The Social Environment & Hamlet's Conflicts

This study will examine the significance of the "diseased social order" in Shakespeare's Hamlet. Specifically, the study will show how the corrupted social environment aggravated Hamlet's internal conflicts and led to the tragedy which ultimately resulted.

It is impossible to separate the diseased social order of Denmark as it is portrayed in the play and the tragedy of Hamlet. It might be argued that much of the tragedy would have been averted had Hamlet slain Claudius when he was first made aware that Claudius had killed his father, but no one knows what other consequences would have occurred had he taken action immediately. In any case, the murder itself emerged from the diseased social order, and, as part of that social order---at the very top of it as a matter of fact---Hamlet could hardly be expected to be exempt from the corruption. It might even be argued that the conflict within him was a matter of his own conscience clashing with the corrupt social order. In other words, it may not have been something lacking in himself which delayed his taking action, but rather that hesitation may have been his particular manifestation of the diseased social order which hesitated in the face of spreading corruption.

In any case, there is much evidence of the corruption of society and its impact on Hamlet and the resultant tragedy. One of the signs of both personal and social corruption is deception. People and institutions are not what they appear to be, not what they present t

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of the knowledge of that corruption. He recognizes that he alone must take revenge, and he can confide in or ask help from no one. Hamlet hurls metaphors and similes around in profusion, as in his encounter with poor, addled Polonius, speaking of fishmongers and maggots breeding in dead dogs and "good kissing carrion," but Hamlet recognizes himself that all of this is merely putting off the inevitable. He says in response to a question from Polonius, "Words, words ,words" (II, 2, 190). Hamlet continues to try to spend his rage and responsibility in wordplay of every kind, but it is an increasingly unsatisfying option to revenge. Act III, of course, is marked by Hamlet's famous "To be, or not to be" soliloquy. The speech is indicative of the conflict which the diseased social order has created, or at least aggravated, inside him, for what Hamlet is contemplating is suicide: "Whether 'tis nobler . . . to suffer/ The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,/ Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,/ And by opposing end them?" Of course, Hamlet is too torn internally to take such action, and his mind provides him with the dangers of suicide: "To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub" (III, 1, 57-60; 65). Hamlet considers

Category: Literature - T