“…Be all my
sins remembered.” Hamlet, on the surface, seems to be about madness,
about revenge, about death or suicide but it’s not. Hamlet is an
iceberg: there’s much deeper into it than is visible. It is about betrayal,
obscurity of human nature, difficulty in bringing about physical action from
mental determination and most importantly, intricacy of human relationships.
Hamlet is a very complexly developed, dynamic character with diverse and unique
aspects in his personality, visible through his thoughts, his actions, his
intelligence, and above all, his language. In the line in his predominant
soliloquy, “…be all my sins remembered,” he assures the readers of his
knowledge about the significance in Claudius’s death.
“To be, or
not to be: that is the question.” Hamlet delivered this soliloquy when he was
struggling to act upon his duty as a son and responsibility as a prince. He was
certain that Claudius needed to be killed for the betterment of Denmark, or the
“prison” as he called it, and to avenge his father’s death but he could barely
demonstrate his anger through speech, let alone action. His uncertainty in
whether to change or to stay the same – “to be, or not to be” – prevented him
from fighting the iniquitous and ending his emotional and mental struggle, “…or
to take arms against the sea of troubles, and by opposing end them?” “To die:
to sleep; No more.” Death, in this soliloquy, can be taken to be literal but it
can also symbolize the future – the unknown. No individual is aware what the
future consists of and how it will affect their respective lives – “for in that
sleep of death what dreams may come.” The ambiguity of the future was what
Hamlet feared; the insecurity of the future was what Hamlet feared; the “death”
of the future (or rather, in the future) was what Hamlet feared.
The ambiguity, the insecurity and the
ultimate “death” that the future consists of forced Hamlet to stop before
acting upon his instincts. He questioned the worth of being disciplined if
killing Claudius was the morally right act. But he blamed his questioning on
the fear of the future: if unaware of what it held, then why commit to a
responsibility whose outcome was also unknown – “for who would bear the whips
and scorns of time,” why would a being bear through the hardships and
sufferings of the present: only because of greater fear of the unknown (“to
grunt and sweat under a weary life, but that the dread of something after
death”). Hamlet didn’t fear Claudius’s death or him killing Claudius, but he
feared the outcome of his death: not only on Denmark, not only on his mother,
but also on himself. An action can never be taken back and time can never be
reversed: how would killing Claudius have an impact on his personality – “the
undiscover’d country from whose bourn/no traveller returns…” This fear was what
made Hamlet endure all his pain, of knowing the truth yet unable to do
anything, and all his confusion, of the outcome of Claudius’s death – “…puzzles
the will/and makes us rather bear those ills we have/than fly to others that we
know not of?” And this fear was what made Hamlet act crazy (where the concept
of Hamlet’s insanity comes to place) and appear to be weak (concept of “he
wanted to commit suicide”) – “thus conscience does make cowards of us all.”
Through all these fears and uncertainty, Hamlet “lost” his ability to reach a
physical conclusion – “and lose the name of action.” Finally, he ends up
requesting Ophelia to remember him in her prayers: “…be all my sins
remembered.”
Hamlet’s
“to be, or not to be” served a purpose of not only “self-overhearing” for
Hamlet, but also to clarify for the audience that Hamlet, being a very
determined and definite individual, is wavering not because of his “insanity”
but because of his perplexity about the outcome of his actions in the future.
Hamlet declares his definite knowledge of the value of killing Claudius, “when
he himself might his quietus make/with a bare bodkin?” – locutionary effect;
Hamlet delivers “to be, or not to be” to not only self-overhear but to create a
sense of understanding for the audience, “and lose the name of action” –
illocutionary effect; Finally, Hamlet elucidates his inability to act to the
audience, “with this regard their currents turn awry, and lose the name of
action” – perlocutionary effect. With the usage of the theory of
performativity, the effect of Hamlet’s language and his speech results in a new
intensity of depth. With this depth, Shakespeare was able to achieve the
formation of Hamlet to be an iceberg: there’s much deeper into it than is
visible.
