his phallicism; at least he uses some very suggestive imagery about Gertrude: leave her to heaven And to those thorns that in her bosom lodge To prick and sting her. (i. v. 86-88) Gertrude has, from her actions regarding her husband, wound up with thorns in her breast that "prick." If we ac­ cept a possible, unconsciously bawdy pun on "prick" (cf. Sonnet 20), then we have an image of Gertrude's having taken over King Hamlet's phallus. In this perspective, there may be an unconscious pun in the Ghost's otherwise superfluous plea that Hamlet "remember" him; King Ham­ let is plausibly begging to be re-membered, to have his "member" restored to him. (As unlikely as this pun seems, it is very possible in Shakespeare's use of language; for the same pun, see my discussion in Chapter Eight of the "re­ membrances" returned to Hamlet by Ophelia and, in Ap­ pendix A, my analysis of Sonnet 3.) Moreover, I think that Hamlet makes such an issue of "remember me," harping on the phrase at the beginning of his soliloquy and perhaps even writing the seemingly trivial words in his tables, be­ cause he too is expressing Shakespeare's unconscious theme of the lost paternal member. I think that only some such interpretation, relying on unconscious determinants, can explain why the phrase "remember me" is given so much emphasis and why a critic like Bradley, who focuses on conscious motivation, is so helpless to account for it.

THE ABSENT FATHER AND HIS SON

Forced to make the choice of who is the superior in­ terpreter of the ghosts that plague men's minds, some readers will choose Freud over Wilson's college of sixteenth-century spiritualists and entertain the possibility that Shakespeare endowed Hamlet with a fantasy of a father who is ghostly because he was "seen" to be robbed of his manliness, castrated in a primal scene. Since so much of the play deals with loss of manliness and peeping and spy­ ing, these readers may agree that a primal-scene castration could underlie much of the play's conflict, and they will want to understand the relationship between the "tables" soliloquy and, say, the "lawful espials" of Claudius, the Polonius who peeps, and the Hamlet who peaks (spies): "yet IJ A dull and muddy-mettled rascal, peak/ Like John-a-dreams, unpregnant of my cause,/ And can say nothing." These readers will also wonder if Hamlet resorts to a play to avenge his father because watching has a pow­ erful emotional relationship to his father's lost manliness, if Hamlet is by psychological necessity not only the "observed of all observers," as Ophelia describes him, but also an ob­ server who simultaneously re-enacts and wishes away his terrifying observations from "youth." 4. If Hamlet fantasizes a primal-scene castration of his father, he also fantasizes his own castration, or, at least fears his failing to remain erect. He is afraid of physically collapsing, and he invokes his "sinews" to bear him "stiffly up." Similarly, his fear for "this distracted globe" seems a displacement upward of his castration fantasy. This anxi­ ety, though, is not made up of only fear; it also, paradoxi­ cally, expresses a wish—a wish for a punishing father who is frightening enough to dissipate the Oedipus complex. Hamlet fears a distracted globe but then immediately wishes one on himself, adopting an antic disposition just as his father leaves. This seems a deliberate overdramatization of the impact his father can have on him, a strategy that would perhaps prove his father still strong. (This read­ ing of the antic disposition gives us insight into the trou-

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bled issue of Hamlet's sanity, a matter I will take up in Chapter Five.) It is of course possible to explain Hamlet's fear of mental and physical collapse without invoking fear of castration and strategies for dealing with the unconscious. A man after all is entided to be scared of ghosts! The reason I cannot accept this simple explanation as an account of Hamlet's imagery is that Hamlet, here and elsewhere, begs for the collapse he fears. He foists an antic disposition on the distracted mind that he is worried about, and he pleads just earlier, that his sinews of his body will indeed collapse: O that this too too sullied flesh would melt, Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew, Or that the Everlasting had not fixed His canon 'gainst self-slaughter. O God, God. . . . (i. ii. 129-132) Hamlet simultaneously wishes his "flesh" would melt and conjures up a vision of God the Father, who, because he is the ultimate judge, forbids "self-slaughter" and thus pro­ tects his children, at least indirectly. If we accept some equation between Hamlet's "flesh" and his penis, the organ that can become solid and then meltingly flaccid, then we find Hamlet wishing his penis resolved "into a dew," wish­ ing his sullied (or solid) organ removed. Perhaps, too, he is thinking of ejaculation when he speaks of his flesh resolv­ ing "into a dew," of sexuality as death, as if he were taking on himself the castration he "saw" visited on his father in the primal scene. However this may be, Hamlet's wish for destruction forms an ambiguous pattern with his fear in the "tables" soliloquy, a pattern of mental functioning that makes possible fantasies of the Everlasting, a potent and prohibiting Father who seems to be a rewrite of King Ham­ let, the father who did not last. One can see that if Hamlet needs to weaken himself, make himself antic, wish himself away, in order to prove his father strong, he is unfortunately going to deprive him-

THE ABSENT FATHER AND HIS SON

self of just the strength that he needs his father to model for him. This is not a rational strategy, but rather one that ultimately leads to tragedy. It is, nevertheless, one that Hamlet pursues. Bradley's idea of loss and grotesqueness, which was applied so carelessly to the passage on a conscious level, is, we now see, a possibly accurate response to Hamlet's un­ conscious fear that he and his father have lost their phallic strength, that his "sinews" will not bear him "stiffly" up, and that the pernicious woman has grotesquely and irre­ trievably weakened her ex-husband. And I think there is a causal link between Hamlet's sense of loss and his need to kill off his superego (as Fliess describes). Insofar as Hamlet incorporates his father as a superego, he is his father, emasculated like him. Hamlet has lost the kind of father he needs and would like to rid himself of the weak father. This has to be accomplished in the most roundabout ways since Hamlet cannot even consciously acknowledge his ambivalent feelings for his father. 5. If Hamlet fears that he is vulnerable like his father, he might also be fantasizing that he is his father's age, ready to die. He is irrationally afraid that he will grow "in­ stant old," something extremely unlikely to happen. This irrational fear of growing suddenly old is connected in the play with a fantasy of old men growing suddenly young. Later we will look at passages in which Hamlet sees Polonius becoming a young man "if like a crab you could go backward"; in which Polonius is called a "calf"; in which he is dubbed a "great baby . . . not yet out of his swaddling clouts"; in which Hamlet suddenly seems older, not only thirty instead of twenty, but ripe for death. The possibility that a son can become the same age as his father, and that a father can suddenly become a young man, reinforces Shakespeare's theme: sons need strong fathers because they identify with them. By simultaneously fearing growing old and wanting to wipe out his "youth," Hamlet leaves himself only a very pre­ carious present, and even that is dominated by the weak father he is trying to banish. Thus his wish to destroy his

THE ABSENT FATHER AND HIS SON

youthful experiences may be a wish not to have been born at all. "I could accuse me of such things that it were better my mother had not borne me," he later laments. Much of the play's imagery, as we shall see in Chapter Seven, con­ cerns this wish either not to be born or to be born into a world that is free from the oedipal enticements of seduc­ tive mothers and ambiguous fathers. 6. Paradoxically, Hamlet's attempt to wipe away his youth is also a return to youth, a wallowing in the past, in regressive behavior. Deprecating adult sexuality through­ out the play, Hamlet is often obsessed with infantile fan­ tasies of filth and poison, with rapacious feeding that turns life into garbage, with infection, defecation, and refuse: How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable Seem to me all the uses of this world! Fie on't, ah, fie, 'tis an unweeded garden That grows to seed. Things rank and gross in nature Possess it merely. (i. ii. 133-137) it goes so heavily with my disposition that this goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory; this most excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave o'erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire: why, it appeareth nothing to me but a foul and pestilent congregation of vapors. (11. ii. 305-311) KING Now Hamlet, where's Polonius? HAM. At supper. KING At Supper? Where? HAM. Not where he eats, but where 'a is eaten. . . . your fat king and your lean beggar is but variable service—two dishes, but to one table. That's the end. (iv. iii. 16-25) To what bare uses we may return Horatio! Why may not imagination trod the noble dust of Alexander till 'a find it stopping a bunghole? (v. i. 202-204)

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This fascination with eating, rotting, and dirt is evident in the "tables" soliloquy too, but only if we listen with the ear of the psychoanalyst. Hamlet sees his mind as a "book and volume" stored with "baser matter" that he can "wipe away" in order to intro­ duce new matter. However, this new matter, the saw about the smiling villain, must resemble all the "saws" that are being replaced. The eagerness with which Hamlet wants to void his mind and the promptness with which he restores similar matter presents us with a psychological ambivalence that goes deeper than the cliche of likening the mind to a book. I would like to suggest that Hamlet thinks of his mind not only as a "book" but also as a digestive tract, which is, like the mind, an enclosed "volume" of the body. If we take "volume" to mean only "book," then the lan­ guage is simply redundant, a superfluous use of hendiadys, the Renaissance name for doubling terms. 7 But if we as­ sume that "volume" hints at a level of interpretation that "book" disguises, we understand another way in which lan­ guage and act both hide and reveal the inner mind. If Hamlet unconsciously fantasizes his mind as a "vol­ ume," as a digestive tract that begins with something valu­ able and turns it into waste, "baser matter," if he feels him­ self irresistibly turning significance into triviality, form into gibberish, his father's living commandment into a cliche, this could perhaps be his way of adapting to a world that has also consumed what is valuable to him. Hamlet, in this view, would be like Nestor in Troilus and Cressida, trying to become like his world and therefore immune to it; in a voracious, all-consuming world one must respond with "an accent tuned in self-same key," recommends Nestor (i. iii. 53). But the model of Hamlet's behavior is not just his adult world of "foul and pestilent vapors" but also his infantile experiences, in which one could magically create new reali­ ties by taking in food and transforming it into fecal matter. A regression to an infantile interest in this process would thus spare Hamlet much suffering from the loss of his father, because in the child's world of anality that which is

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lost or destroyed can be replenished.8 Furthermore, if adult sexuality proves corrupt, as it does to Hamlet, one may very well try to redeem that corruption by regressing to anal fantasies in which the digestive process is just as creative as conception and birth. Perhaps Fliess's juxtapos­ ing the "tables" soliloquy to a psychology of anality was not as irrelevant as it seemed. Ella Freeman Sharpe has pointed out that the predomi­ nant images in Hamlet, the filth and poison, all indicate that Hamlet is attempting to regress from oedipal conflict to anality,9 but I think this overstates the case. Hamlet tries many strategies, even here in this one soliloquy, to forge an armor that will help him defend against the psychic shock of his father's destruction. Hamlet is not a dysfunctional neurotic with a monolithic "fixation," but a man whose agile mind is still, for the present, mercurially exploring ways to adapt. 7. Hamlet's spasmodic seizure of a pen possibly involves a fantasy of displaced phallic activity associated with the sexual stories the Ghost has been telling. Indeed, Hilda Hulme has shown that an Elizabethan double entendre re­ ferred to woman as "tables" on whom a man could use his "pen."10 Apparendy men would sometimes keep track of their assignations in their tables; by association their tables became their whores. If Hamlet is thinking of his tables as a whore (and whoring is not far from his mind), it is curious that he immediately associates his writing with his uncle and not with Gertrude, the obvious candidate: "So uncle, there you are." Note too that it is the phrase "damned vil­ lain" (Claudius) that evokes "my tables." If Hamlet wishes to play the woman to his father, perhaps he also fantasizes Claudius playing woman to him. Just as he sees his father impregnating his "book and volume" brain, perhaps he also sees himself impregnating his tables, his whore Claudius. Can it be at all possible that Hamlet fantasizes Claudius as a woman to be used sexually? This would be an uncon­ sciously logical complement to Hamlet's need to see his

THE ABSENT FATHER AND HIS SON

father as a strong punisher of oedipal rivals, but that does not mean that the fantasy is indeed there. But if we follow a few clues that Shakespeare has given us, I think we must arrive at an interpretation that includes some version of Hamlet's seeing Claudius as a punished man transformed into a woman. First consider that later in the play, Hamlet, through some theological chop-logic, turns Claudius into his mother: HAM. KING HAM. wife,

Farewell dear mother. Thy loving father, Hamlet. My mother—father and mother is man and man and wife is one flesh; and so, my mother. (iv. iii. 50-53)

Claudius, then, as "mother" is not far from Claudius as woman, as castrated. That Claudius should be married to Gertrude as one flesh, that they should be similar in flesh, is, I think, as bizarre as it sounds, part of the deep uncon­ scious wish that Shakespeare worked into his conception of Hamlet. "O villain, villain, smiling damned villain" is a free association and an appositive to "O most pernicious woman." These parallel exclamations will, he secretly hopes, turn out to be the same. In one frightening way, Gertrude and Claudius are al­ ready the same in Hamlet's mind. Both proved King Ham­ let weak, Gertrude by castrating him during the primal scene and Claudius by penetrating him through the ear in the orchard. By calling Claudius "mother," Hamlet thus at once groups him with Gertrude as a castrator and also wishes on him the paternal punishment that he be made a woman. For Hamlet, a punished Claudius would prove King Hamlet was not castrated, and the proof that Claudius has been punished would be that he could be used as "ta­ bles." In addition to the tables, there is another clue that Ham­ let is wishing Claudius a woman in the soliloquy. Erupting into the troubled language here comes the feature of Claudius that is most highly charged in Hamlet's mind, the

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smile. Like that of the Cheshire Cat, this smile is disem­ bodied and villainous, difficult but necessary to interpret on account of the emphasis it gets. In Shakespeare's imagi­ nation a loaded smile such as Claudius' seems to represent the female orifice, and, by synecdoche, woman, as in Touchstone's "Jane Smile" (AYL n, iv. 46). Later in the play, Hamlet, without any obvious reason for doing so, in­ terprets Rosencrantz's smile as an allusion to woman: "Man delights not me; no, nor woman neither, though by your smiling you seem to say so." To validate this equation of woman and smile further requires a lengthy detour through the rest of Hamlet and through other plays in which the smiling villain appears; the reader who would like to take this detour is referred to Appendix B. Here let me try to explain, in terms that associate smiling with sexually transformed men, Hamlet's wry remark about being sure that "at least" in Denmark there are smil­ ing villains. Hamlet has arrived at what we may consider a universal fact of life, that men are hypocrites, "That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain." And yet, with his characteristic wit, he must deflate this generality with his anticlimactic "At least I am sure it may be so in Denmark." The humor involved here is probably based on what Freud calls the economy of affect; we are given an ugly fact of life and then get it transformed into a trivial local issue. This pleasurable sparing of emotion usually acts, according to Freud, as a bribe to allow more serious, unconscious mean­ ing to verbalize itself.11 I think the unconscious meaning creeping into Hamlet's aphorism about the smiling villain concerns a wish and a corresponding fear that the wish is not true exactly in the place where Hamlet wants it to be true, "in Denmark." What is the wish? We have to unravel some infantile (primary process) thinking to find out. Aphorisms, though they have a mature evaluative ring, rely on a childlike fondness for compression of opposites, condensation and oversimplification. The aphorism at hand, though it has a vague air of Machiavellian logic, is really only an infantile

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compression of two oversimplified caricatures of man. Hamlet's connecting logic between smile and villain is less important than his need to connect. One can hear the less logical, infantile voice more clearly in Hamlet's first version of the aphorism, "O villain, villain, smiling damned vil­ lain." The unconscious wish here, in the context of what we have already said about the "tables" soliloquy, is, perhaps, "I wish Claudius were a smile, a castrate, a woman, for hav­ ing committed the oedipal crime, for being a villain." And of course Hamlet fears that his wish cannot be fulfilled, so he jests the whole matter away and turns abruptly from the written aphorism to what he must do: "Now to my word." There is an immediate problem here. Hamlet is not, on the surface, wishing a smile on Claudius but deprecating his smile. This can be explained, I think, by viewing the emotional investment in Claudius' smile as overdetermined. On the conscious level, the smile does represent hypocrisy to Hamlet and he naturally resents it. But the choice to rivet especially on the symbolic value of the smile, and the force with which he does so, cannot be explained without reference to unconscious determinants, which could very well contradict the surface level. The same could be said for Shakespeare's other highly charged, smil­ ing villains, such as Leontes' "Sir Smile." These seven fantasies, woven together in a complex structure that both expresses and disguises conflict, are perhaps not the only ones that inform the poetry of the "tables" soliloquy, but they allow us, even in their diverse and sometimes inconsistent material, to summarize the specific nature of Hamlet's attitudes towards his father, Claudius, and Gertrude. I think we can organize these fan­ tasies in the following way: "I wish," says Hamlet in his unconscious, "that Claudius were already punished, made into a smile, a woman, for having committed oedipal murder—then I wouldn't have to make myself into a woman. I wish my father had been strong enough to have punished the oedipal criminal—

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then my superego, my incorporated father, would be strong enough to punish the libidinous aspect of me that it sees in Claudius—I would be able to punish Claudius if he were, paradoxically, already punished by my father." In this perspective, it is clear why Hamlet writes about Clau­ dius and not about his father; he is not interested in pun­ ishing his father, as Fliess seemed to suggest, but in seeing his father's enemy already punished. "I wish my per­ nicious mother had not done what I saw her do as a child, had not unmanned my father—then he would have been strong enough to avoid the oedipal criminal." "I wish I had been my father's wife—I would not have unmanned him, I would have helped him demonstrate his potency." "I wish I were my own mother—then my future action would not be presided over by the disgusting behavior of Gertrude." "I wish I could like a child wipe away all that is contrary to my wishes." "I wish that by writing, the poet's gift for reshap­ ing reality, I could magically transform my father into what I need him to be." All this is wild and whirling, but I think it follows logi­ cally from the situation of the agitated speaker of the "ta­ bles" soliloquy. Still, these readings need more support. IV Since the closet scene contains overt features of the primal scene, a psychoanalyst would want to seek there confirma­ tion of the fantasies of the "tables" soliloquy. If Hamlet is unconsciously hoping to recreate a father who was not cas­ trated in the primal scene, who is still strong enough to punish oedipal villains, then we would expect the Prince to reveal something of this when the Ghost returns to him in Gertrude's closet. As psychoanalytic critics have been quick to point out,12 Hamlet sets a distincdy sexual tone for the scene with his mother, not only in his suggestive metaphors for what he will be doing in his mother's bedroom (contrasting himself to the incestuous Nero, he will "speak daggers to her, but

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use none"), but also in the topics he chooses to discuss, such as getting Gertrude out of Claudius' lecherous embraces. Gertrude herself seems to echo Hamlet's incestuous fan­ tasies, as we would expect since Shakespeare can only pro­ vide one center of unconscious motivation, by using sexu­ ally suggestive images to describe Hamlet's verbal assault: "These words like daggers enter in my ears". That the Ghost chooses just this moment to "chide" his guilty son seems a close enough parallel to what, according to the psychoanalytic view, a child expects from a father whose place with the mother is being usurped. On a latent level, King Hamlet enters in his dressing gown to stop an oedipal violation by stepping between his son and his wife; this, however, gets expressed as a request for his son to step in "between" Gertrude's self and "her fighting soul"—in a moment I will try to account for this wrinkle that the analysts neglect. The scene, then, represents on one level a son's imagined displacement of his father as well as the son's imagined punishment. The analysts also neglect the complications in the scene's fantasy content that Polonius introduces. It is Polonius who gives the scene its primal-scene quality, his spying and snooping that reminds us of the youthful observations that Hamlet was so anxious to reject in the "tables" soliloquy. There are three things, I think, that should be said about Polonius in this connection. First of all, Polonius' an­ nounced reasons for being behind the arras cannot be the whole story; indeed, Claudius needs a spy, but Polonius as­ signs himself the job all too readily: And as you said, and wisely was it said, 'Tis meet that some more audience than a mother, Since nature makes them partial, should o'erhear The speech of vantage. (πι. iii. 30-33) Polonius relishes the idea of spying for Claudiusjust as he liked getting Reynaldo to spy, and thus he calls our atten­ tion to the possible, unconscious reasons for his being be-

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hind the arras. Plausibly he needs to intrude into an oedipal scene in which mother and son are "partial" to each other. Secondly, Polonius is, like King Hamlet in this scene, another demoted father figure, relegated to the son's place as a voyeur; thus this dotard, standing in the Prince's infan­ tile shoes as an observer of something resembling a primal scene, represents Hamlet's identification with a weak father. And, thirdly, he is a weak father who realistically lacks the Ghost's power to reassert himself; he is killed as he betrays his hiding place in a bumbling effort to save the mother figure, and he is going to stay dead (in the sources he is fed to the hogs). If we consider both father figures who overlook Ham­ let's interview with Gertrude, the fantasy content of the scene begins to appear more ambiguous. Of the two inter­ vening fathers, one is so potent he can penetrate stones and make life quicken in them ("make them capable," i.e., receptive) and the other is impotent, penetrated, dead, fit for a small bet ("dead for a ducat"). If we assume a rela­ tionship between these two father figures, a couple of ques­ tions suggest themselves. Is Polonius' overly enthusiastic participation in this scene partly the result of an inevitable return of the repressed, the welling up of the weak father who lurks in the recesses of the Prince's mind and forces him to conjure up a potent father who has come to "chide"? Does Hamlet choose this moment to have a vision of the Ghost because he needs compensation for another victimized father, saying, as it were, that though Polonius is permanently victimized my father can be easily restored? It seems plausible to me that Shakespeare is implying an affirmative answer to these questions. Consider how ready Hamlet is to describe his father's ghost as powerful and potent, yet how much this power is undermined by pitiableness: Look you, how pale he glares! His form and cause conjoined, preaching to stones, Would make them capable.—Do not look upon me, Lest with this piteous action you convert

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My stern effects. Then what I have to do Will want true color; tears perchance for blood. (in. iv. 126-131) To compensate for Polonius, Hamlet tries to make his father impressive, able to shatter "stern" behavior, but the father remains "piteous," a man who provokes "tears" in two, opposing ways, as a punisher and as a victim. One could, I suppose, object to seeing the Ghost as a fan­ tasy compensation for Polonius on the grounds that the opposite may be true. One could argue that Polonius is the compensation, his death a punishment for the strengths of the real father. It is true that we cannot with confidence as­ sert that Polonius is closer to the real (and weak) father of Hamlet's psyche and that the Ghost is closer to the imagi­ nary (and strong) father. But in this case I do not think we need to sharply distinguish who is the fantasy father, be­ cause Hamlet thinks of both these fathers as strong and weak, real and imaginary. He thinks of Polonius both as a "lord" worth repenting and as a heap of "guts" worth noth­ ing; he thinks of the Ghost both as a reverent bearer of the "dread command" and as a skulking thing ("it") that "steals away." But still I feel the weight is on the side of the Ghost as a fabricated defense against the all-too-real weakness of Polonius. This perhaps becomes clearer in Appendix C, where I look at a poem by Donne and try to describe the opposite process in action—that is, a fabricated weak father as a defense against an all-too-real strong father. Polonius' death behind the arras probably had in Shakespeare's imagination a profounder connection with King Hamlet's death in the orchard than may at first ap­ pear. It may be just a coincidence, but in Much Ado Shake­ speare arbitrarily associates orchard and arras by having Borachio report a conversation that he claims to have overheard from "behind the arras" but that in fact took place in an orchard. Through Borachio, Shakespeare was, I assume, consciously trying to create in a play about not-

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ing, or looking, an atmosphere of unreliable testimony, but the specific distortion from orchard to arras constitutes, I think, a free association that just might have a parallel in Hamlet, where Polonius' death behind the arras may be a distortion of King Hamlet's death in the orchard. However this may be, both Polonius and King Hamlet were caught unawares and penetrated, both weak enough to be elimi­ nated by oedipal sons. If we see Polonius as an exaggerated version of the weak aspects of King Hamlet (just as the "radiant angel" is an exaggeration of his strengths), then certain suggestive as­ pects of Polonius' presence in the closet scene take on an added significance. For instance, Polonius, in his overly so­ licitous urging that Gertrude chastise her son, seems, in spite of manifest evidence to the contrary, to encourage Gertrude to respond to Hamlet's incest fantasies. Hamlet, we remember, comes to Gertrude thinking her made of "penetrable stuff," and he fears he will be like the incestu­ ous "Nero" and do "such bitter business as the day/Would quake to look on." In this context Polonius recommends: Ά will come straight. Look you lay home to him, Tell him his pranks have been too broad to bear with, And that your Grace hath screened and stood between Much heat and him. I'll silence me even here. Pray you be round with him. (III. iv. 1-5)

"Pray you be round with him." Though Polonius is on one level urging Gertrude to berate Hamlet, it may not be too far-fetched, given the bawdy Elizabethan pun on "ring" and "round,"13 to suggest that Polonius is unconsciously recommending that Gertrude be sexually receptive." Ά will come straight. Look you lay home to him." Again, if we take the language as over-determined here, the possible sexual implications of "come straight" (erection) and "lay home" (have coitus) turn Polonius' advice into a PandarusIike whipping up of the instincts (this would not be the first

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time Polonius has expressed interest in sexuality under the guise of good policy). Polonius tells Gertrude to remind Hamlet that she had fended off a wrathful father figure ("stood between/Much heat and him"), thus implying again on a submerged level that contradicts the manifest level, that the way is now clear to incest. And in telling Gertrude to warn Hamlet that his pranks are too unrestrained "to bear with," Polonius reminds us of the Elizabethan use of the word "bear" to mean "to bear the weight of a man sex­ ually." Thus the fantasies associated with Polonius here are those appropriate to a father figure who is so weak that he not only fails to protect his rights to the mother but even panders for the son. Polonius tries to be a vicariously punishing father, but the fantasies that underlie (and undermine) his image of himself as a strict disciplinarian show him to be no punisher at all. For the son disciplines him ("Thou wretched, rash, intruding fool"), not the other way around. I think I can now explain why King Hamlet expresses his supposed unconscious desire to step between Hamlet and Gertrude by asking Hamlet to step between two parts of Gertrude. King Hamlet is so weak that he, like Polonius, is unconsciously pandering incest, not forbidding it. There is another aspect of Polonius' role in the closet scene that comes into focus as soon as we see him as a ver­ sion of the weak King Hamlet. The only shred of evidence in the play that Hamlet thinks his mother a direct ac­ complice in his father's murder occurs just after Hamlet has blindly pierced the arras and killed Polonius: HAM. [.Draws.] How now! A rat? Dead for a ducat, dead! [Makes a pass through the arras and] kills POLONIUS. POL. [Behind.] O, I am slain. QUEEN O me, what hast thou done? HAM. Nay, I know not. Is it the king? QUEEN O what a rash and bloody deed is this!

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HAM. A bloody deed—almost as bad, good Mother, As kill a king, and marry with his brother. (III. iv. 25-30)

Since we have not heard this accusation from Hamlet be­ fore, I assume that there is some special connection be­ tween the penetrated Polonius and Hamlet's feeling that Gertrude is a king killer. I thus also assume that his accusa­ tion is more related to the scene's specific fantasy material than it is to his conscious convictions about his mother. Richard Flatter claims that Hamlet is haunted by a "ques­ tion he does not dare to ask" about his mother's complicity in his father's murder: "To avenge his father's death is, as soon as the Ghost's story is confirmed, so to speak a merely technical problem: it involves no psychological difficulty: it only needs to be executed, and that can be done at any convenient time or place. Far more complicated and, for him far more vital, is his desire to discover the truth about his mother's complicity. He could easily kill Claudius when he finds him at prayer. But Hamlet is now so oc­ cupied with his self-imposed task as to his mother that for the moment he neglects the task imposed on him by his father."14 If Hamlet does not talk about his mother's complicity in the prayer scene, by what psychology does Flatter infer that he is haunted—and if haunted, what psychology teaches him that Hamlet, in all his revealing soliloquies, would not be able to talk about something so consciously troubling? I too feel that Hamlet is haunted by his mother's guilt, but in a way that at least makes psychological sense. Hamlet is preoccupied with an irrational view of his mother's guilt; he is haunted not by Gertrude's killing King Hamlet four months ago but by her castrating him many years ago during a primal scene like that embedded in the fantasy content of the "tables" soliloquy. It is realiz­ ing that there is a dead, penetrated man again in Ger­ trude's chamber that reminds Hamlet of his castrated father, and it is this "killing" of the King, I think, for which

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Hamlet is holding Gertrude responsible here. Hamlet, on this hypothesis, never talks about his mother's guilt because he is haunted by an infantile event that has been repressed (this is the kind of mental haunting we cannot and do not talk about), not because he is haunted by an adult event (if consciously haunted, why not talk about it?). The repressed event is allowed expression here only because present cir­ cumstances mobilize the feelings associated with it and be­ cause there is a convenient way to disguise these feelings (accusation of murder instead of accusation of castration). I think some such explanation, relying on unconscious de­ terminants, is necessary to account for why Shakespeare is so unclear as to the nature and degree of Gertrude's in­ volvement in her husband's death. Without psychoanalysis, I think, this question can be debated only in the most fruit­ less way.15 I realize that I am being just as speculative as Flatter, even more so, when I claim that Hamlet is troubled not by his mother the murderess but by his mother the castrator. But I do not think I am being as arbitrary. My explanation at least takes into account the precise motivation (the pene­ tration of Polonius) of Hamlet's accusation. And there are real indications here that Hamlet imagines his mother as a consumer of men: Could you on this fair mountain leave to feed, And batten on this moor? (HI. iv. 67-68) These images of feeding seem more appropriate to a child's view of a sexuality that consumes by incorporation than they do to an adult's view of his mother as a mur­ deress. And they are consistent with the "tables" soliloquy. In this perspective, consider the lines that follow almost immediately after Hamlet's accusation of his mother: QUEEN What have I done that thou dar'st wag thy tongue In noise so rude against me? HAM. Such an act

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That blurs the grace and blush of modesty, Calls virtue hypocrite, takes off the rose From the fair forehead of an innocent love, And sets a blister there, makes marriage vows As false as dicers' oaths. . . . Heavens face does glow O'er this solidity and compound mass With heated visage, as against the doom Is thoughtsick at the act. (in. iv. 40-52) Hamlet accuses his mother of some unspeakable "act" that can only involve her incestuous relations with Claudius and her betrayal of the "marriage vows." Hamlet's disgust with his mother's sexuality and her complicity in his father's murder is associated with a terrible sight, with a spectator's "heated visage," "thoughtsick at the act." Though this spectator is sublimated to a personification of "heaven," he nevertheless exhibits the characteristics of a child witnessing the sexuality that "takes off the rose/From the fair forehead of innocent love." That Hamlet will not or cannot name the act that provokes such a heated visage makes me feel that he is hurling forth an infantile accusa­ tion that we can perhaps best account for by inferring a primal-scene castration of the father near the center of Shakespeare's creation of these lines. Penetrating the unknown man behind the arras who is calling for help evokes from the distraught Hamlet the ac­ cusation that his mother killed his father. But why does Hamlet lash out so mercilessly in the first place? Tender by nature, he is nevertheless often vicious when occasion strikes a sensitive memory or fear. What is being struck here? Whatever it is, this is not a rational attempt to kill Claudius, who was just left praying elsewhere in the castle. When Polonius cries in panic and Hamlet kills him in a spasm of irrational reflexes, Hamlet may be trying to restage, and thereby gain mastery over, the castration that Gertrude visited on his father. The secret object of Hamlet's impulsive viciousness may be to substitute

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another dead man for King Hamlet in Gertrude's closet; let it be Polonius or Claudius or anybody, as long as it is not his father, for whose death Hamlet is unconsciously seek­ ing a stand in. Unfortunately, the man behind the arras ή King Hamlet, at least on one level of Hamlet's fantasies (on a conscious level he at first does not know whom he has killed). Re­ member that connection between arras and orchard in Much Ado. And notice the chain of association as Hamlet first guesses that the dead man is "the King" (Claudius) and then links the King with his father ("As kill a king," i.e., King Hamlet). Polonius thus cannot serve as a calming sub­ stitute for King Hamlet in the son's unconscious attempt to rewrite the story of his father's unmanning. Just as the Murder of Gonzago fails to achieve anything but the reenactment of his father's death, this mini-play in Ger­ trude's closet serves only to reconfirm the vulnerability of his Polonius-Iike father. He thus remains incensed about the archaically imagined castration of his father and ricochets Gertrude's horror at his "bloody deed" back in her face, accuses her of killing. By blaming Gertrude, he is also able to deny responsibility for using Polonius in a failed psychological defense; in the play scene too he was careful to shift blame for that fiasco by assuring the court that the Murder of Gonzago was written by some "Italian." Polonius, however, is not the only father figure in the closet scene who complicates our view of Hamlet's relation­ ship to his father. Though he is not present, Hamlet's uncle-father is to be reckoned with. Like Polonius, Claudius causes Hamlet to dream up (via imagery instead of demonology or hallucination) a strong version of his father: Look here upon this picture, and on this, The counterfeit presentment of two brothers. See what a grace was seated on this brow: Hyperion's curls, the front of Jove himself, An eye like Mars, to threaten and command, A station like the herald Mercury

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New lighted on a heaven-kissing hill— A combination and a form indeed, Where every god did seem to set his seal To give the world assurance of a man. This was your husband. Look you now what follows. Here is your husband like a mildewed ear, Blasting his wholesome brother. Have you eyes? Could you on this fair mountain leave to feed, And batten on this moor? (iii . iv. 54-68) This god-like father compounded of half the pantheon has power to "threaten and command"; he is also an obvi­ ously exaggerated idealization (that every god did seem to "give the world assurance of a man" is symptomatic). So too is Claudius an exaggerated wretch who deserves to be threatened and commanded. Hamlet thus describes a "counterfeit" of "two brothers"—"counterfeit" cannot but carry a meaning that Hamlet does not seem consciously to intend, that is, "fraudulent." Just as Hamlet seized on a smile as a caricature of his uncle in the second soliloquy, so he here is quick to reduce Claudius to a similar caricature, a "mildewed ear." I think we can read this "ear" as a bodily organ as well as a unit of corn. As an image of a rotting bodily orifice, the "mildewed ear" reveals, I think, the same fantasy content as the "smile." Claudius as either a smile or a mildewed ear represents a castrated Claudius, an oedipal Claudius who has been punished, orifice for orifice, by the man whose phallicism he stole by penetrating his ear. Ham­ let of course does not say anything about his father's hav­ ing visited this punishment on Claudius, but he does hold up his father's picture to that of the new King and magi­ cally uses his father to blast the strong and potent Claudius for "blasting his wholesome brother." Through imagery, King Hamlet is re-established as a powerful "mountain" (even as a god on a "heaven-kissing hill") whose picture levels Claudius to a flat "moor" (dead or barren land). In the "tables" soliloquy Hamlet perhaps wishes his father strong enough to castrate Claudius and make him into a

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womanly "smile," and in the closet scene he holds up two pictures in order to conduct a kind of puppet show in which a slight variation of this (mildewed ear instead of smile) occurs. Gertrude, however, tries to talk Hamlet out of these fan­ tasies. At least she regards his vision of the Ghost, if not his description of his father, as a sign of madness, and, in so telling him, she presents us with a picture of King Hamlet that radically differs from her son's "radiant angel." Yet what she offers is remarkably close to Hamlet's worst image of his father: Alas, how is't with you, That you do bend your eye on vacancy, And with th'incorporal air do hold discourse? Forth at your eyes your spirits wildly peep, And as the sleeping soldiers in th'alarm, Your bedded hair like life in excrements Start up and stand an end. O gentle son, Upon the heat and flame of thy distemper Sprinkle cool patience. Whereon do you look? (iii . iv. 117-125) These are the most vivid images of peeping ("wildly peep") in the play, and we would expect them to contain some of the same primal-scene fantasy material that we found in the "tables" soliloquy. From Gertrude's descrip­ tion, it seems that Hamlet is re-living, on his father's cue, the horrors of a primal-scene night. We get images of being startled out of sleep by noise ("sleeping soldiers in th'alarm"), of being so ocularly startled that the inner self flies with astonishment into the eyes, of something "bedded" leaping to an erection ("start up and stand an end"), of liquid relief ("sprinkle cool patience")—in short, Gertrude's speech seems a conscious ordering of uncon­ scious fragments surviving from infantile exposure to sex­ uality. Hamlet's hair may indeed be standing on end from sheer fright, but, given the references to beds, sleeping, and pro-

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vocative nocturnal activity, it is not unlikely that this aroused hair is, on the fantasy level, also a symbolic reac­ tion to viewing a primal-scene entrance by his father to his mother's "chamber." Shakespeare's choice of the ambigu­ ous word "excrements," which in his day meant extending upward and excreting downward, characterizes Hamlet as both aroused with erect, phallic excrescence and livid with excremental rage. We know from psychoanalysis that a child who has been shocked by something sexually frightening will simultaneously be sexually aroused and lose control of his bowels. This sounds preposterous, but it does fit Gertrude's imagery, and we do have clinical evi­ dence, most notably from Freud's Wolf-Man,16 that it is possible. We remember Hamlet's need to "wipe away" in the "tables" soliloquy; later we will consider the drinkingDanes passage, in which Hamlet associates being excited with being soiled. Here let me try to state what this might mean in Gertrude's description of her frightened son. In the reality of the stage, Hamlet probably is holding dis­ course with what Gertrude calls "incorporal air" and "bodi­ less creation" (I would stage the scene with no Ghost visible to the audience), but in his inner mind he is viewing, or rather reviewing, his father's becoming incorporal and bodi­ less, reduced by his mother's valuation to nothing, to a cas­ trate, to excrement. He himself secretly values his father in this way; the Ghost is hallucinated just as Hamlet decries a "king of shreds and patches," a description consciously applied to Claudius but more appropriate to the pitiable King Hamlet. No demonological theory, I think, can account for Ham­ let's behavior here as well as psychoanalysis. It may seem strange to say that Hamlet is erect and frightened because he is re-experiencing a primal scene. But Gertrude's words, like so much else in the play, deal with the terrors of things seen, and we should remember that in real life see­ ing a primal scene is more probable than seeing a ghost. "Whereon do you look?" asks Gertrude. If the answer to this question is that Hamlet looks on his father's castration, then the following lines seem appropriate:

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HAM. Do you see nothing there? QUEEN Nothing at all; yet all that is I see. (hi . iv. 132-133) King Hamlet is reduced to "Nothing," to female genitalia if we allow for a possible, unconsciously bawdy pun on "noth­ ing," a pun that Hamlet has just made in the play scene.17 Even though King Hamlet's picture triumphs over that of Claudius' in Hamlet's estimation, the appearance of the former Majesty of Denmark does not corroborate this. Rather he is castrated by Gertrude's suggestions, just as he was undone by her sexuality, and he appropriately "steals away" in shame. Hamlet bends his "eye on vacancy," trying to establish a relationship with a father who is finally not there. This "vacancy" thus seems to represent both the imag­ ined gap left by King Hamlet's castrated member as well as his general absence, his failure to provide a reliable model of manliness for his son. The former interpretation is ob­ viously so much more controversial than the latter that it would perhaps be wise to ignore the possible symbolism of "vacancy." But so much of the play deals with being vis­ ually shocked, from the opening jitteriness of the watch­ men, to the appearance of the Ghost, to Claudius in the play scene, to Fortinbras' awe of "such a sight" in the play's closing lines, that we must infer that there is some powerful unconscious fantasy struggling to express itself, something more visually troubling than the father's literal absence. After all, literal absence cannot be visually shocking, but an imagined castration can. Let us leave Hamlet as his eyes grow large and wild in Gertrude's chamber and return to Act One, where the Ghost's story and the cellarage scene confirm our reading of both the "tables" soliloquy and the closet scene. V The Ghost begins the story that will provoke the "tables" soliloquy with another version of being so visually startled that one's hair stands on end:

THE ABSENT FATHER AND HIS SON

I am thy father's spirit, 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. But that I am forbid To tell the secrets of my prison house, I could a tale unfold whose lighted word Would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood, Make thy two eyes like stars start from their spheres, Dry knotted and combined locks to part, And each particular hair to stand an end Like quills upon the fearful porpentine. (i. v. 9-20) The Ghost says that the punishments for his "days of na­ ture," his days of flesh and sexuality, would make Hamlet's "two eyes like stars start from their spheres." If we insist on a this-worldly explanation for these imagined punishments in hell, we have not far to go to find that King Hamlet is talking about being punished, not for but during his days of sexuality, with his son a frightened witness, just as he is in Gertrude's closet. Again visual shock is associated with what one might see at night: Hamlet's hair would be "knot­ ted and combined" as if he had been asleep. The kind of punishment that King Hamlet undergoes in hell is left to Hamlet's imagination, which in this play usu­ ally involves the lurid fantasies of his unconscious. In fact, King Hamlet seems to guarantee the recruitment of his son's unconscious by suppressing, in the name of the laws of hell, what would be the "facts" of his situation. If the Ghost's likening his son to the "fearful porpentine" is also a comment on himself, then we have a man whose phallic armaments are lost in the excitement of attack, a man who, for all his quills, can be left vulnerable, not only "confined to fast in fires," but castrated: Thus was I, sleeping, by a brother's hand Of life, of crown, of queen at once dispatched, Cut off even in the blossoms of my sin. (1. v. 74-76)

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The Ghost means "blossoms of my sin" in an abstract sense, but he might also be implying that he was "cut off" in the sexual act, castrated when the flesh blossoms. "Forbid" to tell his full story, limited in his motions, "doomed" for his "foul crimes . . . of nature," King Hamlet is weak and va­ cant in all senses of the word. He is not all there. Nor is the son who would be watching this punishment, whether in hell or in the primal scene; he is an image of his father. One may legitimately complain of the critic who consid­ ers too curiously on the primal scene, who listens reductively between the lines of verse for "the squeaking bed springs," as Frederick Crews puts it.18 But Hamlet is largely about watching, and we want to account for the super­ charged sights on which the play turns. It is difficult to overstate the case for the ways in which a primal scene dominates the play's imagery. Before we continue with the Ghost's story, we might add one more passage to our dis­ cussion of the visually startling; it has some important bear­ ing on the Ghost. Here is Horatio's report to Hamlet on what has been transpiring during the midnight "watch": Two nights together had these gentlemen, Marcellus and Bernardo, on their watch In the dead waste and middle of the night Been thus encountered. A figure like your father, Armed at point exacdy, cap-a-pe, Appears before them, and with solemn march Goes slow and stately by them. Thrice he walked By their oppressed and fear-surprised eyes, Within his truncheon's length, whilst they, distilled Almost to jelly with the act of fear, Stand dumb and speak not to him. (i. ii. 196-206) Again observers stand "dumb" with "fear surprised eyes," "distilled/Almost to a jelly" in a liquid panic that foreshadows Hamlet's wish to be resolved into a dew and, later, Gertrude's plea that her son "sprinkle cool patience" on his nightmarish vision. But are not these suggestive im-

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ages incompatible with a primal scene in that what is ob­ served is a solitary figure who passes "slow and stately," frightening to be sure, but hardly reminiscent of violent sexual activity? I hate to invoke the chancy idea of reversal again, the possibility that, as in the primal-scene dream of Freud's Wolf-Man,19 stately movements reverse a more bestial activity, but this seems to be what is going on here, for there would be nothing inherently frightening about mere stateliness. And the solitary figure is after all not so solitary; with the "two" observers there are a total of three people involved, just the number participating in the pri­ mal scene. Perhaps Shakespeare has also reversed the number of the observers and the observed. In any case, "three" is a loaded figure in the passage, and it also appears as the number of times the Ghost passed by the observers. Furthermore, we have, as I mentioned before, a possible pun on "dead waste and middle," and a hint of compensa­ tory phallicism in the "truncheons length" and in the over­ emphasis placed here and a few lines later on the Ghost being armed "cap-a-pe," "top to toe," and "head to foot." This dogged head-to-foot business also seems to displace attention from the body's significant middle. There is also the possibility that the whole scene has been already sexualized by the tenth line in the play, when Francisco de­ livers the seemingly innocent cliche that there is "Not a mouse stirring." A mouse often symbolized a woman or her genitalia, as in Hamlet's demand of Gertrude in the closet scene that she not let Claudius call her "his mouse." Francisco's remark would then be a heartsick denial of the visions of shocking sexuality that have been forced upon him as he watches in the night. All of these interpretations are uncertain, but they do reinforce each other and remain faithful to the fact that the play is about watching and corrupt sexuality. They are also compatible with the Ghost's story of incest and murder which follows: 'Tis given out that, sleeping in my orchard, A serpent stung me. So the whole ear of Denmark

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Is by a forged process of my death Rankly abused. But know, thou noble youth, The serpent that did sting thy father's life Now wears his crown. (i. v. 35-40) The "serpent," "that incestuous, that adulterate beast," who "abused" the "ear of Denmark" as well as the ear of her King, specializes in corrupt sexual penetration. Several psychoanalytic writers have linked this poison in the ear with childhood and with the primal scene, and it is worth quoting Holland's summary of three of them: "Otto Rank found this episode a symbol for impregna­ tion; the fact that Hamlet sees the sexual act as animal-like, sadistic, is part of his general infantilism. Ella Freeman Sharpe sees it as the symbolic poisoning of the child-poet who heard the frightening and distasteful sounds of his parents' loving. . . . ErnestJones . . . concluded that the . . . ghost's description of his murder is . . . a symbolic descrip­ tion of a sexual attack by one man on another; Claudius' descriptions that the king was stung by an adder in an or­ chard, is a further disguise of the same idea, the serpent being a phallus omitting poisonous semen. The orchard symbolizes the woman in whose arms the king was mur­ dered, and thus Claudius' account is [also] linked to fan­ tasies in which the child imagines himself watching the parents in the act of love, or, in this case, of the "sleep of death" afterward. . . . "The differences in these three accounts probably seem somewhat greater than they are. All three agree that pour­ ing poison in the ear symbolizes some kind of insemina­ tion. One need not choose between heterosexual or homosexual insemination for, in the unconscious,. . . both apply; and the fact that the symbol is ambiguous suggests an ambiguity . . . that reaches to an early level of infantile confusions."20 It may be argued that the analysts focus too much on a reductive allegory, leaving out too much of the details of

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the Ghost's story. I think they are, taken together, close to the true complexity of the play's material here, but we still need to understand, say, the curious verbal patternings in the lines that develop the theme of the "adulterate beast": Ay, that incestuous, that adulterate beast, With witchcraft of his wits, with traitorous gifts— O wicked wit and gifts, that have the power So to seduce!—won to his shameful lust The will of my most seeming-virtuous queen. (i. v. 42-46) Counterpointed to the alliteration on the letter ω is a hiss­ ing and tapping rhythm on the letters 5 and t; interrupting this pattern is a sputtering repetition of the word "gift." How do these things, of interest to the literary critic, relate to what the psychoanalysts find in the passage? And what is the significance of the doublings and echoes of words and phrases in the following macabre lines? Upon my secure hour thy uncle stole With juice of cursed hebona in a vial, And in the porches of my ear did pour The leperous distillment, whoses effect Holds such an enmity with blood of man That swift as quicksilver it courses through The natural gates and alleys of the body, And with a sudden vigor it doth posset And curd, like eager droppings into milk, The thin and wholesome blood. So did it mine And a most instant tetter barked about Most lazarlike with vile and loathsome crust All my smooth body. (1. v. 61-73) This may be part of what Holland calls "a childishly con­ fused account of the sexual act," but it also reveals a sophis­ ticated use of what we usually think of as conscious, poetic devices. Here, as throughout the play, we have an insistent use of the rhetorical figure hendiadys or paired images:

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"gales and alleys," "posset/And curd," "thin and whole­ some," "vile and loathsome." There is also a set of echoes that gives the horror a verbal nicety: vile-vial, porches-pour, leperous-lazarlike, vigor-eager, cursed-courses—curd-crust, and many sub-ripples within these. Moreover, the rich imagery makes the passage's grotesqueness self-denying, almost sublime. Indeed, the last line holds up a picture that un­ does all the damage done before: "my smooth body." What are we to make of all this? As in the phrase "book and volume," which we considered in connection with the "tables" soliloquy, the hendiadys may disguise troubling thoughts in one image only to have those thoughts burst forth in the second; or, vice versa, a troubling first image may be scaled down by the second. For instance, "thin" im­ plies something weak about King Hamlet's "blood," but "wholesome" quickly compensates. "Burnt and purged" in the porpentine passage works similarly, with "burnt" referring to a King Hamlet victimized in purgatory and "purged" to a compensatory salvation. "Natural gates" im­ plies that King Hamlet is concerned about distinguishing his orifices from unnatural, imposed holes, but "alleys" di­ verts attention from the conflicted subject of bodily open­ ings by persisting in a movement away from the body to metaphor. "Posset and curd" works the other way, first disguising then revealing the truth. "Posset," a drink of hot milk cur­ dled with ale but considered a delicacy, glosses over the gruesome effect on King Hamlet's blood that "curd" makes more direct. Also working in this way is the phrase in the "porpentine" passage describing Hamlet's "knotted and combined" locks: "knotted" can refer safely to hair only, but "combined" also hints at coupling, at the primal scene on which the Ghost is inviting Hamlet to gape with eyes "like stars." All the Ghost's story is tense with alternating revelation and repression, with the dynamics of the infantile mind, to be sure, but also with the skill of the poetic mind. "My smooth body" denies the "gates and alleys of the body";

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"porches" makes the ear seem grander, more on the scale of architecture, less likely to provide a vulnerable recepta­ cle to "pour" poison into; a confusion of bodily fluids and liquid nourishment, of distillments, blood, hebona, posset, milk and eager, disguises with quaint metaphors a poison­ ous infantile vision of the sexual mixing of liquids (in the Renaissance, conception was thought to result from a mix­ ing of male and female distillments of blood). All the metaphors and echoes and alliterations give the assurance of poetic control just because control is so necessary when frightening details of adult sexuality are surfacing. In this light, consider the difficulty King Hamlet has with the word "gift" just after he mentions the gifted "incestu­ ous beast." Interrupting himself as the word drops heavily from his tongue, compulsively repeating it anyway, King Hamlet reveals his envy, his weakness, his inferiority be­ fore his brother's prowess. But he also controls his revela­ tions with verbal pyrotechnics on w and s sounds. Perhaps "wit" became the crucial alliterative syllable because it con­ tains a possible double entendre concerning the genitals (cf. Rosalind's "your wife's wit going to your neighbor's bed," AYL iv. i. 164). However this may be, King Hamlet is cer­ tainly telling a pitiful story dazzlingly composed. He speaks with verbal beauty of visual horrors. A father weakened in the primal scene, might, in his son's imagination, speak just as King Hamlet does. That is, he might if he and his son were endowed with the poetic powers of Shakespeare. There is more of the same in the Ghost's long story, but let us move on to the conclusion of his appearance in Act One, to the baffling "cellarage" scene that occurs just after the "tables" soliloquy. Eleanor Prosser summarizes the ways in which the Ghost betrays himself as a devil to a Ren­ aissance audience accustomed to seeing evil spirits rise from under the stage. In general she is persuasive, but she lets the fine detail of the episode slip through her fingers, leaving her holding only a tautological conclusion: "Shakespeare made the Ghost act like a devil because he wanted his audience to notice that it acts like a devil."21

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What about the two amazed observers, Horatio and Marcellus, whom Prosser refers to but ignores in her interpretation—certainly they are relevant to a scene that has emphasized the visually startling? And what about the emphasis on "swear," "sword," and shifting ground? Again, we want to know not only that the Ghost is a devil but also why he has been imagined in this way or even at all. According to Prosser, the "repeated shifting of ground in order to swear suggests a specific convention, but a study of stage tradition helps little" (p. 139). She provides us with the useful information that ghosts associated with miners ("pioneers") are likely to be devils, but let us operate on her conclusion, based on wide reading in Elizabethan drama, that in this scene conventions and traditions count for little. Shakespeare's Ghost here as elsewhere is like no one else's. Consider the dynamics of the crescendo of the episode; from a psychological point of view Shakespeare has more than compensated for his failure to follow convention by providing material of a more interesting kind: HOR. Propose the oath, my lord. HAM. Never to speak of this that you have seen. Swear by my sword. GHOST [Beneath.] Swear. HAM. Hic et ubique? Then we'll shift our ground; Come hither, gentlemen, And lay your hands again upon my sword. Swear by my sword Never to speak of this that you have heard. GHOST [Beneath.] Swear by his sword. HAM. Well said, old mole! Canst work i' th' earth so fast? A worthy pioneer! Once more remove, good friends. HOR. O day and night, but this is wondrous strange! HAM. And therefore as a stranger give it welcome.

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There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy. (i. v. 152-167) Whatever this all means to Hamlet, it allows him to re­ store his lost equanimity. He changes from a frenzied chase about the stage to a lofty recommendation that Horatio "welcome" the Ghost to his "philosophy." Suddenly he has the serenity to allay the Ghost with a paternal "Rest, rest, perturbed spirit." How does Hamlet achieve this calmness? My feeling is that Shakespeare, far from working with the externals of stage convention, is laying bare the internal workings of an obsessive ceremony that is designed to con­ trol fear and bring its practitioner peace of mind. Hamlet gains composure, I think, because he is able to foist his own startled, primal-scene self onto his bewildered friends. It is they who stand amazed, gaping at Hamlet's "wonderous strange" behavior. It is they who must bear the shock of the phallic "old mole" working "i' th' earth so fast," they who must botde up within themselves what they "have heard" and "seen." They, of course, think this no special burden and are surprised Hamlet is investing so much energy in his ritual. But, then, all neurotic rituals seem unnecessary from the outside. Only by inferring an irrational, uncon­ scious significance to the ritual, a hope to project primalscene memories elsewhere, can we explain Hamlet's com­ pulsive need to have his friends repress what they have seen. Both friends must "swear" by the "sword." The haunting alliteration calls us back to the "tables" soliloquy: Now to my word: It is "Adieu, adieu, remember me." I have sworn't. Hamlet swears to remember his father, that is, as I argued earlier, to re-member him. Similarly, the obsessive and

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iterative swearing on the phallic sword may be a way to reassert King Hamlet's masculinity and to reestablish the world of sworn fidelity that the primal scene has undone. Hamlet's need for swearing and swords thus seems to be­ long, not to stage convention, but to the context of parental sexuality, as we see again in the play scene: P. QUEEN "Both here and hence pursue me lasting strife, If, once a widow, ever I be wife!" HAM. If she should break it now! P. KING " 'Tis deeply sworn." ( iii . ii. 226-229) Hamlet interrupts his play to hope that it not end in bro­ ken vows. It is perhaps to guard against the false-swearing of his mother (that it is too late does not matter to the un­ conscious) that he bullies his friends into swearing. Perhaps, too, when Hamlet forces his friends to "lay your hands upon my sword," he is fantasizing a world of homosexuality safe from false-swearing women. This too would help bring his mind to rest. Hamlet's need to "shift" ground also seems obsessive and symbolic, again motivated by internal exigencies. Moving around demonstrates mobility and freedom (as much as compelled behavior can symbolize freedom), precisely the qualities that the Ghost has surrendered, due to his primal-scene death and his ensuing imprisonment in the "earth." By shifting his "ground," Hamlet proves that he is not stuck in the mother earth. In this way of thinking, he also manages to liberate his father, for if the Ghost is "hie et ubique," then his demeaning confinement, his imposed limitations, would in some sense be undone. I thus see Hamlet acting out a salvation for the Ghost, just as he acts out a salvation for himself by assigning his irredeemable fantasies to his friends. Hamlet's act does not altogether work as a defense against his weak father, for even here the Ghost is denigrated by what Prosser calls Hamlet's own "mocking tone, his almost taunting familiarity" (p. 140).

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But for the time being it works well enough, and Hamlet is able to lay to rest the perturbed spirit of his father. Of course such obsessive rituals can work only temporar­ ily, and Hamlet is soon plagued again by what he has here warded off. The Ghost's story lingers on in his mind, infect­ ing his behavior in the nunnery scene, the play scene, and the closet scene, festering right down to his last words: You that look pale and terrible at this chance, That are but mutes or audience to this act, Had I but time (as this fell Sergeant Death, Is strict in his arrest) O, I could tell you— But let it be, Horatio, I am dead. (v. ii. 336-40) This is young Hamlet speaking, but is it not also the Ghost with whom Hamlet has identified? "I could a tale unfold," says King Hamlet in Act One. "O, I could tell you," says his son in Act Five. Both father and son are unable to tell their complete tale. If he had lived, Hamlet could only have re­ told his father's story of the primal scene; in fact he is even now acting it out. His "audience" is shocked; his onlookers are "mutes," and their "minds are wild" (as Horatio says a few lines later) at "such a sight" (Fortinbras). Here at the end the passive Horatio, in a sudden and un­ expected burst of assertion, gives orders that "these bodies/ High on a stage be placed to the view." Shakespeare allows Horatio to speak for once with so much authority because, I think, Horatio's assertiveness mirrors Hamlet's. It is energetically in the service of passively observing the results of violence. Horatio is truly telling, as he was re­ quested, Hamlet's "story." He is also telling the Ghost's story, the results of which he orders "placed to the view" as a monument to the primal scene, to the impact of a ghostly father. Dying with his father's style of suppressed narrative on his lips, Hamlet leaves us with an abbreviated story and an abbreviated life that has been poisoned by a father simi­ larly "cut off." The following chapters deal with the play's

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persistent and failing search for an alternative to this father. Tragically, all the fathers that the play holds before us betray their weaknesses, and this weakness usually has something to do with the imagined havoc wreaked in the primal scene. The powerful-looking Ghost of King Hamlet was chased away by nothing more substantial than the "uneffectual" glow-worm. As Hamlet's father was himself finally inefifectual, so too are the other father figures in the play.

FIVE

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I A CLEVER if unctuous politician, a shrewd statesman and master of Realpolitik, Claudius is a successful king and a successful oedipal criminal. He is a constant reminder to Hamlet that, in the last analysis, royal success does not be­ long to his father. Claudius proved that King Hamlet, in spite of his martial prowess, was finally weak. The new King thus becomes the touchstone for all the other weak fathers in the play. He is the one man who is strong, and precisely the man whom Hamlet needs to see as weak, for a punished Claudius would prove King Hamlet a strong punisher. Moreover, as a younger brother (son-surrogate) who proved a father weak, he succeeds exactly where Ham­ let fails; he is strong in spite of the weak father figure in his world. In this chapter I will be discussing various versions of the father whose weakness is at issue because Claudius is so strong. But even the strong Claudius embodies the return of the repressed King Hamlet. For if Claudius is "rank" with the murder of King Hamlet, then he is, in one sense, like King Hamlet. Claudius evokes the weak father just by being so strong, and he even imagines himself wielding a hand that is mainly his vulnerable brother's: What if this cursed hand Were thicker than itself with brother's blood, Is there not rain enough in the sweet heavens To wash it white as snow? (ill. iii. 43-46) Unable to cleanse himself of his brother's blood, he be­ comes, here in his prayer, what he has killed, a weak man.

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And a few lines after these words, Claudius tries desper­ ately to make himself weak. Since this is so much at odds with the King's predominant strength, it deserves a special word: In the corrupted currents of this world Offence's gilded hand may shove by justice, And oft 'tis seen the wicked prize itself Buys out the law. But 'tis not so above. There is no shuffling; there the action lies In his true nature, and we ourselves compelled, Even to the teeth and forehead of our faults, To give in evidence. What then? What rests? Try what repentance can. What can it not? Yet what can it when one cannot repent? O wretched state! O bosom black as death! O limed soul, that struggling to be free, Art more engaged! Help, angels! Make assay. Bow, stubborn knees, and, heart with strings of steel, Be soft as sinews of the new-born babe. All may be well. (III. iii. 57-72)

One could argue, as Goddard does, that the prayer scene is Shakespeare's way of showing us that even Claudius is morally sensitive, that even he might cast off his "steel" ob­ duracy for a more Christian manliness,1 but this explana­ tion does not take into consideration either Claudius' im­ agery or the fact that his guilty struggling is so isolated from his behavior. Another level of meaning exists below Claudius' moral charades. Claudius' ability to humble him­ self before God does testify to his strengths, but these strengths, I think, have as much to do with fantasy as with morality. In spite of his weak father-figure brother, Claudius still has within him the image of a strong father in God. Claudius is strong because his father (God) is potent; making himself cringe before a damning God reminds him of his own heart of steel. Where Hamlet is never sure of the strengths of his father or of the God who "puzzles" his will, IOO

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even here worried whether God will mete out the punish­ ment that Claudius deserves, Claudius is dead certain what his fate will be before God. If Hamlet is weak because he incorporated a weak father, Claudius is strong because he incorporated a strong God. Where Hamlet was terrified, as we saw in the "tables" soliloquy, that his "sinews" would not bear him "stiffly up," Claudius cajoles himself into flaccidity, begging the steel strings of his powerful heart to become "soft as sinews of the new-born babe." Claudius is trying to force himself into a subservient relationship with a father figure who will compel him "Even to the teeth and forehead" to confess his sins. According to Freud, fear of damage to teeth is com­ mon in dreams, symbolizing castration,2 and if we find this interpretation applicable here, we find Claudius fright­ ened of punishment by a God who will tamper with his phallic powers. Claudius is fearful of what Hamlet is going to wish on him in just a moment—castration by a vengeful God—and his defense against his fear is, paradoxically, to perform a symbolic castration on himself. Even without the uncertain symbol-decoding here, we can sense that Claudius, in order to placate a damning God, needs to imagine himself chastened, his masculine strength of "steel" rendered weak. Claudius' self-inflicted weakness could be calculated to free himself from the punishment that he feels himself doomed to anyway at the hands of God. His "soul" (a pos­ sible sublimation of the penis, as I suggested in Chapter Two) is a "limed" bird (another possible symbol of the penis),3 struggling to free itself from entanglement so that it may once again soar. Feeling his "bird" trapped, hoping to ward off an angry God, he begs himself to weaken his sinews: perhaps a fantasized self-weakening would prevent God's more brutal castigation. This kind of unconscious strategy would remind a psychoanalyst of a neurotic's need to invent and stage little rituals designed to propitiate the hostile forces of his fantasy life. Since Claudius nowhere else shows himself less than brave, able, and uncringing

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(one thinks of his behavior before Laertes and the mob), we wonder what connection Shakespeare made between the cringing and the manly Claudius. Claudius seems, on an unconscious level, a fantasy of what, from Hamlet's point of view, it takes to be strong. Though Claudius is the only model in Hamlet's world for strength, he is also the one model Hamlet cannot adopt, because Claudius acts on the principle that weak fathers (King Hamlet) must simply be destroyed to make room for strong Gods and the sons of strong Gods; in contrast, Ham­ let needs a strong God to guarantee (not obliterate) a strong father. Claudius can use religion to do without a father, but Hamlet cannot. Claudius can isolate his own weakness, doubt, and perplexity in religion, And like a man to double business bound I stand in pause where I shall first begin, And both neglect, (ill. iii. 41-43) but Hamlet's ambivalence spreads throughout his life. Where Hamlet lives one long experience of vacillating "yet," Claudius stages a litde religious ritual of "yet" ("Try what repentance can. What can it not?/ Yet what can it?") but is otherwise free of the indecision that plagues Hamlet. Where Claudius can parlay his self-weakening ("Be soft as sinews of the new-born babe") into strengths, Hamlet's analogous self-castrations ("O that this too too solid flesh would melt"), his self-destructiveness, his self-imposed madness, do nothing to bolster in his own mind an image of strength. Claudius gets a lot of mileage out of the strong father he has found in religion. Hamlet is weak because he has found a strong father nowhere. Claudius comes away from the prayer scene knowing that in heaven there "is no shuffling," yet he feels free to engage in sword-play that depends on it ("with a little shuffling, you may choose/ A sword unbated," he later says to Laertes).4 Claudius is more religious than Hamlet, for he more certainly believes in a strong God, but he uses his

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religion, like so many people in the real world, to achieve a non-religious potency. Man makes God in his own image and uses Him to his own ends, sometimes with terror. Claudius' weakness, then, may represent a return of the repressed weakness of King Hamlet, but, more important­ ly, it tokens a terrifying strength, an identification with a powerful, damning God. In terms of the play's fantasy content, the most impor­ tant index of Claudius' strength is his ability to survive marriage with the dangerous Gertrude. King Hamlet, with all his inspiring victories, was presumably as manly as Claudius, but, according to the fantasies we saw in Ham­ let's "tables" soliloquy, he could not survive the test of Ger­ trude. There is one place in the play where Claudius' power to override the "pernicious" Gertrude becomes part of the manifest drama. When Laertes breaks into the inner chambers of the castle, Gertrude apparently steps forward and tries to take charge of the situation herself, grasping Laertes by the cloak. Claudius will have none of this behav­ ior, which would force him into the emasculated role of hiding behind petticoats, and imperiously orders, "Let him go Gertrude, do not fear our person J There's such divinity doth hedge a king." This, on the surface, sounds like sheer bluster, coming from a man who has recently hurdled over that very hedge, but I think this is Claudius at his most confident and sincere. He believes, as we saw, in "divinity," and he believes a strong divinity means, by identification, a strong Claudius. With this kind of assurance he can, with­ out a moment's glance at the irony of his words, sweep Ger­ trude aside and take charge like the strong King that he is. Claudius is displaying his regality and even Gertrude must shrink before it. The rest of the play's fathers are as weak as Claudius is strong. What follows is an examination of the many father figures in Hamlet. They constitute a rich and varied group, and I try to point out the ways they fit into the play's psy­ chological themes without flattening them out to a com­ mon denominator. A certain amount of patient accumula-

THE VAIN SEARCH FOR A STRONG FATHER

tion of evidence is necessary to demonstrate just how broadly and deeply the play concerns itself with the mental shock of discovering a father unmanned in the primal scene and in adult life. I will try to show that much of the play's seemingly incidental detail takes on a greater coher­ ence if we infer these unconscious aspects of the play. However, the unconscious can never make itself brutally clear, and so I must make my case by giving many conver­ gent interpretations that, when taken individually, may seem highly controversial. Taken together, however, they are more convincing. II There are two father figures in Norway. Old Fortinbas is dead and Old Norway is "impotent and bedrid." For the most part, I am going to leave Old Fortinbras to Chapter Eight, where he, as a party to a written contract, has a logi­ cal place in my discussion of the play's emphasis on writing. Here I wish only to say that he is a weak father who lost his kingdom and "abandoned" his son to grow up without him, and that this son seems to be compensating for his own weakness by over protesting his machismo in the most absurd wars in Poland (by implication, one wonders how much overprotesting King Hamlet was doing on the ice in Poland). Though both literary and psychoanalytic critics always see the forthright action of Fortinbras as a foil to the neurotic indecision of Hamlet, these two patronymic sons are, in many ways, equally alienated from reality, both try­ ing to gain, in impossible ways, their fathers' lost power. Hamlet fantasizes his father as strong and Fortinbras tries to resurrect his father's strength by winning insignificant battles. Although Fortinbras' ridiculous victory in Poland does, by way of magic and coincidence, regain him his father's forfeited power, this war-mongering is still neu­ rotic, just as compelled as are Hamlet's delusions. Fortinbras represents a wish-fulfillment; he is a benefac­ tor of a world going through incredible transformations. Just to please him, the House of Denmark conveniently

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drops dead. His name means "strong arm" (Horatio refers to his "strong hand"), but Fortinbras has strength by wish only. He is a dream of strength, an inhabitant of a fantasy world where a father's failure can be suddenly cancelled out, a world that supplies a needy son with that which his father failed to provide. Hamlet is in the same dilemma as Fortinbras, only Shakespeare was honest enough to make him look for solutions in a more familiar and more frus­ trating world. In Fortinbras' perspective the memory of a father bubbles wishfully to the surface to secure psychic peace ("I have some rights of memory in this kingdom,/ Which now to claim my vantage doth invite me."); in Ham­ let's perspective the memory of a father leaps up, brutally and realistically, to poison life ("Remember thee? Ay thou poor Ghost, while memory holds a seat/ In this distracted globe"). Old Fortinbras is, then, a wished-for father whose weakness finally does not count, a father unlike King Ham­ let. Hamlet's father is the kind we all have, one who leaves his imprint, who must be reckoned with, in spite of any at­ tempts to wish him away. Old Norway is another weak father. He is the Claudius in Fortinbras' life, an uncle who has inherited the kingdom. But, unlike Claudius, Old Norway only puts on a show of strength, in truth finding it necessary to propitiate a poten­ tially angry "son" by buying him off. When Hamlet gets out of line, uncle Claudius makes plans to kill him; when For­ tinbras disobeys, uncle Norway pays out coin. Old Norway is a father who seems to control the illegal actions of his "son," but his control appears weaker when we realize that it is largely based on bribery. Fortinbras Receives rebuke from Norway, and in fine, Makes vow before his uncle never more To give th' assay of arms against your majesty. Whereon old Norway, overcome with joy, Gives him threescore thousand crowns in annual fee And his commission to employ those soldiers, So levied as before, against the Polack. ( h . ii. 69-75)

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It is usually sons who must appease fathers, but Norway is an uncle-father who is so "impotent" that he must appease his son. In one sense, Norway solicits "quiet pass" for Fortinbras to carry out, in a disguised way, exactly the invasion and conquest of Denmark that he intended. At least Fortinbras accomplishes what he originally set out to do. Like Old Fortinbras, Norway is, at the end, simply wished away. Young Fortinbras takes over the Norwegian lands that Old Fortinbras lost as if there were no sovereign in Norway who might also have rights "of memory." Nor­ way is a weak father who fortuitously becomes invisible and inconsequential. He represents, again like Old Fortinbras, an unconscious strategy to which Shakespeare's integrity could give only limited weight, an attempt simply to wish away the weak father. Ill Polonius literally lurks everywhere in the play and so will play a part in my discussion at various points, but since this chapter is about weak fathers and their sons, I should say something here about Polonius' famous advice to Laertes. When Polonius instructs his son to "character" (i.e., in­ scribe) in memory his few precepts, he prepares us for Hamlet's inscribing his father's message into the tables of memory. Not surprisingly, Polonius' remarks contain fan­ tasy material that is consistent with the "tables" soliloquy: There—my blessing with thee. And these few precepts in thy memory Look thou character. Give thy thoughts no tongue, Nor any unproportioned thought his act. Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar. Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried, Grapple them unto thy soul with hoops of steel, But do not dull thy palm with entertainment Of each new-hatched, unfledged courage. Beware Of entrance into a quarrel; but being in, Bear't that th' opposed may beware of thee.

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Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice; Take each man's censure, but reserve thy judgment. Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy, But not expressed in fancy; rich, not gaudy, For the apparel oft proclaims the man, And they in France of the best rank and station Are of the most select and generous, chief in that. Neither a borrower or a lender be, For loan oft loses both itself and friend, And borrowing dulleth 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. Farewell, my blessing season this in thee. (i. iii. 57-81) Commentators who bother with this unfortunately stale passage confine themselves to describing Polonius as a cribber of these pretentious precepts, who foppishly memorizes them and hypocritically retails them on appro­ priate occasions. But I assume that Polonius' insistence on these precepts has some specific significance that cannot be accounted for by simply saying that this is Polonius being tedious or hypocritical, recommending truth to his son when he himself is prepared to resort to any "indirection." I think there is a persistent fantasy running beneath these lines that is integral to the play's most obvious concern: the relationship between fathers and sons. Polonius advises Laertes on how to regulate his affairs with other men (he says nothing about women). He advises his son to "take each man's censure" quietly, to curb his own aggression by being discreet and giving "thoughts no tongue," to take the first blow before "entrance to a quar­ rel." This is of course all very sound and traditional, but Shakespeare is never merely traditional. Shakespeare, I think, has endowed Polonius with a fantasy of Laertes as an oedipal villain (Polonius catches Laertes unexpectedly with Ophelia) against whom the best defense is to discourage him from involvement with women and to recommend

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passivity to other males. On an unconscious level, I think Polonius advises Laertes to exercise his husbandry with a "friend" not with a woman ("husbandry," as in Sonnet 3, has to carry some secondary reminders of "husband"), to "grapple" a man to his "soul" in very suggestive proximity, to stay away from getting children (or at least to stay away from child figures, "each new-hatched, unfledged cour­ age"), to be true to a man, not to a woman ("Thou canst not then be false to any man"), to "proclaim" himself a man by joining a society of well-dressed men. Polonius seems to imply that this passivity among males transforms King Hamlet's aural vulnerability ("in the porches of my ears did pour/ The leperous distillment") into aural acuity ("Give every man thy ear"); but on another level I think Polonius is trying to sweet-talk Laertes into unmanning himself in just the way King Hamlet was unmanned, through the ear. True, Polonius tells Laertes that once in a quarrel he should "Bear't that th'opposed may beware of thee," but "Bear't" also has a passive meaning, even, as we shall see in the "To be" soliloquy, a passive sexual meaning. If Polonius is advising Laertes to conduct himself in a manly way, he is also, on another level, undercutting this message. After we have heard what went into King Hamlet's ear, we have to assume that Polonius means more than he says when he recommends an open ear to his son. Polonius is a weak father who can defend himself only by foisting his weakness onto his son. He is in this respect just like King Hamlet, getting his son to "character" weakness into his memory. My speculative reading here is made more plausible by the context in which the precepts are given. The imme­ diate threat to Polonius that necessitates the fantasy con­ tent of the precepts is his finding Laertes with Ophelia. One generation often stands in place of another in the un­ conscious, and I think that Ophelia becomes the wifemother for whom Polonius and Laertes are in competition. Polonius has already lost his wife, and though we are not told how this came to pass, the loss puts him by association

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in the same category of oedipal victims that King Hamlet is in. Polonius is not about to lose another woman from his household. Neither is Laertes happy about Ophelia leaving home for another man. Both father and son want to get Ophelia out of the range of Hamlet ("out of the shot and danger of desire," says Laertes; out of "Perilous circum­ stance," says Polonius), both of them, I think, more anxious to keep Ophelia at home for themselves than to protect her from any real danger from Hamlet, who is nowhere con­ firmed as the unprincipled seducer they claim. And, given the traditional bawdry about locks and keys, there even seems to be some reciprocal innuendo of unconscious in­ cest in Ophelia's words to Laertes: " 'Tis in my memory locked/ And you yourself shall keep the key of it." I think, then, that it is in defense against Laertes' unconscious, in­ cestuous assertion, and against Ophelia's unconscious ac­ cord, that Polonius must fantasize Laertes as a passive homosexual (he is also anxious to fantasize Ophelia as harmlessly presexual: "think yourself a baby"). I have one further thought on what provokes Polonius' precepts. "There—my blessing with thee./ And these few precepts. . . ." Critics have not, as far as I know, been able to determine what Polonius means by "There." Polonius may lean forward and kiss Laertes—after which he says, as it were, "there, that's for you." Surprised to find Laertes still at home ("Yet here, Laertes? Aboard, aboard, for shame!"), Polonius has obviously already taken leave of Laertes and given him his blessing (and, knowing Polonius, even some precepts); but kissing Laertes makes Polonius think of his son as a sexual object, and "these few pre­ cepts," with their embedded homosexual content, follow compulsively. In the "tables" soliloquy, Hamlet fantasizes himself play­ ing a woman to his father in order to be able to see his father as strong and masculine; but here Polonius under­ mines Hamlet's efforts, and demonstrates just how weak a father can be, how a father, out of his own weakness, needs to fantasize his son as passive, how, finally, he is not man

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enough to control his son's sexuality. In spite of his fan­ tasies, Polonius reveals in the scene with Reynaldo that he is sure Laertes is not playing a passive man in Paris but rather a "drabbing," quarrelsome rake. With Laertes and Ophelia, Polonius is a domestic tyrant, but the fact is that he is ineffectual, and, like King Hamlet, he winds up a pas­ sive victim, penetrated by a son figure. Polonius is so weak that he even has fantasies of being punished by Claudius. That is, Polonius is secretly so wor­ ried about the consequence of failure in Claudius' service that he needs to mime his own beheading: POL. Hath there been such a time, I would fain know that, That I have positively said, " 'Tis so," When it proved otherwise? KING Not that I know. POL. [Pointing to his head and shoulder] Take this from this, if this be otherwise. ( ii . ii. 153-156) The stage direction involving a gesture to head and shoul­ der is supplied by almost all editors on the assumption that Polonius refers to a voluntary submission to execution; if this is the case, then we have, in a significant jest, the great patriarch relishing a fantasy of discipline at the hands of a truly strong man. No wonder Laertes flees from the home of this inadequate model of strength. But even while he is abroad, Laertes must live under his ambiguous father's influence. Reynaldo's spying on Laertes represents the long and powerful reach of the great busybody, but Polonius' instructions to his agent are just as infantile as they are tyrannical. Reynaldo is to speak with strangers in Paris and lay "slight sallies" (from sal­ ly =sully) on Laertes. If Laertes is as dirty as Polonius as­ sumes, these strangers will confirm Reynaldo's forgeries with genuine smut. Poor Laertes is treated as a "thing a lit­ tle soiled i' th' working." He becomes a victim of Polonius' childish anality. Polonius' need to throw mud pies and re-

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duce his son to a "thing" would almost necessarily produce a young man who had to spend his energies escaping in­ fantility and proving himself a grown-up. Laertes' overprotesting libertinism, however, should not be interpreted as freedom from the weak father. Later in the play Laertes manifests all the qualities of a weak son. Used as a tool by Claudius, he becomes enslaved to a father figure who encourages him in a line of action that leads to death. This perverse relationship with Claudius must have something to do with his relationship to Polonius. Just how enmeshed Laertes is with a weak father is seen in the vow he makes to Claudius: LAER. To his [Polonius'] good friends thus wide I'll ope my arms, And like the life-rend'ring pelican Repast them with my blood. KING Why now you speak Like a good child and a true gentleman. (iv. v. 146-149) Having lost his father, Laertes tries to replace him by be­ coming himself the kind of parent he lost; with consider­ able bravado he imagines himself father even to Claudius. But what an ambiguous father! Laertes as parent is not only quite womanly, nourishing his children from his own body, but also the prey of his own children who feed from his blood. "Why now you speak/ Like a good child," com­ ments Claudius. Whose "good child"? Polonius'—the man whose cause Laertes has come to serve? Claudius'—the man whose cause he is even now being persuaded to serve? Probably both. Laertes, like Hamlet, is son to an ambigu­ ously strong-weak father (Polonius-Claudius) who fosters the destruction of the son. That Polonius destroys his children is an accusation that smolders in the play's depths. But Hamlet comes close to articulating this accusation. "O Jeptha, judge of Israel, what a treasure hadst thou," says Hamlet in a seemingly mad rejoinder to Polonius' attempt at criticism of play-

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wrights and genres. I will take this matter up again, in Chapter Eight, but here I want to notice that Polonius is likened to a man whom the Book of Judges introduces as "a mighty man of valour, and he was the Son of a harlot." Though a powerful man, Jeptha came from a sexually loose background. This seems to have something to do with his lack of foresight, with his rash promise that re­ sulted in the sacrificial killing of his daughter. If Hamlet means to put Polonius into the category of strong-weak fathers who kill their children, of fathers whose am­ biguities seem to be born out of illicit sexuality, then he could not have done better than to associate him with Jeptha. And since King Hamlet is the "mighty man of valour" in this play, Jeptha's association with Polonius applies to Hamlet's father as well. Hamlet may be partially able to fantasize his father as a tower of strength whom he can fear, but he is never capa­ ble (though he does try, as we shall see in Chapter Eight) of transforming Polonius into the kind of father he needs. Hamlet needs a father he can fear, but Polonius, a poten­ tial father-in-law, fears him, just as he fears his own son. As a father figure who fears son figures, Polonius is the em­ bodiment of Hamlet's worst suspicions about his father. IV Arthur Wormhoudt has suggested that the name Polonius, the Polestar, and the Poles all echo each other and form an unconsciously significant pattern.5 It is difficult to under­ stand from Wormhoudt's psychoanalytic interpretation exactly what this significance may be (it seems to depend on the fact that Poland is north of Denmark!), but I think this word play is worth pursuing from another angle. Polonius and the Poles are interesting mirrors of Hamlet's father. Somewhere along the line Shakespeare apparently changed Polonius' name from the Corambis in the First Quarto, and the reason for this may have been an uncon­ scious impulse to associate the Chamberlain with the North

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Star and with Poland. Both of these things are of course associated with King Hamlet: When yond same star that's westward from the pole Had made his course t'illume that part of heaven Where now it burns, Marcellus and myself, The bell then beating one—[Enter GHOST] (i. i. 36-39) He smote the sledded Polacks on the ice. (i. i. 63) Let us pursue for a moment the connections between Polonius, Poland, and King Hamlet, the Polestar who failed to give guidance. In the face of Fortinbras' onslaught, the Poles heroically and foolishly garrison a worthless piece of real estate only to lose. A proud people who seem always to lose, the Poles provide an interesting background to the other losers in the play. In real life, I suppose, he who beats Poland may prove himself strong, but in imaginative literature, where the only territory to be lost or won is psychological, I would think that he who comes to Poland must in some ways be like Poland; the imaginative mind travels along paths of psychological affinity, not along highways of political expediency. Shakespeare does not send King Hamlet and Fortinbras to Poland for Lebensraum, but rather, I think, for expression of themes integral to his play. The Poles represent the weakness that fathers and sons have to over­ come in order to be strong, a weakness so frightfully in­ grained that it must be overcome again and again in its outward form. The warmongering King Hamlet and Fortinbras, from this point of view, are drawn to Poland be­ cause they fail to come to terms with the Poland that is within. Thus, in spite of the fury abroad, the weak Poland con­ tinues to fester at home in the shape of Polonius, who, though he does not lose all his bets, does, like Poland, lose the most important ones. While Hamlet is on his way from butchering Polonius, he crosses paths with Fortinbras, who

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is on his way to butcher the Poles; it is the same butchery, both princes blindly driven to obliterate the weak father lurking behind their mental arras. Fortinbras has no more consciously sane reason for going to poor Poland than Hamlet has for killing poor Polonius, but Shakespeare had, I think, the unconsciously consistent reason for having both these characters try to kill off weak father figures. The symbolic value of King Hamlet's warfaring against the Poles has not received the attention it deserves. This is a complex aspect of the play. Poland is a weak father, but she is also a treacherous mother. From Fortinbras' captain, Hamlet learns that twenty thousand soldiers will die fight­ ing for only a "part of Poland," "a little patch of ground," "a plot." He reviles himself for not being as bloody as these soldiers, for doing nothing about his murdered father, and he also views Poland in the same way he views his mother, as a consumer of men: How stand I then, That have a father killed, a mother stained, Excitements of my reason and my blood, And let all sleep, while to my shame I see The imminent death of twenty thousand men That for a fantasy and trick of fame Go to their graves like beds, fight for a plot Whereon the numbers cannot try the cause, Which is not tomb enough and continent To hide the slain? O, from this time forth, My thoughts be bloody, or be nothing worth! (iv. iv. 56-66) Hamlet not only tells us here that he cannot act, but he also gives us a reason for his inability to manage anything more assertive than bloody thoughts. His energies are tied up in obsessive memories of the primal scene, of "beds," "sleep," and "a father killed, a mother stained." We re­ member that as Fortinbras' soldiers go "to their graves like beds," King Hamlet literally went to his grave on his or-

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chard's couch, and he also, in Hamlet's imagination, went to his grave in Gertrude's bed long before Claudius got to him. The terrifying Gertrude, demon of the bed, is perhaps represented here by her genitalia, that "little patch" that is fruitful but too small to "farm," that "part" or "plot" that was a tiresome double entendre in the Renaissance (cf. Sonnet 137).6 The "part" of Poland that is going to con­ sume so many men thus seems to be the female part into which Fortinbras and King Hamlet must thrust their dar­ ing and overprotecting masculinity. We do have to wrench out of context Hamlet's prophetic ability to "see/ The imminent destruction of twenty thousand men" in order to have him witnessing with "shame" a primal-scene destruction involving only two people. But we have to explain why he is associating seeing, sleep, beds, graves, "a little patch," and the destruction of men. We also have to explain why his excitements of "rea­ son and blood" turn inward, plague him, keep him from acting in the external world. Hamlet rages against himself, I think, because all the action in the external world will not rout out the tyrannical, unconscious fantasies of the primal scene, but turning bloody "thoughts" against his own mind might liberate him. Fortinbras can magically rid himself of fantasies of his undone father by killing them off in their projected form, but Hamlet, to whom this kind of projec­ tion is impossible, must acknowledge his troubles as inter­ nal. Hence Fortinbras can act, but Hamlet must brood. King Hamlet, Polonius, and Poland thus seem to consti­ tute an unsteady Polestar against which weak sons can only confusedly orient themselves. V The mighty but fallen father of the Trojans excites Hamlet and thus repays comparison with King Hamlet. While Priam is not exactly a character, he is a father figure who should be included in any discussion of the play's imagina­ tive center: n5

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"His antique sword, Rebellious to his arm, lies where it falls, Repugnant to command. Unequal matched, Pyrrhus at Priam drives, in rage strikes wide, But with the whiff and wind of his fell sword Th' unnerved father falls. Then senseless Ilium, Seeming to feel this blow, with flaming top Stoops to his base, and with a hideous crash Takes prisoner Pyrrhus' ear. For lo, his sword, Which was declining on the milky head Of reverend Priam, seemed i' th' air to stick; So as a painted tyrant Pyrrhus stood, And like a neutral to his will and matter Did nothing." ( ii . ii. 476-489) Hamlet likes this recitation because it deals with just the thing that bothers him most, with a weak, defenseless father who lost the potency to "command" his "sword." It allows him to hear, in the safe realm of art, of a weak father who was almost strong, almost divinely protected, almost saved by a force that would take Pyrrhus "prisoner," in­ capacitating the villain's sword, reducing him to an orifice, an "ear." The speech allows him to tantalize himself by riveting his attention on the moment before a father (in his unconscious, his father) was unmanned, as if, like a child, he could imagine a new ending to the story, and make it real. Yet, though the story is art, it is still too unmalleable, and Hamlet, who has selected and begun the story, has to let the First Player continue from the moment Priam is mentioned. Even in art there is no way to prevent the father's ultimate destruction, though Hamlet does make other, vain efforts to use art in this way. Hamlet's fantasy of Priam also includes a fantasy of a son. Like Hamlet, Pyrrhus is out to avenge a father (Achil­ les), 7 and, just as Hamlet is now unable to act, so too was Pyrrhus "neutral to his will and . . . Did nothing" (cf. Ham­ let's "I do not know/ Why yet I live to say, this thing's to

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do"). But Pyrrhus is also like Claudius ("a man to double business bound"), a delayer who can finally act, a hesitating son who finally is strong because his father, that indomita­ ble, champion thug of the Iliad, was strong. The fantasy content here seems to be saying, "if King Hamlet were, like Achilles, really a hero, then his son could, like Pyrrhus, be only momentarily delayed." I realize that I have Hamlet in one fantasy here sympathizing with Priam, and in a con­ comitant fantasy identifying with Pyrrhus; though this is rationally absurd, it seems to me a plausible enough con­ densation of two of Hamlet's unconscious strategies for dealing with his father. The unconscious does not mind in­ consistencies. Priam's death, Pyrrhus' pause, and the story that enfolds them, appeal to Hamlet's imagination on yet another level. Just as Hamlet can picture his father almost rescued from a stunned Claudius-Pyrrhus, he can also picture him pro­ tected from a banished Gertrude: "But as we often see, against some storm, A silence in the heavens, the rack stand still, The bold winds speechless, and the orb below As hush as death, anon the dreadful thunder Doth rend the region, so after Pyrrhus' pause, A roused venegeance sets him new awork, And never did the Cyclops' hammers fall On Mars's armor, forged for proof eterne, With less remorse than Pyrrhus' bleeding sword Now falls on Priam. Out, out, thou strumpet Fortune! All you gods, In general synod take away her power, Break all the spokes and fellies from her wheel, And bowl the round nave down the hill of heaven, As low as to the fiends." (ii . ii. 490-504) "Pyrrhus' pause" may be interpreted on the surface as the result of that still small voice that would hinder any man, no matter in what vengeful rage, from shedding

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royal blood, but I think we can also see it as part of the play's submerged pattern of watching and being im­ mobilized or shocked by what one has seen. The phrase "But as we often see" introduces a section of the speech that involves three spectators. What "we" as onlookers see is a personified heaven who also stands quietly looking on, "speechless." The heavens are in turn likened to Pyrrhus, the third onlooker, who swoops down on the object of his vision with "roused vengeance." What is seen is perhaps sexualized: "The dreadful thunder/ Doth rend the region." Hence it is not surprising that a woman is immediately blamed for both Priam's death and the aroused passion of Pyrrhus; no sooner is the phrase "falls on Priam" men­ tioned but the "Strumpet Fortune" is invoked and cursed, the "round nave" at the center of her "wheel" banished. Thus the recitation on one level exorcizes the primal-scene mother. This interpretation, however, needs more sup­ port. Since the play has already sexualized Fortune's "waist and middle," this "nave" seems an obvious symbol for Fortune's destructive genitalia. But also, with a pun on "knave," this nave becomes masculinized; Fortune's power derives from absorbing the phallicism, "spokes and fellies," from the great men she has undone. Yes, according to the story, it is Pyrrhus who kills the great Priam; but the feverish, bombastic exclamations hurled at Fortune direct us away from what would be Pyrrhus' version of the event to what is Hamlet's interest, to his suspicion that fathers are unmanned by women before they are slaughtered by vil­ lains. In a moment Polonius will have to ask the First Player to stop, for Hamlet is in tears; he hears of a strumpet who is responsible for Priam's death, catches the allusion to his father in "Mars's armor, forged for proof eterne" (King Hamlet had an "eye like Mars"), and recalls the primalscene mother who ended the possibility of an eternally powerful father. It is perhaps some comfort to Hamlet that this woman receives the wishful punishment of being sent "as low as to the fiends," just the punishment Hamlet fan-

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tasized for Claudius in the prayer scene. In fact this punishment of Fortune may have been part of the reason Hamlet selected this recitation. With Fortune consigned to hell, Polonius interrupts, but the quipping dialogue between him and Hamlet is sugges­ tive of the same unconscious themes that are woven into the recitation: POL. This is too long. HAM. It shall to the barber's, with your beard.— Prithee say on. He's for a jig or a tale of bawdry, or he sleeps. Say on; come to Hecuba. (π. ii. 505-508) The wisecrack about cutting off Polonius' beard, the refer­ ence to "bawdry" and to sleep, and the possible pun on the "tale" (tail) that is "too long" and must be shortened all reinforce the interpretation that Hamlet has a primalscene castration on his mind. His eager anticipation of that part of the recitation which deals with Hecuba lets us know how much he wants to replace Fortune with a truer woman, one who would try to protect and weep over her dying.husband: PLAYER "But who (ah woe!) had seen the mobled queen—" HAM. "The mobled queen"? POL. That's good. "Mobled queen" is good. PLAYER "Run barefoot up and down, threat'ning the flames With bisson rheum; a clout upon that head Where late the diadem stood, and for a robe, About her lank and all o'erteemed loins, A blanket in the alarm of fear caught up— Who this had seen, with tongue in venom steeped 'Gainst Fortune's state would treason have pro­ nounced. But if the gods themselves did see her then, When she saw Pyrrhus make malicious sport

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In mincing with his sword her husband's limbs, The instant burst of clamor that she made (Unless things mortal move them not at all) Would have much milch the burning eyes of heaven And passion in the gods." (ii. ii. 509-525) But even Hecuba brings with her associations of Ham­ let's primal scene. Standing with a blanket around her "o'erteemed loins," Hecuba presides over another scene of visual shock involving not only her own clamor "when she saw," but also the venomed anger of mortals who "this had seen" and of any gods who perhaps "did see her then." Even the milk of the good Hecuba is caught up in this nightmare, seen only in the form of the bloddied "milky head" of Priam and the "milch" of the "burning eyes of heaven." Hecuba is "mobled," covered up, and this bothers Hamlet, as he queries the word. Perhaps it is just the pre­ tentiousness of the term that raises his eyebrow, but perhaps he also unconsciously objects to seeing the good mother draped as if she had something to hide. In any case, her "loins" are associated with the scene of destruc­ tion in which they are mentioned and she can thus provide no balm for Hamlet. Priam is the obvious father figure in the recitation. But we must also mention the First Player and Aeneas. The First Player usually speaks these lines as part of a play that Hamlet "once" saw. "One speech in't I chiefly loved. 'Twas Aeneas' tale to Dido, and thereabout of it especially when he speaks of Priam's slaughter," remembers Hamlet. The First Player in the role of Aeneas courting Dido brings the recitation into the realm of the love life of ancestors (Elizabethans believed they were descended from Aeneas' son Brute) and into disastrous, parental passion. But the Aeneas-Dido story ends with the destruction of the power­ ful and seductive queen, not the hero of Rome and the father of Britain. This reversal of the King HamletGertrude story would be another reason for Hamlet to re-

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quest the recitation. Unfortunately, Hamlet cannot focus on Dido, the object of Aeneas' tale, but must gape at the vision of Priam, the tale's subject. As he reconstructs his primal scene out of this material, he stares wildly; he has no hope but to blur his vision with tears. Like a child, he cries. As the leader of his troupe, the First Player is a father figure whom Hamlet much admires. Hamlet thinks the great actor would also know how to take action in the real world: What would he do Had he the motive and the cue for passion That I have? He would drown the stage with tears and cleave the general ear with horrid speech, Make mad the guilty and appall the free, Confound the ignorant, and amaze indeed The very faculties of eyes and ears. Yet I, A dull and muddy-mettled rascal, peak Like John-a-dreams, unpregnant of my cause, And can say nothing. (π. ii. 565-575) Hamlet sees the First Player as a great model, but the quality of the First Player's heroism is quite ambiguous; he would be capable of nothing more assertive than "horrid speech." In fact, it seems his function to reenact the primal scene that demonstrates fathers weak, to "appall" and "confound" an audience by amazing the "very faculties of eyes and ears." He reminds Hamlet of spying ("peak"), of sleep ("John-a-dreams"), and of the destruction of his father ("cleave the general ear"). Just as the First Player here speaks of the unmanning of Priam, he will later act the destruction of King Hamlet in his role of the Player King. Thus we have in the Priam passage a set of ambiguous father figures enclosed in each other like Chinese dolls. Slaughtered Priam is in the story of Dido-entrapped

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Aeneas who is played by the confounding First Player who, as the Player King, represents the penetrated King Ham­ let. VI Hamlet's friendship with Horatio, a man near his own age, seems to indicate that he has been able to free energy from an obsessive involvement with father figures. In fact, Goddard cites Hamlet's ability to love Horatio as proof that we need not take psychopathology into account when we deal with Hamlet and his father, that Hamlet has sufficiently broken his family bonds to become socially adaptive.8 If I am right in claiming that Hamlet is constantly reworking his relationship with his father, then we would expect to find at least some traces of a father figure in Horatio, as strange as this may at first seem. I do not mean to suggest that Horatio is a father figure in the same way that Polonius and Priam are, but that Horatio touches in Hamlet the same fantasies that the obvious fathers do, that Horatio is acceptable as a young friend partly because he has the traits of an older man.9 Shakespeare does seem to suggest some connection between Horatio and King Hamlet by having Horatio liken himself to Hamlet's father: I knew your father. These hands are not more like. (i. ii. 211-212) I suppose Horatio means that the Ghost was just as perfect a match to King Hamlet as his (Horatio's) hands are to each other. But by holding his hands up and saying that they are "not more like," he also suggests, on another level, that they could not be more like King Hamlet. Since, as we saw in the prayer scene, Claudius also identifies his hand with the former King, Shakespeare may be using (perhaps un­ consciously) the same technique in both places to identify a man with Hamlet's father. Hamlet has before him the socially approved model of

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young men engaging and challenging each other in inter­ national gallantry, of Laertes in Paris and Lamord at the Danish Court, and he seems to have found a healthy, Eriksonian place in this "courtier's, soldier's, scholar's" world of the new generation. But under stress, this "glass of fash­ ion," as Ophelia calls her former suitor, seizes upon a man from his past who, significantly, comes wandering back into his life with the report of his father's ghost, and re­ news a friendship that is something more than an expres­ sion of conflict-free love. To Hamlet, I shall argue, Horatio represents a compromise. On the one hand, he is an idealization of the recent past at Wittenberg, which seemed to promise a future of physical and mental liberation from the older generation; on the other hand, he is, as the har­ binger of the Ghost, a representative of Hamlet's past, an example of the young literally haunted by the old. Yes, Hamlet does make an attempt, as Goddard claims, to form a relationship with Horatio outside the sphere of his father, but this attempt bears the marks of the psychic struggle it has been through. A good place to begin an analysis of Horatio's place in the play's fantasy content is Hamlet's tribute to his friend: Nay, do not think I flatter. For what advancement may I hope from thee, That no revenue hast but thy good spirits To feed and clothe thee? Why should the poor be flattered? No, let the candied tongue lick absurd pomp, And crook the pregnant hinges of the knee Where thrift may follow fawning. Dost thou hear? Since my dear soul was mistress of her choice And could of men distinguish her election S' hath sealed thee for herself, for thou hast been As one, in suff'ring all that suffers nothing, A man that Fortune's buffets and rewards Hast ta'en with equal thanks; and blessed are those Whose blood and judgment are so well commeddled That they are not a pipe for Fortune's finger

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To sound what top she please. Give me that man That is not passion's slave, and I will wear him In my heart's core, ay, in my heart of heart, As I do thee. Something too much of this. (in. ii. 56-74) This sounds suspiciously like Hamlet's earlier claim that his father's spirit would fill his inner world "all alone." Appar­ ently Horatio has some competition as the unique inhabit­ ant of Hamlet's "heart's core," his "heart of heart." Just as Hamlet earlier fantasized an impregnation by his father, he here imagines himself as possessing a female organ ("my dear soul was mistress") that has impregnated itself with Horatio ("her election/ Hath sealed thee for herself"). Hamlet must, then, in some profound way, identify Horatio with his father.* Because Hamlet's speech to Horatio has become so familiar, we may overlook how complex and strange it is, how rich and yet hopelessly confused it is. Before I con­ tinue to offer a psychoanalytic explication of it, then, I would like to indicate some of its difficulties. For example, how can a "candied tongue" "crook the hinges of the knee"? We can get around this difficulty as Tschichiwitz does by construing an implied "let the candied tongue lick absurd pomp,/ And let crook the pregnant hinges of the knee," but as the line presently reads we get a highly con­ densed and bizarre caricature of the flatterer. Similarly confused is the image of the fawning dog licking his master in hope of reward; for that reward ("thrift") also comes "fawning." Pomp may be "absurd," but he would not be so absurd as to fawn like those who set off his supposed great­ ness. There may be some consciously subtle point here about there being no difference between the fawning and the fawned-upon, but that does not seem to be what Ham­ let is talking about. This all becomes especially strange when we remember * Tony Richardson's film of Hamlet (1969) is the only production I know in which Horatio is portrayed as distinctly aging.

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that this fawning, sugar-coated dog-flatterer with pregnant knees and prominent tongue is conjured up by Hamlet for no obvious reason: HAM. Horatio, thou art e'en as just a man As e'er my conversation coped withal. HOR. O my dear Lord— HAM. Nay, do not think I flatter. We do not have Shakespeare's intonation of Horatio's "O my dear lord," but it seems clear to me that no matter how the actor speaks this line, Horatio is not accusing Hamlet of flattering him. He is simply and blushingly expressing em­ barrassment at Hamlet's unexpected superlatives. Hamlet is the only one thinking about flattery here, and he is doing so, I think, in response, not to what Horatio objectively says, but to what Horatio subjectively represents. Since Hamlet is overprotesting about being a flatterer, something no one has accused him of, it seems reasonable to suggest that he unconsciously does feel that he is a flat­ terer, and that Horatio, because he reminds Hamlet of his father, is just the person to remind him of flattering an au­ thority figure. Hamlet says that Horatio is the last person he would think of flattering, but he is thinking of flattering him, even if only in a negative way. Hamlet says he can­ not hope for "advancement" from his poor friend (as if Horatio might have thought this!), but he nevertheless be­ trays that these are precisely the terms in which he is think­ ing of his friend. By way of denial, Horatio is represented in Hamlet's mind as an authority figure who deals in ad­ vancement. In wishing to dissociate himself from the flatterer, Ham­ let practically confesses that he sees himself as a being who at best has only a "candied tongue" and at worst has a pro­ pensity for turning himself into a woman with "hinges" that can be made "pregnant." In this view, Hamlet distin­ guishes himself from (but really identifies with) a flatterer of an authority figure; this authority figure is in turn dis­ tinguished from (but is really the same as) Horatio-King

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Hamlet. This fantasy embodies the wish that by fawning and thus making a woman out of oneself one can disarm an authority figure and make him fawn in return; this is why, I think, the royal reward is also described as fawning. As we saw in the "tables" soliloquy and in Claudius' prayer, one can, by offering oneself as a woman to the father, ward off the father's threat of punishment. Apparently Horatio reminds Hamlet of his father precisely in this connection, and thus gives Hamlet occasion to enshrine his friend in his heart along with his father. To Hamlet's unconscious, Horatio is someone to "cope withal," to have sexual inter­ course with (cf. Iago's "Where, how, how oft, how long ago, and when/ He hath, and is again to cope your wife," Oth. iv. i. 86). Horatio also gives Hamlet occasion to wish for a father who is strong enough to make his son fear punishment. For it is not unambiguously clear to Hamlet that Horatio-King Hamlet, the authority figure on whom his imagination is playing, is indeed strong. Hamlet finds the pomp of majesty "absurd"; perhaps he means that only some pomp is absurd, but this remark might well apply to his father. And assuming that for Hamlet Horatio does represent King Hamlet, Hamlet's friend-father is a very ambiguous man. If Horatio is a man whose holes are unavailable to For­ tune's phallic "finger" (Fortune is the universalized virago who has castrated man and absorbed his potency), he is nevertheless a man with holes. He is a man who "suffers nothing" yet "suffers all"; the easy meaning of "experienc­ ing everything yet suffering nothing" that we may extract from this contrast is not true to the ambiguous quality of the line—there is no way that the phrase "suffers nothing" can entirely cancel out "suffers all." He is "poor"; re­ member "thou poor Ghost"—this sense of "poor" seems to be much closer to the determinants of Hamlet's raising of Horatio's poverty than is anything in the manifest context. According to Hamlet, Horatio has a certain power, but it is a passive power: "A man that Fortune's buffets and re­ wards/ Hast ta'en with equal thanks." Notice how Shake-

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speare suspends the verb "ta'en" so that no activity stands between "A man that" and "Fortune's buffets and re­ wards"—and by "ta'en" Shakespeare means here passive suffering, not active grabbing. For Hamlet, passive power would be just the formula that could redeem passivity from weakness, that could convert weakness into heroic endur­ ance. Horatio is fortified with nothing more than his good spirits (if that is all he has to "feed and clothe" him he must be weak indeed, almost like a child), but Hamlet is able to endow him with unsurpassed strengths that make him a model for humanity. The Prince elevates the passive pauper, I think, because he is trying to endow his vic­ timized father's analogous passivity with analogous strengths. We can even hear Hamlet referring to a second person whom he would like to see built on the model of Horatio: "Give me that man . . . and I will wear him/ In my heart's core . . . as I do thee." That second man, I suggest, is King Hamlet, who was installed in Hamlet's heart's core in the "tables" soliloquy. And this second person must also refer to Hamlet himself, for he whom one wears in his heart's heart must constitute part of one's identity. Indeed Hamlet not only identifies Horatio with his father but also with himself: "Horatio—or I do forget myself" are his first words on meeting his old friend. Hamlet is trying to incor­ porate Horatio, a heroically passive father figure, so that he and his father can be thought heroic in their passivity. We should not let Hamlet's calmness here blind us to the powerful conflicts he is trying to manage. Actually, Hamlet has a hard time maintaining the idea of a man parlaying a passive acceptance of "suff'ring all" into heroism. A little later, after he has slain the passive Polonius, thus discover­ ing once again that suffering all is not such a good plan for father figures, Hamlet suddenly and viciously turns on Rosencrantz and berates him for passively absorbing all that the world pours into him: ROS. Take you me for a sponge, my Lord? HAM. Ay, sir, that soaks up the king's countenance,

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his rewards, his authorities. But such officers do the king best service in the end. He keeps them, like an ape, in the corner of his jaw, first mouthed, to be last swallowed. When he needs what you have gleaned, it is but squeezing you and, sponge, you shall be dry again. (iv. ii. 15-22) Rosencrantz' passivity leads to a trip through the diges­ tive process, to becoming refuse like Polonius. Hamlet of course would want to distinguish the sycophancy of Ro­ sencrantz from the independence he thinks he sees in Horatio. But I think his intense emotion here betrays a loathing of all passive, sponge-like behavior, and this can­ not but have some reference to Horatio, a man who has passively taken all that Fortune dishes out. Rosencrantz says he does not understand Hamlet; "a knavish speech sleeps in a foolish ear," retorts the Prince, reminding us of the reason for his hatred of passivity, his father's death from a sleeping, passive ear. It is worth noting, by the way, that while Hamlet is away, the supposedly independent Horatio remains in the Danish court and, like Rosencrantz, does the King's bidding. It is not merely in response to Horatio's growing embar­ rassment that Hamlet breaks off his praise with "Some­ thing too much of this"; he is dealing with a volatile train of thought that is leading him straight to the father who be­ queathed him a passivity that was not heroic when the final test came. So he quickly drops the subject of Horatio's praiseworthy passivity. Some psychoanalytic critics have alluded to a homosex­ ual fantasy revolving around Hamlet and Horatio, with­ out defining what I consider the essential characteristic of this homosexuality, Hamlet's need to admire a man who resembles his father. 10 These analysts also tend to forget (and Goddard reminds them) that Horatio also represents Hamlet's healthy and quite normal social adaptiveness. Horatio, as I said, is a composite of friend and father, and I must therefore balance the above interpretation with those

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aspects of Horatio's relationship with Hamlet which prom­ ise liberation from the father. To do this, I need not go further than the subject to which Hamlet turns after break­ ing off his idealization of Horatio: Something too much of this— There is a play to-night before the king. One scene of it comes near the circumstance Which I have told thee, of my father's death. I prithee, when thou see'st that act afoot, Even with the very comment of thy soul Observe my uncle. If his occulted guilt Do not itself unkennel in one speech, It is a damned ghost that we have seen, And my imaginations are as foul As Vulcan's stithy. Give him heedful note. For I mine eyes will rivet to his face, And after we will both our judgments join In censure of his seeming. (ill. ii. 74-87) Here the fantasy of having to propitiate a father by be­ coming a woman is entirely rearranged. Hamlet is going to "join" with Horatio, not to conciliate him as a father but to band with him as a brother to "censure" the father (Claudius). It is the father, not the son, who is going to cringe, his "occulted guilt" forced to the surface. Indeed, far from the son having to make himself a woman, the father is going to be made a grotesque, female monster who will, like Error in Book I of the Faerie Queene, "unken­ nel" her sins from her womb. Hamlet even seems to fan­ tasize a phallic penetration (displaced upward) of this woman Claudius: "mine eyes will rivet to his face." The two companions are not only going to stage the "circumstance" of one father's death, but are going to sit in judgment on and damn his stand-in, who, depending on the effect of the Murder of Gonzago, will be either Claudius or the Ghost. Hamlet will have used Horatio either to get sufficient dis­ tance from his father to be able to isolate him under the

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rubric of "imaginations . . . foul/ As Vulcan's stithy," or to be able to act on independent conviction of a right course, free of compulsion from his father. With Hamlet thus free from the older generation, there will either be a "damned Ghost" or a damned Claudius. Thus there are two Horatios in the play, the Horatio who brings the Ghost into Hamlet's world, and the Horatio who tries to help Hamlet exorcize him. The latter Horatio is from Wittenberg, learned in a Protestantism whose tenets include rebelling against the father; the former is from the prison that is Denmark, and he appears on the battlements to be worn in Hamlet's heart along with his father. One Horatio is a friend, the other a father. There is thus a latent ambiguity in the fantasies connected with Horatio. There is also a famous manifest ambiguity about Horatio that was first propounded by G. F. Bradby 11 and that has since troubled critics who wish to view Hamlet as an artistic unity. Bradby points out that if we put one set of passages together we find that Horatio has been a long-time inti­ mate of the Danish Court who knew King Hamlet (whom he calls "our King") and the history of his warfaring, and if we put another set together we find that Horatio is practi­ cally a foreigner who knows nothing of the customs or the courtiers (including Yorick, Osric, and Laertes) of Den­ mark. I think I am now in a position to claim that this dis­ crepancy is not an unimportant inattention to details on Shakespeare's part (as such critics as Waldock 12 and Dover Wilson 13 assert in an attempt to dismiss Bradby's annoying "problem"), but rather a significant and probably uncon­ scious indication of the poet's double attitude towards Horatio's function in the play. Horatio reflects the al­ legiance to the new generation that might have saved Ham­ let from his father; he is a "friend," the mirror of Hamlet's maturity and independence of mind ("If your mind dislike any thing, obey it"). But Horatio is also a "father" who sucks Hamlet into the vortex of the past ("In the dead waste and middle of the night . . . A figure like your father"). It is part of the play's tragedy that Horatio the

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friend is outweighed by Horatio the father. I do not wish to minimize the value of Hamlet's friendship with Horatio, but to enshrine it as a potential saving grace, as a measure of the Hamlet that could have been. But insofar as Horatio is associated with King Hamlet he partakes in the destruc­ tion of his friend and helps us measure the Hamlet that was. It is fitting that in Hamlet's dying mind, Horatio's final task before eternity should be the telling of the royal Prince's past. I think he has been telling that "story" in a quiet way during the whole play, himself coming into the "dead waste and middle" of Hamlet's life, a "figure like" the ambivalent King Hamlet who accompanies the Prince to his death. VII I am well aware that if one is looking for father figures it is not hard to find them everywhere. The world is full of candidates who qualify by virtue of age, authority, power, or talent. But the fathers in Hamlet are not like the figures we respect, fear, and emulate in real life; Shakespeare's imagined fathers have survived the white heat of his crea­ tive fire; they come to us charged with meaning, conflict, and ambivalence; they demand interpretation. Consider the example of Lamord, the French horseman whose reputa­ tion is used by Claudius to manipulate Laertes into the dis­ honest fencing match with Hamlet: Two months since Here was a gendeman of Normandy. I have seen myself, and served against, the French, And they can well on horseback, but this gallant Had witchcraft in't. He grew unto his seat, And to such wondrous doing brought his horse As had he been incorpsed and deminatured With the brave beast. So far he topped my thought That I, in forgery of shapes and tricks, Come short of what he did. (iv. vii. 81-90)

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Claudius says that this wonderful horseman praised Laertes in Hamlet's hearing, that Hamlet was envious and wanted to challenge Laertes immediately, that therefore the Prince would accept a fencing match. Now, the most remarkable thing about this use of Lamord is its seeming irrelevance to Claudius' purpose. The fact is that Laertes needs no wiley plans, no long stories about Lamord. He is already prepared to cut Hamlet's "throat i' th' church," or anywhere else, right now. Perhaps Claudius is taking no chances, wants to be sure Laertes' vanity as well as his vengeance is enlisted in the crooked enterprise, and goes through the litany of Lamord's praise of Laertes to this end. But even this explanation does not account for the seemingly gratuitous digression on Lamord's skill as a horseman; as Maynard Mack, Jr. points out, horsemanship plays no part in Claudius' plots.14 Claudius may be manipu­ lative even when he does not have to be, but what is Shakespeare doing? Claudius decides to interrupt the unfolding of his plans by ascertaining, in a seemingly unnecessary play, how "dear" Laertes' father was to him: KING The scrimers of their nation He swore had neither motion, guard, nor eye. If you opposed them. Sir, this report of his Did Hamlet so envenom with his envy That he could nothing do but wish and beg Your sudden coming o'er to play with you. Now, out of this— LAER. What out of this, my lord? KING Laertes, was your father dear to you? (iv. vii. 100-107) Claudius is using dear Polonius as emotional blackmail; we remember that the Ghost, presumably to hide the weakness of his claim on his son, tried this technique on Hamlet: "List, list, O, list!/ If thou didst ever thy dear father love." The Ghost tries to enlist Hamlet's support by

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making him feel guilty.15 But Laertes does not require arm twisting in the name of the father, and we begin to suspect that Claudius' rigamarole about Lamord has more connec­ tion with the play's theme of questionably "dear" fathers than it does with any need to motivate Laertes to take ac­ tion. In fact, if we follow Claudius, we begin to notice some peculiar similarities between Lamord and King Hamlet. I thus feel that I am being fair in saying that I have not gone looking for Lamord as a father figure but have had him pointed out to me as such by the text. Lamord is the "brooch indeed/ And gem of all the na­ tion"; he thus resembles King Hamlet, whom Hamlet de­ scribes as a similar museum piece, even including the "in­ deed": "A combination and a form indeed/ Where every god did seem to set his seal." Lamord was in the Danish Court "Two months since," precisely the period of time that elapsed between King Hamlet's death and the opening of the play; there is thus the suggestion that the warrior Lamord replaces the former martial hero of Denmark. The association of the two-month time span with Lamord can­ not be merely accidental since Shakespeare has been at great pains to load it with meaning by having Hamlet make such ado about the two months since his father died even when the period has grown, as Ophelia reminds him in the play scene, to "twice two months." Lamord is from "Nor­ mandy," from the province in France, to be sure; but he is thus also associated with a Northman, with the gem of Denmark and Norway, with the Polestar King Hamlet (for emphasis of this point, Shakespeare has Claudius and Laertes echo each other in affirmation of the fact that one from Normandy is "A Norman"). Lamord's name marks him as the dead one or "the murdered one" (there is, how­ ever, some textual uncertainty to the name); he is thus as­ sociated with the dead one in the play, King Hamlet. Even Lamord's skill with a horse reminds us of King Hamlet: Claudius says that Lamord fused with the horse, that he was "incorpsed and deminatured/ With the brave beast"; in the play scene Hamlet calls his father a "hobby-horse," a

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stufiFed figure of a horse fused to the waist of a folk dancer. By name, place of origin, profession, reputation, and date of appearance in the Danish Court, Lamord can be as­ sociated with King Hamlet. But so what? Certainly there are enough obvious father figures in the play to illustrate the preoccupation; why bother just adding to the list? Well, I am trying not only to support my argument about the play's pervasive search for a gem of a father, but also to ac­ count for something in the text that seems gratuitous. This is the keen pleasure that Claudius takes in Lamord's "witchcraft" as a horseman. On the one hand, I see Lamord as another ambiguous father, a man who is at once the gem of all the nation and a mere ornament, a "brooch," simultaneously a "wondrous" man and a "beast," "deminatured" like all the father figures in the play; on the other hand, Claudius has genuine enthusiasm for a powerful man who dazzles his admirer into a vain attempt to match "what he did." We can see the ironies of being a beast and a brooch, but to Claudius Lamord is unambiguously envi­ able. So Shakespeare not only gives us another version of am­ biguous King Hamlet in Lamord but also a way, Claudius' way, of blinding oneself to the weaknesses of the father and identifying with his strengths. Seeing Lamord's beastly "witchcraft" as only positive, Claudius can practice it too, as we learned from the Ghost: "that incestuous, that adulter­ ate beast,/ With witchcraft of his wits . . . won . . . my most seeming virtuous queen." Like Lamord, Claudius is a "beast"; using witchcraft he wins a whore instead of a horse (the whore-horse pun was an Elizabethan favorite), and he is even now winning over Laertes. Thus Claudius does not mind coming "short" of Lamord, no more than he minded being weak before God in the prayer scene; by ignoring Lamord's ambiguities, he has a strong man to model him­ self after. No wonder he relishes the telling of Lamord's accomplishments. Hamlet of course would not be able to ignore the horse­ man's deminaturedness. He does not possess Claudius'

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ability to use mental "forgery of shapes and tricks" to make beastliness come out the way he wants it to be. Thus he lives with more integrity but also with more psychic vulnerabil­ ity. What makes the Prince admirable also makes him subject to a frenzied anxiety; he cannot adopt Claudius' de­ fensive blotting out of the ambiguities of the father. Shake­ speare does, however, let us consider the possibility of Hamlet's identifying with Lamord in Claudius' manner. Just as Lamord is the gem of his nation, Hamlet is "Th' ex­ pectancy and rose of the fair state." But while Lamord is one with a beast, Hamlet can only make silly gestures in the direction of beastliness. Though he wishes he were a tiger like the "Hyrcanian beast," his threats to Laertes in Ophelia's grave dwindle from the ferocious to the diminu­ tive: Let Hercules do himself what he may, The cat will mew, and dog will have his day. (v. i. 291-292) Hamlet thus could not identify with the likes of Lamord because beastliness is associated with weakness, with the small powers of cats and dogs, with the ambiguous nature of the father who plagues Hamlet but assists Claudius. Claudius is happy to take advantage of the ambiguous father in order to propel himself into power; Hamlet must "mew" like a cat and plea that the father act on his own be­ half: "Let Hercules himself do what he may" (we remember that Hamlet in the first soliloquy associates Hercules with himself and with his father).16 There is yet another level to the pleasure Claudius takes in watching Lamord perform. Claudius offers an alterna­ tive to the primal-scene horrors of Hamlet's watching. Where the Ghost invites Hamlet to peer on a scene of hideous sexuality and incestuous sheets, Lamord excites Claudius' sexual fantasies in a titillating but not a disturb­ ing way. I would not make a case for a sexual level in Claudius' admiration of Lamord's performance if it did not occur in a play where all watching involves some sexuality.

THE VAIN SEARCH FOR A STRONG FATHER If it were not for this context, I would not notice that in Claudius' phrase, "So far he topped my thought", "topped" could have a sexual meaning to the Elizabethans (cf. Iago's "Would you, the supervisor, grossly gape on? Behold her topped?" Oth. HI. iii. 391), nor would I see the parallel between a man "incorpsed" in his horse and a lover incorpsed in his whore (cf. Hotspur's "when I am a-horseback, I will swear I love thee infinitely," 1H4 11. iii. 100). Similarly, the fact that the Ghost uses the word "witchcraft" to describe Claudius' illicit sexuality would not necessarily be recalled by Lamord's "witchcraft" if it were not for the connections the play has already made between watching a performance, horses, and whoring. The dumb show of The Murder of Gonzago, with its performance of the murder and illicit sexuality involved in King Hamlet's death, follows directly upon Hamlet's reference to the hobby-horse, the folkloric phallic symbol. All these hints do not prove that Claudius has sexualized his watching of Lamord, but they do offer us at least a plausible way to ex­ plain his voyeuristic enthusiasm. If Claudius' joy from Lamord's performance is to be meaningfully contrasted with Hamlet's shock from the performances he sees, then we see that Claudius has found a way to deny not only the ambiguous father but also the primal scene. Lamord's sexualized show would undo Ham­ let's horror-show, make it innocent. But this is a vision only Claudius can see. For Lamord fades out of the play just as he comes into it, as a fantasy that has a reality only in Claudius' mind. Though Claudius says that Hamlet paid close and envious attention to Lamord's praise of Laertes, Hamlet himself never mentions the Norman; we must as­ sume that the kind of sublimated performances that the horseman acts out are unavailable to the Prince. VIII Though Adam conventionally comes up in talk of digging in the Renaissance, I think our racial father also earned his

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place in the graveyard scene in Hamlet because he is appro­ priate to Shakespeare's unconscious themes: CLOWN There is no ancient gentlemen but gard'ners, ditchers, and gravemakers. They hold up Adam's profession. OTHER Was he a gendeman? CLOWN Ά was the first that ever bore arms. OTHER Why he had none. CLOWN What, art a heathen? How dost thou under­ stand the Scripture? The Scripture says Adam digged. Could he dig without arms? (v. i. 29-37) Adam had, in spite of the gravedigger's claim to the con­ trary, all the appropriate limbs. This quibbling about whether the father of mankind had arms contributes some­ thing to the play if we read these "arms" as an unconscious displacement from the only limb that really matters in fan­ tasy life, the one that digs in the earth mother. We re­ member that the Ghost is an "old mole" a "worthy pioneer" who can "work i' th' earth so fast." The playful humor with Adam allows Shakespeare to discuss openly, in a seemingly innocent way, the unconscious fear that everywhere lurks in the play's depths: "Why he had none"—fathers may be suspected of having lost their "arms," of having lost their phallicism. (One wonders what unconscious motives were present in Shakespeare's procuring of his father's heraldic arms.) Actually, there is a way of accounting for the quibbling about Adam's arms without resorting to psychoanalysis; I offer it to show that psychoanalysis does not necessarily contradict what literary critics have to say, but often con­ tributes more precision. Maynard Mack, Jr., duly notes that "heraldry, weaponry, and anatomy become all entan­ gled when the gravedigger describes Adam as the first that ever bore arms."17 The object of this comic ambiguity, ac­ cording to Mack, is to elaborate the ambiguous world in which Hamlet must live. But this and all dramatic am-

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biguity occurs in highly specific ways. We want to know, and Mack does not tell us, why "arms" becomes the crucial punning word and why the quibble goes on to claim that Adam had none. Psychoanalysis helps us ask the question and provides a plausible and precise answer. We should include Adam's sons here, for they are in the play too. Like the two Hamlets, the identities of Adam and Abel, father and son, merge. In the first court scene Claudius tries to tell Hamlet that he has carried mourning for his father too far, that the "death of fathers" is nature's common theme "From the first corse till he that died to­ day." Claudius means the "first corse" to be Adam, the first example of his general theme. But the archetypal corpse was not a father, but a brother, Abel. Claudius' slip reminds us not only of his own making of a brother into a corpse but also of Shakespeare's interest in the way a man's unconscious makes itself heard. I think Shakespeare's own unconscious is being heard too, for Claudius' slip conflates Adam and Abel, armless father and vulnerable son. The next time Claudius traces general themes back to the beginning he gets the "brother's murder" straight, for he is not trying to cover up; but he makes another error, either his or Shakespeare's slip: O, my offense is rank, it smells to heaven; It hath the primal eldest curse upon't, A brother's murder. (πι. iii. 36-38) Here in the prayer scene Claudius alludes to Adam's other son Cain, who committed the first "brother's murder." But the "primal eldest curse" did not go to Cain but to Adam, who fell; Cain got the second. Claudius' confusion about elementary biblical characters perhaps reflects on the perilous state of his soul, but it also contributes to the play's unconscious theme: cursed fathers, ambiguous fathers, are models for their sons, who become indistinguishable from them. Cain is mentioned again in the graveyard, just after

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Adam is discussed. Hamlet complains of the way the gravedigger throws one of the skulls around, "as if 'twere Cain's jawbone." He then muses that the skull might really have belonged to "Lord Such-a-one," that it once "had a tongue in it, and could sing," but that "e'en so" it is now "my Lady Worm's," chapless, and "knocked about the mazzard with a sexton's spade." It is important to note that Hamlet associates a jawless ("chapless") skull with a jaw­ bone, pictures the tongue back in its cavity, fleshes out the Lord Such-a-one, as if he is trying to restore the Lord, save him from being knocked about the head by a brutal man and from being devoured by an insidious woman, Lady Worm. Hamlet tries seeing the Lord's skull as Cain's jaw­ bone, but the fact remains that it belongs to Lord Such-aone. Hamlet's problem is that the Lord Such-a-one of his life, King Hamlet, cannot be restored, and the Cain of his life, the fratricidal Claudius, cannot be dismembered. This is so because Hamlet is like Abel, a son of a father who can be considered armless, defenseless, no matter what his achievements in Eden or Poland. Thus, here in the grave­ yard, Hamlet is again worrying that fathers can be too easily displaced; even the gravedigger, he says, "would circumvent God." IX Shakespeare may have adapted Yorick's name from Rorik, Hamlet's maternal grandfather in the sources. This, to be sure, is only one of many conjectures on the derivation of the name,18 but it does suggest that Shakespeare may have viewed Yorick as an ancestral figure in Hamlet's life. In fact, we know that Yorick must have substituted for the ab­ sent, warfaring King Hamlet as a father to the Prince. Hamlet tells us in the graveyard that the former King's jes­ ter played with him, gave him rides on his back, and told him jokes. Hamlet thus commiserates with "poor Yorick," now a skull, in the way he empathized with the "poor ghost" of his father.

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Eissler believes that Yorick is a "thinly disguised father image" who reminds Hamlet of his "feminine passive rela­ tionship to his father."19 Eissler is vague, but he seems to think that the "most dangerous" implication of Yorick is that Hamlet has identified with him and has become a pas­ sive jester. I think, however, that the fantasies associated with Yorick are more precise and subtle than Eissler allows, and that Yorick reflects primarily on King Hamlet and only secondarily on the Prince: Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio, a fellow of in­ finite jest, of most excellent fancy. He hath borne me on his back a thousand times. And now how abhorred in my imagination it is! My gorge rises at it. (v. i. 183-187) We have seen how Shakespeare sexualizes riding in Lamord's witchcraft and Hotspur's puns. I think Hamlet is here fantasizing a homosexual relationship in which Yorick plays the woman. The fact that "abhorred" can refer not only to the skull in Hamlet's hand but also to the experi­ ence on Yorick's back betrays Hamlet's guilt about the symbolic meaning of riding on his father's jester. In fact, given the syntax, it is primarily the riding that is abhorred. On the one hand, from his experience with the smiling vil­ lain Claudius, Hamlet enjoys reminiscing on this smiler as a womanlike sexual object who might be penetrated from the rear; on the other hand, using this father figure comes too close to the fear of seeing his father as a woman. On one level, what Hamlet abhors is having treated Yorick "abwhore," as if he were related to a whore (cf. the pun on "Abhorson" in Measure for Measure). As Hamlet continues to elaborate on his memories of Yorick, he spins out a fantasy that reinforces the idea of Yorick as "lady": Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know not how oft. Where be your gibes now? Your gambols, your songs, your flashes of merriment, that were wont

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to set the table on a roar? Not one now to mock your own grinning? Quite chapfall'n? Now get you to my lady's chamber, and tell her, let her paint an inch thick, to this favour she must come. Make her laugh at that. (v. i. 187-194) Hamlet recreates only the feature of the skull that is of interest to him, Yorick's lips, pictured in "flashes of merri­ ment," "grinning." Yorick's skull (along with the other skull thrown up by the gravedigger) seems to symbolize a castration to Hamlet (the other skull "had a tongue in i t . . . once"),20 and immediately calls up in his mind grinning lips. More to my point, Hamlet, holding the skull in his hands, identifies its grinning face with that of a woman. That is, he instructs the skull to tell my lady that to its "favor she must come." Hamlet's imagination has traced Yorick through a history of smiling, castration, and finally womanhood, just the process he wishes on the smiling vil­ lain. Unfortunately it is just the process his father has been through, as Yorick the father figure testifies. With Yorick's decapitated skull in his hand reminding him of the castration of father figures, Hamlet is not primarily worried, as Eissler implies, about his being in a feminine relationship to his father; on the contrary, he fears that his father can be used as a woman. Yorick, how­ ever, is not only a version of King Hamlet. In a special way Eissler is right and we can see the jester as King Hamlet's boy, a feminized man doomed to live as a clown and a bawd. As such he would be a castrated son, an image, as Eissler says, of a feminized Hamlet Jr. But if this is so, Yorick would, like Polonius, represent both a castrated father and the son who incorporated his father's weakness, and Hamlet would not be worried that he was passive to his father but that he was like his father. Not long after Hamlet leaves the graveyard, he runs into a kind of living metamorphosis of Yorick's skull. Osric's name echoes Yorick's, and, like the former King's jester,

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the present King's fop is "spacious in the possession of dirt." Yorick lies in much of it and Osric owns much of it. These two characters thus seem linked together in Shake­ speare's imagination—if the one is a father figure, perhaps the other one is as well. Indeed, though Osric is a "lord of beasts," he is still a lord. As Shakespeare's imagination seems to respond to Yorick by creating Osric, it responds to Lord Osric by creating a more venerable "Lord." This Lord enters with the message that Osric brought, and one wonders if Shake­ speare could not have found a less redundant transition into his final scene. The Lord does, however, manage to reinforce one thing about Osric: he refers to "Young Os­ ric," whose youth is all the clearer, contrasted with his old and stodgy counterpart. But, in addition to the contrast, we also feel an identity between these two lords (they bring es­ sentially the same message), and this identity of old and young leads us, I think, to the unconscious determinants of Osric. He is, even more literally than Polonius, an authority figure fantasized as a child, even a baby. Horatio thinks of Osric as a newborn "lapwing" running away "with the shell on his head," as someone who is so affected in his language that he is, like a child, still learning to speak. Hamlet refers to Osric's "crib" (bin of fodder) standing at "the King's mess" and we may want to allow a possible pun on "crib" (the OED however gives 1649 as the earliest use of crib = cradle). Osric thus seems to be a conflation of the weak son and the weak father, a man of independent means and a child of dependent sycophancy, a ruler of men and a timeserver (to "the tune of the time"), the presiding judge and fop at the fencing match, an infantile lord. Flatter interprets Osric as the Angel of Death, the an­ nouncer and officiator of the duel that causes Hamlet's death.21 This seems a fair enough metaphor for Osric's hovering over Hamlet in the last scene. But I think the point to be made is that if Osric is the Angel of Death in Hamlet's life, it is by virtue of the fact that he is an insuffi­ ciently strong "lord," on the fantasy level a parody of King Hamlet.

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Shakespeare seems to imagine Osric's appearance on stage as that of a birdlike creature of much plumage. Ham­ let calls him a "chough" and Horatio says he is a "lap­ wing," probably because Osric ostentatiously waves about a bonnet that is undoubtedly of the most feathery and exotic kind. Though not of the higher stratospheres, Osric is obviously aerial, a "waterfly." I point this out be­ cause shortly after Osric exits, Hamlet speaks of another bird in some of the most quoted lines of the play: "we defy augury; there is a special providence in the fall of a spar­ row." If there is an unconscious connection between this "sparrow" with whom Hamlet obviously identifies and the "chough" that is Osric, then I think it goes something like this: to escape the fear that his father, as represented by the birdlike Osric, is weak, Hamlet fantasizes himself as a small and unassuming bird who is supervised by a potent father (cf. Matthew 10:29, "Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? and one of them shall not fall on the ground without your father"). By masochistically identifying him­ self with the bird who may be sent to death by a powerful but just God, Hamlet avoids thinking of his father as that bird, an awkward, prattling "lapwing" like Osric. As a lord, Osric parodies King Hamlet; as a child he parodies Hamlet himself, another weak son who has incor­ porated a weak father. Hamlet can only wish that there is a Lord in heaven stronger than this lord of much earth. Hamlet the sparrow is as sublime as Osric the lapwing is ri­ diculous, but these two helpless "birds" are interesting as a pair, I think, because they are sublime and ridiculous ver­ sions of the same thing. X In my discussion of the "tables" soliloquy, I argued that Hamlet's adoption of an antic disposition acts out a fan­ tasized self-castration designed to prevent a feared (and wished-for) father from exacting a real one. I would now like to press this further and suggest that Hamlet thinks of his madness itself as a father figure, that to Hamlet the J 43

THE VAIN SEARCH FOR A STRONG FATHER

madness he incorporates into his personality along with the Ghost's "commandment" is not so much a state of mind as an allegorical figure who takes on the powers and propor­ tions of a father: Give me your pardon sir. I have done you wrong, But pardon't, as you are a gentleman. This presence knows, and you must needs have heard, How I am punished with a sore distraction. What I have done That might your nature, honour, and exception Roughly awake, I here proclaim was madness. Was't Hamlet wronged Laertes? Never Hamlet. If Hamlet from himself be ta'en away, And when he's not himself does wrong Laertes, Then Hamlet does it not, Hamlet denies it. Who does it then? His madness. If't be so, Hamlet is of the faction that is wronged, His madness is poor Hamlet's enemy. Sir, in this audience, Let my disclaiming from a purposed evil Free me so far in your most generous thoughts That I have shot my arrow o'er the house And hurt my brother. (v. ii. 228-246) The difficulty of interpreting this passage is exacerbated not only by the impossibility of determining to what degree Hamlet's madness is "less than madness and more than feigned" (as T. S. Eliot puts it),22 but also by the question of the Prince's integrity here. Dr. Johnson started a debate on this question by wishing that Hamlet had opted less for a flashy excuse and more for a genuine apology to the mourning Laertes,23 and critics are still trying to indict or to clear Hamlet on this score.24 With both Hamlet's sanity and his decency simultaneously at issue, it is not likely that psychoanalysis can offer an interpretation of the passage that will suit everyone. In fact, I think psychoanalytic critics have made these questions more murky than anyone else,

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making disparate diagnoses (which are mainly only labels) of Hamlet's madness as schizophrenia25 and manicdepressive psychosis.26 Nevertheless, I think that once we see Hamlet's madness as a father figure, a psychoanalytic reading of the passage begins to make sense of its troubling issues. Hamlet pictures his madness as a power that takes him away from himself. I suppose this view of madness as a psychic disintegrator is fairly commonplace, but the phrase "ta'en away" seems to grant a physicality to the psyche that makes me think that Hamlet is talking about more than his mind. The mental castration that Hamlet describes seems a close parallel to and a displacement of genital castration.27 His madness is an allegorized "enemy," someone who has "punished" him by interfering with the use of his weapon ("I have shot my arrow o'er the house/ And hurt my brother"). The image of the bow and arrow seems more appropriate to genital functions than to mental states, and the word "punished" suggests an avenging authority figure. Though the evidence is not overwhelming, I think these hints allow us to hypothesize a fantasy of a castrating father figure underlying the allegory of an enemy derang­ ing the mind. Let me try to give this interpretation a little more sup­ port by reviewing the birth and consequences of Hamlet's madness. As a direct result of meeting with his father, Hamlet thinks it necessary, for no obviously strategic rea­ son, to diminish the potency of his mind. In the sources, Hamlet makes himself mad to camouflage his preparation for revenge; in Shakespeare's play, Hamlet's madness ad­ vertises itself as a danger to Claudius. Hamlet's madness, then, has more to do with his response to his father than it does with his conscious designs on Claudius. Any interpre­ tation deserves a hearing that can meaningfully relate this madness both to the father who engendered it and to the use it is put to (making the killing of Claudius more dif­ ficult). I think interpreting Hamlet's madness as an al­ legorized and internalized castrating father does just this. The madder Hamlet makes himself, the more he dem-

THE VAIN SEARCH FOR A STRONG FATHER

onstrates to his unconscious self that his father is exactly what he wishes him to be, a powerful punisher. Unfortu­ nately, the madder he gets, the more he himself becomes what he fears to be, an impotent weakling. He needs both to make himself mad to prove his father strong and to make himself acutely prescient, as he is with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, to prove himselj strong. Thus the degree of his madness is always mercurially indeterminate as he jockeys up and down the scale of sanity, trying to find a non-existent equilibrium that will satisfy all his wishes and fears. We need not, then, decide how mad Hamlet is be­ cause he tries on all degrees of madness, and we need not specify how much of his madness is feigned because the compulsion to feign madness is itself a mad process28 that has very little to do with the poise and rational cunning that we usually mean when we talk of feigning. Though entirely inconsistent with his conscious motives, Hamlet's selfimposed madness is thus an expression of illogical, uncon­ scious needs. In this unproductive process, Hamlet does manage, however, to further his central unconscious strategy. By adopting an intimidating but not a useful madness, he ex­ presses his desire to kill Claudius without having to kill him, without stealing the show from his father, who, he hopes, will step in and take over. In fact, his mad threaten­ ing makes it almost necessary for someone else to step in, because Claudius becomes more and more wary and less likely to give Hamlet the opportunity that he does not re­ ally want. Hamlet's intimidation of Claudius finally does get a father figure to act, but, alas for Hamlet, it is the wrong father. Claudius himself (not King Hamlet) be­ comes the executioner, sending Hamlet off to death in England. It is Claudius who is now the master of the "raw and red" wounds that King Hamlet once visited on Eng­ land, and he tries to parlay the "cicatrice" of the conquered island into Hamlet's destruction. Returning to Hamlet's apology to Laertes, I think I can

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now unravel the problem of the Prince's integrity. The problem can be stated as follows. If Hamlet feigned mad­ ness, how can he in good conscience offer it as an excuse to Laertes? And if he thinks he was indeed mad beyond his feigning, why does he describe this alleged madness in such an overwrought and overprotesting way? The answer to these questions lies, I think, in the unconscious fantasy that wells up to take over the apology, making it no apology at all. Hamlet is unconsciously at cross-purposes. Let me try to describe this. Laertes is pictured as a "brother" who was inadvertendy wounded by Hamlet's weapon. While on the surface this necessitates an apology, on a submerged level it provides a solution, which Hamlet would not want to retract, to the threat of viewing Father Madness as a castrator. Madness interferes with the phallic weapon, but with "brother" Laertes around the ultimate consequences of this can be foisted off onto an alternate sibling (re­ member that in the cellarage scene Hamlet tried a similar strategy of foisting his primal-scene visions onto his friends). "Father Madness does not castrate me, he cas­ trates Laertes," is, it seems, the unconscious fantasy here. In this view, we can see why Hamlet's reasoning with Laertes is so tortured. Hamlet consciously asks Laertes' forgiveness while he unconsciously tries to set him up for a surrogate punishment (it is ironical that Laertes is at this very moment trying to set Hamlet up to be unmanned, penetrated and poisoned like King Hamlet). If it is easy for Hamlet to be glib about his madness with Laertes, it is altogether impossible for him to be calm on the subject with Gertrude. I think we can see why this is so if we accept some equation between madness and castra­ tion. In the closet scene, we remember, Gertrude tells Hamlet that the ghost he thinks he is seeing is "bodiless," thus stirring her son's frightening memories of the castra­ tion that the pernicious woman imposed on King Hamlet. Since Hamlet is at this moment in his father's place in Ger­ trude's chamber, the possibility of his being castrated be-

THE VAIN SEARCH FOR A STRONG FATHER comes all too imminent. On the fantasy level he could de­ fend himself against this by saying, "1 am not bodiless, I am not castrated." Instead he says, "/ am not mad": QUEEN This is the very coinage of your brain. This bodiless creation ecstasy Is very cunning in. HAM.

Ecstasy?

My pulse as yours doth temperately keep time And makes as healthful music. It is not madness That I have uttered. Bring me to the test, And I the matter will reword, which madness Would gambol from.

(HI. iv.

138-145)

Hamlet is defending himself against the accusation that he is insane, but he seems to be overprotesting. With the cas­ trating Gertrude around, it is too dangerous, too close to truth, to acknowledge oneself mad and hence castrated. Only with Laertes available as a surrogate is it safe to con­ fess madness. In this light there is no problem with Hamlet's conscious integrity. Rather, Shakespeare seems to have endowed him with a conflict between conscious integrity (apology) and unconscious motivation over which he has little control (need and fear of castration). Hamlet's troubled com­ promise satisfies his needs for the moment, but just barely. For with the implicit analogy between brother Laertes, ac­ cidentally

wounded

by

Hamlet's

arrow,

and

father

Polonius, mistakenly killed by Hamlet's rapier, the linking of a punished son and a punished father creeps into Ham­ let's fantasy. The penetrated Polonius and Laertes repre­ sent a return of the repressed, an unconscious admission that strong Father Madness and strong Hamlet (who does not suffer the arrow) are only wishes. I think this reading goes a long way toward solving the issue of the nature of Hamlet's madness. It accounts for Hamlet's erratic assumption of various attitudes towards his sanity. It accounts for why he makes himself mad in the

THE VAIN SEARCH FOR A STRONG FATHER

first place, and for why he sounds least convincing when he is talking about his madness. Being mad and talking about madness allow Hamlet to express the neurotic relationship with his father that is at the heart of his dilemma. Before I leave this matter, let me address an objection that is sure to remain in the reader's mind: "Even if Hamlet secretly pictures madness, or better the maddener, as an authority figure, and even if he makes himself mad to simulate the prowess of this authority, and even if he iden­ tifies the authority with his father, why must we make the unseemly connection between madness and castration? It does seem that Hamlet thinks of madness as a punishment visited on him from without, so why don't we say only that to Hamlet madness is a punishing authority figure and leave out this castration business? Yes, Hamlet is supersen­ sitive to the subject of madness in Gertrude's chamber, and he may even be worried about this father's emasculation there, but why must we insist on a connection between the two questions, between madness and emasculation?" To answer I must remind the reader that in the "tables" soliloquy Hamlet associated the "distracted globe" and sinews that would not bear him "stiffly up." More impor­ tantly, we have to remember that Hamlet's madness is in­ deed mad, irrational, motiveless from the point of view of an adult's world of reality. We must therefore be dealing with the irrational, infantile, and unconscious motivations, and we have all of psychoanalytic evidence to suggest that children who fear or desire punishing fathers do so on the basis of the Oedipus complex. This involves not punish­ ment in the abstract, but punishment for sexual fantasies, not mental derangement, but bodily dismemberment. Therefore Hamlet's compulsive, self-inflicted madness can only be an adult elaboration of a complex set of childhood fears and desires dealing with frightening sexuality. The whole play also tells us this is true. We must insist on this kind of explanation for Hamlet's madness because the one presented in the objection simply does not reflect how ar­ chaic and anarchic Hamlet's behavior is.

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XI Hamlet includes many father figures, or partial father figures. Some are characters in the play, some only alluded to: the God who would have to pardon the praying Claudius, Old Fortinbras, Old Norway, the Poles, Polonius, the First Player, Aeneas, Priam, Horatio, Lamord, Her­ cules, Adam, Yorick, Osric, and Madness. All these are ambiguous, and they remind us in various ways of King Hamlet. But perhaps, to summarize this chapter, I should let Hamlet give the last word on the nature of fathers: Alexander died, Alexander was buried, Alexander returneth to dust; the dust is earth; of earth we make loam; and why of that loam whereto he was converted might they not stop a beer barrel? Imperious Caesar, dead and turned to clay, Might stop a hold to keep the wind away. O, that that earth which kept the world in awe Should patch a wall t' expel the winter's flaw! (v. i. 209-216) Alexander and Caesar (we remember that once Polonius "did enact Julius Caesar") are like King Hamlet, two titanic warriors who are now, as Hamlet imagines them, fit only to "stop a hole" or to "stop a beer barrel." The "flaw" in Hamlet's wintery world is that his father, the Caesar in his life, gave him no brighter vision of manliness than inert matter locked into a hole, a thing "t'expel" "wind." As in the "tables" soliloquy and elsewhere, Hamlet has to regress to anal fantasies in order to accommodate experiences in his adult world that have shown him that fathers can be turned into dirt. Hamlet's fallen Caesar is a keynote for the play; he ap­ pears not only at the end but at the beginning too: A little ere the mightiest Julius fell, The graves stood tenantless, and the sheeted dead Did squeak and gibber in the Roman streets;

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As stars with trains of fire and dews of blood, Disasters in the sun; and the moist star, Upon whose influence Neptune's empire stands, Was sick almost to doomsday with eclipse. (i. i. 114-120) A little ere the ghost of King Hamlet is to appear, we hear what transpired "a litde ere the mightiest Julius fell." Horatio's account of the "sheeted dead" in Rome prepares us for the Ghost's story of "incestuous sheets" and for the play's primal scene in which ghostly parents "squeak and gibber." The primal scene is vivid here, similar to what we have seen in Hamlet's fantasies. Someone feminized like the moon ("moist star") looks on "sick almost to dooms­ day," bodily liquids are discharged as "dews of blood," and sheeted ancestors are seen as if they had murdered each other. This is a foreboding introduction to the ghost of King Hamlet, to the version of the mighty Julius who is about to enter the world of Hamlet, but it is an accurate one. Hamlet sees Caesar in a bunghole. And Horatio com­ pares the ghost of Caesar to that of King Hamlet (indeed the two will later constitute a pair as Shakespeare's two fa­ mous ghosts). Even the mightiest are victims, no models at all for action in the world, nothing but dirt. Shakespeare has scoured the world from Norway to Rome, from Troy to Britain, from history to mythology, from heaven to hell, from madness to method, without finding a viable father for Hamlet.

SIX MOTHER MISTRESS MAN

I HAMLET is endowed with fantasies that involve both his parents. Even though Gertrude has not been absent from my discussion, I should balance my emphasis on father figures. There is, indeed, a good deal of psychoanalytic criticism that claims that the maternal issues of the play are far more central than the paternal.1 In response to Fred­ eric Wertham, the man who first emphasized the matricidal question,2 Ernest Jones described in just a few words what should have been obvious in the first place, that a son who was having difficulties with his father because of his mother might very well seek to solve the whole oedipal crisis by getting rid of his mother: "With Hamlet, Wertham advanced the idea [matricide] in a one-sided fashion as the sole explanation of Hamlet's dilemma. Actually matricidal impulses, which are familiar to psycho-pathologists, always prove to emanate from the Oedipus complex of which they are one facet, or—to change the metaphor—for which they are an attempted solution."3 According to Jones, then, all the hostility that Hamlet expresses towards his mother, and towards Ophelia and women in general, is part of a familiar oedipal triangle. But even though I think Jones is right, the choice between him and Wertham seems to me a meaningless one unless we can show just how closely related the play's fantasies of mothers and fathers are, how much the imagery of each comple­ ments the other. Fantasized matricide can be, we shall see, part of a complex strategy for Hamlet to eliminate the woman who is responsible, as we saw in the "tables" so­ liloquy, for the frightening sexuality that weakened King Hamlet and made him easy prey for Claudius. So far, Gertrude has overshadowed Ophelia in my dis-

MOTHER MISTRESS MAN

cussion of the play's fantasies of women. In order to bring out the close ties that nevertheless exist between these two women, I would like to consider four scenes that Ophelia dominates: her description of Hamlet's visit to her closet, her mad singing at court, the scene in which her drowning is described, and her funeral. All four of these scenes, as well as her farewell to Laertes (discussed in Chapter Five) and the "nunnery" scene (which I will treat in Chapters Seven and Eight), present Ophelia in an exquisite but piti­ ful passivity, and contrast her emphatically with Gertrude, who exhibits a bovine yet rapacious passivity. Ophelia's lovely modesty seems just the antidote for Hamlet's expo­ sure to his mother's poisonous sexuality. These women are, though, more intimately linked than this contrast would seem to allow. I will argue that to Hamlet Ophelia repre­ sents both an escape from and a return to the gross sexual­ ity of Gertrude, both an opportunity for a safer sexuality than was offered King Hamlet and a repetition of the same dangers. Eissler thinks Gertrude "aggressive" and Ophelia "passive,"4 but both, I think, are passive and, ultimately, dangerous. All the imagery in the play portrays Gertrude, "who would hang on [her husband]/ As if increase of appe­ tite had grown/ By what it fed on," as passively consuming her mate's power, and Ophelia, I shall argue, turns out to be the same in the play's fantasy content. The following interpretations, then, present Ophelia as much more ambiguous than the lovely rose of stage tradi­ tion. I do not mean to suggest that she appears as anything other than sweet and chaste; it is the imagery that swirls around her that betrays another Ophelia, the victim of what Blake called "The invisible worm/ That flies in the night" and poisons the way men view the rose of women. The interpretations are also rather speculative, but they stem from the facts of the play. Hamlet is disgusted with his mother's sexuality ("In the rank sweat of an enseamed bed/ Stewed in corruption, honeying and making love/ Over a nasty sty"), and this in turn disgusts him with Ophelia ("wise men know well enough what monsters you

MOTHER MISTRESS MAN

make of them"), and with all women ("frailty—thy name is woman"). Hamlet, in his worst moments, thinks of Ophelia as a whore: "I have heard of your paintings, well enough." From her sophisticated repartee with the Paris-bound Laertes, to her eerie tale of Hamlet's visit to her chamber, to her mad and bawdy songs, to her muddy and sexualized death (she drowns wearing "long purples,/ That liberal shepherds give a grosser name"), Ophelia stumbles into the play's worst nightmares of corrupt sexuality. Our interpre­ tation of her role in the play should reflect that she was the destined bride of a man who grew to be first vulgar, then cruel, and finally phobic about female sexuality. After I discuss Ophelia and Gertrude, I will treat Hamlet as a third woman in the play. We have already seen that in fantasy Hamlet feminizes himself before his father and Horatio. There are other aspects of Hamlet as woman. II Let us begin in Ophelia's closet. Goddard, always provoca­ tive and ingenious, has argued that there are good reasons to suspect that Ophelia, sewing alone in her closet, halluci­ nated her silent encounter with the distracted prince. God­ dard cites similarities in mood, certain thematic, verbal, and musical parallels between the "subjective" ghost scenes in Ophelia's and Gertrude's closets, details that make him see the two scenes in the same light, thus paving the way for considering Hamlet as an hallucination. He notes the appropriateness of a lonely, love-sick girl, who feels guilty for rejecting Hamlet on her father's advice but against her own heart, conjuring up a vision of her beloved. There is thus, according to Goddard, a strange ambiguity built into Ophelia's narrative; because the event she describes is so eerie and because it happens offstage, we can never be sure whether or not Hamlet actually came to Ophelia's closet. Goddard continues: "It is highly characteristic of Shakespeare to present us with a thought or situation that can be taken in either of

MOTHER MISTRESS MAN

two opposite ways, with the result that both of them affect the imagination simultaneously. So here. No matter if you reject what may be called a 'subjective' interpretation of Hamlet's interview with Ophelia, having once heard it sug­ gested, you can never again read the scene without being conscious of it hovering over or lurking behind the lines. The pure objectivity of the incident has been contaminated forever. The very impossibility of totally dismissing the new suggestion shows that there is at least a shadow of truth in it."5 Now if Goddard is right and his interpretation becomes an unalterable fact in our experience of the play, then we are entided to ask what it all means. What difference does it make if we wonder whether Hamlet was really in Ophelia's closet? I do not think we can be satisfied on this score by Goddard's reference to Shakespeare's general principles of presenting "a thought or situation that can be taken in two opposite ways," or by a general reckoning up of thematic parallelisms between the spirits in the closets of the two ladies, though this does make the play tighter and more in­ teresting. Anyone who reads Goddard will find much cir­ cumstantial evidence linking the ghost in Gertrude's closet with the wraith in Ophelia's closet, evidence that he will probably either accept or reject in the most general way. I prefer to make as much as possible out of Goddard's read­ ing, pressing it for as specific an interpretation as possible. Here is part of Ophelia's account of what took place in her closet: My lord, as I was sewing in my closet, Lord Hamlet, with his doublet all unbraced, No hat upon his head, his stockings fouled, Ungartered, and down-gyved to his ankle, Pale as his shirt, his knees knocking each other, And with a look so piteous in purport, As if he had been loosed out of hell To speak of horrors—he comes before me. (ii . i. 77-84)

MOTHER MISTRESS MAN With the sudden switch to the present tense in the words "he comes before me," one begins to feel that whatever the objectivity of Hamlet's presence in the closet there is some­ thing other-worldly in Ophelia's speech. "Piteous," notes Goddard, is precisely the word that Hamlet uses to de­ scribe the other ghost in the other closet scene. But in his attempt to demonstrate that there is something ghostly about this Hamlet of Ophelia's, Goddard neglects another parallel between the two scenes that shows that there is also something like the living Hamlet and not like a ghost in Ophelia's description. This frightened, knee-knocking Hamlet is behaving just as he does when he watches the Ghost of his father depart Gertrude's closet: Forth at your eyes your spirits wildly peep, And as the sleeping soldiers in th' alarm, Your bedded hair like life in excrements Start up and stand an end. (HI. iv. 1 19-122) Thus I think Goddard quite wrong when he says that Hamlet nowhere behaves as he purportedly does in Ophelia's chamber. I argued before that what frightens Hamlet in Gertrude's closet is a mental reliving of the father-castrating primal scene, and I think that here in Ophelia's closet we are dealing with the same unconscious material. Ophelia describes Hamlet as if she were seeing a ghost "loosed out of hell," and Hamlet behaves as if he were seeing a ghost, frightened with his knees knocking. Perhaps Hamlet seems ghostly because he is watching something that has to do with his ghostly father. In this perspective, it appears that there are quite specific unconscious links between Hamlet's experience with the ghost and his visit to Ophelia. Hamlet, after having brooded for a couple of months (but to the audience it seems immediately), goes to Ophelia's closet to test the primal-scene horrors that came flooding back into his mind from infancy during the "tables" soliloquy and that return again in Gertrude's closet. Sexuality is clearly hinted at in

MOTHER MISTRESS MAN

Ophelia's description of her lover. With "doublet all un­ braced" and garters "down-gyved," Hamlet is, according to the Variorum Edition, irregularly exhibiting the "regular amorous etiquette" of a "man professing himself deeply in love" by assuming "a certain negligence in dress."6 Hamlet, however, is more than negligent in dress; he seems half wndressed, as if he were thinking less of amorous etiquette and more of a sexual encounter. Except for Rebecca West,7 critics for obvious reasons have avoided considering this very plausible interpretation of a man entering a woman's chamber undressed and uninvited. Psychoanalysts, though, would not be surprised to find that his eerie ac­ count of Hamlet entering Ophelia's chamber was a sexual fantasy of Hamlet entering Ophelia herself. In this light, Hamlet seems to visit Ophelia to see if the sexuality that undid his father is really as dangerous as he fears, really as ugly as his father's reports of damned lust. He has heard and imagined sexual horrors in his meeting with his father, and Ophelia leaves out only the adjective "sexual" when she alludes to the "horrors" that Hamlet spoke of as if he were "loosed out of hell." It seems almost impossible not to supply that adjective by analogy with the kind of horrors that King Hamlet brings from hell. It is this sexual undercurrent, I think, that provides the determinants for the associations Goddard finds between the two closet scenes. I think Goddard is brilliant in seeing a ghost in Ophelia's closet, but unsatisfactory in focusing his attention on Ophelia's hypothetical hallucination. Ham­ let, I think, is ghostly not because he is a hallucination but because he is reliving the sexual trauma that made his father ghosdy. Whether or not the fictitious Ophelia hal­ lucinated is a question that we of course can never decide. But that the living Shakespeare invested Ophelia's account with the same unconscious material that we find in Ger­ trude's closet is psychologically possible and compatible with the play's imagery; it is therefore subject to at least some degree of verificiation. Of course, once in Ophelia's closet, Hamlet cannot really

MOTHER MISTRESS MAN

test Ophelia's sexuality. Not only would this experimenta­ tion conflict with all that is consciously decent about him, but it would also involve severe unconscious risks. Uncon­ sciously motivated and unconsciously checked, Hamlet's sexual advance toward Ophelia stands, like so much else in his behavior, paralyzed. He approaches Ophelia but must stand at arm's length, holding his hand up to his brow as if he were protecting himself, falling back into the infantile role of an observer and not a participator in sexuality. "He falls to such a perusal of my face/ As he would draw it," says Ophelia, noting Hamlet slipping into voyeurism and away from the sexuality suggested by another meaning of the word "draw," which has a bawdy Elizabethan connotation on the model of drawing a sword.8 It is just the hints of sexuality that give us a clue to the nature of Hamlet's am­ bivalence. The gentle Ophelia, that hoped-for escape from the destructive sexuality of his parents, presents to Hamlet just as frightening a prospect as does his mother. We remember that one of Hamlet's responses to the primal scene that he relives in Gertrude's closet is a fearful anal rage. In Ophelia's closet I think this anality is also present when Ophelia speaks of Hamlet's "stockings fouled." This is and was a common phrase for befouling oneself, and I think something of this applies to Hamlet. (Again, that it is Ophelia, not Hamlet, who is endowed with the anal fantasy is further proof that an author's uncon­ scious determinants do not respect conscious character dif­ ferentiation.) Escaping the trials of primal-scene sexuality by regressively fleeing into the safer land of voyeurism and anality, Hamlet suffers, in Shakespeare's fantasy, a befoul­ ing bowel attack and can come only to a vaporous orgasm, a sigh that "did seem to shatter all his bulk/ And end his being." This seems an anal variation of genital orgasm, and in its impotence it strikes all the notes of Hamlet's fear of sexuality. The experience seems to "end his being," leaves him "without his eyes" (perhaps displaced testicles), and makes him assert a prolonged and compensatory visual penetration of Ophelia:

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That done, he lets me go, and, with his head over his shoulder turned, He seemed to find his way without his eyes, For out o'doors he went without their helps, And to the last bended their light on me. (ii. i. 94-98) This compensatory staring, however, also reminds us of the primal scene; just as Hamlet "bended" his eyes on Ophelia here, he will "bend" his eyes on his father's ghost in Gertrude's closet. I think, then, that Shakespeare has Ophelia describe Hamlet behaving like a ghosdy, castrated man afraid of sexuality because he (Shakespeare) identifies the Prince with the ghostly, castrated King Hamlet. And Ophelia, who is so terrified by the whole experience, is herself treated like a frightening sexual object because she has been caught up in the sexual blight that Shakespeare is explor­ ing. As the primal scene pollutes a child's view of sexuality, so does preoccupation with Gertrude's betrayals, recent and archaic, pollute the rose that is Ophelia. How pitifully appropriate that Ophelia speak the words that picture her caught up in the play's primal-scene nightmare!

Ill Many readers will find it easy to deny the sexual aspects of Hamlet's visit to Ophelia. There is no doubt at all, however, about the sexual references of Ophelia's pitifully mad songs in Act IV, and here we need not stray too far from the surface of the play to comment on Ophelia as a lovely girl who has merged witji the most frightening views of woman as sexual object. Moloney and Rockelein, by the way, quite incorrecdy assume that Ophelia's open wallow­ ing in sexual fantasies signifies real memories of relations with Hamlet that actually occurred just as the songs por­ tray them.9 This kind of psychoanalytic interpretation mis­ takenly accords Ophelia's unconscious independent real-

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ity; instead of relating her fantasies to the play as a whole, it tries to decide the content of her fictitious mind. I think it would be better to examine Ophelia's bawdy songs in the context of the unconscious material we have detected elsewhere. This way we can avoid speculating on the status of Ophelia's unconscious and assume that it is part of the same complex of unconscious determinants that underlies Hamlet's and the other characters' words. Perhaps the most striking thing about these songs is that they are hopelessly confused in their reference to Polonius as a father and a young lover who went to the grave "with true love showers": How should I your truelove know From another one? By his cockle hat and staff And his sandal shoon. He is dead and gone, lady, He is dead and gone; At his head a grass-green turf, At his heels a stone. White his shroud as the mountain snow— Larded all with sweet flowers, Which bewept to the grave did not go With truelove showers. (iv. v. 23-40, intervening dialogue omitted) If this refers to Polonius, how indeed can we tell him "From another one," from a young lover who could only be Hamlet? Dyce, however, wondered "that anyone should have the folly to suppose that the ballad now sung by Ophelia must apply in minute particulars to her father! Enough for her that it is a ditty about death and burial; no matter that its hero is a youthful lover,—he was cut off by a sudden fate, and so resembled Polonius."10 It seems to me that this conflation of Hamlet and Polonius must "matter." Claudius interprets this ballad as "Conceit upon her father," but, as if she were correcting him, Ophelia in another ballad tells us what her first ballad "means":

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"When they ask you what it means," she tells Claudius, "say" that it is a "Valentine." Now it is not altogether surprising that Ophelia has jum­ bled together her deranged feelings about her father and his murderer, love objects both. But I think that we also have here a submerged association that parallels much else in the play. If we take Ophelia's Polonius-Hamlet exactly as the composite figure she presents, we get the picture of a young (Hamlet) and incestuous (Polonius) lover who has seduced her on Valentine's Day and is now, almost as if in consequence of this love-making, "dead and gone." (We have seen Hamlet and Polonius conflated before.) Ophelia sings at once a love song and a dirge, sings of incestuous sexuality that leads to death. This is the same sexuality that Gertrude represents. If we look closely at the next song, the valentine, we can see that there are suggestions that reinforce this interpreta­ tion, that lift the song out of Ophelia's plight and place it in the play's wider perspective of fear of women. Shakespeare of course did not write this popular ballad, but he did choose to introduce it here, thus making it no accident that its latent content is relevant to the play. Here is as much of the song as Ophelia sings: Tomorrow is Saint Valentine's day, All in the morning betime, And I a maid at your window, To be your Valentine. Then up he rose, and donned his clothes And dupped the chamber door, Let in the maid, that out a maid Never departed more. By Gis and by Saint Charity, Alack and fie for shame! Young men will do't if they come to't, By Cock, they are to blame. Quoth she, "Before you tumbled me, You promised me to wed."

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So would I 'a' done, by yonder sun, An thou hadst not come to my bed. (iv. v. 48-67, intervening dialogue omitted) Valentine's Day is a day when both men and women can take the traditional male role of seeking a mate, and one can see in the song a certain fluidity in who is doing the seducing. I think that this indeterminacy, even reversal, of normal sex roles provides a key to the general pattern of reversal that we get in Ophelia's confused rendition of the song. For instance, she has the man donning his clothes in­ stead of taking them off. Other forms of reversal include blaming the man for the seduction when it was initiated by the woman, and expressing the loss of virginity by having the man "let in the maid" instead of the maid letting in the man. If we apply this pattern to reversal to a deeper level, it is possible to view the abused maid as a representation of an abused man. One possible interpretation of the maid who departed the chamber no longer a maid is that she de­ parted as a man, having absorbed her lover's phallicism. Of course the plain meaning of the passage is that she is no longer a maid simply because she lost her virginity, and I cannot prove that we should tamper with this reading. Re­ versal, however, is an integral part of the song and of Ophelia's mad adaptation of it, and it would not be too surprising if she were alluding to a literal change of sexual roles by fantasizing the maid's becoming a man at the ex­ pense of her lover. Even on the surface level of the valentine song, Ophelia expresses a certain amount of hostility for the male sexual organ, thus strengthening my interpretation of Ophelia as a terrifying object of sexuality. "Young men will do't, if they come to't,/ By Cock, they are to blame," sings Ophelia, obviously disapproving male libido, and, it seems, the male organ. This reading rests on what associations we bring to the word "cock." Furness quotes Dyce's Glossary and gives "A Corruption, or euphemism, for God'ni and that is why some editors capitalize Cock. Now in the context, it is no

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more a wrench from "cock" to penis than it is from "cock" to God, especially if we spend some time reading the OED on the subject. Perhaps there is then another reason, be­ sides the maiden's loss of chastity and his loss of honor, that makes the lover in the song change his mind about marry­ ing such a valentine. Perhaps he fears castration, fears a woman who disapproves of the "cock." I should say something about the lover's manifest reason for rejecting his valentine, that is, his insistence on virgin­ ity. Psychoanalysis has found that it is common for a child to internalize two versions of his mother, one faithful to him and pure, the other betraying him in a "whorish" rela­ tionship with his father. These are similar to the opposing mother figures that have been culturally instituted as the Virgin Mary and the Whore Fortune. A man's preoccupa­ tion with virginity can be an unconscious attempt to exor­ cize the "whorish" mother and reinstall the virgin, an at­ tempt to do away with frightening, adult sexuality; it is perhaps this kind of thinking that underlies the lover's re­ jection of his valentine and Hamlet's rejection of Ophelia. If there is indeed an unconscious reference to castration in Ophelia's valentine, then her final song, her last words, would be very appropriate: For bonny sweet Robin is all my joy And will 'a not come again? And will 'a not come again? No, no, he is dead, Go to thy death-bed, He never will come again. His beard was as white as snow, All flaxen was his poll. He is gone, he is gone, And we cast away moan, God 'a' mercy on his soul! (iv. v. 189-198, intervening dialogue omitted) This is a love song that again conflates Polonius with Ham­ let and has obvious sexual and incestuous implications.

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Harry Morris has pointed out the bawdy Elizabethan sense of "sweet Robin," the penis.12 According to Ophelia, sweet Robin has gone to his "death-bed"; the obvious sexual in­ terpretation is that Robin died in bed, performing. First the young lover was rendered old and impotent like Polonius, the old man with the beard "as white as snow." Then he died. The imagery thus presents Ophelia as a frightening mistress who brings her young lover to bed to be first wizened and then castrated. This interpretation seems to be supported by a curious discrepancy between Ophelia's version and that of all the surviving manuscripts of the original ballad, which give "Gone to thy death-bed."13 We have no way of knowing whether Ophelia's ominous "Go to thy death-bed" is Shakespeare's intention, conscious or otherwise, or whether a compositor slipped. At any rate, all texts of the play strangely give Ophelia commanding the death of poor bonny Robin: "Go to thy death-bed." The sweet Ophelia, having handed out her flowers, alas sinks into death, unconsciously speaking of the horror-filled sexuality that she was meant to redeem. IV The third scene I am discussing here, Gertrude's narration of Ophelia's death, brings the two women in the play into their closest association. That Gertrude has such precise and vivid information on the manner of Ophelia's drown­ ing makes it appear as if she were there herself, watching from just a few feet away. Surprisingly, I have never seen anyone wonder how Gertrude happened to come by her picturesque report. Clearly no one actually saw the drown­ ing or Ophelia would have been rescued as she floated along chanting old tunes. Though Senecan messengers conventionally have keen imaginations, Shakespeare, I am sure, means us to wonder why Ophelia has caught Ger­ trude's imagination in this way. There is also something sinister here. If we get the impression that Gertrude was actually a physical, as opposed to an imaginative, witness to

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the drowning, then we should wonder why Gertrude did not intervene. I, for one, have always felt uneasy about Gertrude's involvement in Ophelia's death. This kind of speculation links the two women not only dramatically but also imaginatively. Added to this we have the facts that both women, in contrast to all the men in the play who die, indirecdy take their own lives, Ophelia derangedly and Gertrude unknowingly; that both die from liquid, Ophelia "heavy with [her] drink" and Gertrude poisoned with hers. Considering these women for a mo­ ment in their imaginative unity, let us look more closely at Gertrude's report. There is a willow grows askant the brook, That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream: Therewith fantastic garlands did she make Of crowflowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples, That liberal shepherds give a grosser name, But our cold maids do dead men's fingers call them. There on the pendent boughs her crownet weeds Clamb'ring to hang, an envious sliver broke, When down her weedy trophies and herself Fell in the weeping brook. Her clothes spread wide, And mermaid-like awhile they bore her up, Which time she chanted snatches of old lands, As one incapable of her own distress, Or like a creature native and indued Unto that element. But long it could not be Till that her garments, heavy with their drink, Pulled the poor wretch from her melodious lay To muddy death. (iv. vii. 166-183) No one would want to deny the gross, sexual allusions here, for Gertrude places too much emphasis on the "long purples/ That liberal shepherds give a grosser name." These long purples are not only phallic symbols, for they also represent the very sexuality that Gertrude stands for; one of their "grosser" names is the "rampant widow."14 I

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think, indeed, that the whole passage is a melodious dis­ guise for the most terrifying sexuality, involving castration ("dead men's fingers"), fear, and death. Like Ophelia's songs, I think that Gertrude's story gives us a picture of a sexual encounter in which there is a reversal of roles, and that we need to reconstruct this reversal before we can ar­ rive at the passage's fantasy content. On the manifest level, the woman Ophelia comes to the masculine tree ("his hoar leaves") to hang her "crownet" on the "pendent boughs." This represents a woman actively encircling a man instead of our more typical way of think­ ing of men penetrating passive women. That there may be unconscious reversal of roles here may also be hinted at in the chop-logic of the gravedigger when he theologizes on the subject of "If the man go to this water." By substituting "the man" for Ophelia, whom he is talking about, the gravedigger gives us license to reverse the genders of the subject and object of Ophelia's actions at the brook. If we do so, then we get, on the level of unconscious symbolism, a man coming to a woman, penetrating her "crownet" with his "pendent bough[s]" (this plural makes the phallic sym­ bolism less precise but not necessarily less plausible), and in the treacherous act becoming castrated ("an envious sliver broke"). Flowers often stand for female genitalia, but here they seem to stand for both female and male, both the "fair maid" that the crowflowers represent15 and the penis of the long purples, and their union in Ophelia's garland results in deathly sexuality. In this light the phrase "melodious lay/ To muddy death" can be seen as overdetermined, plausibly referring to the sweets of sexuality turning into dirt, death, and castration. Similarly, water is a common dream symbol for woman, and Ophelia's death by water, as well as Ger­ trude's later death by poisoned drink, may represent through reversal a man's sexual death by woman. The male willow, growing "askant the brook," is perhaps in­ volved in this sexual death; "his hoar leaves" may involve a pun on "whore," thus suggesting that a man is being turned into a woman from close proximity to the female water.

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Reading a man's sexual death into Ophelia's drowning is indeed speculative, requiring considerable manipulation of the text by that unreliable principle of reversal. I had bet­ ter look closer at the gravedigger's version of the drown­ ing, for it is in his context that my interpretation seems true; only fifteen lines after Gertrude finishes her story, we get the following: Here lies the water—good. Here stands the man— good. If the man go to this water and drown himself, it is, will he nill he, he goes; mark you that. But if the water come to him and drown him, he drowns not himself. Argal, he that is not guilty of his own death, shortens not his own life. (v. i. 15-20) This occurs in a context that the gravedigger has sexualized by his curiously worded assertion that the "crowner" (coroner) has "sat" (or "sate") on Ophelia. He continues in this vein, blundering along in a way that makes it difficult to tell how aware he is of the double-entendres of his nonsense.16 The female water "lies," the man "stands" erect. The man "drowns" but "shortens not his own life"; the implication is that he has been shortened by someone else, the womanly waters that "come to him." Whatever else Shakespeare meant by all this, he wanted the sexualized drowning of a man juxtaposed to Gertrude's story of Ophelia's drowning. I do not want to deny the manifest pathos of Ophelia's death, for this pathos measures the potential good that Hamlet's fantasies have blighted. But I do want to suggest that Gertrude's speech seems, on the fantasy level, to have more to do with the fears of men than it does with the mis­ ery of Ophelia. The play is written by a man and it should not be surprising if the intensity of this passage can in large part be accounted for by male fantasies. At any rate, from this point of view it makes sense that Shakespeare should have the sexually frightening Gertrude narrate Ophelia's death with its gruesome dead men's fingers, thus identify­ ing the Prince's mother and mistress even more strongly

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with the fantasies of destructive sexuality that inform so much of the play. Sweet Ophelia is thus again brought into close identification with the kind of sexuality that Hamlet is trying to escape. Ophelia goes to her death in a poignant passivity that is poles apart from Gertrude's seductive and dangerous pas­ sivity. Yet, on the unconscious level, Ophelia's passivity is still riddled with death. There is a further, subtle sugges­ tion about the power that resides in the demure Ophelia: suicide is the only way she can die. Or, if we accept the pos­ sibility that Gertrude was criminally negligent, only another woman is strong enough to kill her. In Hamlet we hear of seven men killed by other men; the two submissive but potent women die only at their own hands. A man can only wish them away into the elements. Passivity, as in the case of the napping King Hamlet, makes men weak, but it makes women, even helpless Ophelia, terrifying and po­ tent, decked out with "dead men's fingers." It is part of the play's tragedy that the only way Hamlet can view Ophelia is in the setting of the fantasies Shakespeare gave him. V I think this view of Ophelia prepares us for the symbolism that we find in the fourth scene I want to discuss here, Ophelia's funeral. Lying in her grave, Ophelia is an object of a lovers' duel between Hamlet and Laertes, provoking both into the grave to proclaim, in the most hyperbolic terms, that they wish to be buried with her, "the quick and dead." The hyperbole seems to indicate that there are in­ tense unconscious determinants here, that the manifest situation of Ophelia in the grave is plausibly a reversal of a latent fantasy of a grave in Ophelia; 17 that is, the lovers plunge into a tomb that is, on one level, Ophelia's castrat­ ing vagina. If for the moment we conflate Hamlet ("forty thousand brothers") with Laertes into one figure, then we get an emblematic action of incestuous penetration of a womb that is a tomb, a penetration that is self-destructive

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(Hamlet and Laertes fighting) and castrating (being buried alive in a womb). The passive Ophelia thus again becomes intimately associated with all the sexual fears that swirl around Gertrude. Even in death her passivity does not keep her from being a frightening woman. If it is objected that there is no reason to see Ophelia in the grave as a reversal of a sexual grave in Ophelia, I can offer the fact that Gertrude does associate Ophelia in her grave and Ophelia in her marriage bed: Sweets to the sweet! Farewell. I hoped thou shouldst have been my Hamlet's wife. I thought thy bride bed to have decked, sweet maid, And not have strewed thy grave. (v. i. 243-246) Even though Gertrude distinguishes the two, she makes us think of graves and bride's beds in the same context. Moreover, there are other hints here that we are dealing with sexuality in addition to funerals. Hamlet's remark that he will fight on the theme of his love for Ophelia until his "eyelids no longer wag" may be an unconscious upward displacement. And the competition to see who can imagi­ natively throw up the highest mountain over his and Ophelia's joint grave seems a compensation for the under­ lying fantasies of loss of manliness. These suggestions are only trifles, though, compared to the powerful image of being buried "quick" in a woman's tomb. Again the gravedigger helps us make more certain the sexualization of Ophelia's grave. As he digs, he sings his own version of three stanzas from a love song in Tottel's Miscellany. He begins by recalling that in youth he "did love, did love." Now the young lover is ready for the grave; as he completes his singing Hamlet muses on what he sees and hears: HAM. Did these bones cost no more the breeding but to play loggets with them? Mine ache to think on't. CLOWN A pickax and a spade, a spade,

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For and a shrouding sheet; O, a pit of clay for to be made For such a guest is meet. (v. i. 91-97) With his rhythmic thrusting in the earth, and with his song of love, the gravedigger has sufficiently associated his activ­ ity with sexuality to move Hamlet to think of "breeding." And this is the grave that Hamlet is shortly to plunge into, a grave where love and the "shrouding sheet" meet (we remember the "incestuous sheets"), where sexuality and dirt are synonymous, where lovers and relatives are indis­ tinguishable. As the Ghost dug like a mole in the earth so fast, the gravedigger turns his work into another grisly reenactment of digging in the earth-mother. Thus the grave, on one level of the play, is as much in Ophelia as Ophelia is in the grave. Ophelia again represents sexuality that brings a lover to "a pit of clay." But even if we follow the gravedigger's sexualization of the grave, we must return to the surface of the play, where we find the unpleasant business of making love to the dead Ophelia. If in some sense the grave is in Ophelia, Ophelia is still in the grave and that confronts us with necrophilia, which to a literary critic is even worse than reversal. I think it sufficient to point out that for the most part psychoanaly­ sis explains necrophilia as an attempt to master the sadistic, death-causing aspects of sexuality under the assurance that it is not the necrophiliac but the corpse who is dead and castrated.18 Shakespeare, I think, has the composite brother figure Hamlet-Laertes incestuously caress the dead Ophelia in order to master fantasies of sexual death. These fantasies, as we shall later see, clamor to the surface in Hamlet's sexual disgust with Ophelia in the nunnery scene. These four scenes that have Ophelia at their imaginative center have not brought us to a pretty conception of Ham­ let's sweet mistress. Nor of his mother. But this is a play about the cankered rose, about a father and son who were weak largely because they were undone, in the son's fan-

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tasy, by sexually treacherous women. The son would thus want to kill off these women or banish them in any way he could. Hamlet wishes Ophelia out of the world in the nun­ nery scene, just as the priest in the graveyard wishes her banished to unhallowed ground, where "shards, flints, and pebbles should be thrown on her." But Hamlet does not literally have to kill off women because he has another way of dealing with them. He identifies with them.

VI Hamlet fantasizes his father as weakened by sexual entan­ glement with his mother, a passive yet fatal woman who absorbed into herself her husband's powers. The play's portrayal of women as dangerous thus complements its preoccupation with fathers who are weak. I argued earlier that in order to escape this syndrome Hamlet fantasized himself pregnant by his father and by the father figure Horatio, making himself a woman to his father in order to prove to himself that his father was really a man. I shall now argue that this adoption of a female role not only satisfies Hamlet's conflicts with his weak father but also af­ fords him an opportunity to manage his dangerous mother without having to kill her. As a third woman in the play, Hamlet can be treated in the light of what we have said about Ophelia and Gertrude. The idea of Hamlet as woman is not confined to the play's unconscious content. There are two places where Hamlet manifestly likens himself to a woman, one place where Claudius speaks of Hamlet in metaphors of preg­ nancy and birth, and a similar passage in which Gertrude speaks of the female nature of her son. First let us consider Hamlet's own version of himself as a woman. After the newly arrived players are escorted to their rooms, Hamlet breaks out into his third soliloquy, lashing himself for hav­ ing less response to his father's death than the First Player had for Hecuba's misery:

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This is most brave, That I, the son of a dear father murdered, Prompted to my revenge by heaven and hell, Must like a whore unpack my heart with words, And fall a-cursing like a very drab, A stallion! (n. ii. 589-594) Hamlet, though he disapproves, clearly thinks of himself as a woman, a "whore," a "drab," a "stallion" (a stallion is a male prostitute; the Folio has scullion = kitchen wench). He thinks of himself as having an internal organ (a "heart") pregnant with words, and just earlier in the speech he speaks of being "unpregnant of my cause." More impor­ tantly, he thinks of himself as being the lowest kind of woman, identifying with whores, absorbing them into his own person, hoping, as it were, to get them out of the envi­ ronment. Hamlet later says that Claudius "whored" his mother, and it is his mother's sexuality, I think, that he tries to master by identifying with it. Notice, too, that Hamlet not only must identify with whores but must also repudiate a worthy mother: Is it not monstrous that this player here, But in a fiction, in a dream of passion, Could force his soul so to his own conceit That from her working all his visage wanned, Tears in his eyes, distraction in his aspect, A broken voice, and his whole function suiting With forms to his conceit and all for nothing! For Hecuba! What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba, That he should weep for her? (a. ii. 556-565) I think I am right in hearing here not only Hamlet's as­ tonishment at the power of the First Player's emotion for a woman long dead, but also something more, a surprising repudiation of the worthy mother of the royal Trojans. Hamlet thinks all this emotion for Hecuba "monstrous,"

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thinks her a subject practically equivalent to "nothing," exclaims "For Hecuba!" as if she were contemptible, the last person anyone would get excited about. True, he is condemning his inability to register a complaint about a real and present injustice while the First Player storms so potently about a fictitious and past loss, but he is also re­ pudiating Hecuba—and this deserves an explanation. Hamlet rejects this virtuous mother, I think, because his psyche is overloaded with the whorish aspect of his mother, and Hecuba, through contrast, only makes matters worse. It is precisely because Gertrude is not like Hecuba that Hamlet must incorporate his mother and try to get her whorishness under control. This he can do under less pres­ sure if he dismisses from his mind the touchstone that shows his mother so poorly. Later he will tell Gertrude to throw away the worst part of her heart and "live the purer with the other half," but in the "Hecuba" soliloquy he does the opposite, throwing away the good mother and adopt­ ing the bad, attempting, by a strange but unconsciously plausible strategy, to bring about the same reform he urges on his mother. Hopefully, according to this strategy, whorish Gertrude will disappear if Hamlet takes on her identity. But, as always, the return of the repressed makes itself felt and the soliloquy leaves Hamlet embroiled with whorishness, himself a whore like the women of his fan­ tasies, himself rejecting the Hecuban virtues with which he is trying to endow his mother, himself shunning Hecuba as "nothing," i.e., a "cunt" (cf. the bawdy punning on "noth­ ing" in the play scene). Eissler speaks of Hamlet's fear in this soliloquy of becom­ ing a "sexually perverted passive male."191 think what is to be noted is that Hamlet, though he is horrified by his own passivity just as he is horrified by his father's fatal passivity, turns himself into a "sexually perverted passive male" any­ way, unconsciously hoping to master a deeper fear of sexu­ ally perverted passive females. For it is women who have the power to steal men's potency and render them passive; to master women is to master passivity.

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The next time Hamlet likens himself to a woman, it is part of a strategy of deliberate passivity. This is how he brushes off doubts about fencing with Laertes: HAM. But thou wouldst not think how ill all's here about my heart. But it is no matter. HOR. Nay, good my Lord— HAM. It is but foolery, but it is such a kind of gaingiving as would perhaps trouble a woman. (v. ii. 214-218) Hamlet knows he is walking into a trap; he has good reason to suspect a deadly plot in Claudius' and Laertes' friendly fencing match. To obey this suspicion, he says, would be womanly. But it would not be womanly, it would be sane; to go to his death like a sheep is much more the act of feminine cowardice, reminiscent of Ophelia's passive death. Hamlet's denial of femininity thus does not describe his behavior, though it does give us the terms in which to understand it. He needs to be like "a woman" in order to absorb the destructive passivity of women into himself, where it might be wishfully under control and useful to his ends. In fact his passive surrender to Claudius' plot does destroy his enemy, though the price for this success is his own unmanning, the suffering of being penetrated and poisoned like his father. Weak and passive, a victim of other men's stratagems, Hamlet follows meekly along in order to destroy hardy and active men; in this he is like the mother of his fantasies. Internalizing the identity of a de­ structive, passive woman is thus a way of eliminating Ger­ trude from the external world without actually having to resort to matricide. Hamlet's characterization of himself as a woman is echoed by Claudius. Though Claudius presents his own machinations as forceful and manly ("Offense's gilded hand may shove by justice"), he portrays the scheming of the hysterical Hamlet as feminine:

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There's something in his soul O'er which his melancholy sits on brood, And I do doubt the hatch and the disclose Will be some danger. (iii . i. 165-168) Here in the nunnery scene Claudius disagrees with Polonius' diagnosis of Hamlet as lovesick; rather, he sus­ pects the Prince, who has just made threatening remarks about letting "all but one" marriage survive, of craft. Ac­ cording to Claudius, Hamlet "sits on brood" like a mother hen, ready to "hatch" some dangerous plot. This is an image of a destructive birth (of which there are many in the play, as we shall see in Chapter Seven), and it makes Ham­ let into a hideous mother. This parallels Hamlet's identifi­ cation with whores and his destructive use of passivity in the play's last scene. Through Claudius, Shakespeare seems to envisage Hamlet overcoming his fears of birth and women by becoming like what he fears. To summarize this complex process, let us skip to a similar passage at the end of the play. After Hamlet finishes raving in Ophelia's grave, Ger­ trude comments on the feminine and neurotic behavior that regularly possesses her son: This is mere madness; And thus awhile the fit will work on him. Anon, as patient as the female dove When that her golden couplets are disclosed, His silence will sit drooping. (v. i. 284-288) Like Claudius, Gertrude likens Hamlet to a delivered mother, albeit a mother dove who has just hatched ("dis­ closed") two baby doves ("couplets") covered with golden down. One aspect of this fantasy seems to involve an allu­ sion to a beautiful ("golden") birth, redeemed from women. Shakespeare's fantasy seems to say, as it were, "I wish birth could be handled exclusively by a hermaphro-

MOTHER MISTRESS MAN

dite man, by Hamlet the male-female dove." There is of course a certain amount of irony involved in this fantasy wish as Shakespeare puts it in the mouth of Gertrude. Another aspect of the fantasy also undermines this wish. As in Ophelia's description of Hamlet's sighing in her chamber in such a manner "As it did seem to shatter all his bulk/ And end his being," Gertrude, I think, alludes to a sexual climax on the part of Hamlet. "His golden couplets disclosed" strikes me as a possible though disguised refer­ ence to ejaculation, with "couplets" referring to Hamlet's testicles and "disclosed" to an orgasmic bursting out. Simi­ larly, "His silence sits drooping" seems a description of a post-coital penis. This is a rather speculative interpreta­ tion, resting on uncertain symbolism. But if we remember that Gertrude's remarks occur just after the latent, sexualized penetration of Ophelia's grave, then it seems less strange to relate her description of Hamlet to a de­ scription of ejaculation. Also, "His silence sits drooping" is a metaphor that accords a certain amount of physicality to "silence." At any rate, it is no more strange to think of Ger­ trude unconsciously alluding to her son's sexuality than it is to think of her alluding to his motherhood, and if my read­ ing is correct, then we get a fantasy of Hamlet "drooping" after completing the conflict-ridden, sexual act of plung­ ing into Ophelia's grave. This of course undercuts the concomitant fantasy of banishing women from the of­ fice of giving birth. Even as a fantasized woman, there seems to be no way for Hamlet to escape the conflicts of heterosexuality. Hamlet, as woman and mother, as whore, as impreg­ nated by King Hamlet and by Horatio, adopts strategies aimed at, among other things, the mastery of the terrors of woman through identification with them. It is part of Shakespeare's undeniable health that he was able to enter­ tain these strategies and the realities that undermine them, working opposites into the controlling realm of art. Shakespeare adopts no easy strategy that magically lifts his characters, or himself, out of conflict. Hamlet may be, at

MOTHER MISTRESS MAN

times, a mother or a mistress, one of three women in the play, but for the most part he is a man in conflict with the kind of woman who destroyed his father. Mothermistress-man is thus a triad of ideas in the play that repre­ sents a considerable amount of unconscious conflict, but Shakespeare never merely brushes this conflict away by having Hamlet wish that he were himself a woman, his own mother or his father's mistress.

SEVEN TO BE OR NOT TO BE BORN

I MY DISCUSSION of Ophelia and Gertrude only begins to de­

scribe the play's themes of women, conception, and birth. There are many other images and fantasies that indirectly reflect on Gertrude and Ophelia and on Hamlet's revulsion toward female sexuality. This material is scattered throughout the play but becomes especially intense in the "To be or not to be" soliloquy. This is not self-evident, and so I would like to use this chapter both to shed psycho­ analytic light on what is perhaps the most puzzling passage in dramatic literature and to support and expand the interpretations offered in Chapter Six. As I go through the "To be" soliloquy and its connections with other pas­ sages in the play, I will keep in mind that it is a prelude to these irrationally bitter insinuations about Ophelia's sexu­ ality: If thou dost marry, I'll give thee this plague for thy dowry; be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as snow, thou shalt not escape calumny. Get thee to a nunnery. . . . I have heard of your paintings well enough. God hath given you one face, and you make yourselves another. You jig and amble, and you lisp; you nickname God's creatures and make your wantonness your ignorance. Go to, I'll no more on't; it hath made me mad. (in. i. 135-148) This outburst occurs forty lines after Hamlet finishes the "To be" meditation, and it represents, as I will try to show, a surfacing of what was there deeply buried and carefully controlled. I will postpone until the next chapter an analysis of the multifaceted nature of the nunnery scene,

TO BE OR NOT TO BE

its emphasis on the peepers Claudius and Polonius, on Ophelia's reading and her returning of Hamlet's "remem­ brances," but here I want to focus on the fact that the "To be" passage flows into a "mad" inquiry into Ophelia's sex­ ual "honesty." Of course it is important to remember that Hamlet's meeting of Ophelia, who is nervously acting out her father's plot, may force a radical disjuncture from his thoughts in the "To be" soliloquy, but if the present ar­ rangement of the text represents Shakespeare's intention, we should follow the usual critical and psychoanalytic prac­ tice of assuming organic unity. Most critics, however, have chosen to remove the so­ liloquy from its context, thus making it even harder to interpret. John Dover Wilsonjustifies this treatment of the passage by noting that "To be or not to be" is not in fact "The question" of the play, that it is a digression. "No one but Shakespeare could have interrupted an exciting dra­ matic intrigue with a passage like this. The surprise and the audacity of it takes our breath away," exclaims Wilson.1 One can move the soliloquy around in the text, adopting, say, its position in the First Quarto, or one can extrapolate a gloss to fix up its present context, as Samuel Johnson does ("Before I can form any rational scheme of action under the pressure of this distress, it is necessary to decide whether, after our present state we are to be or not to be"),2 and still the soliloquy, according to the critics, does not quite fit. Turn it how you will, the passage's relevance seems shrouded in almost monumental irrelevance. Of course there are always critics who can overcome their difficulties with the surface level of a text by raising these difficulties to principles. Stephen Booth, for exam­ ple, in "On the Value of Hamlet," finds value where others have found trouble. Hamlet's soliloquy, surprising in its very existence and puzzling in its systematic undermining of the distinction it begins with, is, according to Booth, typ­ ical of a play that "obviously makes sense and . . . just as obviously cannot be made sense of." "The soliloquy, the last scene, the first scene, the play—each and together—

TO BE OR NOT TO BE

make an impossible coherence of truths that are both un­ deniably incompatible and undeniably coexistent."3 My problem with Booth is that in placing value on art that expands our ability to accept incoherence within coherence ("People see Hamlet and tolerate inconsistencies that it does not seem they could bear"), he has no way of relating that which is coherent to that which is incoherent. This, I know, would involve discovering a new coherence, and it is just in Hamlet's lack of final coherence that Booth finds the value of the play. But surely the "To be or not to be" soliloquy, having captured the imagination of the world, must contain some meaningful relationship be­ tween what engages us and what puzzles us, some coher­ ence less abstract than the moral Booth draws: "Truth is bigger than any one system for knowing it, and Hamlet is bigger than any of the frames of reference it inhabits." I, for one, am less interested in knowing that Hamlet is larger than its frames of reference than in understanding why it inhabits just those frames of reference. The ambivalence that Booth finds in the "To be" passage has, I think, a locus in human behavior as psychoanalysis describes it, and this ambivalence can "be made sense of" if we do not ignore the fantasy content of the passage and the following nun­ nery scene. While Booth at least argues for the value of the solil­ oquy's illogical inclusiveness, Harry Levin, in The Question of Hamlet, argues that "though [its] syntax is quite informal, the movement of ideas is logical" and the question remains coherent. It is worth quoting Levin to illustrate the compli­ cated machinery scholars use to avoid fantasy and emotion: "The process of dubitation, with its disjunctive eithers and whethers, usually involves more choices than one; and readers or hearers oversimplify when they equate 'to be' with 'to suffer' and 'to take arms' with 'not to be' (hi. i. 5658). The method preferred by Renaissance logicians— which does not differ greatly from the selective procedures used today by so-called mechanical brains—was the

TO BE OR NOT TO BE

dichotomy, which chopped its subjects down by dividing them in half and subdividing the resultant divisions into halves again. The result may be bracketed into a diagram of the sort that we find in Robert Burton and Petrus Ramus. Thus, if we leave aside the unpromising conse­ quences of 'not to be,' the proposition 'to be' entails two possibilities: 'to suffer,' and—if we flinch from that for the moment—'to take arms. . . .' What follows is, once more, a bifurcation. How we may end our troubles by opposing them is equivocal; our opposition may do away with them or with ourselves. This deflects us toward the alternative, 'to die'; and if that is truly the end, if death is no more than a sleep, we are back in the dreamless realm of 'not to be.' But if, instead of oblivion, there are dreams; and if those dreams are nightmares, comparable to the worst sufferings of this life; then we are impaled upon the other horn of the dilemma— 'to suffer . . . ,' 'to be. . . .' "4 Levin almost convinces me, via a simpler line of argu­ ment than Booth's, that there is, after all, no problem. "To be or not to be" is the philosophic question of Hamlet epitomized. But Hamlet is touching upon nightmares, his own and ours, and no amount of intellection (Ramist or Levinesque) is going to account for the effect this soliloquy has had over the centuries. Hamlet is somewhat engaged in an intellectual exercise, but that is not what stirs us or him; he will shortly loose an uncontrollable torrent of filth on Ophelia. I am going to suggest that "To be or not to be" does not seem to be or remain the question partly because its ap­ parent logic is complicated by unconscious irrationality. Specifically, I am going to suggest that its surface reference to suicide is inextricably bound up with a latent and com­ plex reference to birth and sexuality. Yes, I am going to argue that the soliloquy is about both death and birth, and I will try to reconcile this Boothian double frame of refer­ ence. I do not think anyone has noticed that even on the surface level this most famous line in literature could well

TO BE OR NOT TO BE

be the first words in a meditation on to be or not to be born. Hamlet is throughout preoccupied with a whole complex of fantasies revolving around conception and birth: So oft it chances in particular men That for some vicious mole of nature in them, As in their birth. (i. iv. 23-25) The time is out of joint, O cursed spite, That ever I was born to set it right! (1. v. 189-190) For if the sun breed maggots in a dead dog, being a good kissing carrion. (11. ii. 180-181) Conception is a blessing but as your daughter may conceive, friend, look to't. (11. ii. 185-187) Yet I, A dull and muddy-metded rascal, peak Like John-a-dreams, unpregnant of my cause, And can say nothing. (11. ii. 572-575) Why wouldst thou be a breeder of sinners? (HI. i. 121-122)

I could accuse me of such things that it were better my mother had not borne me. (HI. i. 123-124) Did these bones cost no more the breeding, but to play at loggats with them? Mine ache to think on't. (v- i- 91-93) I will try to set the soliloquy in this context. But before I do so I should present my reasons for suspecting that the soliloquy has to do with birth in the first place. In addition to the indeterminacy of the first line, there is, to begin with,

TO BE OR NOT TO BE

a curious insistence on forms of the word bear: "bear the whips," "bare bodkin," "fardels bear," "bourn," "bear those ills." When Hamlet says a few lines after the soliloquy that he wishes his mother "had not borne" him, the previous versions of "borne" all of a sudden strike me in retrospect as the trace of unconscious thoughts on birth struggling to express themselves. In the soliloquy the word "bourn" seems particularly expressive in that it carries a potential pun. In addition, the soliloquy suggests some sort of birth in these lines: 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. (hi . i. 84-88) The image seems to be one of a child born healthy and then sicklied over. This is rather speculative, but the word "native" apparently caught G. Wilson Knight's imagination in the same way it does mine; Knight too senses here a "rosy cheeked" baby boy: "The image . . . contrasts the chubby face of youthful ardour with the sickly introspec­ tion of the ascetic. But what on earth has this rosy cheeked boy to do with suicide?—for it is he, not the other, who is expected to take the plunge."5 (This suicidal boy seems just the emblem for what I consider the double focus of the so­ liloquy: birth and death.) Further references to birth may possibly be found in the allusion to naming ("lose the name") and in an unconsciously determined allusion to the birth waters that bring a child "awry" into the world. And lastly, the phrase "the thousand natural shocks/ That flesh is heir to" perhaps suggests birth trauma; certainly the word "heir" conjures up something to do with a new gen­ eration. Though some of the words in the soliloquy suggest birth only in the most removed way, the total impression of the passage seems to me to invoke birth as well as death.

TO BE OR NOT TO BE

Admittedly, my emphasis on birth runs counter to the soliloquy's overt talk about dying and may seem to further obfuscate matters that are confusing enough. Yet, I main­ tain, it is the fantasies of birth and the necessary parental sexuality that this involves that give rise to and largely ac­ count for Hamlet's rather baffling meditation on selfdestruction. Indeed, Hamlet has previously linked birth with self-destruction: So oft it chances in particular men That for some vicious mole of nature in them, As in their birth, wherein they are not guilty, (Since nature cannot choose his origin) By the o'ergrowth of some complexion, Oft breaking down the pales and forts of reason, Or by some habit, that too much o'erleavens The form of plausive manners, that (these men, Carrying, I say, the stamp of one defect, Being nature's livery, or fortune's star) His virtues else, be they as pure as grace, As infinite as man may undergo, Shall in the general censure take corruption From that particular fault. The dram of evil Doth all the noble substance to a doubt, To his own scandal. (i. iv. 23-38) If this talk of birth's saddling a child with his own de­ struction is as relevant to the "To be" passage as I think it is, it would be helpful to know what Hamlet is talking about when he describes "particular men" who are born with "particular fault." Notice that the emphatic word "particu­ lar" is repeated twice; it is a word that Gertrude has already applied to Hamlet with special reference to death: QUEEN Thou know'st 'tis common; all that lives must die, Passing through nature to eternity. HAM. Ay madam, it is common.

TO BE OR NOT TO BE

QUEEN If it be, Why seems it so particular with thee? (i. ii. 72-75) I think, then, that Hamlet is talking about himself when he talks of "particular men" and "particular fault." His plural "particular men" gives way to the singular "His virtues," "his own scandal," as if he has someone specific in mind. Hamlet, I think, is unconsciously talking about the guilt (though he protests he is "not guilty") that begins at his birth and leads to his destruction ("corruption"). What is the nature of this corruption? On one level it seems to have something to do with Claudius' drunken­ ness, for this has provoked Hamlet's discourse, but drunk­ enness is not the corruption that is poisoning Ham­ let's relationship with the unfaithful Gertrude and with Ophelia. Rather, I think, Hamlet's imagination is running more on the sexuality that is excited by drunkenness than on drunkenness itself; at least the next time he talks about the drunk Claudius he is telling Gertrude not to allow "the bloat King" to tempt her "again to bed." Thus it may not be at all strange if Hamlet sees his mother's sexuality as the "particular fault" that links his own birth and his selfdestructive disgust with life, the same fault that led, as in the myth of Tristan, to his own engendering and his father's death. Let me go through the "To be" soliloquy from this point of view.

II The question quickly turns into another: Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, And by opposing end them. (in. i. 57-60)

TO BE OR NOT TO BE I think it a mistake to take "outrageous fortune" here as a simple synonym for "the whips and scorns of time" (which have, I shall argue, their own specific connotations), for Fortune is a whorish woman who has certain connections with Gertrude. Elsewhere Hamlet reveals quite erotic feel­ ings about Fortune: GUILD. On Fortune's cap we are not the very button. HAM. Nor the soles of her shoe? ROSEN. Neither, my lord. HAM. Then you live about her waist, or in the middle of her favors? GUILD. Faith, her privates we. HAM. In the secret parts of Fortune? O, most true! She is a strumpet. (II. ii. 232-239) and blest are those Whose blood and judgment are so well commeddled That they are not a pipe for Fortune's finger To sound what stop she pleases. (HI. ii. 70-73) In the Renaissance, Fortune is a woman with the appro­ priately seductive "secret parts," yet she plays a man's pipe only to undo him, to raise him to erect heights only to dash him to ultimate destruction as "she pleases." She has ab­ sorbed her potency from the men she has destroyed. So too in the soliloquy she is fantasized as the wielder of phallic "slings and arrows" (hence "outrageous"). We expect as we read through the either-or proposition about the nobler mind that Fortune will remain the subject of both halves: whether to suffer Fortune or to take arms against her. That Hamlet's attention is deflected from Fortune to a sea of troubles makes me suspect that he is unconsciously trying to suppress all that Fortune represents to him in an amorphous and diffused "sea" (so vague that it has pro­ voked a spate of emendation). But his very attempt at sup­ pression perhaps reveals what is bothering him; for "sea" is

TO BE OR NOT TO BE

a common dream symbol for woman. In this light we can partly interpret Hamlet's meditation on Fortune as fol­ lows: whether to suffer passively the attacks of a phallic woman or to assert phallicism ("take arms") against her. From the beginning of the play, the woman that Hamlet is most obsessed about is of course his mother, and For­ tune, the sublunary manager of men's lives, seems an obvi­ ous disguise for Queen Gertrude. His oedipal desires hav­ ing been reawakened by Claudius' success, Hamlet is, in the soliloquy, unconsciously brooding on the temptations and risks of returning once again to his mother's womb, not just as a baby being born, but also in the phallic manner of his father. The risks of this incest are clear: castration by the frightening woman who undid King Hamlet or by her substitute Fortune, who plays the "stops" or holes of men. Hamlet's own birth is a proof of the parental sexuality in which he wishes to participate, but it is also tied, in the fan­ tasy life Shakespeare gave him, with what seems to be a very disturbing primal-scene memory in which the mother becomes potent by castrating her husband and absorbing his phallic power: Who would fardels bear, To grunt and sweat under a weary life, But that the dread of something after death, The undiscovered country, from whose bourn No traveller returns, puzzles the will, And makes us rather bear those ills we have, Than fly to others that we know not of? Thus conscience does make cowards of us all. (πι. i. 76-83) Earlier I argued that Hamlet must come to terms with a kingly father who lost his phallicism in a primal scene. Here Hamlet is again reworking the horrors of "sleep" and "dream," the "grunt and sweat" of parental sexuality (cf. Hamlet's bitter words to Gertrude in her closet that recall this grunting and sweating: "the rank sweat of an enseamed bed,/ Stewed in corruption, honeying and making love/

TO BE OR NOT TO BE

Over the nasty sty"). This sexuality seems again linked with the father's castration in that the "country"· from which no traveller returns is, on an unconscious level, probably not the country from which the Ghost does return but the one implied in Hamlet's obscene pun during the play scene: "country matters." Because sexuality is so dangerous, one cannot return intact from this country. Even if we take "country" to be the Ghost's Purgatory, Hamlet thinks, in the "tables" soliloquy, of this country too, from which travellers apparendy can return only impotently and inef­ fectually, as something to "couple" with. "Country" is also related to "conscience," which, on the manifest level, means a cowardly taking inventory of pros and cons; but, on the latent level, it seems to be that which causes sexual cowardice, the fear of phallic flight ("makes us rather bear those ills we have/ Than fly to others we know not of"); it seems an echo of (or another version of) that castrating female "country." It may seem absurd, even on an unconscious level, to interpret con-science as "cunt-knowledge," or simply "cunt," but there is some evidence that Shakespeare sometimes made this bawdy pun intentionally. Sonnet 151 seems to turn on just this pun, and the Old Lady in Henry VIII relies on a double-entendre of "conscience" when she encourages Anne to put aside her scruples and venture her "maidenhead" to Henry's desire: the capacity Of your soft cheveril conscience would receive, If you might please to stretch it. (11. iii. 31-33) In addition to this reading of "conscience," there may be, in the soliloquy, a pun on the literal Latin meaning of con­ science, that is "knowing together," and this may hint at the primal scene. At any rate, I think unconscious knowledge of a castrating primal scene, of a country from which no traveller returns, accounts for a good deal of the soliloquy's motivation.

TO BE OR NOT TO BE

Further evidence that Hamlet is reliving a primal scene may be found, I think, in the excessive attention given to forms of the words "bare" and "bear." These words, as we saw, imply birth; they also suggest sexuality. "Bare" means "unsheathed," "nude." What connotations "bear" might have brought along are clear from these passages: Women are made to bear, and so are you. [i.e., bear a man's weight, as well as bear a child.] (Shrew, π. i. 209) This is the hag, when maids lie on their backs That presses them and learns them first to bear Making them women of good carriage. [again bear a man's weight and bear a child.] CR fc? J, i. iv. 92-95) The word "bear" thus invokes converging meanings hav­ ing to do with birth and sexuality as well as simple carrying. The phrase "who would fardels bear ... But that the dread of something" may thus be variously interpreted: (1) bear­ ing inert fardels is less dreadful than allowing a woman to bear one in intercourse into the "country" (cf. Ferdinand's log-bearing as a substitute for sexual relations that Miranda in The Tempest)·, (2) bearing inert bundles is less dreadful than bearing or giving birth to children, and al­ lows the child to do the bearing, thus getting rid of the frightful mother; (3) bearingfardels sounds (I am following a very speculative critic here) a little like bearing fathers6— that is bearing (being a mistress to) one's father, as we saw in the "tables" soliloquy, is less dreadful than being a man borne into the "country." The manifest meaning of this passage, that bearing trouble is better than death, also suggests, via the tiresome Elizabethan pun on dying, fear of sexuality; in any case, the manifest level is not Hamlet's real concern for dying is not, as we have seen, his im­ mediate problem. We begin here to see the connection between the pas­ sage's double allusion to birth and death. For it was through birth that the child Hamlet was initiated into

TO BE OR NOT TO BE

deadly intimacy with his mother, an intimacy that now threatens him, no matter how it is resolved: if he takes arms against his mother, or any other woman, he runs the risk of being castrated like his father; if he suffers patiently, he proves himself a castrate, a passive victim of Fortune. "But what on earth has this rosy cheeked boy to do with suicide?" asked Knight. Alas, all too much. Birth initiates Hamlet into Gertrude's corrupt sexuality and hence into death. Now is perhaps a good time to quote one of the play's many powerful images of birth into death, an image that brings to the surface that which is submerged in the "To be" soliloquy: tell Why thy canonized bones, hearsed in death, Have burst their cerements, why the sepulcher Wherein we saw thee quietly interred Hath oped his ponderous and marble jaws To cast thee up again. (i. iv. 46-51) Appropriately directed to the elder Hamlet, this evokes a frightening picture of birth from and into death, a picture of difiFerent detail but on the same theme as the child born "awry" into the world. The "marble jaws" through which King Hamlet passes seem to constitute both a vagina and a tomb. The impotent father who passes through these jaws unfortunately becomes a self-image of Hamlet, who him­ self passed through similar "jaws" when he was born. Emerging from his tomb, King Hamlet makes a strong impression, but tells a story of his weakness, his inability to act on his own behalf. His "rebirth" is aptly characterized by the Player King's valuation of his wife's vows of perma­ nent widowhood: "Of violent birth but poor validity." Young Hamlet too can be characterized as victimized by his birth, "For he himself is subject to his birth," as Laertes warns Ophelia in a passage whose significance to the play is deeper than usually supposed. Laertes means by "birth"

TO BE OR NOT TO BE

Hamlet's "greatness," which he cynically equates with "cir­ cumscribed" expediency. But Laertes also implies, in his own corrupt logic, that Hamlet's "birth" necessitates a de­ vious and destructive sexuality; Hamlet, according to Laertes, will plunder Ophelia's "chaste treasure" as "The canker galls the infant of the spring." Laertes is wrong to accuse Hamlet of this unfeeling rapacity, for it is not true of the Prince's conscious view of birth and sexuality; but, ironically, it is true of Hamlet's unconscious, in which sex­ uality does gall the infant of the spring, in which the "na­ tive hue" is "sicklied o'er" and of "poor validity." Thus the idea of birth, with all its frightening sexual causes and consequences, can threaten a child with death, force him to see the world as a place in which one gives birth to dead matter only. Hamlet is forced to regress to anality, because this is, as we saw in the "tables" soliloquy, the mode that most accomodates death and corruption in life. Unable to derive pleasure from his adult creativity, from his ability to give birth to life in art, to "beget a tem­ perance," as he says to the players, Hamlet must regress to an anal realm where pleasure can be derived from aggres­ sive and destructive impulses. The pleasure of art must give way to the grim jocularity of devising his schoolfellows' deaths and relishing the idea of worms at work on Polonius and others. At times Hamlet regresses from the vision of life engendering life to an obsession with the life cycle as death feeding on death: "A man may fish with the worm that both eat of a king, and eat of the fish that hath fed of that worm." "We fat all creatures else to fat us, and we fat ourselves for maggots." "And thus the nature hue of reso­ lution/ is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought." In this connection, it is worth re-quoting the following lines from the graveyard scene to show the constellation in which the birth fantasies of the "To be" soliloquy fit: Did these bones cost no more the breeding but to play at loggets with them? Mine ache to think on't. (v· i- 93-95)

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This reveals, in a joking, lighthearted manner, a similar disgust with breeding that Hamlet betrayed in his jibes at Polonius about breeding "maggots in a dead dog." Breed­ ing leads to death, to dirt and degradation in that bones are likened to small pieces of wood or other matter that are thrown at an object during a game.7 In this anal world, bones do not live but "cost." Hamlet's own birth is brought into this perspective as the gravedigger, standing mid human wreckage, gives us the circumstances of "that very day that young Hamlet was born." It is as if Hamlet's birth occurred in the graveyard just as it is being narrated in the graveyard. In the conclud­ ing lines of the play Hamlet is almost literally born into death: "Let four captains/ Bear Hamlet." This is the end to which Hamlet points in his iteration of the word "bear" in the "To be" soliloquy. Shakespeare's imagery of birth into death is persistent at the end of the play: Ά did comply, sir, with his dug, before 'a sucked it. Thus has he, and many more of the same breed that I know the drossy age dotes on, only got the tune of the time. (v. ii. 193-194) Osric, Hamlet tells us, has survived a decadent infancy dur­ ing which he "did comply with his dug, before 'a sucked it," an infancy that, full of the negotiations typical of anality, has well prepared him for a "drossy" age that dotes on those "spacious in the possession of dirt." Osric's birth has thus led to the same dead world to which Hamlet's birth has led. Rejecting the model of Osric, Hamlet thinks he is not of the same "breed," but it is precisely his own negotia­ tions with his parents, with whether to take arms against Fortune/Gertrude, that destroy the promise of his birth. Ill To defend himself against his deadly oedipal conflict he has been born into, Hamlet can either (1) wish his father

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strong enough to have avoided castration and to have un­ ambiguously discouraged his son's oedipal desires, or (2) wish that his mother was less seductive and less castrating, or (3) wish, as he does elsewhere, that parental sexuality does not exist and that he was never born, or (4) stop trying to wish away anxiety and sublimate it, weave it into a medi­ tation. As it happens, he tries all these things in the "To be" soliloquy, none of them successfully: 1. Parallel in construction to "the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune" is "the whips and scorns of time." Just as the "outrageous fortune" conjures up an image of Ham­ let's mother so do the "scorns of time" conjure up his father: For who would bear the whips and scorns of time, Th' oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely, The pangs of despised love, the law's delay, The insolence of office, and the spurns That patient merit of th' unworthy takes. (ill. i. 70-74) Here Hamlet, in rough strokes, shadows forth an imposing authority figure (or composite of figures), an oedipal "op­ pressor" who makes his son feel the "pangs of despised love." As far as this goes, it represents Hamlet's wish for a father sufficiently strong to make him give up incest once and for all. Unfortunately, this authority figure also man­ ifests weaknesses. He is an oppressor in the "wrong," with no clear claim to his son's obedience, a "proud man," "un­ worthy" of his arrogance, insolently rejecting the "patient merit" of his son. He is not strong enough to exact the law; like his son who has incorporated him as a tarnished ideal, he is involved in "delay," forcing his son to make his own law, his own "quietus." Johnson8 was right in pointing out that these are not ills that would plague a prince, but they are the ills that would unconsciously strike a prince in Hamlet's oedipal situation. Like Hamlet's madness, these "whips and scorns of time" symbolically represent an ambi­ valent father who both scorns and is scorned by his son. 2. Hamlet could make do with this ambiguous image of

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his father if his mother were not so seductively carnal and so potently castrating. Hence he tries to temper the sexual death that the mother can inflict. "A consummation/ De­ voutly to be wished" in his almost pathetic attempt to en­ fold the nightmarish primal-scene mother in the less car­ nal, less threatening version of marital "consummation" sanctified by the devout church. In offering this interpreta­ tion I am assuming that the juxtaposition of "consumma­ tion" and "devoutly" is not accidental and that it suggests marriage. Of course Hamlet is referring to himself, to his death, when he speaks of "consummation," but it would not be strange to find Hamlet condensing a reference to his own death with a wish for a more sanctified mother who would free him from death wishes. Hamlet also may be echoing Christ on the cross ("consummatum est"); if so, he is alluding to another son who condensed birth and death—though Christ of course wishfully managed to turn death into rebirth, thus avoiding Hamlet's fears that birth has been turned into death. But then Christ was the son of the Immaculate Mary. Gertrude (or Fortune), however, with her "thousand natural shocks," with her ability "to post/ With such dexterity to incestuous sheets," is too incontestably carnal to wish away successfully. 3. Hamlet, mired in the guilt and shame of inadequacy, trapped with a mother whose carnality cannot be altered even in fantasy and with a father whose weakness was proved by his death and his wife's early remarriage, centers his wishes on the third member of the oedipal triangle: he wishes himself unborn (just after the soliloquy): I could accuse me of such things that it were better my mother had not borne me: I am very proud, revenge­ ful, ambitious, with more offenses at my beck than I have thoughts to put them in, imagination to give them shape, or time to act them in. What should such fellows as I do crawling between earth and heaven? We are arrant knaves all, believe none of us. Go thy ways to a nunnery. (HI. i. 123-130)

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This is Hamlet describing himself as Laertes described him to Ophelia. But Hamlet cannot be describing his actual behavior. To some degree, all these "offenses" that this noble philosopher-prince is harping on must refer to "thoughts" that he has never acted on, that are deeper than imagination and more terrible, to "proud, revengeful, am­ bitious" fantasies that sound suspiciously like those which make oedipal sons wish their mothers had never borne them. Psychoanalysis usually identifies such powerful and unnameable "offenses," such exaggerated feelings of sin that appear to have no reference in the manifest world, as derived from incest fantasies. The way to handle incest, Hamlet seems to be saying on an unconscious level, is to banish birth, to banish himself from "between heaven and earth," and to banish women, the "breeder[s] of sinners," to an asexual "nunnery." Of course "nunnery," taken as an Elizabethan brothel, undermines the wish. Sexuality can­ not be wished away, though this is, I think, what Hamlet tries to do by contemplating making his own "quietus." Quietus is a legal term for "full discharge"; it is thus not far, in sound or sense, from coitus. In Hamlet's world, however, women will always breed sinners, both biologically and oedipally, and there is no way to expropriate their sexuality by making one's own "quietus." 4. His wishes undercutting themselves as they are made, Hamlet must continue his dynamic struggle to manage his troubling fantasies by disguising them. The soliloquy, in its manifest guise as a meditation on suicide, offers him the opportunity to sublimate, and thereby control to some ex­ tent, his worst fears. I have mentioned the feared results of visiting the "undiscovered country"; but it is important to note that this fear is sublimated, hidden in the Christian scheme of the universe. Fear of castration also seems to be disguised in these lines of rarefied meditation: To die, to sleep— To sleep, perchance to dream: ay there's the rub, For in that sleep of death what dreams may come x 95

TO BE OR NOT TO BE When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, Must give us pause. (HI. i. 64-68) I think we are again dealing with the nightmares of castra­ tion and primal-scene "sleep." We get two images here that reinforce this interpretation. The first is the "rub," "a term of bowls, meaning a collision hindering the bowl in its course,"9 and it was probably chosen because it uncon­ sciously represented to Shakespeare incapacitated phallicism. My evidence for this assertion goes a little further than the plausibility of phallic symbolism in the hindered bowl. "Rub" seems to have been an Elizabethan vulgarism for sexuality,10 as in Troilus and Cressida, where Pandarus shoos the lovers off to bed ("so, so; rub on and kiss the mis­ tress"), and in Love's Labour's Lost where Maria and Boyet engage in a little bawdy repartee: MAR. Come come, you talk greasily; your lips grow foul. COS. She's too hard for you at pricks, sir. Challenge her to bowl. BOY. I fear too much rubbing. (iv. i. 139-141) What Boyet fears is a sexual encounter with the dangerous Maria, and perhaps something of this nature is in the un­ conscious content of Hamlet's fear of his "rub." In addition to "rub" we have "mortal coil." In the course of time the word "coil" has provoked much emendation because it does not quite seem to be used in either of the two familiar Elizabethan senses ("turmoil" and "looped rope"),11 but I am going to offer a scintilla of further evidence for main­ taining it as it is. My evidence takes the form of an etymol­ ogy possible only in the unconscious, but this is probably no stranger than the Gaelic derivations that are suggested in the Variorum Edition. "Coillen" (the OED lists other possi­ ble sixteenth-century spellings under "cullion") means testi­ cle and it seems possible to me that Shakespeare wrenched

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"coil" out of its usual uses because it brought with it certain appropriate unconscious associations. What Hamlet is un­ consciously doing, I think, is trying to diffuse in philo­ sophic speculation the consequences of the erotic sleep, the "rub," that shuffles off the most "mortal" part of man, his "coillens." That castration is part of what is being sublimated here seems to get support from the rather transparent fantasies that the passage elicited from Charles Lamb: "I confess myself utterly unable to appreciate that celebrated so­ liloquy in Hamlet, beginning, 'To be, or not to be,' or to tell whether it be good, bad, or indifferent; it has been so han­ dled and pawed about by declamatory boys and men, and torn so inhumanly from its living place and principle of continuity in the play, till it has become to me a perfect dead member."12 "A perfect dead member," "torn so in­ humanly from its living place," may be just an accident of expression unrelated to the actual content of our soliloquy, but I do not think so. Lamb, of course, is deaf to the possi­ ble unconscious content of his remarks because he, like Hamlet, has sublimated raw fantasy to philosophy. This sublimation unfortunately gets Hamlet no further than did his wish making. Contemplating suicide with a "bare bodkin," he fantasizes avoiding castration at the hands of the pernicious woman by turning his phallicism against himself in self-castration. By castrating oneself in fantasy one can avoid the real thing at the hands of Ger­ trude. However, "bodkin," besides meaning a small dag­ ger, also means "a litde implement. . . with which women separate and twist over their hair."13 Hamlet is right back in the primal scene, suffering castration from a woman's "litde implement." And in the following moments with Ophelia, Hamlet is again outraged by the threat of castra­ tion as he reenacts a primal scene with dotard-castrate Polonius playing Hamlet's role of peeper. I will have more to say about the "nunnery" scene, but here my point is that the brooding of the soliloquy has not prevented Hamlet from responding to "the fair Ophelia" as a grotesquely

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frightening sexual object. Thus all four of Hamlet's uncon­ scious defense strategies fail him, for he must return to the manifest facts of his life, that his father proved to be as weak and castrated as he once imagined him, that Claudius verified Gertrude's castration of King Hamlet, that the fears of childhood are part of his adult reality. IV An investigation of the "To be" soliloquy has led us to a core of birth and death fantasies. But surely the genera­ tions of schoolboys who have declaimed this piece have de­ rived more pleasure from it than we can account for by say­ ing that it allows a catharsis of their worst oedipal fears. Admirers of the speech persist in hearing its positive note, and, though psychoanalysis finds that positive feelings often constitute a delusion that seeks to hide an underlying panic, we should not leave this famous meditation without making some argument for the good things it stirs in us. There are, after all, even psychoanalytic critics who find Hamlet in his soliloquy involved in healthy processes. Ac­ cording to Eissler, Hamlet is going through a promising self-analysis: "Hamlet has now discovered the fear of death to be the obstacle to taking action. According to Freud, it is castra­ tion anxiety that is at the bottom of the fear of death, and it is significant that the problem of castration anxiety appears at this point. Inasmuch as Hamlet is grappling in this so­ liloquy with his fear of his father, one may say that he has made a significant step forward.. .. The point of interest is that it is his own admission of the prevalence of fear that apparently enables Hamlet to overcome that very fear."14 And this process of overcoming just keeps right on going throughout the play until Hamlet is reborn: "The last scene of the tragedy rests on deep layers of ar­ chaic symbolism; in it death, incest and rebirth form an identity. The theme of rebirth is expressed through Fortinbras' sudden appearance; he is Hamlet reborn. No

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sooner has Hamlet died than he reappears as the hero, no longer divided by conflicts. Fortinbras exemplifies also the man whose father was defeated when he was young, and who therefore did not have to struggle with stern paternal authority; even his uncle is sick and weak, and about his mother nothing is heard. He has been spared the effect of an oedipal conflict that under extreme conditions, can be devastating; and he takes over, in effect, where Hamlet has left off" (p. 129). Eissler has to fudge a little to get Hamlet reborn (we may object that the last-minute substitution of the changeling Fortinbras is a different kind of rebirth than the return to psychic health), but he feels that this rebirth clearly devel­ ops not only in the "To be" but in all the soliloquies. He refers to "Hamlet's growth into an ethically and morally independent person—that is to say, an adult, in terms of modern psychology and philosophy." He means that Ham­ let is able to kill Claudius not as a "hired assassin" but as one who has "appersonated," that is, one who has made "the ethical demand . . . part of himself. . . not dependent on what authorities [i.e., his father] have to say on these questions" (p. 126). What are we to make of this? I see Hamlet wallowing in the mire of anal birth fantasies, un­ able to "overcome" his "castration anxiety," and Eissler has Hamlet reborn as an adult of the best philosophical and psychological breed. Eissler is not the only analyst to detect in the soliloquy the incubation of great and future individuality. Erik Erikson, who has taught us that psychoanalysis can and should describe the processes that transform our lurid infantility into creative adulthood, our buried familial vicissitudes into flowing social interaction, hears in Hamlet's words a parallel to those adolescents who desperately seek and oc­ casionally (as in the case of Luther) miraculously achieve a new identity, a rebirth into a world that will finally yield gratification: "The one most exposed to the problem of his existential identity is the late adolescent. Shakespeare's Hamlet, a very x99

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late adolescent with a premature, royal integrity, and still deeply involved with his oedipal conflicts, poses the ques­ tion of 'to be or not to be' as a sublime choice. The introspec­ tive late adolescent, trying to free himself from parents who made and partially determined him, and trying also to face membership in wider institutions, which he has not as yet made his own, often has a hard time convincing himself that he has chosen his past and is the chooser of his fu­ ture."15 Erikson makes it seem as if our late adolescent prince did succeed in convincing himself that he is the chooser of his future. But by quoting "to be or not to be" Erikson alludes to Hamlet only in the most general way, and he may not have wanted to press the analogy between the historical Luther and the fictitious Renaissance prince who littered a stage with corpses. Still it is worth considering Hamlet's soliloquy as a promise of new life; for also the nonpsychoanalytic critics of the play assure us that Hamlet, even as he hurtles to and through destruction, promises a redemptive emergence. G. Wilson Knight is perhaps the obvious critic to consult on the matter of redemption. He first wrote an essay enti­ tled "The Embassy of Death: An Essay in Hamlet," and then countered this with a further essay, "Rose of May: An Essay on Life Themes in Hamlet," thus emphasizing the play's redemptive imagery that shines beneath its crust of death. In a third essay, "Hamlet Reconsidered," he again places much weight on mystical life themes, especially the ones he claims to find in the soliloquy: " 'To be': that is, not merely to live, to act, to exist, but really to be, as an integrated and whole person, not in the modern psychological but in the Nietzchean sense. A super-state is indicated, a marriage of the twin elements, masculine and feminine, in the soul, whereby the personal­ ity is beyond the antinomies of action and passivity; a lived poetry blending consciousness and unconsciousness . . . an all but impossible integration, the Christ state. It is no less than the final goal of the race; and that is precisely why the

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opening line echoes and re-echoes from generation to gen­ eration with ultimate authority."16 Knight would disagree with Eissler only in his subtle dis­ tinction that Hamlet is reborn, but "not in the modern psy­ chological" sense. I am not sure how many readers accept Knight's definition of the "Christ state" as the "final goal of the race," or how many share his confidence that this defi­ nition is to be heard reverberating from generation to gen­ eration in the six monosyllables that begin the soliloquy, but surely some readers do. Before we call them out of order by the same principle that Knight got them in order—that is, by fiat—let us con­ sider one of the play's further allusions to birth that I deliberately suppressed in my earlier discussion; it is an al­ lusion that Knight, if he decided that it and the "to be" pas­ sage were of the same stuff, could make much of. I refer to Marcellus' account of Christ's birth, given early in the play, to explain the sudden disappearance of the Ghost: It faded on the crowing of the cock. Some say that ever 'gainst that season comes Wherein our Saviour's birth is celebrated, This bird of dawning singeth all night long, And then they say no spirit dare stir abroad, The nights are wholesome, then no planets strike, No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm: So hallowed and so gracious is that time. (i. i. 157-164) This is the promising birth, renewable every year at Christmas time, and if there is even one single drop of it mixed with the baser fantasies of birth that appear in Ham­ let's soliloquy perhaps the whole speech is redeemed. Since Christ is obviously part of the play's meaning, perhaps he is somewhere in the wings during the "To be" soliloquy, guaranteeing an alternative to the gruesome birth and sexuality that Gertrude represents. I think Shakespeare consciously and seriously intended

TO BE OR NOT TO BE

something along these lines. The "wholesome" night of the savior's birth seems deliberately contrasted with the un­ wholesome nights that Hamlet, as he says in the drinking Danes passage, was born to: But to my mind, though I am native here And to the manner born, it is a custom More honoured in the breach than the observance. This heavy-headed revel east and west Makes us traduced and taxed of other nations. They clepe us drunkards, and with swinish phrase Soil our addition. (i. iv. 14-20) I will come back to these lines in a moment for a psychoanalytic interpretation, but here let me try a moral reading similar to that of Knight. "To the manner born," Hamlet nevertheless casts off his sinful state: he rejects revelry and is presumably ready for something better, perhaps ready for the redemption promised by the savior's birth, assuming for the moment the play is about redemp­ tion. Perhaps it is no wonder that Knight hears Hamlet reaching out for the "Christ state," no wonder that Erikson and Eissler hear Hamlet not only yearning for rebirth but actually in its throes, no wonder adolescents recite the soliloquy and feel in touch with their most promising, indi­ vidual selves. I am afraid, though, that what Shakespeare may have consciously intended is not the whole story, and it surprises me that Eissler, who offers so many brilliant in­ sights into the play, seems to go along with Shakespeare's wishes so unquestioningly. Hamlet, I think, is not only indicating his ripeness for salvation when he deprecates the riotous customs of Den­ mark. He is also revealing a profound fear of excitement. He wishes to refrain from revelry because, perhaps, ex­ citement leads to anal accidents "in the breach," to becom­ ing "soiled," "swinish," and consequently "taxed" by au­ thority figures. I argued earlier that reliving a primal scene in both Ophelia's and Gertrude's closets stimulated Ham­ let's "excrements"; here too, I think, Hamlet is uncon-

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sciously escaping from the horrors of parental sexuality (the ghost of his castrated father is about to appear) into anality, an escape that he must deny by dissociating himself from the soiled compatriots who nevertheless occupy his imagination. Shakespeare does contrast the night of Christ's birth with the nights that Hamlet was born into, but this is not enough to make the negative half of the con­ trast simply go away and leave the world of the play re­ deemed. The "manner" to which Hamlet was born is more deeply troubling to him and to the play's fantasies than one would expect by reading Hamlet's calm but ambivalent identification with (note his use of "us") and dissociation from the drinking Danes. Let us look at Marcellus' account of the "gracious" birth and see what it consists of, how it may, or may not, redeem Hamlet's express disgust (he tells Polonius that Ophelia may conceive as the sun breeds "maggots in a dead dog") with the more usual type of birth. Christ's birth forever makes Christmas nights "wholesome"; on the other hand, the Ghost's rebirth into this world, through "ponderous and marble jaws," makes the "night hideous." I do not think that we stray too far from this manifest contrast if we partially explain it as a distinction between nights haunted by primal-scene horrors and nights free of these horrors, as a contrast between two kinds of sexuality: Christ came into the world with the good tidings that, divinely con­ ceived, he bypassed all the threats of sexuality; the Ghost comes into the world with a sorry tale of the most poison­ ous sexuality, of "that incestuous, that adulterate beast," of "shameful lust" that "will sate itself in a celestial bed,/ And prey on garbage," of lust and murder that are finally one. Had Hamlet been born as Christ was, he would have saved himself, to put it mildly, considerable trouble; that Shake­ speare wishes he and his hero were so born and finds escape in that wish may very likely provide the basis for our own feelings of redemption as we read Marcellus' folklore and Knight's philosophy of the "Christ state." James Joyce perhaps was responding to this wish when he speculated on Hamlet being father of himself;17 Christ too, according

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to the Nicene Creed, performed this trick, so useful to the unconscious. It is a strange wish, and a strange redemp­ tion, to be spared the normal birth, but it is something we have enshrined in our religion as well as in our fantasy life. I think we detect further signs of a wish for unthreatened sexuality in Marcellus' speech. Christ's birth makes nights wholesome in that "no spirit dare stir abroad." The sex of these spirits is at first not specified, but to Marcellus "spirit" suggests "fairy" suggests "witch"; what is banished from wholesome nights is women, fierce and destructive witches who have "power to charm" and power (by association) to "take" (i.e., to infect). On the one hand, the passage's Christian mythology circumvents men's par­ ticipation in conception, and, on the other hand, its imag­ ery forbids women's participation in night-time activity; the point is thus doubly made that what makes nights wholesome is keeping men and women apart. The passage, indeed, seems to portray a world where there is no night­ time sexuality between the sexes at all, for all the "no's" seem an overprotesting attempt to deny the phallic pene­ tration of mother earth by "planets" (cf. Leontes' image of the cuckold maker: "a bawdy planet that will strike/ Where 'tis predominant," WT i. ii. 201). This segregation of men and women permits a kind of peaceful, unthreatened, and inexhaustible phallicism, allows the "cock" to sing "all night long" with no fear of lapetite mort. I do not wish to rest too much of my sexual interpretation on the disputable possi­ bility that "cock" here alludes to the penis, but compare Ophelia's deranged bawdy about "Young men will do't if they come to't/ By cock, they are to blame." Nor do I wish to stake too much on the arcane fact that Freud often as­ serted an equation between bird and penis—though the "bird of dawning" does remind me of the stork, the "bird" who brings new life. But these observations, taken together with the manifest subject of Christ's birth, do seem to con­ verge on one interpretation: Marcellus' seemingly digres­ sive excursion into the relationship between Christ, cocks, and witches seems to constitute a disguised wish for a sexu-

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ality that is better than that which Gertrude presents to Hamlet, for a birth that redeems man in general and Ham­ let in particular from their worst sexual fears, a wish for a sexuality that initiates men not into death but into a new dawning. This, I think, is the play's wishful alternative to Hamlet's "To be" soliloquy, an alternative available to all those who wish to hear grand redemption in the play. Marcellus is also wishing, in a corollary way, for birth into omnipotence instead of into dependency and bootless competition with a father figure. The specific "spirit" he is taking under consideration is, after all, not at first a "witch" but the majestic father of Denmark's greatness, and it is he who would not "dare stir abroad" if it were the night of the omnipotent son's birth. This wish for power to banish the father (even to metamorphose—castrate—him into a "witch"), though it may at first seem inconsistent with the play's plea for a strong father, is nevertheless of the same stuff; for the very wish that banishes King Hamlet replaces him with an even more powerful father figure against whom to "dare" would be impossible. This authority figure is, of course, God, who transmits power to his son Christ (we remember Claudius' relationship with his strong God). Paradoxically, Christ can be strong enough to banish his father ("he that hath seen me hath seen the Father") only if his father is strong enough to banish him ("my God, my God, why has thou forsaken me"). As sons can get the power to banish fathers only by having a strong father with whom to identify, Marcellus' wish both to banish and to in­ stall a strong father is not as absurd as it may appear. This kind of double-think is apparendy typical of the uncon­ scious. Marcellus follows his (and Hamlet's) Christian mythology in wishing for a son who is strong (even though crucified) because his father is strong. Unfortunately, as far as this play goes, these wishes are only just that. Knight and Eissler and Erikson not­ withstanding, this is not a play about the rebirth of a Christ or a Luther or even a Renaissance everyman; it is a play about birth into death, about sexual corruption:

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QUEEN What have I done that thou dar'st wag thy tongue In noise so rude against me? HAM. Such an act That blurs the grace and blush of modesty Calls virtue hypocrite, takes of the rose From the faire forehead of an innocent love, And sets a blister there, makes marriage vows As false as dicers' oaths. (iii. iv. 40-46) It is a play about a corrupt sexuality that undid King Ham­ let, leaving him to "fade" in shame when the "cock" crows. It is a play about his son who follows in his footsteps. We, with Eissler, and perhaps even Shakespeare, can wish all we want that Hamlet were reborn in Fortinbras. But he died. It was Shakespeare who lived, challenging and mas­ tering the terrors of his mind, projecting his own potential failure into a literary creation. Those good feelings of rebirth that the "To be" soliloquy evokes from us seem to be nothing else than the stirrings of our mercurial powers to wish. But I do not wish to claim that our wishes are entirely worthless; they represent our ability to confront and escape the tragedy of the human mind lost in its own fears, our capacity to wish, and thereby create, psychic health out of psychic chaos. Though our wishes can do Hamlet the literary character no good, they can do us good, allowing us with Shakespeare's help to ex­ press and to control the infantile fears that will not go away by themselves.

EIGHT

MANAGING THE UNCONSCIOUS I I HOPE I have shown how the fantasy content of Hamlet converges. The speculative readings I have advanced along these lines seem to me to be harmonious with one another, and they weave together aspects of the play that have heretofore stuck me as inexplicable and unrelated. Lack of final proof leaves me with doubts about the validity of many of my points; yet some such speculations seem necessary to account for the troubling fantasies of the play. I am sorry that my interpretations do not all carry perfect conviction, but both psychoanalysis and life turn up mean­ ings that cannot be confined to the realm of the certain. There is one area, though, where my interpretations have done an obvious injustice to the play. Though I have talked about Shakespeare's attempts at coping with his fan­ tasy material, I have given more emphasis to the fantasies and less to the coping. To a great extent, I have treated the play as Freud treated dreams, looking for central and unifying unconscious themes and organizing details of the play according to their disguised relationship to these themes. It should be objected that a play is not a dream, that it is no more a spontaneous elaboration on uncon­ scious life than it is a thematic elaboration on conscious life. A play is a crafted ordering of both conscious themes and unconscious fantasies, as well as something more. It is a total experience larger than the words that comprise it or the time it fills on stage, a whole world of human coping within a controlled framework of technique. What I would like to do in this chapter, then, is treat Hamlet as a set of developing strategies that tries to manage the fantasy ma­ terial we have been discussing. Obviously Shakespeare wrote the play not as a dreamer but as a craftsman, attempting, among other things, to

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manage his unconscious fantasy life by deploying his con­ scious talents as a writer and an artist. Significantly, Shakespeare also endowed his chief character with a pro­ pensity for writing, and this writing represents in the play, I shall argue, an attempt to deal with and control the un­ conscious conflicts unleashed in the play. For Shakespeare, writing was a successful adaptive mechanism against being overwhelmed by the unconscious; but for Hamlet writing is a defense that fails. It is as if Shakespeare were asking "what would happen to me if I couldn't use art to manage my teeming, self-deluding and potentially self-destructive mind?" In Hamlet Shakespeare studies failure so that he can succeed.1 Where earlier I roamed freely through the play to de­ scribe related unconscious material, I will now try to con­ fine myself to a description of the play as it unfolds in time, as it works with and defends against its unconscious con­ tent. Defensive work goes on in many ways, but I have cho­ sen to emphasize writing because it is an important though neglected2 concern of the play. I do not want to give the impression that writers need to write about writing in order to manage unconscious fantasies; it is just that in this particular play, I think the best way to characterize all of Hamlet's strategies of management is to emphasize writing. A good deal of the verisimilitude of Hamlet as a character stems from the fact that Shakespeare endowed him with a full panoply of defenses, with rationalizations, regressions, sublimations, escapes into madness, flights into aesthetics, and, in general, the protean self-protectiveness of a real mind. Hamlet's writing involves all these qualities and thus allows me to give characterological coherence to defenses that I previously treated in isolation. My discussion here moves from Hamlet's conflict with an ambiguous father and a frighteningly seductive mother to his (and the play's) attempts at transcending these con­ flicts. I argued earlier that Hamlet tries to escape his ambiv­ alent father by imagining him strong enough to punish Claudius, that Hamlet delays because he hopes his father

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will demonstrate his strengths by revealing Claudius to be already punished, made into a woman. Let me repeat that whereas I am confident that the evidence justifies my ac­ count of Hamlet's conflict with a weak father, I am less cer­ tain of his need to see Claudius as woman. Still there is some case to be made for this corollary, and though it is secondary to my main argument I am going to advance it along with matters of which I am more sure. Fantasizing Claudius a woman punished by King Hamlet would be a useful strategy for the Hamlet who is looking for a strong father; whether it is a fantasy that Shakespeare actually bestowed on Hamlet, consciously or unconsciously, is dif­ ficult to know. I myself think of this reading as only a pos­ sibility, but for me it is the possibility that best accounts for the fact that Hamlet never seizes the one conscious rationale for not killing Claudius: murder is, the Ghost himself says, evil "even in the best" of cases. We need an interpre­ tation that fits the frenzied, irrational nature of Hamlet's motivations. I shall argue that one use to which Hamlet puts his writing is, especially in The Murder of Gonzago, to transform Claudius into a woman. But the main use to which his writing is committed is the management of fan­ tasies concerning a weak father. Tragically, the defense fails. Before I begin my analysis of the play's use of writing, perhaps I should preview the ground we have to cover. It will quickly be seen how many of the puzzling and crucial issues in the play circle around a written document. There is the "sealed compact," not produced on stage, but of some consequence since it brought Old Fortinbras' lands to King Hamlet and thus provides the motive of the sub-plot. There is, as we have seen, the dramatic moment when Hamlet writes his father's message in his tables, and the analogous moment when Polonius asks Laertes to "charac­ ter" precepts in his mind. There is Claudius' sealed com­ mission to England as well as his "greeting to Old Norway." There are Polonius' "notes" dispatched with Reynaldo to Laertes. There is the book from which Hamlet reads in the

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fishmonger scene, and the t>ook from which Ophelia reads in the nunnery scene, both given strong emphasis. There is the return commission from Old Norway, which is jux­ taposed to Hamlet's love letter, such a puzzling document that it has been explained as a forgery by Polonius. The First Quarto has Hamlet reading from a book before he begins the "To be" soliloquy, and there has been some fruidess speculation as to what document may be involved here. There are Hamlet's lines "set down" for presentation in the Murder of Gonzago, and the lines he composes to send Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to their unnecessary deaths. There are other kinds of documents too; Ophelia is "A document in madness," and Polonius compares himself to a "table-book." Osric speaks as if out of the "margent" (margin) of a book, Hamlet as if out of an "index." Perhaps the most significant instance of this kind of imagery is Francisco's command to Bernardo, in the very opening words of the play, to stand and "unfold" himself, as if Ber­ nardo in opening his coat and revealing his identity were like a letter. This keynote image has, I think, deep thematic reverberation. There is the unproduced but everywhere present book of court behavior: "We did think it writ down in our duty to let you know of it," explains Horatio to Ham­ let regarding the Ghost. There is the unwritten book of re­ venge: "Is't writ in your revenge/ That, swoopstake, you will draw both friend and foe/ Winner and loser?" asks Claudius of the revengeful Laertes. There is the book of divine truth: "O . . . that the Everlasting had not fixed/ His canon . . ." "How does thou understand the Scripture?" quibbles the gravedigger. Surely all this must come to much more than the accidental business involved in put­ ting a play on the stage. Hamlet's writing is especially invested with either tre­ mendous nervous energy (the tables) or exhilaration (the commission forged to send Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to their deaths, the lines written for The Murder of Gonzago) or mystery (both the letter to Ophelia that Polonius reads and the letter to Claudius on Hamlet's return to Denmark

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provoke more questions than answers from the court), or with all of these qualities. The other documents, both al­ luded to and produced on stage, when taken together with Hamlet's, form an intriguing pattern. Hamlet does not write all the documents in the play, but these documents as unconscious strategies, just like the unconscious fantasies they manage, overlap character differentiation. Not only, as Harry Levin has noticed, is writing "characteristic"3 of Hamlet; it is characteristic of the play. (Levin unfortu­ nately makes nothing of his observation.) What follows is an attempt to see what unity the play's emphasis on writing offers us and how it expresses Hamlet's dynamically devel­ oping psychic conflict. II In the first scene of the play, Horatio sits down to elaborate on what the opening context of military watchfulness and an armed ghost has led us to think will be the play's "main motive." King Hamlet, he says, challenged to single combat by King Fortinbras of Norway, Did slay this Fortinbras, who, by a sealed compact Well ratified by law and heraldry, Did forfeit, with his life, all those his lands Which he stood seized of, to the conqueror. (i. i. 86-89) In the long retrospect from Act V, this "sealed compact" loses our attention, but it is given emphasis where emphasis usually counts, at the beginning. As Claudius' sealed com­ mission ("There's letters sealed," cries Hamlet to Gertrude) later becomes a major concern, I do not think we should let this compact slip into the background as easily as the play does. Though the compact does not contain the play's "main motive" on the surface, the unconscious content here is indeed central. This can be made clear, I think, by considering the two parties to the compact as splits of one father figure, and their sons as splits of one son figure.

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Fortinbras is disinherited while, simultaneously, Hamlet is being born to a double inheritance (see Eissler for the probability that Hamlet and Fortinbras were born on the same day).4 The kingdom at issue is perhaps, on the level of fantasy, the mother, as Horatio suggests a few lines later by referring to "the skirts of Norway." This inheritance of the mother by one son is also a disinheritance because it deprives the other, dispossessed son of a strong father with whom to identify. Taking, then, Hamlet and Fortinbras as one son, and Old Fortinbras and King Hamlet as one father, we have an oedipal son who has ambiguously lost and won his mother because his father ambiguously lost and won her. This is not mere juggling with the text, for the play itself compares the two sons as well as the two fathers. Thus Young Fortinbras, "hot and full," is eager to regain his father's lost phallicism by asserting his own in Poland, just as Hamlet must try to compensate for his un­ done father, whose successes in Poland and Norway are now irrelevant. Later events recompose what the sealed compact disguised by splitting a father and son into pairs. On some level, Shakespeare knew what he was doing when he had Horatio label a story, which soon into the play seems to have been a digression, as a "main motive." Just as Hamlet tries to assuage his fear that he has a weak father by writing in his tables, so too does Shakespeare try to disguise the weak father by splitting the losing father and the winning father into two different parties to a writ­ ten agreement. The written document rearranges reality, or denies reality by returning to the past, and offers proof that the father who really mattered was not emasculated; the emasculated one was an enemy. There may also be here a disguised wish for the father's death, but more strongly implied, I think, is a son's wish for the father to kill off weakness as it is projected onto an enemy. The disinher­ ited father and the disinherited son thus reinforce Ham­ let's fantasy that he and his father have been equally ren­ dered weak, a fantasy that is only partially managed by the

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compensatory father and son who temporarily inherited double. The sealed compact with its attendant duel has a usually unnoticed relationship to the wager and duel at the end of the play; as Horatio explained the old bet, Osric explains this one: The king, sir, hath wagered with him six Barbary horses, Against which he has impawned, as I take it, six French rapiers and poniards, with their assigns, as girdle, hangers, and so. Three of the carriages, in faith, are very dear to fancy, very responsive to the hilts, most delicate carriages, and of very liberal con­ ceit. (v. ii. 149-155) Osric's froth serves a function; by implication it puts King Hamlet's wager in a parodic context that at once trivializes the former king and catches his son up in a deadly game. And this time it will not be only the enemy who is de­ stroyed, though young Hamlet does, like his father, techni­ cally win the wager. As always, Shakespeare does not have a silly character pratde about just anything, but rather has Osric exaggerate the manly dimensions of "rapiers and poniards" by using the word "carriages" to describe "hang­ ers" (the strap from which a sword was hung). Hamlet in­ sists that a carriage is for a cannon and that Osric give up this affectation, but meanwhile the point has been made that the wagers in this play grow out of a foppish protesta­ tion of manliness. By implication, we get the feeling that King Hamlet's wagers were similarly motivated by a manli­ ness that constandy needed to be inflated. Osric's recitation of the wager is also connected to the earlier bet in that it too is associated with a written docu­ ment. When Hamlet insists on an explanation for "car­ riages," Horatio cleverly likens Osric's language to a euphuistic book that requires marginal notes: "I knew you must be edified by the margent ere you had done." Many

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critics have commented on the play's theme of affected and corrupt language,5 but I think it important to note that this theme fits into Shakespeare's interest in one psychological reason iorwhy language is corrupted: words generally and writing specifically become distorted in an attempt to in­ flate masculinity and control unconscious fears of fathers who lose wagers as well as everything else. Ill For Shakespeare and his characters writing plays or com­ pacts or aphorisms can be, I am arguing, not only a way of expressing unconscious fantasies but also a way of trying to control them. Let me return to the "tables" soliloquy and add to my analysis of the fantasy content of the smiling vil­ lain an account of how Hamlet tries to control his fantasies by writing. Hamlet's rather sudden and unexpected need to produce his tables comes in a context that gives us, I think, a clue to the kind of intrapsychic conflict which, for him, Shakespeare's character, logically moves toward a resolution in writing: And thy commandment all alone shall live Within the book and volume of my brain, Unmixed with baser matter. Yes, by heaven! O most pernicious woman! O villain, villain, smiling damned villain! My tables—meet it is I set it down That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain. (i. v. 102-108) Though Hamlet is highly emotional about allowing only his father to live in the book of his memories, his emotion does not keep him from developing this thought along the lines of the very carefully chosen imagery of "records," "saws of books," and "book and volume." But then with the phrase "baser matter" he seems to lose this ordered train of thought. He pauses a moment, tries to pick up where he left off, but can find only a series of interjectory phrases:

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"yes, by heaven," "O most pernicious woman," "O villain, villain, smiling damned villain." I think Shakespeare has endowed Hamlet with an un­ conscious process that, uncovered, can help to explain pre­ cisely why Hamlet's orderly thinking disintegrates. Hamlet is trying to create a noble image of his tarnished father, an image free from "baser matter"; to do this he needs to exclude his castrating mother and his castrating uncle from the tables of his memory, for they remind him that his father was, as he only a moment ago learned, so vulnera­ ble. He moves securely along with this strategy of exclud­ ing undesirable portions of reality until he gets to the phrase "baser matter." Now matter and mater both have the same etymology and it is my feeling that Hamlet uncon­ sciously realizes that he has made a punning reference to his baser mother. His neat conceit about living "all alone" with his father's memory disintegrates and he finds himself confronting the "pernicious woman." Hamlet would like to fantasize having a family that would consist only of him and his father, but his mother is too real and breaks into his feeble strategy of denial. With the pernicious Gertrude comes the smiling villain who also proved that King Ham­ let was no man. Hamlet's imagery of writing, of records and books, having failed to create the kind of mental world he needs, he reaches for his tables, hoping that in literal writing, not imagery of writing, he can punish Claudius and fabricate what he needs, or at least regain the poise he lost after the phrase "baser matter." But this strategy does not quite work for Hamlet. It is perhaps significant that "tables" are associated not only in Hamlet's mind with restructuring his family, but also with the family he so wishes to deny, the family that was created out of his father's final weakness: "The funeral baked meats/ Did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables." Ta­ bles are also associated in his mind with less socially adap­ tive defenses to which he must resort because writing is insufficient to control the conflicts he feels. The verbal crit­ icism about the recycled furnishings of the "marriage ta-

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bles" almost controls his anger toward his mother, but it descends into a darker, more regressive defense strategy to which Hamlet is prone. As the funeral baked meats were one dish for two tables, beggars and kings are, Hamlet tells Claudius later in the play, "two dishes, but to one table." This destructive, anal vision of life is a defense strategy into which Hamlet's writing often swerves ("wipe away ... baser matter"). Is it really possible that the movement of Hamlet's thought, from an ordered conceit on his father's memory to a sputtering denunciation of his mother and uncle to writing in his tables, can be explained as an unconscious failure to keep his mother suppressed? Is it really possible that Shakespeare unconsciously endowed Hamlet with a pun on "matter" to observe the dynamics of this failure? The answers to these questions are uncertain, but my read­ ing of "baser matter" does fit the troubled thinking in the passage and the specific objects of Hamlet's emotion. And similar fantasies of families without mothers, we have seen, can be examined elsewhere in the play. In addition to fan­ tasies of womanless families consisting of Hamlet and his father (or Horatio or Yorick), we have Hamlet trying to keep Gertrude out of Claudius' bed, and Hamlet's follow­ ing lines, which try, I think, to separate father figures from mother figures: What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba, That he should weep for her? (ii . ii. 564-565) We have already seen how Hecuba functions as a mother figure, and if we think of the First Player as a father figure (he is the leader of his troupe), then we can see Hamlet's emotional response here partly as an attempt to deny any relationship between fathers and mothers. That the First Player is nothing to Hecuba and she nothing to him is, on the surface, Hamlet's point only in the limited context of a comparison between his and the First Player's abilities to respond to a cause, but his words may have a wider applica-

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tion. It is probably not an accident that it is Hecuba (and not Priam, say) whom Hamlet wants to dissociate from the First Player; nor is it accidental that Hamlet greets as a couple the First Player and the young boy who plays the women's parts, fantasizing, I think, a marriage in art that excludes mothers. When Hamlet reacts to the First Player's emotion, very likely he is revealing intense disappointment over the failure of art and writing, of the First Player's reci­ tation, to set mothers and fathers in a comfortable relation­ ship that would protect the father. However this may be, I think writing is Hamlet's answer to his discovery in the "ta­ bles" soliloquy that the pernicious woman cannot be sepa­ rated from the memory of his father. If we discard this explanation as too fantastic, we will have to find another that explains both the orderly and emotional details of the passage; merely saying that Ham­ let is emotional is too vague and explains nothing. IV Hamlet exits with his tables and Polonius enters with a packet of "notes" for Laertes in Paris. Polonius' stage prop­ erty does not make much of an impression compared to the play's other documents (an actor, though, could give it as much prominence as he thought fit), and I do not wish to make too much of it. Let me just say that these "notes," among other things, offer Polonius the excuse to pry into his son's sexual activity in a secretive way that is reminiscent of (and a reversal of) a child's voyeuristic experience of a primal scene. Polonius thus reenacts the primal scene of Hamlet's tables. (The role reversal of father and son in a primal scene, as we saw in Chapter Four, is later repeated in Gertrude's closet.) Showing Polonius to be an unprincipled spouter of moral platitudes never seemed to me to require such a long scene as this. That the man is untrue to his son could be made clear with a few words elsewhere, if, indeed, it Is not already obvious what kind of father Polonius is. I now see

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Polonius' attempt to verify his son's sexual prowess as cen­ tral to the play, for it seems to reverse Hamlet's attempt in the prayer scene to verify his father's prowess. In addition, Polonius' use of his notes anticipates his use of Ophelia's reading to investigate Hamlet's madness and Hamlet's use of The Murder of Gonzago to investigate Claudius' guilt. These instances of writing too, we shall see, involve manag­ ing primal-scene sexuality. Polonius uses his "notes" to prove his son a man as Ham­ let uses his tables to prove his father a man. If we conflate these two fantasies, we get the ideal for which Hamlet is striving: a son who is potent because his father is. As it is, we get a ghost who makes a show of manliness and his con­ sequently impotent son on the one hand, and, on the other hand, an impotent father and his consequently "drabbing" son, who overprotests his manliness in Parisian brothels. V In the second court scene (π. ii.), three significant docu­ ments appear on stage. Cornelius and Voltemand, who were sent off with dispatches in i. ii., return with letters ex­ pressing Old Fortinbras' acquiescence in all the political demands of Claudius and a request for a laissez-passer for his nephew's army en route to Poland, "As therein are set down." Claudius accepts the document, says he will read it later, and turns immediately to Polonius, who has another document for the King's attention. Presumably the political letter is still visible as Polonius reads the love letter req­ uisitioned from his daughter: "To the celestial and my soul's idol, the most beautified Ophelia"— That's an ill phrase, a vile phrase; "beautified" is a vile phrase. But you shall hear. Thus: "In her excellent white bosom, these, &c." QUEEN Came this from Hamlet to her? POL. Good madam stay awhile; I will be faithful.

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"Doubt thou the stars are fire, Doubt that the sun doth move; Doubt truth to be a liar, But never doubt I love. O dear Ophelia, I am ill at these numbers. I have not art to reckon my groans; but that I love thee best, O most best, believe it. Adieu. Thine evermore most dear lady, whilst this machine is to him, Hamlet." (ii . ii. 109-124) With two documents visible on stage, we are asked to contrast the political letter, whose contents are pleasing and straightforward, with the love letter, whose provisional style and baffling contents provoke more questions than answers. Polonius queries a phrase, Gertrude interrupts with a question, and afterwards the exasperated Claudius demands, "But how hath she/ Received his love?" Hamlet's letter deals with complex human emotions that can never be "set down" adequately, whereas the political letter oper­ ates in a realm where all that needs be set down can be, at least according to Claudius: Giving to you no further personal power To business with the king, more than the scope Of these delated articles allow. (1. ii. 36-38) The discrepancy between the adequacy of these two kinds of documents corresponds, I think, to Hamlet's (and Shakespeare's) wavering conviction that what he fantasizes in writing is true to reality. The general implications of the contrasting letters are fairly clear. The one is adequate to account for the reality it represents, the other is not. What we are meant to under­ stand in particular about Hamlet's love letter is more prob­ lematical. Hamlet's letter has troubled critics even more than the tables. "Who, reading Hamlet for the first time, is not disappointed in Hamlet's letter to Ophelia? Who, read-

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ing it for the twentieth time, does not retain something of that disappointment," says Goddard: "It sounds more like Osric addressing some Elizabethan maid of honor, if the anachronism may be pardoned. 'Never doubt I love.' Alas we might all too easily doubt it on the evidence here submitted. Even the uninitiated in psy­ chology might well suspect the sincerity of an epistle so overloaded with adjectives and superlatives, with its dears and mosts and bests, its adieu and etcetera, not to mention the epithet beautified, which even that seasoned worldling Polonius finds 'vile,' or the reiterated word doubt which must in one instance be wrenched into a meaning different from the one that it carries in the other three to bring any sense or logic into the third line of the quatrain. (A cynic, indeed, might find in that third line a sort of 'joker' slyly inserted to annul the effect of the whole.) And why, in the name of Love's simplicity, should Hamlet have reserved for a girl who was scarcely more than a child a word, ma­ chine, so rare at that time that it does not occur even once elsewhere in all Shakespeare's works? Taken singly, any one of these lapses might be overlooked, but taken to­ gether they are hard to reconcile with the character or manner of the man who bade the Players not to overstep the modesty of nature."6 Goddard goes on, rather ingeniously, to argue not only that Hamlet, the scorner of affected language, would not write like this, but that he did not; Polonius did. Since Polonius in his own mind has already established the rea­ son for Hamlet's madness, he, according to Goddard, would not be above a litde forgery to certify his truth, just as he is ready to put Reynaldo up to forgery (the word is Polonius') to demonstrate Laertes' already established libertinism. Further, Goddard points out many stylistic similarities between the affected letter and the affected Chamberlain, notices Polonius' refusal to answer directly Gertrude's question about the letter's author, and parries possible objections to his theory quite well. Like so many theories about Hamlet, Goddard's argument cannot be ab-

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solutely proved or disproved, but I think that anyone who reads his paper will always feel, at least, that Shakespeare meant us to suspect that Polonius might have forged Ham­ let's letter. This much is incontrovertible: Shakespeare puts Hamlet's letter in Polonius' mouth, thus associating it with both Prince and Chamberlain. Now this confusion about the letter's author may save us the difficulty of considering Hamlet as an Osrician wooer, but it is still confusion in itself, and, as far as I can see, it illuminates none of the play's issues. But if we are dealing with an unconscious identification between Hamlet and the dotard Polonius as joint wooers of the same woman, then we have another version of an oedipal conflict in which Hamlet is in competition with a father figure who is too weak. We remember that in Gertrude's closet Polonius as­ sumes Hamlet's role in the primal scene, and that in Ophelia's songs Polonius and Hamlet become conflated. Here, too, in the confusion of Hamlet's letter, this odd identification repeats itself. The love letter establishes the identification that Hamlet so desperately needs to rewrite. Its affected and corrupt language, especially its use of "doubt" in opposite senses, expresses not only the am­ biguity of Hamlet's world in general but also the specific ambiguity of love that bumbling, intruding father figures like Polonius present to their sons.

VI "But look where sadly the poor wretch comes reading," says Gertrude, as Hamlet enters with the third document of the second court scene. The King and Queen exit, leav­ ing Polonius to probe further into the matter of Hamlet's "madness": What do you read my lord? HAM. Words, words, words. POL. What is the matter, my lord? HAM. Between who?

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POL. I mean the matter that you read, my lord. HAM. Slanders, sir; for the satirical rogue says here, that old men have grey beards, that their faces are wrinkled, their eyes purging thick amber and plum-tree gum, and that they have a plentiful lack of wit, together with most weak hams. All which, sir, though I most powerfully and potently believe, yet I hold it not honesty to have it thus set down; for yourself, sir, shall grow old as I am if, like a crab, you could go backward. POL. [Aside] Though this be madness, yet there is method in't. (ii . ii. 191-207) The method in Hamlet's madness consists not only of a conscious satire on Polonius but also of an unconscious identification with the dotard: "for yourself, sir, shall grow old as I am." This identification is of course what Hamlet is trying to escape, and he thus has good motivation to call what is "thus set down" nothing but "slanders" and "not honesty." His wishes things set down differently. Derisively interpreting "matter" as conflict and not, as Polonius means it, as subject matter, Hamlet makes us believe that conflict is on his mind. That he has a conflict, arising from an impotent father figure with "weak hams," explains, I think, this otherwise meaningless free association to Polonius' innocent question. Polonius thinks he is sounding Hamlet's madness and, though not in the way he thinks, he is right. We are close here to the dynamic vitality of Ham­ let's unconscious mind as it veers toward the realization of the impotent father and then reels back, mockingly reject­ ing reality as slanders and counteracting the acknowledg­ ment of impotence by beefing up diction: "I most power­ fully and potently believe." Just before Hamlet entered, Polonius disclaimed being an impotent, "mute and dumb" "table-book"—how threateningly impotent Hamlet does see Polonius and how much he, book in hand, would like to end impotence and conflict by rewriting Polonius. But un-

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fortunately for Hamlet, written "matter" never escapes "matter" as conflict; in the "tables" soliloquy writing cannot elude "baser matter," and here it can only record the most embarrassing details of "old men." Again Hamlet's tone and his writing regress to the level of sadistic taunting, to the treatment of people as refuse. Hamlet's curious fantasy that Polonius might "grow old as I am" reminds us of his wish in the "tables" soliloquy that he not "grow instant old." This fear of the interchangeability of himself and weak old men finds one other expres­ sion, and this too involves Polonius and writing; on hearing from Rosencrantz that boy actors have stolen the audience away from the adult Players, Hamlet is shocked that the children are undermining their own future: Will they not say afterwards, if they should grow themselves to common players (as it is most like, if their means are no better), their writers do them wrong to make them exclaim against their own succes­ sion? (ii. ii. 354-358) This occurs in the same scene, some hundred and fifty lines later, in which Hamlet lectures Polonius on growing old. If Hamlet hopes that writing can protect one against growing up into a superannuated man, he has proof here in the "writers" for children that he is sadly mistaken. Hamlet's father, his author, has provided for him the same future as the boys' writers provide for them. No wonder he is so anxious to undo the effects of growing from child to man and, twenty lines further, fantasizes Polonius again growing backward in age to a "great baby," "not yet out of his swaddling clouts." Here in this scene, writing takes a great blow as a defense against the father. As we have seen, the recitation by the First Player of a passage from a play recounts Priam's story but does not save him. In fact, the effect of writing is un­ dermined even before the First Player speaks by having

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Polonius appropriate the role of critic; in his mouth all writing is parodied: The best actors in the world, either for tragedy, com­ edy, history, pastoral, pastoral-comical, historicalpastoral, tragical-historical, tragical-comical-historical-pastoral; scene individable, or poem unlimited. Seneca cannot be too heavy, nor Plautus too light. For the law of writ and the liberty, these are the only men. (ii . ii. 403-409) If dramatic writing can control high-pitched emotions, one would never know it from listening to Polonius' cita­ tion of the tools of the trade. I do not think that this pas­ sage is merely a parodic fluff about genres, as it is usually taken, but a comment on the quality of writing, especially in The Murder of Gonzago, that Hamlet can muster to his de­ fense. Just as writing loses its authority in Polonius' mouth, so too do the titanic fathers of drama, "Seneca" and "Plautus." Though Hamlet represents Shakespeare's suc­ cessful use of writing about ambiguous fathers, it portrays failure on this count. It is no coincidence that Polonius, who once enacted Julius Caesar, shares Hamlet's interest in the drama; both fail to understand and use it properly (Hamlet in The Murder, Polonius in all the plays he sets up in life for his or Claudius' viewing), and this constitutes another aspect of Shakespeare's strange conflation of these two characters. VII During the time that Hamlet is devising the "dozen or six­ teen lines" to be "set down" for the players, he runs into Ophelia, who is pretending to read. When he first speaks to her, he seems calm enough. She tries to return the gifts he once gave her. This is too painful, so he denies he ever gave "ought." Then all verbal hell breaks out in one of the cruelest scenes in drama. Is it simply, as Dover Wilson ar-

MANAGING THE UNCONSCIOUS gues, 7 that he sees or intuits Polonius' presence? Or is there something about the stage properties, the gifts, and the book, which, like "letters sealed," provoke his deflected frustration onto the most accessible human being? The first explanation is not sufficient, for what would Shake­ speare be illuminating—that Hamlet can be hysterical and cruel if he thinks he is being abused? If so, why so cruel and hysterical? The book and the gifts have to be part of the explanation or they would not be there. Polonius has set the stage: Ophelia, walk you here.—Gracious, so please you, We will bestow ourselves. [To OPHELIA.] Read on this book, That show of such exercise may color Your loneliness. We are oft to blame in this, 'Tis too much proved, that with devotion's visage And pious action we do sugar o'er The devil himself. (in. i. 43-49) These words touch Claudius to the quick: The harlot's cheek, beautied with plast'ring art, Is not more ugly to the thing that helps it Than is my deed to my most painted word.

(HI. i.

51-53)

This sets a background of fraud and whorish sexuality in which Hamlet's verbal violence will operate. Somewhere, behind the circumstance that his gifts are returned to him and that Ophelia seems in league against him, Hamlet in­ tuits that Ophelia is using her book to "sugar o'er/ The devil himself" in a way that threatens him. What is this devil, for Hamlet, that is being sugared over? 1 think Hamlet sees Ophelia here as the primal-scene mother who is at once a saint for a conventional "nunnery" and a whore for an Elizabethan brothel "nunnery." He wishes to deny that he has had anything to do with this whore, that he ever gave her "ought"; that is, if we accept

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"ought" as the bawdy counterpart to "nought," Hamlet wishes to deny Ophelia any control over his penis. What I think is happening here is that Hamlet does see or, more likely, intuit the peeping father figures; but the web of as­ sociation in his frenzied mind has to be more complex than that. It is likely he makes a connection between the "re­ membrances" that Ophelia is returning and the feelings as­ sociated with the Ghost's admonishment to "remember me." The peepers and the remembrances begin to add up, unconsciously, to a primal scene in which Ophelia hands him some trinket that was once his, castrating him; and then, glaring at Ophelia's book, he realizes, again uncon­ sciously, that the "book and volume" on the primal scene that he thought he had wiped away in the "tables" soliloquy is really still ever present, that the rewriting of the castrat­ ing primal scene is literally out of his hands. Claudius likens his verbal camouflage to the "painted" harlot's cheek; for Hamlet it must be frightening indeed to see writing, which he uses to manage the father-destroying, whorish aspects of the primal scene, in the hands of the harlot herself; in a moment he will be echoing Claudius, screaming at Ophelia about her "wantonness," her "paint­ ings." Something of this unconscious nature is necessary to explain both Hamlet's extreme reaction to the book and "remembrances" and his ugly outburst on Ophelia's cor­ rupt sexuality. With a book in her hand, Ophelia practi­ cally drives Hamlet mad, depriving him of his defenses. Laertes later calls his sister a "document in madness," meaning, in the literal sense of the word, that she is a "les­ son" in madness; the unconscious content of his words, though, apply in a wider sense to the play: documents are intimately involved with madness, with the control or lack of control of the unconscious. VIII The next time Hamlet is as frantic and antagonistic as he is with Ophelia is at the presentation of the most important

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piece of writing in the play, The Murder of Gonzago. We need to explore exactly what meaning Shakespeare has in­ vested in Hamlet's sudden infatuation with using his be­ loved theater as a weapon, both offensive and defensive, against Claudius. To do this we will have to pull together a little material from elsewhere in the play. We remember that when Hamlet says goodby to Claudius on the way to England he addresses his uncle as "mother." Commenting on this passage, Eissler says that Hamlet "adumbrates the sort of psychological situation in which a subject is aware of having been taken possession of by a fantasy to which he nevertheless attributes only a lim­ ited degree of reality value."8 Eissler does not unravel the meaning of this fantasy of Claudius as mother (he explains Hamlet's "one flesh" quibble as simply another accusation against Claudius for committing incest with his brother's wife, thus neglecting Hamlet's highly suggestive attribution of motherhood to his uncle), but he confirms what we dis­ covered in the "tables" soliloquy, that Hamlet can entertain his delusion only by relegating it to the fiction-making realm of writing. It is only in the written world of poetry and drama that man can be fantasized as woman with even "a limited degree of reality value." I think the following passage makes this point: You are welcome, masters, welcome, all. I am glad to see thee well. Welcome good friends. O, old friend, why, thy face is valanced since I saw thee last. Com'st thou to beard me in Denmark? What, my young lady and mistress? By'r Lady, your ladyship is nearer to heaven than when I saw you last by the latitude of a chopine. Pray God your voice, like a piece of uncurrent gold, be not cracked within the ring. (ii. ii. 428-435) Shakespeare has Hamlet single out only two players in his welcome. Although the "old friend" will be necessary to the plot in his role as manager of the production of the Murder of Gonzago and Shakespeare needs to introduce

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him, Hamlet's remarks to the young boy who plays the women's parts seem entirely gratuitous. There are, I think, at least three disguised functions that the boy actor serves here. First, he permits Hamlet to turn politely but rather abrupdy away from his "old friend," a man whose "valanced" face testifies to the fate of father figures. The boy also allows Hamlet to link the First Player with a "young lady and mistress," a mental marriage of a father and a boy that, like the other homosexual fantasies in the play, cir­ cumvents the dangers of heterosexuality. (Since Hamlet greets the First Player and the boy as a couple, I would stage their entry in a way that would hint at some personal relationship between the two players.) But perhaps it is the boy's third function that is most relevant here, for it brings us to the heart of Hamlet's unconscious choice of the thea­ ter as a strategy in his campaign against Claudius. The boy, I think, activates Hamlet's unconscious perspective on sex­ ual transformations: boys can be fantasized as women, in spite of the fact that in real life they are growing up to be men. The world of the theater allows Hamlet to displace the real boy's pre-genital sexuality upward to "heaven" and downward to his "chopines" (platform shoes); it allows him to concentrate on his make-believe young lady's "ring" of voice: "ring," as in the closing couplet of The Merchant of Venice, was Elizabethan bawdy for cunt; the "ring" printed on a coin, and "cracked," also have similar bawdy connota­ tions.9 As in the case of the boy actor, only in art can Ham­ let hope to impose on reality his wish that Claudius has been made a woman. He writes, I think, because he hopes to put Claudius through the same transformations a boy actor can go through. True, Claudius is not going to be an actor in the play, just a spectator. But he is supposed to recognize himself and thus identify with the process his surrogate Lucianus is put through. That sexes can be transformed in the theater may very well account for Ham­ let's feeling that the play's the thing for Claudius, for it will

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prove him a "mother," an emasculated man punished by King Hamlet. However bizarre this may sound, it is clear, as we shall see, that the production of Hamlet's play in­ volves more than a rational attempt to assess Claudius' guilt. That Hamlet cannot allow his dozen or sixteen lines to catch the King's conscience also brings us to the psychology of sexual transformations. To explore Hamlet's frantic in­ terference with his play, we have to know precisely what this "conscience" is that Hamlet thinks he is catching. "Catch the conscience of the King"—this jingling, alliter­ ated phrase has caught the imagination of the world, thus making me suspect that it expresses unconscious content that is powerful indeed. Freud would say, I think, that just like jokes and puns the alliteration here sets up a controlled verbal framework that allows unconscious content to ex­ press itself more or less safely.10 On this hypothesis, some­ thing in Shakespeare's unconscious resembling in sound the syllables beginning with a hard "c" is trying to come to the surface. "Conscience" seems the key, and we happen to have a vivid association of Hamlet's to this word: The undiscovered country, from whose bourn No traveller returns, puzzles the will, And makes us rather bear those ills we have, Than fly to others that we know not of? Thus conscience does make cowards of us all. (hi . i. 79-83) Conscience, as I argued earlier, is an echo of and an associ­ ation to the "undiscovered country," and this in turn may be associated with "country matters" and with the sexual punning on "conscience" in Sonnet 151. The area of asso­ ciation is by no means clearly defined here, and I cannot be sure that conscience has anything to do with country mat­ ters and that Hamlet is trying to catch Claudius' "country," trying to prove, as it were, that Claudius has already been

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made a woman.* But this all seems a possibility that is con­ sistent with Hamlet's remarks during his play, as we shall see in a moment. If the "conscience" Hamlet wishes Claudius to betray in response to his writing has any irrational meaning, and we can hardly expect that it does not, we might try the pos­ sibility that this conscience has something to do with female genitals. Mice and other furry animals are often associated with the female pubic area,11 and the fact that Hamlet calls his play "Mousetrap" may corroborate my hypothesis that Hamlet uses his play to catch Claudius the woman. In Ger­ trude's closet, Hamlet thinks of his mother as Claudius' "mouse"; in the play scene he may be wishing that Claudius were the "mouse," the woman. Alternatively, Hamlet may unconsciously think of the mouse he is going to catch as Claudius' detachable phallus (cf. Freud's Rat-Man).12 The mouse, once trapped, will leave the King unambiguously feminine. Detachable phalluses are clearly in Hamlet's mind just at the moment the play begins; at least a detachable hobbyhorse, a figure of a horse strapped around an actor's waist, is on his mind: O heavens! Die two months ago, and not forgotten yet? Then there's hope a great man's memory may outlive his life half a year. But, by'r Lady, 'a must build churches then, or else shall 'a suffer not thinking on, with the hobby-horse, whose epitaph is "For O, for O, the hobbyhorse is forgot." ( H I . ii. 132-138] * Other uses in the play of the word "conscience" give us very little help. "Now must your conscience my acquittance seal" (iv. vii. 1) is the phrase Claudius chooses to summarize his self-justification to Laertes. This does link Laertes' womanly submission with "conscience" and with writing ("seal") and so has some small resemblance to Hamlet's consciencecatching writing. Hamlet's two later uses of "conscience" (v. ii. 58-67), re­ garding his good conscience in his schoolfellows' death and in his designs on Claudius, do not openly betray their unconscious significance, but if they do carry the same latent meaning (and they need not) as the King's "conscience," they would not be absurd in their contexts.

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The phrase "O, the hobbyhorse if forgot" obviously re­ fers to King Hamlet; worried that his father has lost his po­ tent "hobbyhorse," Hamlet naturally wishes that Claudius and not his father would suffer the loss of his folkloric phallic symbol, that Claudius would prove himself a cas­ trate. "Hobbyhorse" was also an Elizabethan cant term for whore,13 and Hamlet, worried that his penetrated father was made a whore, might wish that it was Claudius instead who was the woman. Since Hamlet arranges the play, we may also think of him as the mousetrap, of him as the woman. We saw in Chapter Six that Hamlet makes himself a woman for un­ consciously strategic reasons, and here he may be fantasiz­ ing the taking of Claudius into his female trap. Maybe this helps to explain Hamlet's lack of decisive (phallic) action when Claudius flees. I think these speculations are all possible explanations for Hamlet's conscience-catching mousetrap. At any rate, the fact is that Hamlet clearly means more by conscience than is normally meant by the word. If he were simply interested in getting to what we would conventionally call Claudius' "guilty conscience" and provoking a confession, he would not so irrationally inter­ fere with his play. Let us test my hypothesis of the King's conscience in an analysis of what occurs during Hamlet's play. Lucianus, whose role in The Murder of Gonzago is analagous to Claudius' role in King Hamlet's story, enters, and for ten lines, according to Hamlet, embroiders on his part by mak­ ing faces. Hamlet, who all this while has been heaping obscene deprecation of women on Ophelia, cannot tolerate the acting he claims to see: ΟΡΗ. You are keen my lord, you are keen. HAM. It would cost you a groaning to take off mine edge. ΟΡΗ. Still better, and worse. HAM. So you mistake your husbands.—Begin, mur­ derer.

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Leave thy damnable faces, and begin. Come, the croaking raven doth bellow for revenge. (ill. ii. 252-258) What these "damnable faces" might have been we have no way of knowing. But we do have a clue. Just earlier Hamlet expressly warned the players to avoid ham acting: And let those that play your clowns speak no more than is set down for them, for there be of them that will themselves laugh, to set on some quantity of bar­ ren spectators to laugh too, though in the meantime some necessary question of the play be then to be con­ sidered. (πι. ii. 38-43) Lucianus' contorted faces, then, perhaps involve a grim "laugh" "to set" others to laugh too. For Hamlet, to do more than is "set down," as Lucianus is supposedly doing, is to "laugh." There is always the possibility that Lucianus is making some other kind of damnable face, some horrible, tragic grimacing, but let us follow for a moment my suspi­ cion that there is a precise correspondence between Ham­ let's advice to the players and Lucianus' disobedient acting. But before I can go on, another problem immediately presents itself. Is Lucianus really doing what Hamlet says he is doing? A director of Hamlet has to assume one of two things: either the actor playing Lucianus has deliberately and foolhardily jeopardized Hamlet's educated patronage by disregarding his sound advice just to make funny faces, or the hysterical Hamlet has simply hallucinated this. Though we have no evidence that Lucianus is making any kind of damnable face, Dover Wilson argues, on the basis of Hamlet's accusation, that Lucianus is taking part in some comic underplay between Hamlet and the players.14 To my mind, the empathetic relationship between Hamlet and the players makes this hypothetical comedy highly unlikely. Why should the players flaunt Hamlet's royal patronage? Why should an actor, whose troupe presented caviar to the

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general, play garbage to the Prince? We must at least con­ sider the second possibility, that Hamlet is trying to hal­ lucinate some kind of distorted oral aperture (perhaps a grim laugh or smile) on the face of the unsmiling Lucianus-cum-Claudius. This would be the revenge he, the "croaking raven," de­ sires, for it would show Claudius to have the crucial aper­ ture, to be a woman, already punished. We have seen how much energy Hamlet has invested in seeing Claudius as a smile. Hamlet turns on Lucianus just after goading Ophelia about her taking off his "edge" (erection), and that, in a different sense, is what he hopes is happening to Lucianus-Claudius. "So you mistake your husbands," chides Hamlet to Ophelia as he watches Lucianus, mean­ ing, probably, that women dishonestly take their husbands in marriage by swearing false vows; but on another level he may be implying, or wishing, that husbands (especially husband Claudius) are not what they seem, that they are mistaken wives, rendered women by wives who take the penis in intercourse and retain (mis-take) it. Yet Hamlet too is implicated in all this castration imagery. By croaking he makes himself into an aperture, and it is after all himself who might suffer the loss of his "edge." The failure of the hallucination of womanhood to maintain itself in connec­ tion with Claudius and its tendency to turn back on himself and on his father, the forgotten hobbyhorse, may account, I think, for a good deal of Hamlet's hysterical energy here, as well as for his sudden turning on Lucianus. I have to stop here a moment to say how doubtful I am about my interpretation of Lucianus' funny faces. I cannot tell whether Hamlet complains about a real or imagined fa­ cial expression when he accuses Lucianus of making damnable faces. Even if this expression is hallucinated, I cannot prove that it involves an oral aperture or a smile, although this seems likely. Moreover, even if it is a smile calculated to set others to laugh too, I cannot prove that it is invested with the castration symbolism I claimed to find in the "tables" soliloquy and elsewhere. Altogether, I am

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being so speculative that my interpretation would seem to have litde significance. But then I come back to the facts. Hamlet does talk bawdily about having his edge taken off, and this is juxtaposed to some kind of damnable face of Lucianus. And Hamlet does get hysterical. No conscious, professional disapproval on Hamlet's part for the acting he claims to see can account for his hysteria, nor can it account for the link that is clearly implied between the bawdry with Ophelia and the damna­ ble faces of Lucianus. Again, my best defense for my read­ ing is that it accounts for the emotional quality of the scene and that it is consistent with other material in the play. It still may be wrong, but whatever the right interpretation may be, it will certainly have to resort to similar uncon­ scious processes to explain the baffling juxtaposition of de­ tail that we find in this complex, roiling scene. The Murder of Gonzago, unfortunately for Hamlet's un­ conscious strategies, does not prove Claudius castrated, but rather, as Ernest Jones has suggested, it reenacts King Hamlet's castration,15 thus again reminding Hamlet that he has no strong father with whom to identify. In fact, the play-within-the-play hints at weaknesses in King Hamlet that the play itself has not mentioned. The Player King is much weaker than Hamlet's version of his father. Even be­ fore Lucianus gets to him, we hear that the Player King has been "so sick of late," his "operant powers their functions leave to do." We never hear that King Hamlet was weak be­ fore Claudius' assault, though this implication from The Murder is reinforced, as we have seen, by the fantasy that he was castrated by Gertrude in a primal scene. That the Player Queen is somehow responsible for the Player King's weakness, as Gertrude was responsible for King Hamlet's, is suggested by a curiously ambiguous statement by the overprotesting lady: A second time I kill my husband dead When second husband kisses me in bed. (in. ii. 188-189)

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The Player Queen does not mean that she will "kill" her husband the first time he dies; she thinks she says, merely, that remarriage would be like a second death to him. But as the line stands, it does seem that she, like Gertrude, can be viewed as killing her husband. It is, of course, Lucianus who is the killer, but the Player Queen's slip binds her to the larger play's unconscious theme that primal-scene women destroy men. No wonder the play-within-the-play agitates Hamlet. The Players, who on the surface of things seem to wander haphazardly into Elsinor and into Ham­ let's schemes, really bring with them a recapitulation of all the other visually shocking performances in the play. Thus Hamlet's purposes of re-establishing his father and punishing Claudius are not served by his play. His neurotic demands on art are larger than the drama's capacity to meet them. Claudius' "occulted guilt" does not "unkennel" itself, as Hamlet imagines it will, from an imaginary womb. Claudius is not a woman and does not have a womb. That Claudius does not "blench" at the dumb show is obvious, that he does not blench at anything else seems likely for the King of Show. It begins to impinge on Hamlet's conscious­ ness that his delusions about Claudius are just that, that Claudius cannot be shown to be a woman by confronting him with the theater. Hamlet becomes frenzied, exasper­ ated, tries to project womanhood onto Lucianus-Claudius, and then, because his unconscious reliance on the theater is betraying him, he forces the King to break up the play by his highly erratic and threatening behavior. Even if Clau­ dius does break up the play partially because of the in­ nuendoes of the play itself, it is not clear whether it is Ham­ let or the play that disturbs him more. I would, contrary to Dover Wilson,16 stage this scene so that it was clear that Claudius sees everything, including the dumb show, and responds to nothing but Hamlet's murderous intimida­ tions. And for Hamlet, it is precisely his own murderous impulses that cannot serve as a basis of action; he wants Claudius to be already punished by his father. Ironically, Claudius only later in the prayer scene adopts the emascu-

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lated cringing before a father figure that Hamlet needs to see. Hamlet thinks he has proved Claudius guilty, but what he really needed to prove was, unconsciously, that Claudius was guilty and punished. He may have caught Claudius' guilt (although this is obvious to none of the courtiers except him and Horatio, who already know about the guilt), but he did not catch Claudius' "con­ science," his nonexistent female genitalia. "Half a share" in an acting company is all Horatio thinks Hamlet deserves for his play, and he is right. Hamlet failed in the uncon­ scious half of his task. His writing threatening to fail him, he must save himself from losing his chief defense mecha­ nism by getting the play broken up before it can be a fail­ ure. He also quickly projects the whole play, including the lines he set down, elsewhere: "the story is extant, and writ in choice Italian." The play would not have been his failure, had it been allowed to continue. If Hamlet is wishing away his failing defense, he must also wish away the events that the writing in The Murder was supposed to defend against. And this, according to Alex­ ander Grinstein, is exactly what Hamlet does. Grinstein likens plays-within-plays to dreams-within-dreams; when one dreams that one is dreaming, the material in the inner dream represents something the dreamer wants to pretend is only a dream. Thus Hamlet is wishing, as he does throughout the play (a fact that Grinstein cannot bring into the scope of his three-page essay), that his father was never unmanned. But, as Grinstein concludes from his clinical practice, this wishing away is the "strongest affirmation" of the undeniable reality of the dream-within-the-dream.17 Even making allowance for the fact that dreams are dif­ ferent from plays, it seems clear that neither writing nor wishing are very successful defenses for Hamlet. His father remains absent, his uncle unpunished, and he him­ self unliberated from what he calls, in an earlier account of his malady to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, "bad dreams."

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Skipping maniacally around the stage, singing his own praise and snatches of a song about a toppled "Jove," the giddy Hamlet after the play behaves like a man who has deployed risky defenses against the reality of a weak father and who has narrowly escaped failure. But we are only in Act III of this dynamic study in failing defenses. Failure is coming. Giving up his delusions of Claudius as already punished, Hamlet adopts the strategic hope that his uncle will be punished by a "divinity" that "shapes our ends." This divinity is a convenient father substitute for the King Hamlet who failed to shape Claudius' end, that is, who failed to put an end to Claudius and who failed, if we take "end" in its anatomical sense, to castrate Claudius. Then, at the last moment before he dies, Hamlet realizes he will never see Claudius a woman, and he simply, brutally, and psychotically forces womanhood on the unsmiling villain by identifying the feminized chalice of poison with his un­ cle: Here, thou incestuous, murd'rous, damned Dane, Drink off this potion. Is thy union here? Follow my mother. (v. ii. 327-329) A possible play on the word "union" and the exclamatory "Follow my mother" make me feel that the gratuitous thrusting of the chalice on the already stabbed and poisoned Claudius is Hamlet's final delusive attempt to punish the "incestuous" Claudius by making him and the pernicious woman the same, in "union." That Shakespeare endows the frantic Hamlet with a fan­ tasy in which the poisoned chalice is identified with the Queen seems rather far-fetched, and I had better support my interpretation further. I think the timing of the follow­ ing stage entry connects the Queen with the chalice of poison: I'll have prepared him A chalice for the nonce, wheron but sipping,

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If he by chance escape your venomed stuck, Our purpose may hold there.—But stay, what noise? Enter Queen (iv. vii. 159-162) The fantasy content here seems to be saying that if phal­ lic aggression ("poisoned stuck") does not take care of Hamlet, the poisoned cup, the female genitalia as em­ bodied in Gertrude, will. That Gertrude is irresistibly drawn to the chalice, drinking from it though she is for­ bidden to do so, also reinforces the identification of Queen and cup. In any case, some such interpretation is required to explain Hamlet's powerful and irrational need to force the cup on his uncle, for Hamlet knows that Claudius will die without it. Incest is still plaguing Hamlet here ("incestuous, murd'rous, damned Dane"), and incest mobilizes irrational fantasies. If Hamlet is trying to bring about a sexual transforma­ tion by forcing the chalice on his unsmiling (and hence uncastrated) uncle, then his delusion about Claudius' being a woman is no longer safely isolated in writing. With no con­ trol over his delusions, he is mentally unfit for life. And so we witness not only Hamlet's physical death, but also the failure of psychological defenses that leads to death. It is as if Shakespeare were saying, "This is what would happen if my own reliance on writing were to fail me." But I have jumped to the end of Act V. Let me go back a bit.

IX After the play scene Hamlet is wary of making Claudius into a woman by setting him down as one. However, he still sees documentary certification as a good way of orienting himself to his mother and father. On the way to Gertrude's closet, ready to "drink hot blood," Hamlet transforms his incestuous desires into aggression toward the pernicious woman who initiated his whole conflict:

MANAGING THE UNCONSCIOUS I will speak daggers to her, but use none. My tongue and soul in this be hypocrites: How in my words somever she be shent, To give them seals never my soul consent. (III. ii. 404-407) The metaphor of document "seals," important elsewhere, is not accidental here. Hamlet fantasizes that if his incestu­ ous and murderous desires were given official documen­ tary status ("give them seals"), they would be brought dangerously close to enactment. We can expect from the force of "never my soul consent" that Hamlet uncon­ sciously fears the exact opposite, fears that his wishes to consummate his ambivalent desires will overwhelm his writing and not be controlled by it. With his mother a few moments later, Hamlet turns to the "sealing" of his father as a man, first by producing his picture and then by imagining him as a document bearing divine seals: A combination and a form indeed Where every god did seem to set his seal To give the world assurance of a man. (III. iv. 61-63) Precisely because he lacks this "assurance" about his father, Hamlet must fantasize the gods bestowing it—again as an official document with proper seal. Again Hamlet hopes that writing will shape the kind of reality he desires. Just a few lines before Hamlet gives his mother written assurance that his father was a man, Gertrude, who often uses her son's imagery, takes Hamlet's railing accusations as if they came out of the table of contents or "index" of a book: HAM. Such an act That blurs the grace and blush of modesty, Calls virtue hypocrite, takes off the rose From the fair forehead of innocent love And sets a blister there. . . .

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Heaven's face does glow O'er this solidity and compound mass With heated visage, as against the doom Is thoughtsick at the act. QUEEN. Ay me, what act, That roars so loud and thunders in the index? (ill. iv. 43-53) It is appropriate that Gertrude thinks her unspeakable "act" written in a book from which her son is reading the "index." Hamlet cannot make this act precise, even though his mother demands "what act," because it comes from his unconscious, from his primal-scene memories of one look­ ing on with "heated visage," "thoughtsick at the act" that "sets a blister" on "innocent love." Hamlet of course is not literally reading, but this is the kind of material that he has read and written before, in The Murder, in the book of "old men" quoted to Polonius, and in his tables. In a metaphori­ cal way Shakespeare is testing writing as a defense against Gertrude and the primal scene just as he does with a book or letter literally in his characters' hands. Here as elsewhere, Hamlet's use of writing is never quite masterful enough; he soon finds himself out of control before a ter­ rifying vision of his father. X In Act IV, we hear two letters; both are from Hamlet on his arrival back in Denmark. One is to Horatio; like the letter from Old Norway, it is remarkable for its lucidity. The other is to Claudius; like Hamlet's love letter, it confuses its hearers. We sense the same contrast that we found in the earlier pair of letters, and we thus feel the same doubt, so crucial to Hamlet, about the written word's adequacy to de­ scribe or control reality. But the particular meaning of the puzzling letter is, again, difficult to assess: MESS. Letters my lord, from Hamlet: These to your Majesty; these to the Queen.

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KING From Hamlet? Who brought them? MESS. Sailors my lord they say, I saw them not. They were given me by Claudio; he received them Ofhim that brought them. KING Laertes, you shall hear them.— Leave us. Exit MESSENGER. [Reads.] "High and mighty, you shall know I am set naked on your kingdom. To-morrow shall I beg leave to see your kingly eyes; when I shall (first ask­ ing your pardon thereunto) recount the occasion of my sudden and more strange return. Hamlet." What should this mean? Are all the rest come back? Or is it some abuse, and no such thing? LAER. Know you the hand? KING 'Tis Hamlet's character. "Naked"! And in a postscript here he says, "alone." Can you devise me? LAER. I am lost in it, my lord. (iv. vii. 36-54) Shakespeare obviously wants this fuss to be part of the play, but why? The Messenger could simply have an­ nounced that Hamlet was back. The important words in the letter seem to be "naked" and "alone," and perhaps we should begin with them. Hamlet is physically defenseless, pictures himself almost as a newborn baby, naked and alone. So too do we see him losing his psychic defenses. His writing is no longer serving to redetermine Claudius' sexuality, but, it seems, to affirm his masculinity. Hamlet is going to face up to Claudius' "kingly eyes"; that is, he is, if we accept Freud's equation of eyes and male genitals, going to acknowledge Claudius as a male. This change, we would think, should be in the direc­ tion of health and away from delusion, in the direction of resignation and away from hysterical antics. But this turns out not to be the case. Without his defenses, Hamlet is even more liable for destruction. "I am lost in it," says Laertes of Hamlet's letter, and his words could not be a better de-

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scription of Hamlet's unconscious. His other letter, to Horatio, in its narration of capture by "a pirate of warlike appointment," in its phrase "I have words to speak in thine ear will make thee dumb," also reveals, despite its coyly written bravado, captivity to the father's suspect warfaring, to his vulnerable ear. This interpretation is of course by no means certain, but the business of the two letters must indicate something, and this something presumably has to do with Hamlet's being defenseless and with Claudius' "kingly eyes." One could short-circuit this whole explanation by arguing that the consternation over Hamlet's letter is largely caused by the fact that Claudius thought his nephew dead, in Eng­ land, or on his way there. But this does not explain why the letter should be made part of the drama, nor does it ex­ plain the particular language of the letter. It may be further objected that since Hamlet is calmer and more resigned when he returns from the pirates, it would be unlikely that his letter even partially reveals delu­ sions about Claudius' manhood, whatever Freud may say about upward displacement from genitals to eyes. I think, however, that a calm and resigned Hamlet who can ac­ knowledge Claudius' kingly eyes is a mask, a wish on Shakespeare's part that his hero could, by writing, see things as they are. Even on the conscious level, Hamlet seems very facetious about the kingliness of Claudius' eyes, and I think that on the unconscious level also he is unwill­ ing to accept Claudius as King or man. This reading slights Hamlet's calmness. But how calm or resolute is he? He is not truly resolute about a plan to take finally into his own hands the matter of Claudius' punishment, and he is not truly clear-sighted. He wanders into Claudius' death trap without the slimmest suspicion that either Claudius or Laertes, proven enemies both, might have malice at heart (how different from his former acuteness about the hire­ lings Rosencrantz and Guildenstern). Shakespeare, though he might have wished calmness on his hero and introduced it by fiat, had sufficient integrity not to let his wishes run

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away with him. He shows that Hamlet is still as troubled as ever, especially in Ophelia's grave, still likely to opt for self-destruction, still haunted by his father. XI Hamlet is finally without defenses because his father was without defenses. King Hamlet, in his son's mind, was first castrated by Gertrude and then poisoned in the ear, made a woman by Claudius' penetration. In Chapter Two, I ar­ gued that without a strong father Hamlet resorts to God as a substitute figure who will mete out punishment to the oedipal villain Claudius and put an end once and for all to the troubling dilemma of incest. This calling upon God in the prayer scene and this reliance on the "divinity" that shapes our ends find their way into the play's use of writing as a way to manage unconscious fears. The writing I am re­ ferring to here is the Scripture. In addition to several allu­ sions to one verse or another, there are two important ref­ erences to the Bible as a written document. The first is Hamlet's wish in the first soliloquy "that the Everlasting had not fixed/ His canon 'gainst self-slaughter." This osten­ sibly seems a son's plea for the privilege of suicide, but it is also a postulation of a father figure strong enough ("Ever­ lasting") to protect his son from self-destruction. It is a plea for a father strong enough not only to defend himself but also to defend his son by invoking prohibitions. In the Bible a father like this exists. In Hamlet's life a father like this can be only a wish, something to write about, for King Hamlet was finally too weak to invoke any prohibitions, es­ pecially too weak to prohibit the incest-bound Claudius. The other reference in the play to the holy document is the gravedigger's quibble about Adam in "The Scripture." As we saw in Chapter Five, Adam's presence seems to be motivated by Shakespeare's need to speculate in a lighthearted manner whether our father had the appropriate limbs to dig in the earth mother. The Scripture's place in Hamlet seems to be that it is only another document in

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which the fear that fathers may be impotent can be man­ aged. It provides no ultimate morality, and no ultimate defense. It neither prevents Hamlet from being self destructive, nor does it allow him to die with a calm re­ liance on divinity and the strength of fathers. Hamlet dies still trying to prove the strength of his father by foisting womanhood on Claudius. XII I have left Claudius' sealed commission for last because it appears often, and to discuss its relationship to the other documents in the play we must trace its progress from scene to scene. After Claudius eavesdrops on the nunnery scene and discovers that love is not Hamlet's problem, he tells Polonius: There's something in his soul O'er which his melancholy sits on brood, And I do doubt the hatch and the disclose Will be some danger; which for to prevent, I have in quick determination Thus set it down: he shall with speed to England. (in. i. 165-170) It is noteworthy that Claudius tends, like Hamlet, to feel more comfortable imagining his enemy "set down" in writ­ ing, as if that in some way controls him. The nature of this control is roughly parallel to Hamlet's way of handling his enemy: Claudius, like Gertrude at Ophelia's funeral, imag­ ines Hamlet as a woman (a female bird, to be precise), ready to "hatch" some evil, while Hamlet wishes to view Claudius as a woman as a punishment for evil. To "set it down" is both Hamlet's and Claudius' way of confirming the other emasculated. Claudius entertains Hamlet's fan­ tasies not because Shakespeare did not differentiate his conscious character but because the play's unconscious ma­ terial seeks any possible opportunity to express itself. The commission is alluded to again at the end of Act III:

MANAGING THE UNCONSCIOUS There's letters sealed, and my two schoolfellows, Whom I will trust as I will adders fanged, They bear the mandate; they must sweep my way, And marshal me to knavery. (HI. iv. 203-206) Why Hamlet feels so threatened by Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, who are more like sheep than "adders fanged," and why he later demonstrates such relish in devising their unnecessary deaths, has often perplexed readers,18 but I think that what is to be noticed is that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern have become associated in his mind with "let­ ters sealed" and that his reaction to them here and hence­ forth is to be taken primarily in the context of his need to believe in the powers of things "set down." Of course he righdy suspects the contents of the commission, but there is more than a rational response to his schoolfellows, who, though they make love to the employment, are presumably ignorant of the letter's contents. To some important degree, Hamlet fears the schoolfel­ lows because they are marshalling him to knavery with something written; desperately needing things written to be true, he imagines the danger greater than it turns out to be. I do not wish to minimize the potential danger to Ham­ let. But the innocent Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are not as dangerous as Hamlet hysterically assumes, and they are easily circumvented. To be able to set Claudius down as punished and have it so is precisely Hamlet's unconscious wish. As a victim of his own wish he is outraged, but when he has the opportunity to kill Claudius' agents by the same method of writing, he is coming close to the thing he most desires, and hence he finds such acute pleasure and inven­ tiveness in the act. No conscious motivation could provide this pleasure, for the death of the schoolfellows was not necessary to Hamlet's safety, and no interpretation of Hamlet's gratuitous murdering is going to satisfy us if it rests solely on conscious grounds. The pleasure that Hamlet gains from the death of his

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schoolfellows and the telling of the swaggering tale to Horatio is short-lived, as it must be. Shakespeare was not interested in showing Hamlet wallowing in the regressions of a sadistic fiend, only in showing to what extremes Ham­ let had to go in his search for a workable use of writing as a defense against an unpunished Claudius. But even if Ham­ let were to pursue this sadistic streak, it would not help him much. Since all neurotic defenses contain a version of what they are defending against, Hamlet's success with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern would remind him of a more sig­ nificant failure. The forged commission provided for its bearers to be "put to sudden death/ Not shriving time al­ lowed." Now this is just the way that King Hamlet died. The Ghost tells Hamlet that he was killed with "No reck'ning made," and Hamlet later says that that is the way he wants to see Claudius die, "about some act/ That has no relish of salvation in't." Though Hamlet uses his father's power to kill Rosencrantz and Guildenstern (he seals the forgery with his father's ring), he nevertheless reenacts his father's death. He does not even live to hear that his clever but useless writing succeeded in England; he is already dead in Denmark. The original, unforged commission probably first ap­ pears on stage just after Claudius tells Hamlet that for his safety in the matter of Polonius' death he must leave for England. Hamlet, saying goodby, fantasizes his uncle's unmanning by calling him "mother," and exits. Claudius produces the commission, gives it to the schoolfellows, and invokes his own powers of castration: And England, if my love thou hold'st at aught— As my great power thereof may give thee sense, Since yet thy cicatrice looks raw and red After the Danish sword, and thy free awe Pays homage to us—thou mayst now coldly set Our sovereign process, which imports at full By letters congruing to that effect, The present death of Hamlet. (iv. iii. 59-66)

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Claudius, using imagery that psychoanalysis has come to associate with fantasies of castration, sees himself as the in­ heritor of King Hamlet's power to wreak "red and raw" wounds that bring a whole nation to submission. Hamlet, though, because of his popularity and his mother's love, cannot be so easily made to submit. So Claudius must work indirecdy, through writing "letters." Claudius has only to write and the external world in the shape of England will make what is written true. Again, Claudius' need to cas­ trate Hamlet by setting him down does not have separate unconscious motivation but is rather a neat echo and con­ firmation of Hamlet's need to see Claudius punished in writing.19 The commission returns to stage at the beginning of the play's last scene. Hamlet tells Horatio of his skill in dis­ covering, with the help of the divinity that shapes our ends, the genuine commission, in forging and sealing a new one in the "fair" or scribal handwriting he once mocked (a clear sign of deep feelings about writing—one does not mock where there is no psychological investment). He gives Horatio the original: Here's the commission; read it at more leisure. But wilt thou hear now how I did proceed? (v. ii. 26-27) Hamlet's tale did not require Shakespeare to produce this document again here, but for some reason he needed it on stage at the end. The reader of the play may not realize it, but the commission never again leaves the stage all through the reeling conclusion; Horatio has it. Is he holding it visibly?—a small question of some importance that the producer must decide. For if Horatio, when he speaks these lines, And let me speak to th' yet unknowing world How these things came about. So shall you hear Of carnal, bloody, and unnatural acts, Of accidental judgments, casual slaughters, Of deaths put on by cunning and forced clause,

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And, in this upshot, purposes mistook FalFn on the inventors' heads. All this can I Truly deliver, (v. ii. 381-388) is holding the commission, or perhaps just produces it from a pocket with the words "All this can I/ Truly de­ liver," he would be referring not only to Claudius' ugly plotting, in which regard his lines are usually taken, but to Hamlet's as well. Both Claudius and Hamlet wrote com­ missions. This is, though Horatio does not realize it, a sorry beginning to the "story" of the Prince. Hamlet's writing fantasies, pushed to their extreme in the killing of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, have destroyed his outer world in proportion to the destruction wreaked on his inner world by psychic conflicts and delusions. And Claudius' villainous commission, insofar as it is an unconscious echo of Ham­ let's need to fantasize castration, is further testimony that what is rotten in Denmark is the human mind, destroying itself with its own defenses. "O 'tis sweet/ When in one line two crafts direcdy meet"—Claudius' craft, or defense, is, on one level, the same as Hamlet's craft, and the two castrators meeting head on is not so sweet. "Fall'n on the in­ ventors' heads," Hamlet's and Claudius' written fantasies reinforce each other and destroy the fantasizers. Horatio, holding a written document in the midst of car­ nage, would testify to the failure of writing as a defense against self-destruction. It is a failure that was fore­ shadowed from the very first when the frightened Fran­ cisco, by ordering Bernardo to stand and "unfold" himself like a letter, brought writing into the soul-sick world of de­ fenders, defenseless against the only attack that matters in the play, the visitation of an ambivalent father. Francisco's words cast a long shadow over all the documents in the play and, assuming that Horatio is holding the document Ham­ let gave him, they take on their final dismal coloring here at the end. If Horatio is not a sufficient witness to the failure of writing, Hamlet himself is. He tells us in the graveyard,

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the place to which all things in the play, including uncon­ scious defense strategies, tend, that one should not rely on things written. At least, one should not rely on parchment: HAM. Is not parchment made of sheep-skins? HOR. Ay, my lord, and of calveskins too. HAM. They are sheep and calves which seek out assurance in that. (v. i. 114-117) Hamlet means this in reference to lawyers and their "vouchers." But, alas, it also seems to have an all too poign­ ant meaning for the man whose almost instinctual re­ sponse to crisis is to set things down in writing. "They are sheep and calves which seek out assurance in that."

XIII Looking back over my mind's stage, I find Hamlet one thing with its documents emphatically produced and another with them either expurgated or down-played. In the former case I see the play's most baffling aspects, Hamlet's relationship with the Ghost, his conscience-catching play so frantically interfered with in its presentation, his cruelty to Ophelia, his callousness with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, all revolving around the meaning of setting things down. In the latter case I see the play from what must be Horatio's point of view, and the "story" I would tell would be one "Of accidental judgments, casual slaughters," thus missing a good part of the play's unity. The unity I see underlying the play's emphasis on writ­ ing is a consistent, though dynamic, attempt to fabricate a father strong enough to punish the oedipal criminal with castration. Since a son is in so many ways only as strong as his incorporated father, we can see that a son who feared he had a weak father would wish things Otherwise. We might also expect him to wish for a less seductive mother, thus neutralizing the weak father. Hamlet's matricidal im-

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pulses and Ophelia's melting away into the elements perhaps express this corollary wish, but for the most part the play deals with a mother who is irrefutably present and carnal and a father who is literally only as potent as the desperate "mind's eye" of his son can make him. When writing is successful, it is a defense against the way things are, as in the sealed compact; when it is not success­ ful, it is merely a restatement of brutal reality, as in the book of "old men." To do without writing, to attempt to rearrange reality in life instead of in fiction, leads Hamlet to the psychotic situation in which he, no longer able to imagine Claudius a woman punished by his father, must lit­ erally try to make him one, in "union" with Gertrude. Writ­ ing for Hamlet is a defense that failed, thus making his life a failure. Shakespeare's father was either dying or just dead when Hamlet was being written. This fact from his adult life, coupled with his father's business failures, may have resur­ rected some of his earliest repressions, the fantasized fear that his father was not strong enough to make him give up his (perhaps) oversolicitous mother who had lost two chil­ dren before William was born. However this may he,Hamlet seems to me to embody, among other things, a highly com­ plex fantasy of a strong father who betrays all the weak­ nesses his son ever imagined him to have. As the father, so too the son's self-image; as King Hamlet, so Prince Hamlet. Our favorite character in Shakespeare's works, the most in­ telligent, the strongest, the most beautiful, inherits, alas, his poisoned father's failure. As in the case of the "To be" soliloquy, I have discovered failure at the heart of the play—King Hamlet's failure to maintain himself as a strong father, Hamlet's failure to fabricate the father he needed, Shakespeare's failure to construct a set of mental strategies that could save his hero. But what about the successes? What about the value of Hamlet's intelligence and beauty in adversity? What about our enjoyment of this study in adversity? What about

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Shakespeare's, not Hamlet's, successful use of writing to turn nightmares into creativity? Again we come to the opportunity to turn Hamlet into something more positive than failure. Eissler and Erikson and Knight, we remember, heard great and positive prom­ ise in the "To be" passage and would want to end a discus­ sion of Hamlet in that light. They would want, I think, to reckon up Hamlet's strengths as Goddard does—his "in­ genuousness, his modesty, his truthfulness, his freedom, his courage, his love, his sympathetic imagination"—and set these traits against the tokens of his failure, "his suspi­ cion, his coarseness, his sarcastic wit, his critical intellect, his bloodiness, his revenge."20 If I have overemphasized the symptoms of failure, it is because everyone is quite clear about why they love Hamlet, but less clear about why all those qualities that make him loveable were not enough to save him. Hamlet is beautiful in adversity, but for me the question is: why was not that enough? The answer, of course, would bring us to the very nature of tragedy, and that is another story. But, simply, I would say this much. While comedies shore up psychic defenses, tragedies explore their disintegration.21 In Hamlet, Shakespeare portrays a man, highly gifted like himself, who is largely destroyed by the mental defenses he mar­ shals against intrapsychic conflict. Hamlet's tragedy is the failure of his mental defenses. Any attempt to make this failure a success for the dramatic character Hamlet seems to me replete with the kind of unfulfillable wishing that I find in the "To be" passage and in Eissler's analysis of it. But the portrait of failure was a success for Shakespeare— and for us. He was able to watch from a distance Hamlet's self-destruction and thereby gain mastery over it. We too can distance Hamlet's inherited familial vicissitudes, and wish things otherwise for ourselves; we can enshrine his virtues and, in our awe of his conflicted mind, rededicate ourselves to the mental strategies that keep us from failing. Bywatching tragedy, we can wish, and thereby help create,

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our own psychic health. It is the miracle of tragedy that failure belongs to the fictitious characters and health to the creators, the artist and his audience. XIV Hamlet's style is, perhaps like everyone else's, the out­ wardly directed summation of all his creative and defensive strategies, expressed in his modes of thinking, feeling, act­ ing, and writing. If, as Holland suggests, tragedy studies the failure of psychic defenses while comedy studies the mind surviving the assault of disorder,22 we would expect Hamlet's defensive style of writing to bear the marks of failure. I want to show in a little more detail that the failure that Shakespeare the writer avoids and transforms is pre­ cisely the failure that characterizes Hamlet's style, and that failure is not merely Hamlet's fate but also his dominant mode of behavior. It may seem strange to think of style in terms of failure. After all, a style is what we mobilize against failure, against being overwhelmed by inner and outer pressures. But our styles are at best only provisional and are always skirting disaster. Because they do not work perfectly, we have to im­ prove them by adding and deleting both small and large aspects to our ways of writing sonnets, choosing hats, and adopting life styles. For most people these changes take place within a relatively stable matrix of identity, but at worst our provisional styles break down faster than we can mend them, leaving us with no intact personality structure. In Hamlet, Shakespeare gives us a man whose style changes mercurially and finally becomes the failure it is try­ ing to fend off. Hamlet is always working with a failing style of one kind or another, and, because he is Shakespeare's guinea pig, also with failing literary styles. Critics have had a hard time pinning Hamlet down to the confines of a recognizable character style. Similarly, psychoanalysts cannot agree on which clinical or neurotic style Hamlet most exhibits. Let us focus more widely and

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allow him the desperate right to try on all styles in his grow­ ing, secret need to find a style that both succeeds and, paradoxically, fails. Let us take several incidents from the play, all involving style as a mode of both behaving and writing, and notice the variety of Hamlet's failing adaptive strategies. I am choosing these incidents because they show Hamlet adopting all four of David Shapiro's "neurotic styles," types of handicapped behavior that usually belong to fairly differ en tiable characters.23 I am not interested in making Shapiro's ready-made suits fit Hamlet but only in showing that Hamlet tries on so many styles because each one fits him inadequately, partly because he himself secredy needs them to fit badly. Thus he is an unsuccessful obsessive when he writes in his tables, a poor paranoid when he composes a love letter to Ophelia, a fruitless hys­ teric at his play, and a failing impulsive when he forges a new commission to kill Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. We will see that in these incidents Hamlet needs to fail be­ cause, in part, success would confront him with his father's weakness. Actually none of these incidents involve a clinically rec­ ognized "pure" style (styles are, anyway, a mixture of strat­ egies), but let me associate the dominant pattern of each with similar behavior elsewhere in the play. We will see that the lively variety of Hamlet's styles is a symptom of his fail­ ure and that, tragically, failure is the result of his best men­ tal effort. The tragedy is titanic because the effort and the mind are titanic. Summarizing and extrapolating from Shapiro, we find that the obsessive-compulsive protects himself from what he considers the tyranny of autonomy, from the freedom to be an adult with full feeling and responsibility. Whether he equates autonomy with a punishable "usurpation" of the father's prerogatives, or feels guilty about the depths of his lust for life, or overwhelmed by the complexity of the adult world, or, more likely, a combination of all of these, the obsessive will attempt to flatten out his experience, re­ duce it to a series of technical problems over which he can

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worry, thus infinitely postponing action and proving to his secret self that he is not, after all, autonomous. He corners himself with external directives, and makes himself a slave to the process of finding out what precisely those external directives might be, what he "should" do. And since to him knowing what to do is a sign of hubris, he arranges to be permanendy without conviction about action; in his mind, action is reserved for a shadowy father figure, an exter­ nalized arbitor of "should." He is prone to obsessive rituals and rites, which have specific fantasy content in need of control but which also have a more general purpose: the acting out of a mechanical version of life, a substitute for the full autonomy for which the obsessive feels he might be punished. At moments, Hamlet certainly fits this paradigm. As we have seen, his staging of the "cellarage" scene can be viewed as an obsessional ritual staged around a father figure. And there are less obvious ways in which he steeps his basic functioning in the obsessive style. Though Hamlet sees through Rosencrantz and Guildenstern in a moment and acts accordingly, he prolongs convincing himself about the nature of Claudius' charades. He throws himself into testing for the truth with little relish for finding it. In the process he reduces this truth, which involves large ques­ tions of his responsibility to his father, his manhood, his ethics, and his independence, to a matter to be resolved by a rather technical experiment in the theater. The lines written for the Murder of Gonzago draw on several styles but certainly one of them involves the need of the obsessive to test for the truth while simultaneously making sure that the truth is not reliably established. Even though Hamlet promises to "rivet" his eyes on Claudius' face, he actually loses himself in repartee with Ophelia and even distracts Claudius in ways that make it impossible for Hamlet to be sure about any reading of his experiment—which he finally gets broken up altogether. He manages to establish only a technicality that is at best ambiguous: did Claudius start

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"Upon the talk of the poisoning," as the giddy Hamlet would have it, or upon Hamlet's threatening behavior? Be­ cause this and so much else is deliberately, though secretly, kept in doubt in Hamlet's mind, he has the excuse of not taking action with conviction. Similarly, Hamlet's writing in his tables serves the obsessive's need to whitde life down to technical aspects and ex­ ternal directives. Claudius' smile, as we saw earlier, has a fantasy content, but it also has a mode, a way of reducing the unpredictable world of men to a predictable world of parts, a world in which it is noteworthy that a villain can operate the lever marked "smile." And of course the focus on the technical relationship of smile and villainy comes in the obsessive context of incorporating the paternal voice, the external directive: "Remember me." If Hamlet could only have believed in the validity of that paternal voice, he could have setded down to be a rather dull but successfully adaptive neurotic. But even the ambiguity that enfolds the typical obsessive was not enough to hold Hamlet, for he is ambiguous about his belief in the power of the external directive, without which the obsessive process cannot con­ tinue. Successful obsessives need to believe in their fathers. Thus, in his loss of psychic equilibrium, Hamlet also ex­ periments with the advantages of the paranoid style. Like the obsessive, the paranoid tries to avoid responsibility for his complete self. He does this largely by projecting un­ wanted parts of his personality onto the external world. This, however, secretly persuades him that the world is full of precisely the things he is trying to avoid. He becomes suspicious. He "knows" that right below the skin of experi­ ence fester the poisons he himself has injected; he thus persistendy dissects his world. Because he has endowed the world with his own power, he rightfully fears that it con­ trols him; he perceives himself as a machine run by the very impulses he had to jettison and that are now exter­ nalized and unrecognizable. And because so much of what is vital has been projected away, and so much of what is

MANAGING THE UNCONSCIOUS

suspect really belongs to the self, the paranoid feels incom­ plete and ashamed. He berates himself for real and imag­ ined inadequacies. Hamlet assumes the paranoid's style in his basic mode of doubting all surfaces. Of course he often has every right to be suspicious, but, as we saw in his fear of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, these unlikely "adders fanged," he was re­ sponding to his own projected desire to use "letters sealed" in a murderous way. His letter to Ophelia shows a more subtle paranoia, the kind that gets woven into an almost transparent, day-to-day style. As we found earlier, Shake­ speare seems to have left the authorship of the letter somewhat ambiguous, but we need not worry whether Hamlet or Polonius "really" wrote the letter. Shakespeare wrote it, and what we are finally dealing with is the poet's creation of a dysfunctional style, compounded of the weaknesses of father and son figures, which highlights his own successful adaptation of a mode that penetrates all surfaces and seeks to learn the secret meaning behind every mask. While Shakespeare commands a sublimated and socially adaptive paranoid style, the writer of the love letter is so overwhelmed with paranoid suspicion that he even has to doubt the meaning of the word "doubt," wrenching it into its antonym. We have a hint that he'does not believe in the "beautified" Ophelia either, for, as Ham­ let later raves in the nunnery scene, what is beautified must have an ugly underlying essence. The writer also does not believe in the surface value of his own protestations and must harp "that I love thee best, O most best, believe it." The shame of the paranoid also runs through this unfor­ tunate letter; both the writer and its reader Polonius use the word "ill" to describe its adequacy. And, as in clinical paranoids, the shame is in tandem with the view of the self as a "machine." This word was rare and newfangled in 1600, but Shakespeare, almost omnisciently, managed to place it in a context whose aptness would take over three hundred years to document. But Hamlet is no better at paranoia than at obsession; he lacks the demanding inner

MANAGING THE UNCONSCIOUS

voice that insists on projecting repudiated impulses; he has no solidly incorporated paternal injunction that says, in ef­ fect, "this is forbidden, this you must cast from yourself." The absence of his father makes his paranoid self as nonnegotiable as his obsessive self, not to mention his au­ tonomous self. The paranoid style failing him too, Hamlet switches to the opposite mode of believing everything and everyone. The man whose perspicacity saw through Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, whose "prophetic soul" penetrated Claudius' guilt early on, whose delusional projections fathomed a lurking depravity in Ophelia, suddenly and mysteriously trusts in God's providence and wanders innocently into Claudius' and Laertes' trap. Here Hamlet is in the mode of the hysteric who, in accepting the world as superficial, forges a different kind of style to avoid the same full and responsible self that the obsessive and the paranoid are es­ caping. Where the obsessive and the paranoid remember all sorts of details (however stripped of relevant affect), the hysteric represses total situations. This is facilitated by his tendency to squint his eyes and register very little in the first place. What cannot be repressed is boiled off in emo­ tional outbursts of more show than substance. Since the emotion is not allowed to percolate in the mind, the steam that is blown off is a thin brew and contains little of deep desires or involvements. The hysteric is thus able to deny that the feelings behind his outbursts are his at all. In a world like this, where nothing "counts," the hysteric has no reason to be suspicious of anything. Hamlet's rantings in the nunnery scene, in the play scene, and in Ophelia's grave are clearly in this vein. When he is through with his fireworks, he is "as patient as a female dove," oblivious to the vociferous emotions he need no longer acknowledge as his, and oblivious to any threat that his carrying on may be arousing in Claudius' mind. At one moment suspicious of what Claudius might be up to, he is at another moment unable to perceive that Claudius is up to anything at all. This switch has a parallel in Hamlet's

MANAGING THE UNCONSCIOUS

use of writing. The Murder of Gonzago is marshalled to serve obsessional and paranoid testing, but it becomes an occasion for hysterical acting-out, for what Shapiro calls the hysteric's "theatrical or play-acting quality." Similarly, the writing for the play is at first crafted from the depths of Hamlet's anguish, but as obsession and paranoia give way to hysteria the same writing is disowned; "these are not my feelings," protests Shapiro's hysteric, as does, in effect, the frenzied Hamlet when he talks about the play's origin in "choice Italian." No mode or style will really serve Hamlet, for none is adequate to his double need to act as responsi­ bly as his father wishfully would have and to refuse to act because that would deprive King Hamlet of the last chance to give his son an unambiguous model of autonomous ac­ tion. So he will have to try yet another mode, what Shapiro calls the impulsive style. This too is an effective way of re­ fusing full adulthood, and, in the case of Hamlet, full will­ ingness to take on the responsibilities of an absent father. The impulsive will fabricate in his own mind external temptations that get the better of him, foisting on his pas­ sive self unplanned and unintegrated behavior that he can later disavow. Hamlet as an obsessive could not act, but as an impulsive he jumps aboard the pirates' ship, jumps into Ophelia's grave, jumps into the project of using the play to catch the conscience of the king, jumps into getting the play broken up. As an obsessive, he used his writing to re­ duce life to an aphorism to be pondered, but as an impul­ sive he uses it to precipitate action in the form of the "sud­ den" death of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, no "shriving time allowed." As an hysteric, Hamlet was theatrical and giddy about his writing in the Murder of Gonzago, but as an impulsive he can afford to be quite cool and calculating about his writing, for he cannot be held responsible for what he does in these moments. Like the criminal impul­ sive who blames other people for tempting him, Hamlet makes himself into the passive victim of other people's plots; he need not feel responsible for his schoolfellows'

MANAGING THE UNCONSCIOUS

death because at the very moment he is unabashedly con­ fessing to impulsive murder-through-writing he is also identifying with the passive sparrow who falls because God wants him to, and with his father, whose place he will shortly take as a passive factim of Claudius' strategems. This is the one achievement of all Hamlet's styles: they keep him from being the responsible man he would like his father to be before him. But each style he adopts requires precisely this strong, responsible father, in the form of either an external directive or a peremptory inner voice that compels projection, repression, or disavowal of for­ bidden impulses. Hamlet thus must sabotage each of his styles before he has to face the final ambiguity of the father who pervades his modes as well as his fantasies. Just as the Murder of Gonzago re-enacts the crucial story of this in­ adequate father, it also reveals the inadequacies of all of Hamlet's styles, his obsessive brooding, his paranoid test­ ing, his hysteric outbursts, his impulsive meddling, them­ selves powered by the same father. Using one mode to undermine another, Hamlet can only hope that his failure to craft a viable style will somehow guarantee, by imagined contrast, the autonomy of his father. But his father is dead, and so even this hope is empty. Hamlet's failing styles are, finally, merely that, and he dies without having put his life or his writing to creative use. His tragedy is the failure of style, the failure of an energetic mind to find a way of living with itself.

NINE

CONCLUSION

I

FREUD argued that Hamlet cannot kill Claudius, and hence avenge his father's death, because Claudius has committed just the crimes of patricide and incest that Hamlet himself secretly wished to commit; for Hamlet, killing Claudius would thus be like killing himself, and this he of course does not wish to do. I find this argument suspect even on psychoanalytic grounds, for if Hamlet has identified with Claudius, there are good psychological reasons for him to go straight for Claudius' throat, punishing himself in a pro­ jected form for his incest fantasies. As I have shown, the play turns not on Hamlet's identification with Claudius, but on his identification with his father. NeitherJones in Ham­ let and Oedipus, nor K. R. Eissler in a more recent book, nor any other psychoanalyst or critic has thoroughly pursued the lapses in Freud's application of psychoanalysis to Ham­ let, largely because their discussions of psychological themes have remained curiously divorced from a close analysis of the play's poetry. Though Freud was woefully incomplete and finally wrong about Hamlet, his psychology is immensely useful for an understanding of literature. When applied in detail along with the careful practice of literary criticism, psycho­ analysis reveals in art a multi-faceted relationship between conscious craft and unconscious fantasies. Specifically, I find that in Hamlet Shakespeare deals not with repressed patricidal impulses but with a highly complex search, par­ tially unconscious, for a strong father. Much more than he wants to have killed his father, Hamlet wants his father back, wants a strong man with whom to identify. Shake­ speare presents to us one ambivalent father figure after another, each an imitation or a parody of King Hamlet, the

CONCLUSION

seemingly titanic father who proved surprisingly vulnera­ ble and easily forgotten by his formerly doting wife. King Hamlet opens the play as a frightful apparition, a shell of power hiding a ghostly insubstantiality, a weak and impo­ tent prisoner in purgatory who is unable to exact his own revenge, an absent man. Polonius, Osric, Yorick, the God who could not punish a Claudius murdered while praying, the hopeless Poles, Old Fortinbras, Old Norway, Adam, Priam, Achilles, the First Player, even Horatio, all are ver­ sions of the ambivalent father who constitutes part of Ham­ let's identity. I see Hamlet struggling with real and imagined weaknesses of his father, vainly wishing these weaknesses away, fearing that he too has been weakened by the same processes that brought King Hamlet unexpect­ edly to death, unsuccessfully trying to fabricate a strong father, a model of uncompromised strength. On the surface of the play as well as in its depths, Hamlet worries that he and his father have been unmanned by women, that mothers and mistresses are sexually danger­ ous, that men would be better objects of affection if they did not bear the marks of having been weakened by women. Close analysis of Hamlet's language shows persist­ ent fantasies of homosexuality as an implausible escape from frightening heterosexuality, all sex seen regressively as aggressive and poisonous, ugly like the incest-bound Claudius penetrating his sleeping brother's ear, disturbing like Ophelia as she goes to her muddy death singing love ditties, decked out in long purples, dead men's fingers. Shakespeare's craft allows him to both express and con­ trol the fantasies he lets loose. His imagery, his careful or­ dering of scenes, his ever present puns, his ambiguous characterization, his stage props, all form aesthetic pat­ terns that are not only satisfying in their own right but also help control a roiling complex of fantasies that give the play depth and resonance. For Shakespeare, writing was a successful adaptive mechanism against being overwhelmed by the unconscious; but for Hamlet, in his strange love let­ ter to Ophelia, in his rewriting of The Murder of Gonzago

CONCLUSION

and the deadly commission, and in other documents too, writing is a defense that fails, constituting part of his tragedy. II The psychological themes I have traced in Hamlet can be found in Shakespeare's other works as well. Of course every play is unique, an experiment with new and varied ways of expressing and managing old conflicts. But many of the conflicts come up again and again and so do certain varieties of defenses, qualities that give Shakespeare's writ­ ing its mark and allow us to recognize his style. The ambiguous father who dominates Hamlet permeates Shakespeare's other plays (and the first seventeen sonnets: see Appendix A). The comedies often involve impov­ erished, deposed, or wilfully absent father figures who are joyfully restored: Antonio in The Merchant, Duke Senior in As You Like It, Duke Vincentio in Measure, Pericles and Prospero. And the world of Cymbeline is set right by the triumphant descent of Jupiter, father of the gods. Shakespeare's tragedies often center around a seemingly powerful father figure who withdraws and leaves his world in chaos: Lear abandons the throne, Antony turns his back on the empire, Timon flees the world into misanthropy. Titus could rule men only when he was overprotesting his manliness by getting 21 of his 25 sons killed on the battlefield; when he was called upon to rule Rome in peace, his weakness asserts itself and he must absent himself from consideration as emperor. Romeo and Juliet suffer in a spiritual world run by a benevolent but bungling Friar Laurence and in a political world run by fathers who can­ not keep the peace. Julius Caesar is a ruler whose pride blinds him and makes him vulnerable; he leaves his world in civil war. Macbeth disposes of the rightful monarch, the fatherly Duncan, and then, in a feverish attempt to do "all that may become a man," descends into a nightmarish pro­ testation of manliness; he abandons his kingdom to chaos, and he kills children. Coriolanus is not allowed to rule in

CONCLUSION

Rome; because of an inflated pride that betrays underlying self-contempt, he is chased from a city that he should have helped govern but almost destroys. Like most of Shake­ speare's tragic heroes, Coriolanus' strengths are selfdestructive and therefore also weaknesses. He ends as King Hamlet does, a man who finally could not defend himself. I think it no accident that Shakespeare's ten plays based on English history focus on the bloody civil wars that re­ sulted from having ambivalent father figures sit on the throne. The histories evoke a world not terribly different from that of Hamlet. In King John, the King has his legiti­ macy challenged by the French; he is also undermined by the Pope. In a ploy to save himself, he surrenders authority to the Bastard but finds himself poisoned anyway. Chil­ dren in this world do not fare well; young Prince Arthur is driven to suicide. John is an appropriate introduction to the ambivalent fathers in the tetralogies and Hamlet. Like King Hamlet, Richard II is disposable; his successor Henry IV is a "counterfeit" (we remember that Hamlet's slip in Gertrude's closet characterized the idealized portrait of his father as a "counterfeit"). Henry V bribes church hirelings to sanctify his invasion of France, where he can deflect crit­ icism that he descends from a usurper onto an enemy. Hal overprotests his heroism in France as King Hamlet did in Poland, but it does him no good. He dies young anyway, leaving an infant son who totters through three plays de­ monstrating what weaknesses are foisted on the son of an absent father. Then Richard III tries to dominate the cha­ otic world of weak Henry VI, but he too is an overprotester of manliness, and his withered body makes him a withered man; plagued by nightmares he is finally unable to govern. Shakespeare perhaps liked to think of these inadequate Plantagenets giving way to the sturdy Tudors, and, in one last attempt to portray a great king, he came out of retire­ ment to write the story of Henry VIII, the father of Elizabeth. Unfortunately, Henry is more shifty than strong; worried more about his ability to engender a son than his ability to give England a stable law and religion, he

CONCLUSION

corrupts his own legitimacy as he corrupts law and morality in the expediency of producing a male heir. His limitations make it impossible for him to recognize the promise of Elizabeth's birth which occurs at the end of the play. Ironi­ cally, he thinks Elizabeth augurs a poor future for Eng­ land. Thus Shakespeare closes his cycle of histories and his career as a dramatist without ever being able to install an unambiguously strong father figure as king, though he cer­ tainly did try. Ill Perhaps having a woman on the throne in his own day freed Shakespeare from the psychological tyrannies of the ambiguous father. But Elizabeth may also have helped marshal archaic fantasies of an all-powerful, destructive mother figure. Versions of the emasculating Gertrude and the whore Fortune appear throughout Shakespeare's work: Venus in "Venus and Adonis," Tamora in Titus, Margaret in the first tetralogy, Regan and Goneril in King Lear, Lady Macbeth in Macbeth, Volumnia in Coriolanus. Some of Shakespeare's female characters have their destructiveness alloyed with other, more attractive qualities that may even appear to predominate. But consider the ef­ fect of Portia's mercy on Shylock, Helen's beauty on the Trojans, Desdemona's love on Othello, Cordelia's integrity on Lear, Cleopatra's passion on Antony. Sometimes Shakespeare's emasculating women are treated comically, finally harmless, but their threat to men is nevertheless evident: Beatrice in Much Ado, and Paulina in Winter's Tale. Shakespeare evidently loved Rosalind, perhaps partly be­ cause he keeps her dressed up as a man most of the time, but Duke Frederick sees her as threatening and hateful as a witch; in a fit of mixed political and psychological fear, he banishes her. Viola is lovable, but she too is kept dressed up as a boy most of the time. Duke Frederick banishes Rosalind at least partly because she reminds his guilty conscience of the deposed rightful duke, Rosalind's father. But other Shakespearean charac-

CONCLUSION

ters hate women, especially the women they love, for even more submerged reasons. We begin to see that Shake­ speare and Shakespeare's characters need to depict wom­ en as Tamoras and Gertrudes, whether or not they ac­ tually are sexually frightening. The delusional jealousy of Claudio, Othello, Posthumus, and Leontes involves seeing women as whores even when they are pure. Shakespeare's fascination with the imaginary blight on the rose can be traced to his working into art fantasies of the primal scene. What is it that, say, Othello sees? Something that never happened as he saw it, something that nevertheless works powerfully on the mind, something that poisons sexuality, something that makes Othello and Shakespeare populate their worlds with destructive women. We know of only one account for why a mind would construct this vision, and that is from the psychoanalytic literature on the primal scene. It is the primal scene that dominates the imagery of Hamlet and much else in Shakespeare's work, including Much Ado, Othello, Cymbeline, and Winter's Tale. This poisonous vision of sexuality often encouraged Shakespeare to explore fantasies of escape. In Hamlet we found, among strategies of disguise and rarefactions of all kinds, a particular emphasis on regressive flights to anality. Shakespeare explores at great length scabrous regressions, in Jacques, Thersites, Shylock, and Timon, but the view of life disintegrating into dirt, money, or a pound of flesh is never entirely absent from his work, from Aaron to Cali­ ban. The excremental vision degrades life, but it also saves and nourishes it when conception and birth seem contami­ nated. "Let copulation thrive," says the mad but hu­ manized Lear; he has returned to an affirmation of life after regressing on the heath to a mode best characterized by Edgar: "Poor Tom . . . eats cow-dung for sallets, swal­ lows the old rat and the ditch-dog, drinks the green mantle of the standing pool . . ." (Lear m. iv. 127-132). "The fitchew" or whore, like the "soiled horse, goest to it/ With a more riotous appetite" (iv. vi. 122); even with this regres­ sive vision, or because of it, Lear can still love life.

CONCLUSION

Shakespeare's fantasies of escape, as we have seen, tend also to involve homosexuality. Shakespeare seldom alludes to homosexuality in a direct way, but the society of men only in Love's Labors Lost vows to exclude women, the speaker of the sonnets escapes from his mistress only to suffer from his "friend," Rosalind's disguise results in un­ witting homosexual conquests that playfully counterpoint hitches in the main love story, Achilles dallies with Patroclus in a poor alternative to the whorish sexuality in Troy, Othello kneels with Iago as they plight their troth to each other in league against what Desdemona represents to them. As a contrast and a prelude to Leontes' delusions about his cuckoldry, Polixenes recalls the bygone, innocent love between himself and Leontes: We were as twinned lambs, that did frisk i' th' sun, And bleat the one at th' other; what we change Was innocence for innocence; we knew not The doctrine of ill-doing, nor dreamed That any did. (WT i. ii. 67-71) And later Leontes, returned to psychic health, describes to Florizel his early relationship with Polixenes: Were I but twenty-one, Your father's image is so hit in you, His very air, that I should call you brother, As I did him, and speak of something wildly By us performed before. (v. i. 126-130) In such ways do Shakespeare's men sometimes yearn to es­ cape women by embracing the "innocence" of "wildly" per­ formed love between men. IV Shakespeare pursues throughout his career the explora­ tion in Hamlet of writing as a system of psychic defense.

CONCLUSION

One result of this is a collection of plays that have a high concentration of bizarre uses of writing: in Titus Lavinia writes in the sand with a staff held in her mouth and guided by her amputated stumps; all is lost because of a misguided letter in Romeo and Juliet, Shylock's written bond threatens disaster but all is restored by a magical letter at the end of Merchant', poems are posted on trees in As You Like It', the ghost of Caesar appears as if out of Brutus' book; Othello beats Desdemona with a commission from Venice; Albany finally silences Goneril by threatening to shove a letter down her throat; Lady Macbeth obsessively gets up in the middle of the night and in a somnolent state is seen to "take forth paper, fold it, write upon't, read it, afterwards seal it, and again return to bed"; Timon writes a strange epitaph; the plot of Pericles and the dumb shows within it turn on the written word and on a written riddle about incest; Iachimo takes notes in Imogen's chamber and Jupiter descends from heaven with a letter for Posthumus in Cymheline. And there is much more of this use of writing that cannot be explained by merely citing the conventional appearance of letters and documents on the Elizabethan stage. We cannot understand Hamlet's forged commission or Lady Macbeth's obsessive notes without a psychology that can relate these things to the plays they are in and the writer who made them up. The writing in the forged commission contains Hamlet's best defense and his worst fears; so does Shakespeare's writing, only his defense is stronger than his fears. The sonneteer preserves his friend eternal "in my rhyme." In the comedies, in the poets of Love's Labors Lost, in the playwrights of Midsummer Night's Dream, in the posted sonnets of As You Like It, in the last act of Merchant, and in Propsero's magic, the power of writing poetry and drama restores order, but in the tragedies, es­ pecially in Hamlet, Shakespeare worried that this might not always be true, that writing might not control social or psy­ chic disorder.

CONCLUSION

V One more note on Shakespeare's preoccupation with the conflicts and strategies we have found in Hamlet. It is easy to find parallels to Hamlet in the strange writing of Lady Macbeth, in the corrupt sexuality of Othello, in the anality of Thersites, in the homosexuality of Achilles, and in am­ biguous fathers everywhere. But if Shakespeare uncon­ sciously weaves this material into his plays, one would ex­ pect to find at least a trace of it in all his work, even in something as early and mechanical as The Comedy of Errors. Surely no play by Shakespeare could have less in common with Hamlet than this ingenious out-Plautusing of Plautus, and yet a psychoanalyst would predict that even here there would be important connections with the themes of Hamlet. As a closing challenge, let me see if I can fairly turn up in Errors, even if in utero, so to speak, the psychological themes of Hamlet. If my discussion of Shakespeare's longest and most personal work has any validity, it should not be ir­ relevant to his shortest and most derivative play. At the beginning of Errors we meet an example of what will be Shakespeare's typically troubled father. Egeon of Syracuse is "prosperous," but he is unable to hold his fam­ ily together. He is brave and persistent in his search for the lost members of his family, but he is also foolish in his wan­ dering into the teeth of Ephesian law. Condemned to execution, he is "hopeless and helpless" until rescued at the last moment by his wife Emilia, an early version of Shake­ speare's many women who hold the power of life over their men. Nor is his lost son, Antipholus of Ephesus, any less ambivalently in control of his life. He is locked out, driven mad. He too will be rescued by Emilia, simultaneously with his father. Thus a weak son and a weak father are held up for comparison long before the two Hamlets make their appearances. This rather superficial similarity between Errors and Hamlet takes on more significance as we look further into the earlier play. Curiously enough, there is in Errors a strong hint of incest, precisely of the variety we find in

CONCLUSION

Hamlet. A man usurps his brother's wife. In the slapstick of Antipholus of Ephesus being locked out of his house, we may miss the clear suggestion that his neglected wife needs privacy not merely to "dine" with the other Antipholus but also to be sure of gratifying her desires. She has Dromio "play the porter," a bawdy allusion to the pandar. Antipholus of Syracuse does not know he is in his brother's bed, but Shakespeare knows where he is. Incest is also im­ plied in Antipholus of Syracuse's courting of Luciana, for she thinks he is her brother-in-law. Notice that Shakespeare has conflated incest with twinhood, with ambiguity or doubleness of character. This coupling of biological twinhood and incest is plausibly a simple version of the later linking of psychological ambiva­ lence with incest. In any case, an ambiguous father, sons lost in incest and inherent doubleness, and a powerful mother are elements basic to both Hamlet and Errors. Shakespeare was of course fascinated with doubleness of character throughout his career. Identical twins are an early dramatic expression of a man confused because he does not know his other self. There is, however, a limit to the profundity that a dramatist can coax out of the confu­ sion of twins, and Shakespeare grew to prefer the actor, the two-faced Janus of the stage, as his model of double­ ness. Hal, Hamlet, Iago, Duke Vincentio, Macbeth, Prospero are all actors. But twinhood keeps popping up almost irresistibly, though in a minor key. Shakespeare, who could differentiate characters with a single stroke, thus gives us Regan and Goneril, whom we still have trouble distinguish­ ing even after much fine tuning by the critics. In Hamlet, we could probably have done with only one of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, the indistinguishable time-servers. But they are lightweight representatives of the doubleness that plagues Hamlet (and King Hamlet, the son's model), and so Shakespeare indulged the same fascination for mirror images that led him in Errors to double the number of Plautus' twins. There are other subtle but significant similarities be­ tween Hamlet and Errors. Twins, storms, and sheer per-

CONCLUSION

verse luck provoke accidents, and accidents seem meaning­ less. In Hamlet, accidentally victimized fathers and mis­ takenly committed incest would be blamed on women, and, in fact, this is the case just below the surface of Errors. In consequence, there is much misogyny in the play. Accident may have caused the shipwreck, but Fortune, the old whore whom we will meet again in Hamlet, is blamed. Acci­ dent may be responsible for Dromio of Syracuse's difficul­ ties with the kitchen maid, but he fears a conspiratorial world of female flesh: "I am due to a woman: one that claims me, one that haunts me, one that will have me . . . a very beastly creature . . . all grease," a "globe" with "coun­ tries in her" (iv. ii. 8iff.). Accidents may have barred Antipholus from his house, but he of course blames his wife: "Dissembling harlot, thou art false in all" (iv. iv. 99). And the other Antipholus has these antifeminist remarks for the courtesan who accidentally mistakes him for his brother: "Avoid, then, fiend! What Tell'st thou me of sup­ ping?/ Thou art, as you are all, a sorceress" (iv. iii. 64-65). This, to be sure, is not the soul-sick hatred of women we find in Hamlet, but it is a signpost on the road to the nun­ nery in Elsinor. Accident also bespeaks a mechanical world in which people are manipulated like things, condemned to die like Egeon by a law that understands force but not humanity. Love and passion between a man and a woman are reduced in this world to barter and exchange; the courtesan makes this plan to recover the ring she mistakenly gave to the wrong Antipholus: My way is now to hie home to his house, And tell his wife that, being lunatic, He rushed into my house and took perforce My ring away. This course I fittest choose, For forty ducats is too much to lose. (iv. iii. 91-95) One defense in Hamlet against a world of incest is just such a regression to ducats, to love as force and money, to anal-

CONCLUSION

ity. We do not even know whether the courtesan hears her bawdy allusion to having her "ring" taken by force, for she does not distinguish between gold and sex. We meet this confusion again in Hamlet, where accident (remember Ophelia's accidental death and Horatio's summary of "ac­ cidental judgments, casual slaughters"), regressive sexual­ ity, and the reduction of people to things all intersect in ways not irrelevant to Errors. Shakespeare also weaves into the courtesan's speech another theme that he will develop much in his career, es­ pecially in Hamlet. "Antipholus is mad," she says a few lines above, he is "lunatic." He will require confinement and the ministrations of the "conjurer," Dr. Pinch. This will do him no good until he meets his other self in the recognition scene, but Pinch is sure that Antipholus must be freed from inner demons: "I charge thee, Satan, housed within this manJ To yield possession to by holy prayers" (iv. iv. 53-54). This difficult psychological process is taken care of easily, for the other self turns out to be external, the other twin, and, besides, comedies must end pleasantly. But in Hamlet's world, the other self is indeed internal, too ter­ rifying to be conjured away, and so the Prince dies not quite sure about the nature of his "Satan, housed within." Nevertheless, though the madnesses of Hamlet and Errors have different resolutions, they grow out of the same nexus of conflict, out of doubleness, ambiguous fathers, strong mothers, tempting women, and depraved sexuality. In Hamlet as well as in Errors, the family must be restored in order to rescue endangered fathers and to put an end to a world of errors, accidents, madness, and regression. It is part of the tragedy of Hamlet that families disintegrate, and part of the comedy of Errors that families reunite. But there is also in Errors a touch of the cynicism that will later make Hamlet flee the heterosexual family. At the end of the play, the renewed fraternal love of the two Dromios is precisely juxtaposed to marriage with the greasy kitchen maid:

CONCLUSION

S. DROMIO There is a fat friend at your master's house, That kitchened me for you today at dinner; She now shall be my sister, not my wife. E. DROMIO Methinks you are my glass, and not my brother; I see by you I am a sweet-faced youth. Will you walk in to see their gossiping? . . . S. DROMIO We'll draw cuts for the senior; till then lead thou first. E. DROMIO Nay, then, thus: We came into the world like brother and brother: And now let's go hand in hand, not one before another. (v. i. 415-427) Dromio of Ephesus ignores this penultimate reference to his marital prospects, prefers his "sweet-faced" brother, and the two walk off hand in hand in their twinhood, two males reunited in a harmony whose homosexual sym­ bolism will become clear only when we look back from other plays, from Troilus, Hamlet, and Winter's Tale, in which fantasies of male union counterpoint misogynist im­ ages like that of Dromio's gross fiance. But now, having established a few links between Errors and Hamlet, I must be careful to remember that psychoa­ nalysis has been accused of reducing everything to a com­ mon denominator. One should be wary of any critical method that produces the same kind of interpretation of plays so different as Hamlet and Errors. Notice, however, that I am only testing for the appearance in Errors of cer­ tain Hamlet-like themes. A theme is not the only aspect of a work of art to which psychoanalysis can address itself, as I hope this study of some of the fine detail of Hamlet has shown. A complete analysis of Errors would resemble this book as little (and as much) as that play resembles Hamlet. But I also suspect that if I wrote a book on Errors it would resemble this book too much, for I would blend a little of

CONCLUSION

myself into both plays. I have striven for maximum objec­ tivity here, but no critic can rightfully believe that his book is divested of himself, any more than a playwright can be sure that his art is free of unconscious determinants.

APPENDIX A

KING HAMLET AND THE SONNETEER'S FRIEND REMEMBERED

Look in thy glass and tell the face thou viewest Now is the time that face should form another, Whose fresh repair if now thou not renewest, Thou dost beguile the world, unbless some mother. For where is she so fair whose uneared womb Disdains the tillage of thy husbandry? Or who is he so fond will be the tomb Of his self-love to stop posterity? Thou art thy mother's glass, and she in thee Calls back the lovely April of her prime; So thou through windows of thine age shalt see, Despite of wrinkles, this thy golden time. But if thou lived rememb'red not to be, Die single and thine image dies with thee. (Sonnet 3) In studying Shakespeare's sonnets 1-17, scholars have long tried to account for the presence and the persistence of the theme that the "friend" should marry and bear a son. Even writers who focus on the aesthetic merit of indi­ vidual poems and dismiss as unprofitable the search for the "real" dark lady and her friends have felt it necessary to infer some biographical fact in order to explain how so many poems came to be written on paternity. W. H. Auden, for example, debunks critics who entertain the "illu­ sion that, if they were successful, if the identity of the Friend, the Dark Lady, the Rival Poet, and so on, could be established without doubt, this would in any way illuminate our understanding of the sonnets themselves." Yet Auden is forced to concede that at least in the case of sonnets 1-17 we must work into our interpretation of the poems the likelihood that Shakespeare was commissioned to prop-

APPENDIX A

agandize for marriage by the relatives of his Friend, a con­ firmed bachelor.1 Presumably, Shakespeare kept writing on the same subject because the patrons kept paying for new ammunition. This is not a useful theory, but it seems the best one we have. Thus even the critics who wish to ignore biography adopt it. It is not useful mainly because it does not explain anything. First of all Shakespeare never did mere hack work. Even if he had accepted a commission, he could not have written so well if he were not himself engaged in what he was doing. No one would want to explain Shakespeare's characterization of Shylock and Othello simply on the basis of a possible commission by his company to provide com­ petition for Marlowe's Jew and Tamburlaine. We assume that Shakespeare poured himself into Othello because Othello's delusional jealousy meant something to him per­ sonally. In fact we can infer this personal involvement from the fact that Shakespeare returned to Othello's story again and again in the sonnets, Much Ado, Cymbeline, and Winter's Tale. In the same way we can infer that the subject of paternity was of crucial interest to him. If I am correct about Hamlet's, involving a search for a strong father, then it would not be surprising for Shakespeare to accept with pleasure the op­ portunity to imagine in the sonnets the ideal Friend as an ideal Father; we recall that Hamlet makes a father figure out of his ideal friend Horatio by wearing him in his heart along with his father's commandment (see Chapter Five). With so much emotional energy invested in the idea of a friend as father, Shakespeare would not even need a com­ mission. Auden was right to eschew a clumsy search for Shakespeare's friends and patrons. Let us try to replace or supplement this slender idea of commission-by-therelatives and look for a more subtle biographical deter­ minism. More than we want to know who could have com­ missioned the paternity sonnets, we want to know why Shakespeare found the enterprise congenial. The basic motif of these sonnets is that the Friend's

APPENDIX A

worth will perish unless he renews himself in a son: "So thou . . . diest unless thou get a son" (7); "Thou single wilt prove none" (8); "And nothing 'gainst Time's scythe can make defense/ Save breed, to brave him when he takes thee hence" (12). The Friend is, however, reluctant to ac­ cept the role of father. In fact the speaker sees the Friend as actually abandoning his son as if that son were already born and unclaimed: "You had a father; let your son say so" (13). The fact that the speaker has to repeat his plea over and over measures the strength of the Friend's recalcitrance and the strength of the speaker's own need for the Friend to be a father. To the speaker, the Friend without a son seems even more vulnerable than most men to Time's scythe, more in need of preservation in his own posterity and in the speaker's "pen" (16) and "rhyme" (17). Where other childless men may mature to salvations of all kinds, the Friend without his son, will grow merely worthless: Thy youth's proud livery, so gazed on now, Will be a tattered weed of small worth held. (2) This view of the Friend's special vulnerability, of his entire salvation depending on the renewal of his superficial good looks, characterizes the speaker more than the Friend, and I think we have in these sonnets the same desperate at­ tempt we found in Hamlet to compensate for a father who is absenting himself from his rightful role, refusing to claim and protect his son, making himself unnecessarily vulnerable to the enemy Time. Sonnet 3 is a very complex poem, with Shakespeare's usual multi-tiered meanings, but I think we can tease out from other aspects a tension between a wish for an ideal father and a fear that he is nonexistent. The first two lines present the wish and suggest the fear: Look in thy glass and tell the face thou viewest Now is the time that face should form another. In a rather roundabout way, the speaker requests his Friend to request his reflection to "form another." But how

APPENDIX A

is the image in the "glass" going to reproduce itself?—it is merely an image, of glass, and therefore impotent. Perhaps the indirection of the speaker couches a fear that the Friend cannot be a father. There are similar doubts and ambiguities in the poem. The Friend's son is supposed to grow up to be an image of his beautiful father, just as the Friend is his "mother's glass." Now it may be that Shake­ speare's "real" Friend did look like his mother and not his father, but the lineage of look-alikes in the poem, sonresembles-Friend-resembles-mother, has the curious effect of breaking the expected patrilinear symmetry. This ab­ sence of the Friend's father perhaps reinforces the likeli­ hood that the Friend himself will not or cannot be a father. Moreover, the fact that the Friend looks like his mother undermines the possibility that his beauty would be re­ stored by his son even if he had one; the son might look like his mother. The speaker thus betrays his fear that the Friend will produce no offspring more substantial or more renewing than the image in the glass; in fact the Friend is himself a "glass." There may even be a suggestion that he is emasculated, feminized, like his mother. The closing couplet contrasts the Friend's sterile image in the mirror with his yet unborn living image: But if thou live rememb'red not to be, Die single and thine image dies with thee. There is almost certainly a pun here on "rememb'red" (re-membered). This is so not only because Shakespeare puns incessantly in the sonnets, but also, more particularly, because the pun would underscore the contrast between insubstantial reflection and memory, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the biological reproduction and rememberment that would be possible if the Friend got a son. Since I think this pun of some importance in Hamlet's exchange with the Ghost on the battlements (see Chapter Four), let me labor the obvious here, for in Hamlet the pun seems unconscious and is not self-evident.

APPENDIX A

In Sonnet 3 the pun on "rememb'red" would, again, point the contrasts between "image" as a fading memory of the Friend and image as a son, a solid, re-membered, living model of him, between image as insubstantial reflection and image as flesh and blood. This contrast implies the speaker's fear that the Friend is impotent, unable to en­ gender anything but a reflection in the mirror; that the Friend will die and be, like King Hamlet, soon forgotten ("rememb'red not to be"); that the Friend's members are finally inadequate, unable to renew (re-member) them­ selves; that the Friend is not going to be a father to a son who would have an ideal model. In any case, Shakespeare makes us feel in the first seventeen sonnets that fathers are reluctant to fulfill their role, that they are soon to be victimized by Time or some other enemy, that they are in danger of being forgotten. Like Hamlet, Shakespeare must labor to immortalize the potential father in writing, must, again like Hamlet, idealize fatherhood probably because he never had a strong enough father of his own.

APPENDIX B

SHAKESPEARE'S SMILING VILLAINS AS TRANSFORMED MEN

IN ADDITION to the smiling villain in the "tables" soliloquy, there are other fantasies of smiling in Hamlet that allow us to establish more certainly Shakespeare's equation of a smile and men transformed into women. Let us first look more closely at Hamlet's response to Rosencrantz's smile, already alluded to in Chapter Four. Hamlet has just been elaborating on the wonderful "piece of work" that is man: HAM. . . . and yet to me, what is this quintessence of dust? Man delights not me; nor woman neither, though by your smiling you seem to say so. ROS. My lord, there was no such stuff in my thoughts. HAM. Why did ye laugh then, when I said, "Man de­ lights not me"? (i i . ii. 316-322) Whether or not we can believe Rosencrantz when he denies that Hamlet has accurately explained his "smiling," it is Hamlet who is responsible for the sexual train of thought here, and his innuendo of disliking sexuality with either sex is a free association to his speech on "man" precipitated by Rosencrantz's smile. I think the unconscious content here reads something like this: "Rosencrantz's smile re­ minds me of using the wondrous men whom I have just been talking about as sexual objects, as women." This read­ ing is obviously speculative, but it does unravel Hamlet's overprotesting denial of sexual interest in men or women, and it accounts for Shakespeare's otherwise inexplicable in­ terjection of this fuss over Rosencrantz's smile. That considerable psychic energy is invested in this fan­ tasy is clear from the fact that it appears again in the dialogue between Hamlet and the gravedigger; here we get another version of the phrase "nor woman neither":

APPENDIX B

HAM. What man dost thou dig it for? CLOWN For no man, sir. HAM. What woman then? CLOWN For none neither. HAM. Who is to be buried in't? CLOWN One that was a woman, sir; but, rest her soul she's dead. (v. i. 130-136) Rosencrantz's smile has been transformed into the general situation of jest but otherwise the unconscious content is the same: men can be transformed into women. Here we get the additional suggestion that once a man is trans­ formed into a woman he can be considered dead. I think this reading remains faithful to the development of the gravedigger's quibble: he is not talking about a man but about a woman; he is not talking about a woman but a corpse. A parallel to Hamlet's fantasy of Claudius as a smiling woman is Claudius' fantasy of Hamlet's agreement to re­ main at court: Why, 'tis a loving and a fair reply. Be as ourself in Denmark. Madam, come. This gentle and unforced accord of Hamlet Sits smiling to my heart, in grace whereof Nojocund health that Denmark drinks today, But the great cannon to the clouds shall tell, And the King's rouse the heaven shall bruit again, Respeaking earthly thunder. (1. ii. 121-128) Though Hamlet's "accord" has been plentifully forced (his return to Wittenberg would be "most retrograde" to Claudius' political need to keep an eye on the dispossessed Prince), Claudius is happy to fantasize this accord "smiling" to his heart. Whether or not this smiling submission is a fantasy of Hamlet rendered into passive woman, Claudius does see it as an appropriate occasion for a gala phallic dis-

APPENDIX B play of the "great cannon" shooting to the clouds. If Shakespeare is endowing Claudius with the same fantasy with which he endows Hamlet, this would be consistent with my hypothesis that the unconscious content of the play is homogeneous. Shakespeare would also be illustrat­ ing an aspect of primary process thinking that involves a fantasizer assuming that what he wishes on another is being reciprocated. The smiling villain is a recurrent preoccupation of Shakespeare's plays. Of all his many appearances, 1 I will select only three to support my claim that Shakespeare made some association between smiling villains and unsexed villains. These three are partly chosen because they roughly span Shakespeare's entire career. InHenry VI, Part Three, the future Richard III tells us of his deformities: Why, love forswore me in my mother's womb: And, for I should not deal in her soft laws, She did corrupt frail nature with some bribe, To shrink mine arm up like a withered shrub. (HI. ii. 153-156) With his withered "shrub," the man is too severely hand­ icapped for "love," and so he is going to displace his phallic aggression elsewhere: And I—like one lost in a thorny wood, That rents the thorns and is rent with the thorns, Seeking a way and straying from the way, Not knowing how to find the open air, But toiling desperately to find it out— Torment myself to catch the English crown: And from that torment I will free myself, Or hew my way out with a bloody ax. Why, I can smile, and murder whiles I smile. (πι. ii. 174-182) I think there are several fantasies here, including one of a frightening birth into the "open air," but I will focus only

APPENDIX B

on the significance of smiling. By rejecting love and turn­ ing instead to murder, Richard acquires a weapon ("bloody ax") more potent than his withered shrub. But torn and rent as he tries (as he says three lines before our passage) to "Be round impaled with a glorious crown," he undergoes the same bodily mutilation that he is fleeing from. He is too mutilated to be a lover, but being a murderer also mutilates him; there is no escape. If we allow that some of Richard's supposedly rejected sexual energy is returning here, we may read this highly suggestive imagery as a self-castrating thrusting of his head into a sexualized "crown" surrounded by "woods" (Freud often found that dreams of penetrating landscapes were dreams of coitus).2 Richard's repressed inadequacy wells up and he imagines further damage to himself, expressing the return of a repressed fear: though he "desperately" deploys his "ax," he is like the mutilated Christ, "rent with thorns." Castrating in order to avoid being castrated, Richard re-enacts on himself and others what he fears he already suffered. He is a castrator be­ cause he is a castrate, and he condenses this state for us in the same image Hamlet will use: "I can smile and murder whiles I smile." In the prologue to Henry IV, Part Two, the fantasy figure Rumor offers us another smiling villain who is imagined in a clearly sexual context: Open your ears, for which of you will stop The vent of hearing when loud Rumour speaks? I, from the orient to the drooping west, Making the wind my posthorse, still unfold The acts commenced on this ball of earth. Upon my tongue continual slanders ride, The which in every language I pronounce, Stuffing the ears of men with false reports. I speak of peace while covert enmity Under the smile of safety wounds the world. And who but Rumour, who but only I, Make fearful musters and prepared defence,

APPENDIX B

Whiles the big year, swoln with some other grief, Is thought with child by the stern tyrant, war, And no such matter? Rumour is a pipe Blown by surmises, jealousies, conjectures, And of so easy and so plain a stop, That the blunt monster with uncounted heads, The still-discordant wav'ring multitude, Can play upon it. (Prol. 1-20) Rumor thinks of himself as a false inseminater, "stuffing the ears of men with false reports." He brings news of pregnancies that do not exist (the "big year" mistakenly "thought with child by the stern tyrant war" is a perfect de­ scription of the war rumors discussed in the first scene of Hamlet and makes me think that both plays deal with the same kinds of fantasies). In fact Rumor's phallic powers are so doubtful that he also thinks of himself as a pipe with orifices to be played on by the very men he claims to pene­ trate (this image, as well as the stuffed ear, also become im­ portant in Hamlet). "Painted full of tongues," Rumor seems, on a fantasy level, to be protesting his phallicism, the abundance of tongues overcompensating for a lack of the member that makes true pregnancies. It seems fitting, then, that Rumor is in league with "covert enmity" (another allegorized figure) who hides behind a "smile." Covert Enmity, I think, is another version of Rumor, a cas­ trated sexual villain, a smiling, castrated sexual villain. Rumor-cum-Covert Enmity is, with all his phony phalluses, exactly what Hamlet hopes Claudius is. In The Winter's Tale, Leontes, suffering under the delu­ sion that Polixenes has cuckolded him, tries to console him­ self with the universality of his plight: There have been, Or I am much deceived, cuckolds ere now, And many a man there is, even at this present, Now, while I speak this, holds his wife by th'arm That little thinks she has been sluiced in's absence,

APPENDIX B

And his pond fished by his next neighbor, by Sir Smile, his neighbor. (i. ii. 190-196) Leontes' phallic intruder, against whom there is "no barricado," this great fisher of other men's wives, seems di­ minutively caricatured as "Sir Smile." We remember that in As You Like It, Touchstone speaks of one "Jane Smile" (11. iv. 46). The overwrought Leontes, however, is obviously tell­ ing us more about himself than about the world's hypothet­ ical cuckolders, and, assuming other more phallic carica­ tures were available to him, we want to know why "Sir Smile" becomes Ie mot juste. Since punishment of Polixenes is on Leontes' mind even as he speaks these lines, I think it fair to read "Sir Smile" as a conflation of a sexual villain and his punishment (Leontes will recommend poison, which suggests unmanning, as in King Hamlet's death). Something analogous to this is going on in Hamlet's "ta­ bles" soliloquy. I admit that my attempt to demonstrate an equation be­ tween smile and transformed men does not carry perfect conviction. The fact is that unconscious symbols are sym­ bols precisely because the human mind has to detoxify its certainties by expressing them as only possibilities. Because Hamlet invests so much sexualized energy in the smiling villain, I assume the smile has some sexual meaning and as­ sign those which are most consonant with the rest of the passage, and with the rest of Shakespeare's writing. Readers who do not see a connection between Claudius' in­ cest and his smiling will of course not feel it necessary to assign any symbolic meaning to the smile, let alone one that involves a punishment for a sexual offense. But then they will have to explain in some other way why Hamlet and Richard and Rumor and Leontes need so pointedly to characterize a sexual villain as a smiler. Those who feel that the equation is plausible may recall Freud's study of what is undoubtedly the most famous smile in Western art, that of Leonardo's Mona Lisa. With

APPENDIX B

no father present until he was five years old, Leonardo lived an intense relationship with a phallic mother whose lips became sexually aggressive. It is altogether likely, Freud shrewdly conjectures, that the highly charged smile of his mother provided the unconscious content of many of Leonardo's paintings, especially the Mona Lisa: "If Leonardo was successful in reproducing on Mona Li­ sa's face the double meaning which this smile contained, the promises of unbounded tenderness and at the same time sinister menace (to quote Pater's phrase), then here too he remained true to the content of his earliest memory. For his mother's tenderness was fateful for him; it deter­ mined his destiny and the privations that were in store for him. The violence of the caresses . . . was only too natural. In her love for her child the poor forsaken mother had to give vent to all her memories of the caresses she had en­ joyed as well as her longing for new ones; and she was forced to do so not only to compensate herself for having no husband, but also to compensate her child for having no father to fondle him. So, like all unsatisfied mothers, she took her litde son in place of her husband, and by the too early maturing of his eroticism robbed him of a part of his masculinity."3 That a fatherless Renaissance artist may have seen in a smile an androgynous woman of course does not prove that a Renaissance playwright endowed his fatherless hero with a fantasy of a smile as a token of a punished, woman­ like man, but it does allow us some corroboration that we are in a fantasy region that is as plausible as it is fantastic.

APPENDIX C

POLONIUS AND JOHN DONNE'S BUSY OLD FOOL MY READING of Polonius as both a weak father and a weak son conflated into one character peeping at the primal scene finds an uncanny parallel in a poem by John Donne. I think it worth pausing a moment to let Donne show us that what we find in Polonius may not be as bizarre as it first seems. In Gertrude's closet, Hamlet characterizes Polonius as a "wretched, rash, intruding fool"; this is also Donne's description of the intruding sun: The Sunne Rising

Busie old foole, unruly Sunne, Why dost thou thus, Through windowes, and through curtaines call on us? Must to thy motions lovers' seasons run? Sawcy pedantique wretch, goe chide Late schoole boyes, and sowre prentices, Goe tell Court-huntsmen, that the King will ride, Call countrey ants to harvest offices; Love, all alike, no season knowes, nor clyme, Nor houres, dayes, moneths, which are the rags of time. Thy beames, so reverend, and strong Why shouldst thou thinke? I could eclipse and cloud them with a winke, But that I would not lose her sight so long: If her eyes have not blinded thine, Looke, and to morrow late, tell mee, Whether both the 'India's of spice and Myne Be where thou leftst them, or lie here with mee. Aske for those Kings whom thou saw'st yesterday, And thou shalt heare, All here in one bed lay.

APPENDIX C

She'is all States, and all Princes, I, Nothing else is. Princes doe but play us; compar's to this, All honor's mimique; All wealth alchimie. Thou sunne art halfe as happy'as wee, In that the world's contracted thus; Thine age askes ease, and since thy duties bee To warme the world, that's done in warming us. Shine here to us, and thou art every where; This bed thy center is, these walls, thy spheare.1 I think it interesting that Donne's "sunne" is presented, like Polonius, as both a demoted authority figure and a child. Though the sun is an Apollonian father with power­ ful beams "reverend and strong," the speaker challenges this by claiming that the sun has no reason to think himself great ("Why shouldst thou thinke"). The inverted syntax here (we would ordinarily expect "why shouldst thou think thy beams so reverend and strong?") sets up strengths that the speaker has to deny. He claims that the sun is in fact a court lackey ("Goe tell Court-huntsmen") and an ignoble chider of late schoolboys. He is a father who is an "olde foole" and a "wretch," prying and peeping through cur­ tains in order to interfere with a son's sexual activity. He is also cast in the image of an unruly child (sunne = son) who wishes to participate in adult sexuality; he is an oedipal son phallically "rising," invading a bedroom in which he does not belong. Donne's speaker thus wishes to exclude his po­ tentially punishing father from his sexual life, and, at the same time, remembers his own exclusion as a child and identifies with the rebuffed father. Hence the conflation of demoted father and excluded child. Donne approaches his fantasy material from a perspec­ tive different from Shakespeare's. Hamlet wishes his father stronger and rejects the weak Polonius. Donne's speaker does the opposite, wishing his father figure weaker in in­ fantile and magical thinking, hoping to make the genuinely strong father's phallic powers go away by closing his eyes (like a child he "could eclipse and cloud them with a wink").

APPENDIX C

This failing, Donne's speaker fantasizes the father as a child (excluded from the world of all "kings"), and then, still unable to banish the father, he tries fantasizing him as an old, post-sexual dotard ("Thine age asks ease"). Where Hamlet defends himself by conjuring up a strong father, Donne defends himself by conjuring up a weak father; it is only after the father is fantasized weak, asking ease, that the speaker can admit that "this bed thy center is, these walls thy spheare." However, in spite of the differences be­ tween the speaker of Donne's poem and Hamlet, Donne's busy old fool, his unruly son, provides a close parallel to Hamlet's Polonius, a figure who represents at the same time an old fool of a father and his consequently unruly, conflicted son. I should not leave this comparison of Donne and Shakespeare without reminding the reader that uncon­ scious fantasies of father figures, whether they appear in dreams or literary fictions, do not necessarily correspond to the objective men they are meant to represent. The un­ conscious preserves distorted images, often based on infan­ tile appraisals, wishes, or denials. Thus Shakespeare's "ab­ sent father" in real life lived until his son was in his midthirties, and Donne's "omnipresent father" in real life died when his son was only four years old.

NOTES

CHAPTER ONE 1. Virginia Woolf, The Second Common Reader (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1 9 2 5 ) , p. 5 . 2 . T. S. Eliot, Selected Essays, New Edition (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1950), pp. 123-124. For a sampling of other critics who preceded Eliot in this vein, see J. M. Robertson, The Problem of "Hamlet" (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1 9 1 9 ) , pp. 2 3 - 3 0 . 3 . Harold C. Goddard, The Meaning of Shakespeare (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1 9 5 1 ) , p. 3 5 7 . 4 . For Antony's and Hamlet's free-associating set in the context of similar Renaissance passages, see M. R. Ridley's Arden edition of Antony and Cleopatra (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, !954). PP- 1 8 4 - 1 8 5 . 5 . John Dover Wilson, What Happened in "Hamlet" ( 1 9 3 5 ; rpt., Cambridge: CUP, 1 9 6 2 ) , p. 2 2 7 . 6. Ibid., pp. 4 1 - 4 3 . η. Ibid., pp. 2 1 7 - 2 1 8 . 8. Charles Brenner ,AnElementary Textbook of Psychoanalysis, rev. ed. (Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Books, 1 9 7 3 ) , p. 1 . 9 . Lionel Trilling, The Liberal Imagination (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1 9 5 3 ) ^ . 4 9 . 1 0 . For further discussion of these matters see Frederick C. Crews, Out of My System: Psychoanalysis, Ideology, and Critical Method (New York: OUP, 1975), esp. pp. 165-185; and three books by Norman N. Holland: Psychoanalysis and Shakespeare (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1966), pp. 9-52; The Dynamics of Literary Response (New York: OUP, 1968); Poems in Persons (New York: Norton, 1973)·

CHAPTER TWO 1 . Norman N. Holland, Psychoanalysis and Shakespeare (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1 9 6 6 ) , p. 1 8 5 . 2 . See Holland, pp. 1 6 6 - 1 8 5 , for a summary of arguments amplifying or rejecting Freud-Jones. Most of the amplifications point to the neglected importance of matricide in the play (which

NOTES

Jones incorporated in the second edition of his book) or to the neglected ego psychology (which can be easily incorporated—see, for example, Neil Friedman and Richard M. Jones, "On the Mutuality of the Oedipus Complex," American Imago 20 [1963], 123). The refutations are either in the form of invective, or, like that of John E. Hankins' two-paragraph article "Hamlet and Oedipus Reconsidered," Shakespeare Newsletter, 6 (1956), 11, only the vaguest of reconsiderations. 3. Ibid., pp. 164, 192. 4. Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams, in The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, ed. James Strachey et al. (hereafter abbreviated S.E.), 24 vols. (Lon­ don: Hogarth, 1953-1966), iv, 264-266. 5. Charles Brenner, An Elementary Textbook of Psychoanalysis, rev. ed. (Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Books, 1973), p. 104. 6. For the theoretical underpinnings of this see Freud's The Ego and the Id, S.E., xix, 40-47. 7. James Clark Moloney and Laurence Rockelein, "A New In­ terpretation of Hamlet," Int. J. Psycho-Anal., 30 (1949), 94. 8. Ernest Jones, Hamlet and Oedipus (New York: Norton, 1949), pp. 99-100. 9. The Origins of Psychoanalysis, ed. Ernst Kris et al. (1954; rpt. Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Books, 1957), p. 227. 10. K. R. Eissler, Discourse on Hamlet and "Hamlet" (New York: IUP, 1971), p. 63. 11. See H. H. Furness et al., A New Variorum Edition of Shake­ speare: Hamlet (hereafter abbreviated Variorum Ed.), 2 vols. (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1877), 1, 282. 12. For a psychoanalytic critic on rationalization in the prayer scene, see Simon O. Lesser, "Freud and Hamlet Again," Am. Imago, 12 (1955), 207-220; for a non-psychoanalytic critic, see John Dover Wilson, What Happens in "Hamlet" (1935; rpt. Cam­ bridge: CUP, 1962), pp. 245-246. 13. Variorum Ed., 1, 283. 14. Eleanor Prosser, Hamlet and Revenge, 2nd ed. (Stanford: Stanford Univ. Press, 1971), pp. 36-94. 15. Otto Rank, "Das 'Schauspiel' in Hamlet," Imago, 4 (1915), 41-51. 16. See Freud, "The Dissolution of the Oedipus Complex," S.E., xix, 173-139; The Ego and the Id, S.E., xix, 29-39; Leonardo Da Vinci and a Memory of his Childhood, S.E., xi, 120-123; Civiliza­ tion and its Discontents, S.E., xxi, 72.

NOTES 17. Richard Flatter ,Hamlet's Father (London: Heineman, 1949), p. 41. 18. Harold C. Goddard, The Meaning of Shakespeare (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1951), pp. 349-350. 19. Wilson, p. 84. 20. G. Wilson Knight, The Imperial Theme, 3rd ed. (London: Methuen, 1951), p. 104. 21. Prosser, p. 141. 22. W. W. Greg, "Hamlet's Hallucination," MLR, 12 (1917), 393-421· 23. Goddard, pp. 344-347·

CHAPTER THREE l.See especially A.J.A. Waldock, Hamlet: A Study in Critical Method (Cambridge: CUP, 1931), pp. 76-95. 2. Ruth Nevo, Tragic Form in Shakespeare (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press. 1972), pp. 130-131. 3. Otto Fenichel, The Psychoanalytic Theory of Neurosis (New York: Norton, 1945), p. 165. 4. Waldock, p. g8. 5. Robert Reed, "Hamlet, the Pseudo-Procrastinator," Shake­ speare (Quarterly, 9 (1958), 177-186. 6. Otto Rank, "Das 'Schauspiel' in Hamlet," Imago, 4 (1915), 41-51. 7. James Clark Moloney and Laurence Rockelein, "A New In­ terpretation of Hamlet," Int. f. Psycho-Anal., 30 (1949), 94.

CHAPTER FOUR 1. Bernard D. Grebanier, The Heart of Hamlet (New York: Apollo Books, 1967), p. 339. The circumstantial evidence seems all on the side of literal as opposed to metaphoric writing. Hamlet probably writes in the same fashion as does Iachimo in Cym. 11. ii, and the Doctor in Mac. v. i. 2. Edmund Malone, ed., The Plays and Poems of William Shake­ speare, 10 vols. (London, 1790), ix, 234-235. 3. A. C. Bradley, Shakespearean Tragedy (1904, rpt., N.Y., Meri­ dian, 1955) pp. 326-328. Allquotations are from these pages. 4. Robert Fliess, Erogeneity and Libido (New York: IUP, 1956), pp. 134-137.

NOTES 5. Otto Fenichel, The Psychoanalytic Theory of Neurosis (New York: Norton, 1945), pp. 88-89. 6. Ibid., p. 92. 7. On hendiadys in Hamlet, see Norman N. Holland, "Unity Identity Text Self," PMLA, 90 (1975), 813. 8. Fenichel, p. 155. 9. Ella Freeman Sharpe, "The Impatience of Hamlet," and "An Unfinished Paper on Hamlet," Collected Papers on Psychoanalyse (London: Hogarth, 1950), pp. 203-213 and 242-265. 10. Hilda Hulme, Explorations in Shakespeare's Language: Some Problems of Lexical Meaning in the Dramatic Text (London: Longman, 1962), p. 137. See also A. R. Humphreys, ed., The Sec­ ond Part of Henry TV, Arden Edition (London: Methuen, 1966), pp. 81-82, 11. iv. 263-265, and corresponding note. 11. See Holland, Dynamics of Literary Response (New York: OUP, 1968), pp. 353-354; and Freud, fokes and Their Relation to the Un­ conscious, S.E., viii, 228-233. 12. See, for example, Ernest Jones, Hamlet and Oedipus (New York: Norton, 1949), p. 113. 13. See John S. Farmer and W. E. Henley, Slang and Its Analogues Past and Present (hereafter abbreviated as Farmer and Henley), 7 vols. (London: Routledge, 1890-1904), vi, 32. 14. Richard Flatter, Hamlet's Father (London: Heineman, 1949), pp. 62-63. 15. See, for example, Flatter, pp. 24-39. 16. Freud, "From the History of an Infantile Neurosis," S.E., xvii, 37-38. 17. For psychoanalytic observations on Shakespeare's sexual punning on "nothing" and "naught," see Fliess, p. 198. 18. Frederick Crews, Out of My System (New York: OUP, 1975), p. 166. 19. Freud, "From the History of an Infantile Neurosis," S.E., xv ".

34-35 a n d 57-59· 20. Holland, Psychoanalysis and Shakespeare, pp. 193-194. Also Rank, "Das 'Schauspiel' in Hamlet," Imago, 4 (1915), 41-51; Sharpe, pp. 203-213 and 242-265; Jones, "The Death of Hamlet's Father," Essays in Applied Psychoanalysis, 2 vols. (London: Hogarth, 195 1 ). 323-328. 21. Eleanor Prosser, Hamlet and Revenge (Stanford: Stanford Univ. Press, 1968), p. 141.

NOTES CHAPTER FIVE 1. Harold C. Goddard, The Meaning of Shakespeare (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1951), p. 368. 2. Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams, S.E., v, 385-392. 3. Freud, S.E., v, 392-394. 4. Goddard notes this echo, p. 378. 5. Arthur Wormhoudt, Hamlet's Mouse Trap: A Psychoanalytical Study of the Drama (New York: Philosophical Library, 1956), pp. 79-86. 6. For the sexual overtones of farming, see Farmer and Henley on "plough," v, 229; and "part," v, 142. 7. GeofiFrey Ashe was the first to point out the important paral­ lel between Hamlet and Pyrrhus in "Hamlet and Pyrrhus," N &Q, 1922 (1947). 214-215.

8. Goddard, p. 344. 9. Variorum Ed., 1, 232. 10. See, for example, E. E. Krapf, "Shylock and Antonio: A Psychoanalytic Study of Shakespeare and Antisemitism," Psa. Review, 42 (1955), 113-130; and Marcel Pagnol, "Le plus grand role de tous Ie temps: Hamlet," Shakespeare, Marcel Pagnol et al., CollectionGeniesetRealites (Paris: Hachette, 1962), pp. 275-280. 11. G. F. Bradby, The Problems of "Hamlet" (London: OUP, 1928), pp. 15-18. 12. A. J. A. Waldock, Hamlet: A Study in Critical Method (Cam­ bridge: CUP, 1931), p. 71. 13. John Dover Wilson, What Happens in "Hamlet" (1935; rpt. Cambridge: CUP, 1962), pp. 232-234. 14. Maynard Mack, Jr., Killing the King: Three Studies in Shake­ speare's Tragic Structure (New Haven and London: Yale Univ. Press, 1973), p. 102. 15. For a discussion of the play's poisonous social situation, in which all familial love is a matter of manipulation, see two stu­ dents of Erik Erikson, Neil Friedman and Richard M.Jones, "On the Mutuality of the Oedipus Complex," Amer. Imago, 20 (1963), 123. 16. For Hamlet's unconscious comparison of himself and his father to Hercules, see Samuel A. Tannenbaum, "Psychoanalytic Gleanings from Shakespeare," Psyche and Eros, 1 (1920), 29-39. 17. Mack, p. 106. 18. See Variorum Ed., 1, 395.

NOTES 19. Κ. R. Eissler, Discourse on Hamlet and "Hamlet" (New York: IUP, 1971), pp. 84-85. Norman Symons, "The Graveyard Scene in Hamlet," Int. J. Psa. 9 (1928), 96-119, also expresses Eissler's view. 20. Eissler, pp. 404-405. 21. Richard Flatter ,Hamlet's Father (London: Heineman, 1949), p. 119. See also Anton Ehrenzweig, The Psycho-Analysis of Artistic Vision and Hearing (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1953), p. 129. 22. T. S. Eliot, Selected Essays, New Edition (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1950), p. 125. 23. See Variorum Ed., 1, 440. 24. For example, Haldeen Braddy, Hamlet's Wounded Name (El Paso: Texas Western Press, 1964). 25. John T. MacCurdy, "Concerning Hamlet and Orestes of Abnormal Psychology, 13 (1918-1919), 250-260. 26. Nils Antoni, "Hamlet. En psykologisk studie," Bonniers Iitterara magasin (Stockholm), 29 (May-June, i960), 405-408. 27. For a discussion of a psychotic who equated madness and castration, see Freud's study of Dr. Schreber in "Psycho-analytic Notes upon an Autobiographical Account of a Case of Paranoia (Dementia Paranoides)," S.E., XII, 3-82. 28. See E. S. Stern and W. H. Whiles, "Three Ganser States and Hamlet," J. of Mental Science, 88 (1942), 131-141 for a medical dis­ cussion on what the authors consider to be a psychotic process (Ganser state) of Hamlet's mad feigning of madness.

CHAPTER SIX 1. For a summary of the matricidal question, see Norman N. Holland, Psychoanalysis and Shakespeare (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1966), pp. 180-184. 2. Frederick Wertham, "The Matricidal Impulse: Critique of Freud's Interpretation of Hamlet," J. of Criminal Psychopathology, 2 (1941),455-464. 3. Ernest Jones, Hamlet and Oedipus (New York: Norton, 1949), p. 112. 4. K. R. Eissler, Discourse on Hamlet and "Hamlet" (New York: IUP, 1971), p. 433. 5. "In Ophelia's Closet," The Yale Review, 35 (1946), 469, 473. 6. Variorum Ed., 1, 126,

NOTES 7. Rebecca West, The Court and the Castle (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1958), p. 22. 8. On "draw" and "fall" see Eric Partridge, Shakespeare's Bawdy (New York: Dutton, i960), pp. 104, 110. 9. James Clark Moloney and Laurence Rockelein, "A New In­ terpretation of Hamlet," Int. J. Psycho-Anal., 30 (1949), 99. 10. VariorumEd., 1, 332. 1 1 . I b i d . , pp. 334-335· 12. Harry Morris, "Ophelia's 'Bonny Sweet Robin,' "PMLA, 73 (1958), 601-603. 13. Varioum Ed., 1, 350. 14.Ibid., p. 371. 15. Ibid. 16. Maynard Mack, Jr., comments on the possible bawdy sig­ nificance of "Ophelia's water" in Killing the King (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1973), p. 106. 17. For this kind of reversal, see Freud, "The Occurrence in Dreams of Material from Fairy Tales," S.E. xn, 281-287. 18. See, for example, Ernest Jones, On the Nightmare (New York: Norton, 1931), pp. 111-112; Joseph S. Bierman, "Nec­ rophilia in a Thirteen-Year-Old Boy," Psa. Quarterly, 31 (1962), 329-340; and Wilhelm Stekel's classic case histories in Sadism and Masochism: The Psychology of Hatred and Cruelty, tr. Louise Brink, 2 vols. (New York: Liveright, 1929), n, 248-330. 19. Eissler, p. 435.

CHAPTER SEVEN 1. John Dover Wilson, What Happens in "Hamlet" (1935; rpt. Cambridge: CUP, 1962), p. 128. 2. Variorum Ed., 1, 205. 3. In Norman Rabkin, ed., Reinterpretations of Elizabethan Drama (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1969); all quotations from Booth are from pp. 171 and 175. 4. Harry Levin, The Question of Hamlet (1959; rpt. New York: Compass Books, 1961), p. 69. 5. G. Wilson Knight, The Wheel of Fire (London: Methuen, !95 1 )'P- 3° 6 · 6. For a provocative but zany interpretation of "fardels" as fathers, see Hade Saunders, " 'Who would fardels bear [?]': Hamlet, in, i, 76," Centennial Review of Arts and Sciences (Mich. State), 8 (1964), 71-76.

NOTES 7. Variorum Ed., 1, 384-385. 8. Ibid., p. 212. 9.Ibid., p. 210. 10. On "rub" see Eric Partridge, Shakespeare's Bawdy (New York: Dutton, 1960), p. 181; and Farmer and Henley, vi, 66. 11. Variorum Ed., 1, 210-211. 12.Ibid., p. 205. 13.Ibid., pp. 212-213. 14. K. R. Eissler, Discourse on Hamlet and "Hamlet" (New York: IUP, 1971), p. 113. 15. Erik H. Erikson, Young Man Luther (New York: Norton, 1962), p. 113. 16. Knight, pp. 308-309. 17. James Joyce, Ulysses (New York: Random House, 1961), p. 204.

CHAPTER EIGHT 1. On art as therapy, see Ernst Kris,Psychoanalytic Explorations in Art (New York: IUP, 1952). 2. That is, writing is neglected by everyone except Wormhoudt, Hamlet's Mouse Trap (New York: Philosophical Library, 1956), who constructs a very airy argument throughout his book, with little support from the poetry of the play and without looking carefully at the documents produced on stage, about Shake­ speare's "writer's block." 3. Harry Levin, The Question of Hamlet (New York: Compass Books, 1959), p. 18. 4. See K. R. Eissler, Discourse on Hamlet and "Hamlet" (New York: IUP, 1971), pp. 324-325, on Hamlet and Fortinbras being born on the same day. 5. See, for example, Maynard Mack, Jr., Killing the King (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1973), pp. 103-107. 6. Harold C. Goddard, "Hamlet to Ophelia," College English, 16

(ΐ955)>403-4 0 4· 7. John Dover Wilson, What Happens in "Hamlet" (1935; rpt. Cambridge; CUP, 1962), pp. 125-136. 8. Eissler, p. 275. 9. See Farmer and Henley on "ring," vi, 32; on "crack," n, 197. 10. See Holland, Dynamics of Literary Response (New York: OUP, 1968), pp. 134-161, on the psychological significance, derived from Freud, of alliteration and other sound patterns.

NOTES 11. See, for example, Farmer and Henley on "mouse" and "mousetrap," iv, 364-365. 12. "Notes Upon a Case of Obsessional Neurosis," S.E., x, 213216. 13. See Farmer and Henley, m, 322. 14. Dover Wilson, pp. 53-63. 15. See Ernest Jones, "The Death of Hamlet's Father," Essays in Applied, Psychoanalysis, 2 vols. (London: Hogarth, 1951), 1, pp. 323-328. 16. Dover Wilson, p. 184. 17. Alexander Grinstein, "The Dramatic Device: A Play Within a Play "J, of the Am. Psychoanalytic Assoc., 4 (1956), 49-52. 18. See Leo Kirschbaum, "In Defense of Guildenstern and Rosencrantz," Two Lectures on Shakespeare (Oxford: Blackwell, 196 1 ). 19. See Holland, Psychoanalysis and Shakespeare (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1966), p. 168, for a review of Otto Rank's discus­ sion of "Das Motiv des Uriasbriefes," the motif of killing a son with a letter sealing his doom. 20. Goddard, The Meaning of Shakespeare (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1951), p. 456. 21. On comedy and tragedy as studies in the success or failure of the deployment of psychic defenses, see Holland, Dynamics of Literary Response pp.274-277. 22. See Chapter Eight, note 1 above. 23. David Shapiro, Neurotic Styles (New York: Basic Books, 1965). The following discussion is much indebted to this book. I have, however, taken the liberty to add my own overview to a summary of Shapiro.

APPENDIX A 1. W. H. Auden, "Introduction" to the Sonnets in Sylvan Barnet, ed., The Complete Signet Classic Shakespeare (New York: Harcourt, 1972), p. 1722.

APPENDIX B 1. See J. H. P. Pafford, ed., The Winter's Tale, Arden Edition (London: Methuen, 1963), pp. 16-17, for a list of instances of the smiling villain.

NOTES

2. Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams, S.E., v, 356, 366, 400. 3. Freud, Leonardo Da Vinci and a Memory of his Childhood, S.E., χι, 115-117. APPENDIX C 1. Sir Herbert Grierson, ed., The Poems of John Donne (1912; rpt., London, 1933), pp. 10-11.

GENERAL INDEX

Achilles: 49, 261 A d a m : 49, 136-39, 243, a 6 i Aeneas: i s o - s s alliteration: 9 1 , 229 anality: 56, 67-69, 85, 1 1 0 - 1 1 , 128, 150-51. 158-59. i9>-92. 202-03, 216, 223, 261, 265, 270-71 androgyny: 58-60, 126-29, 140-41, 154. 171-77. 828, 249 A u d e n , W. H.: 275-76

135-36 Columbus, Christopher: 3 comedy: 251 Corambis: 112 Cornelius and Voltemand: 218 Crews, Frederick: 90 defense and adaptation: 207-59 delay: 43-50, 116-17, i93 demonology: 16-17, 38-39, 64,

Bernardo: 35, 39-40, 210 Bible: 243-44 birth: 16, 50, 67, 171-76, 278-206 Blake, William: 153 Booth, Stephen: 179-81 boy actor: 227-28 Bradby, G. F.: 130 Bradley, A . C.: 53-56, 63, 66 Brenner, Charles: 12, 21 Bright, Timothy: g

143-49 Dido: 120-22 Donne, John: 60, 287-89 drunkenness: 185, 202-03 Dyce, A l e x a n d e r : 160, 162 Eissler, K. R.: 25-26, 140-41, 173, 198-99, 202, 205, 227, 251, 260 Eliot, T . S.: 3-7, 144 Erikson, Erik: 123, 199-202, 251

Cain and Abel: 138-39 Caldecott, T h o m a s : 29-30 castration: 33, 62-73, 83-84, 87-88 161-69, 186-87, 197-98, 226, 234, 246-47 Cheshire cat: 71 Christ: 194, 200-05 Claudius: as father: 25-26,82-84,99. 1 1 1 . 130, 146, 246-47 as oedipal criminal: 20-26, 43, 45. 72-73. 138-39. 174. 260 as weak man: 99-103 as wished for woman and/or castrate: 33-34, 69-72, 83-84, 209, 226-34, 241-42 identification with King Hamlet: 99, 146

in prayer scene: 28-35, 235-36 sublimating the primal scene:

Fcierie Queene: 129 father figures (see also King Hamlety. Achilles: 49, 261 Adam: 49, 136-39, 243, 261 Aeneas: 120-22 Alexander: 150 Caesar: 150-51 ClaiuUus: 25-66,82-84, 99-103, 146, 150, 241-42 First Player: 120-22, 150, 216-17 the Ghost: 16-17, 25-26, 33-40, 47-48, 49, 51-98, 130, 143-46 God: 28-35, 60. 102-03, 139, 150, 261 Hercules: 135, 150

301

INDEX father figures (cont.) Horatio: 122-31, 150, 176, 261 Jove: 237 Laertes: 1 1 1 Lamard: 131-36, 150 Madness: 143-49- ^SO- i93 Mars: i»8

7 1 , 187, 237-38; and incest: 27-28, 59, 185-92; closet scene: 4 7 ' 73-86, 147-48; in Hamlet's free association: 6-8; redeemed or wished away: 58-60, 171-77, 214-17 Ghost (see also King Hamlet) : ambiguity of: 16-17, 37-42, 51-98, 130; and madness: 64, 143-46; his "country": 188; his story: 86-98; in Gertrude's closet: 73-86; objective-subjective:

Norway: 25-26, 49, 104-06, 150, 261 Old Fortinbras: 25-26, 49, 10406, 150, 261 Osrk: 142-43261 Plautus and Seneca: 224 Player King: 231-35 Poland: 112-14, 150. 261 Polomus: 25-26, 34-35, 49. 73-82, 106-15, 150, 160-64, 218-24, 261, 287-89 Priam: 115-22, 150, 261 "whips and scorns o f time": 193 Yoriek: 49, 130, 139-42, 150, 261 Fenichel, Otto: 59-60 First Player: 120-22, 150, 172, 216-17, 223-24, 227-28, 261 First Quarto: 30, 112, 179, 210 Flatter, Richard: 36-37, 79-80, 142 Fliess, Robert: 55-57, 69, 71 Fliess, Wilhelm: 24 Fortinbras: 86, 104-06, 1 1 3 - 1 5 , 199, 206, 212 Fortune: 63, i i 6 - i 8 , 123-27, 18687, 190, 192, 194 Francisco: 89, 210 free association: 4-9 Freud, Sigmund: on dreams: 207, 241; on h u m o r : 70; on Hamlet: ig-23, 38, 45, 51, 260; on identification: 32; on Mona Lisa: 285-86; on Rat-Man: 230; on Wolf-Man: 85, 89 Gertrude: and Ophelia: 152-71; as sexually destructive: 62-70, 72-73, 78-82, 103, 114-15, 152302

39-40, 47, 84-85; on the battlements: 51-72; rebirth: 190, 203 G o d d a r d , Harold C.: 4-9, 37, 40-42, 102, 122-23, 154-55, 219-21, 251 gravedigger: 17-28, 136-39, 16667, 169-70, 210, 280-81 Grebanier, Bernard: 53 G r e g , W. W.: 39 Grinstein, A l e x a n d e r : 236 Guildenstem: 62-63, 146, 236, 242, 245-48, 254, 269 guilt: 20-24, 45-46, 100-03 hallucination: 47, 84-85, 154-57, 232-34 Hecuba: 119-20, 171-73 hendiadys: 68, 91-92 Hitler, Adolf: 8 Holland, N o r m a n H.: 19, 20, 90-91, 252 homosexuality: 58-60, 96, 107-09, 126-29, 140-41, 228, 261, 266, 271-72 Horatio: 28, 35, 39-40, 45, 49, 88, 94-97. 213. 247-48, 271; as father: 122-31, 150, 176, 261 Hulme, Hilda: 6g hysteria: 178, 225-26, 237, 257-58 identification: 20-24, 32-33, 97, 122, 160-64, 171-77. 218-24, 228, 250, 260 Iliad: 7

INDEX impotence: 49, 1 1 5 , 158, 278 impulsiveness: 258-59 incest: passim Jeptha: 1 1 1 - 1 2 Johnson, Samuel: 31, 179, 193 Jones, Ernest: 19-25, 38, 4 1 , 44, 5 1 , 90, 152, 234, 260 Joyce, James: 203 K i n g Hamlet (see alsoGAoiO: ambiguous strength of: 26-40, 99, 103, 112-15, 193, 207-59; and Hamlet's delay: 43-50; as oedipal victim: 51-98, 121, 151, 234, 259; as vvrished-for killer of Claudius: 28-31, 43, 69-71, 83-84. 135' »39. »43. 259 Knight, G. Wilson: 37-40, 183, 190, 200-02, 251 Laertes: 34, 102, 103, 123, 132, 154, 174, 190-91, 217-18, 226, 242; as Hamlet's brother: 14448; incestuous relationship with Ophelia: 106-12 Lamb, Charles: 197 Lamord: 49, 123, 131-36, 150 Langer, Walter C.: 8 Levin, Harry: 180-81, 211 Lucianus: 228, 231-34 Luther, Martin: 199 Mack, Maynard, Jr.: 132, 137 madness: 11, 64, 143-49, 271 Malone, E d m u n d : 53 Marcellus: 35, 39-40, 94, 201-05 Marlowe, Christopher: 276 masochism: 64-66, 143, 149, 197, 242

Morris, Harry: 164 mother figures (see alsoGerfrude): Claudius: 70; Fortune: 163, 186-87, 190; Hamlet: 58-60, 171-77; Hecuba: 119-20, 17173, 216-17; Laertes: 1 1 1 ; Ophelia: 152-71; Player Q u e e n : 231-35; Poland: 1 1 4 - 1 5 Murder of Gonzago: 82, 129, 136, 209, 210, 218, 224, 226-36, 240, 254, 258-59, 261 necrophilia: 170 negative O e d i p u s complex: 59-60 Nero: 73 Nevo, Ruth: 44-45 Nicoll, Allardyce: 46-47 Norway: 43, 49, 209-10, 261 obsession: 10, 94-97, 253-55 Oedipus complex: passim Old Fortinbras: 27, 28,43, 49, 209, 218, 261 Olivier, Laurence: 53 Ophelia: and Gertrude's sexuality: 46, 59, 64, 152-71, 226, 231-35, 250, 271; as baby: 109; her love letter: 210, 218-21, 256; in her grave: 168-71, 175-76, 258; incestuous relationship with Laertes: 106-12 Osric: 49, 130, 142-43, 192, 210, 213 paranoia: 255-57 passivity: 97, 126-28, 140-43, 15253, 168, 171-77, 242 pirates: 27, 240-42 Plautus: 224, 268 Player K i n g and Q u e e n : 122,

matricide: 50, 152-77, 249-50 Matthew: 143 messenger: 240-41 misogyny: 58-60, 73, 178-98, 20506, 214-17, 270 Moloney, James Clark: 22-23, ^59

231-35 poison: 89-93, ^55 Poland: 104, 112-15, 212, 261 Polonius: as child/father: 66, 110, 141, 223, 287-89; as actor/critic: 150, 224; as pandering father:

303

INDEX Polonius (cont.) 77-78; as victimized father: 43, 49, 78-82, 110, 112-15, 119, 148; as voyeuristic father: 34-35, 74-76, 287-89; identified with Hamlet: 66, 160-64, 218-24; re­ lationship with Ophelia and Laertes: 106-12, 217-18 pregnancy fantasies: 58-60, 12328, 171-76 Priam: 43, 49, 115-22, 216-17, 261 primal scene: 60-67, 73"74> 80-82, 84-86, 88-98, 114-15, 135-36, 151, 159, 188-89, 196, 226, 235, 240, 265 projection: 39, 95 Prosser, Eleanor: 30, 39, 93-94, 96 Pyrrhus: 116-22 Ramus, Petrus: 181 Rank, Otto: 32, 90 Rat-Man: 230 redemption: 198-206 Reed, Robert: 47 regression: 56, 66, 85, 99-103, 110-11, 128, 141, 150-51, 15859, 208, 265 repression: 10, 14-16 reversal: 35, 36, 89, 162-63, 16667, 170 Reynaldo: 110, 209, 220 Richardson, Tony: 124 η. Rockelein: Laurence: 22-23, 159 Rorik: 139 Rosencrantz: 46, 62-63, 7 1 ' 12 7" 28, 146, 223, 236, 242, 269, 280-81 Rosencrantz (and Guildenstern): unnecessarily murdered: 24548, 253 sadism: 170, 245-46 Second Quarto: 30 Seneca: 164, 224 Shakespeare, John: 137, 250

Shakespeare, Mary: 250 Shakespeare, William: unconscious presence in Hamlet: 5-g, 13-18, 207-08, 238, 250, 279, 289 Shakespeare's works: All's Well·. 7; Antony: 6, 264^5 You Like It: 71, 262, 264, 265, 267, 285; Comedy of Errors: 268-72; Coriolanus: 262, 264; Cymbehne: 61, 262, 265, 267, 276; Henry IV: Part One: 22, 136, 140, 26g,HenryIV: Part Two: 283-84; Henry V: 263, 269,Henry VI trilogy: 263, 264; Henry VI: Part Three: 282-83; Henry VIII: 188, 263; Julius Caesar: 262, Kmg John: 163; KingLear: 32-33, 44-45, 50, 262, 264, 265, 269; Love's Labour's: 196, 266, 267-,Macbeth: 262, 264, 267, 269,Measure: 14-16, 61, 140, 262, 269; Merchant: 228, 262, 264, 265, 267, 276; Mid­ summer: 267; Much Ado: 76-77, 82, 264, 265, 276; Othello: 126, 136, 264, 265, 266, 267, 269, 276;Pericles: 262, 267,Richard II: 263; Richard III : 263, 264; Romeo: 61, 189, 262, 267; Son­ nets 1-17: 262, 275-79; Sonnet 3: 63, 275-79; Sonnet 20: 63; Son­ net 35: 7; Sonnets 134-36: 9; Sonnet 137: 115; Sonnet 151: 188, 229; Taming: 189; Tempest: 189, 262, 265, 267, 269; Timon: 262, 264, 265, 267; Titus: 262, 265, 267; Troilus: 7, 68, 196, 264, 265, 266; "Venus and Adonis": 264; Winter's Tale: 72, 204, 264, 265, 266, 276, 284-85 Shapiro, David: 253-59 Sharpe, Ella Freeman: 69, 90 smiling villain: 70-72, 215, 255, 280-86 The Spanish Tragedy : 35 splitting: 212-13

INDEX style: 252-59 sublimation: 135-36, 195-98, 208, 256 suicide: 65, 181, 183, 190, 197 superego: 28, 55, 57 TotteCs Miscellany. 169 tragedy: 251-59 Trilling, Lionel: 12 Tristan: 185 TschichiwitzjB.: 124

voyeurism (see also primal scene): 34-35- 74-76, 158, 287-89 Waldock, A.J.A.: 46-47, 130 Wertham, Frederic: 152 West, Rebecca: 157 Wilson, John Dover: 9-12, 37-40, 64, 130, 179, 224-25, 232, 236 Wolf-Man: 85, 89 Woolf, Virginia: 3 Wormhoudt1Arthur: 112 writing: 207-59

Virgin Mary: 163, 194 virginity: 167-68

Yorick: 49, 130, 139-42, 261

3°5

INDEX OF PASSAGES FROM HAMLET QUOTED OR DISCUSSED

I.i. 1-125: 36-38, 89 36-39-. 1 1 3 - 1 4 63: 113-15 86-89: 211-14, 250 113-20: 150-51 157-64: 201-05 I.ii. 36-38: 219 67: 42

191-207: 221-24, 250 231-39: 63, 186-87 305-11: 71 316-22: 7 1 , 280 354-58: 223 403-09: 224 428-35: 227-29 476-575: 116-22, 172-73 554-612: 64, 216 572-75: 182

72-75: 184-85 101-06: 138 121-28: 281-82 129-32: 65, 102, 210, 243

Ill.i. 32: 64 43-53: 225-26 56-89: 108, 178-206, 229, 250,

133-37: 67 143-45: 153 146: 154 156-57: 10, 170, 194 180-81: 215 185: 28 2 1 1 - 1 2 : 122 196-206: 61-62, 88, 130 222-23: 210 I.iii. 10-44: 49, 109, 190-91 57-81: 106-12 I.iv. 23-38: 180, 184-85, 202-03 43-5: 39 46-51: 190

251 121-30: 46, 170, 182, 194-95, 225-26 135-50: 153-54. 178 165-68: 175, 244, 249 Ill.ii. 1-45: 61, 191 45-51: 232 56-74: 123-28 70-73: 186-87 76-87: 129-31 90-299: 226-36 116: i88

85: 57-58 I.v. 9-20: 86-97 42-46: 134, 136 86-88: 63 92-112: 51-73, 92, 103, 126-27, 143-46, 149, 150, 152, 188, 189, 209, 214-17, 255 152-67: 95. 254 189-90: 182 II.i. 77-84: 154-59 Il.ii. 69-75: 106-12 109-24: 218-21, 256 180-87: 182, 203

130: 133 131-38: 133-34. 230-31 382-94: 4-9 404-07: 239 Ill.iii. 36-38: 138 36-72: 99-103 73-95: 28-35, 37 Ill.iv. 1-217: 47-48, 73-86 40-46: 206, 239-40 61-63: 239 93-95: 153. 187 i i g - 2 2 : 156-57 138-45: 148 203-06: 245-46

307

INDEX IV.ii. 15-22: i z 8 IV.iii. 16-25: 71 50-53: 70, 227 59-66: 246-47 IV.iv. 56-66: 114-15 IV.v. 21-68: 159-65 121-28: 103 142-44: 2 10 146-49: 1 1 1 189-98: 159-65 IV.vi. 13-31: 240-42, 258

146-47: 183-94: 202-04: 209-16: 243-46: 284-88: 291-92: V.ii. 26-27: 65: 46

16, 27 140-42 67 150-51 169 175-76, 244 135 247

80-210: 142-43 149-55: 213-14 193-94: 192 214-18: 174 221-26: 30, 143 219: 130 228-46: 11, 143-49 327-29: 237-38 336-40: 97 381-88: 247-48

IV.vii. 36-53: 240-43 81-107: 136 134-39- l o z 159-62: 237-38 166-83: 165-68 V.i. 15-20: 167 29-38: 136-38, 210, 243-44 75-93: 138-39 91-97: 169-70, 182, 191

308

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING IN PUBLICATION DATA Erlich, Avi. Hamlet's absent father. Includes index. i. Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616. Hamlet. 2. Fathers and sons in literature. I. Title. PR2807.E67 822.3'3 77-9420 ISBN 0-691-06340-0