William Shakespeare’s Hamlet is arguably one of the most famous plays in world culture and, although it was first performed over four hundred year ago, it is still frequently staged and speaks anew to succeeding generations of theatre goers. It will be argued that Hamlet portrays what is in contemporary society still a devastating problem – the problems concerning the privacy and scrutiny of what we now call celebrities.
Hamlet is, in terms of sixteenth century Denmark, a celebrity. He is the son of the recently deceased king and might even be regarded as his father’s natural successor. Towards the end of the pay it is revealed that even the gravediggers have heard about him: there has been public gossip about him and one gravedigger talks of Hamlet – “He that is mad and sent into England” (5, 1, 52) However, the problems he faces in the court at Elsinore are those faced by the rich and famous now, the great and prominent now: he is unsure of who to trust; he cannot be certain that his friends are genuine and are not simply being sycophantic to him because he is a Prince of Denmark; his every move is watched and analyzed by Claudius, Polonius and Gertrude; and, to make matters worse, he is undergoing severe mental torment because of his father’s death and his his mother’s quick re-marriage – and that is before he is told by the ghost that his father was murdered by Claudius. His and Ophelia’s very public breakdowns are reminiscent of the public breakdowns of Britney Spears and Charlie Sheen. The only difference is that Hamlet is not hounded by modern paparazzi and the modern media – it is significant here that the gravedigger has heard about his madness, but does not recognize him.
This interpretation of the play has been given a vision already in a film production of Hamlet (2000) directed by Michael Almereyda, in which Ethan Hawke played Hamlet. In this version of the play the idea of constant surveillance is stressed: Hamlet’s father’s ghost makes his first appearance on a CCTV system; there are paparazzi desperately trying to get photos of Hamlet; in Act Three, scene one, where Claudius and Polonius eavesdrop a private conversation between Hamlet and Ophelia ( and are normally hidden on stage), in this film version of the play, Hamlet discovers at a crucial moment in the scene that Ophelia is wired and that everything he says to her is being listened to and recorded. This interpretation supports my thesis that the play portrays the fact that the famous find it increasingly difficult to maintain any privacy at all from a prying world - and that such scrutiny is intrusive and makes their situation worse.
Because of his status and potential power Hamlet is sometimes pandered to and flattered because of his position. In Act Three, scene two his comic conversation with Polonius in which he says that he sees a cloud that looks like a camel and then a weasel and then a whale, and Polonius agrees with him every time, shows that, because he is Prince of Denmark, some sycophants will say anything to keep him happy. Something very similar occurs in his relationship with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Initially he greets them in a very friendly way as befits friends from his school days, but then he starts to have doubts and asks them
What have you, my good friends, deserved at the hands of fortune, that she sends you to prison hither? (2, 2, 242-244)
Because they do not answer directly and honestly he presses them on this point:
Were you not sent for? Is it your own inclining? Is it a free visitation? Come, come, deal justly with me. (2, 2, 278-280)
Hamlet quickly comes to his conclusion: “I know the good King and Queen have sent for you.” (2, 2, 285-286). Because he knows they have been “sent for,” he knows he cannot trust them. Indeed, at the start of Act Three Rosencrantz and Guildenstern duly report back to Gertrude and Claudius the outcome of their conversation with Hamlet. In the encounter Hamlet has asserted that “Denmark’s a prison” (2, 2 246) and it is for Hamlet because he is constantly watched and does not know who to trust. This is even shown in Act One when he has seen the ghost of his father and Marcellus and Horatio ask him what the ghost said. Hamlet replies in riddles – Horatio comments “These are bit wild and whirling words my lord. “(1, 5, 137) - partly because he is so overcome by what he has just heard, but also because he does not know if he can trust them with the truth of what the ghost said. The worst aspect of this lack of trust is that Hamlet is aware of what Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are like. After the players have performed their play, Hamlet directly challenges Rosencrantz and Guildenstern by picking up a recorder and using it as an analogy for what they want to do to him:
Why look you how unworthy a thing you make of me. You would play upon me, you would seem to know my stops, you would pluck out the heart of my mystery, you would sound me from my lowest note to the top of my compass; and there is music, excellent voice in this little organ, yet cannot you make it speak. (3, 2, 360-366)
In other words, Hamlet is too complex and his problems too complicated to be understood by Rosencrantz and Guildenstern; this is very reminiscent of the way today’s media search for simple, superficial analyses of eccentric behaviour on the part of celebrities or show an unhealthy fascination with their private lives. Our society is even more intrusive than Elsinore, because of modern media and the speed of communications. Now Hamlet’s ‘mad’ behaviour would be tweeted to a global audience within seconds. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are spies, sycophants and hangers-on, and Hamlet shows no remorse that he has sent them to their deaths: as he says to Horatio -
Why man, they did make love to this employment.
They are not near my conscience, their defeat
Does by their own insinuation grow. (5, 2, 57-59)
As far as Hamlet is concerned, they got what they deserved.
One of ther main promoters of the destruction of privacy in the play is Polonius. In Act Two, scene one he dispatches Reynaldo to Paris to spy on his own son, Laertes, and he overhears private conversations between Hamlet and Ophelia, and later between Hamlet and Gertrude. Apart from the questionable morality of this behaviour – just as questionable as today’s media scrutiny of the lives of the rich and famous – his interfering actually has a malign effect on the relationship of Hamlet and Ophelia in the play, and actually leads to his own death in Act Three, scene four when Hamlet stabs him behind the arras. Hamlet aptly sums him up by calling him “Thou wretched rash, intruding fool.”(3, 4, 32) In the previous scene he had shown real enthusiasm when explaining his plan to Claudius;
My lord, he’s going to his mother’s closet.
Behind the arras I’ll convey myself
To hear the process. (3, 3, 27-29)
Polonius actually seems to like spying and sees it as part of his role as the chief minister of Denmark. Claudius seems to enjoy it too and he is eager to justify their earlier eavesdropping on Hamlet and Ophelia, explaining to Gertrude:
We have closely sent for Hamlet hither,
That he, as twere by accident, may here affront Ophelia.
Her father and myself, lawful espials,
Will so bestow ourselves that, seeing unseen,
We may of their encounter frankly judge...
If it be the affliction of his love or no
That thus he suffers for. (3, 1, 29-37)
This is reminiscent not just of media intrusion, but also government scrutiny of our private communications.
Polonius is happy to use his daughter for his own political ends – with fatal results. At the start of the play he warns Ophelia that Hamlet’s feelings are not genuine and that she is not socially high enough to marry him:
These blazes daughter,
Giving more light than heat, extinct in both,
Even in their promise, as it is a-making,
You must not take for fire. (1, 3, 117-120)
Then he tells her to have nothing to do with Hamlet anymore:
I would not in plain terms from this time forth
Have you so slander any moment leisure
As to give words or talk to the Lord Hamlet. (1, 3, 132-134)
This is interfering in Ophelia’s life and takes no account of her feelings for Hamlet. Polonius furthers confuses both Hamlet and Ophelia by ordering her to meet Hamlet in Act Three, scene one, after a period in which she has had no communication with Hamlet at all. This meeting has the potential to be one of reconciliation between Hamlet and Ophelia. However, that potential is crushed once Hamlet realizes they are being overheard. There is a convention on stage and in film versions that Hamlet hears a noise from wherever Claudius and Polonius are hiding; the convention is that the noise – it could be a sneeze or a cough – comes just before the line “Where’s your father?” (3, 1, 131) and after that line Hamlet’s behaviour changes. Whatever love he once felt for Ophelia is destroyed when he realizes that he cannot trust her – that she is part of the surveillance team, as it were. This shows the destructive effects of such intrusion into people’s private lives. Later in the play Hamlet jumps into Ophelia’s grave and asserts that he loved her. In addition, most productions of the play present Ophelia (through her body language and expressions) as obedient to her father, but actually deeply attracted to Hamlet. If they had not lived in a society where their every move was watched and her father was not prepared to manipulate his daughter for political reasons, then they would have fallen deeply in love. But they are in Denmark and Denmark is a prison with no space for privacy.
Finally Hamlet deals with suicide and thus may invoke in an audience’s mind any suicide, but especially celebrity suicides which remain etched in the public consciousness forever. The most famous soliloquy in the play – Hamlet’s “To be or not to be” – is all about suicide. It should be noted, of course, that technically it is not a soliloquy since he is not alone – every word he says is overheard by Claudius and Polonius. Hamlet contemplates suicide as a potential way out of his problems; Ophelia does commit suicide after having a very public nervous breakdown which is poignantly presented by Shakespeare, especially in the scene where she sings and distributes flowers. Why does she descend into madness and mental breakdown? Claudius understands to a certain extent: he says to Gertrude
First her father slain,
Next, your son gone, and he the most violent author
Of his own just remove, the people muddied,
Thick and unwholesome in their thoughts and whispers,
For good Polonius’ death. (4, 5, 77-81)
But Claudius does not fully understand: to have your father killed by the man you love, a man whose love you have rejected out of obedience to your father is bound to create certain mental pressures. Furthermore, Ophelia has taken part in her father’s schemes to invade Hamlet’s privacy and thus may feel a sense of shame as well as grief for her father and regret about the way she has treated Hamlet. Claudius’s reference to “the people” in the speech quoted above serves to remind us that Ophelia, as daughter of Denmark’s chief minister of state also has a high public profile and is the subject of gossip and speculation. This adds to the pressure she feels, just as it must do celebrities now, who speak of living their lives in a goldfish bowl where every member of the public, it seems, shows an unhealthy obsession with the details of their private lives.
In a stage production of Hamlet it would be possible (as Almereyda did in his film) to stress this aspect of the play – the invasion of privacy and its intrusive, destructive effect on private lives – without changing any words, but simply by adding a cluster of TV cameras and radio microphones for Claudius’s first speech in the play and the flash and whirr of paparazzi cameras whenever Hamlet appears. With the power and applications of mobile phones and the speed of the internet, it may soon seem for all of us (but especially the rich and famous) that we too live in Denmark – a prison with no privacy
Work Cited
Shakespeare, William. Hamlet. 1996. Oxford: Heinemann. Print.
