Hamlet is Hardly a Hero

In the beginning of Hamlet, there are many reasons to sympathize with the title character’s
predicament. His father is dead, his mother barely grieved before jumping into bed (and a marriage)
with Hamlet’s uncle, and it seems as though Hamlet’s right to the throne has been completely
overlooked. If there is a good side and an evil side to the characters in the play, it seems certain that
murderer Claudius is on the evil side, and Hamlet, who seeks justice for his father’s untimely murder, is our good hero of the play.

…Not so much. Until the end of Act III, we see Hamlet as an existential, philosophical character who, despite being clearly obsessed with the idea of death, only thinks of potentially becoming murderous as a means of setting things right. He is sensitive, evident in his frustration at being unable to express emotion in II.II:

“Yet I,

A dull and muddy-mettled rascal, peak

Like John-a-dreams, unpregnant for my cause,

And can say nothing. No, not for a king,

Upon whose property and most dear life

A damned defeat was made. Am I a coward?”

While he wishes to seek revenge for his father’s death, he doesn’t take action. He keeps his vengeful plans as thoughts, and constantly mulls them over and reflects on his situation. Therefore, rather than being a bloodthirsty killer, we see Hamlet as a rational thinker, someone who thinks before he acts.

All of this changes when he brashly murders Polonius. The audience may think that Hamlet will sorely regret his actions once he realizes it wasn’t Claudius behind the curtain, but Hamlet’s response is unnerving:

“Thou wretched, rash, intruding fool, farewell.

I took thee for they better.” (III.IV))

It is clear here that Hamlet lacks the morality necessary for a heroic character. The lines between good and evil, just and unjust, have been blurred, similar to how they were blurred in Othello. Othello, too, was a morally-sound and noble character until he was driven to murder his wife. Unlike Othello, however, Hamlet’s reasons for wanting to murder Claudius are internally motivated, whereas Othello was outwardly manipulated by Iago. Polonius’ murder lacked any real motivation at all, which makes Hamlet seem that more immoral.

In Act IV, Hamlet hides the body with the same non-chalance he had upon discovering it was Polonius he killed. His somewhat humorous attitude towards the murder is disturbing, as he jokes to the king:

“But indeed, if you find him not within this month, you shall nose him as you go up the stairs into the lobby.” (IV.III)

By now we realize that there is officially no remorse, and the other characters realize that Hamlet is dangerous. Our hero of the play is a thoughtless killer, so are we left with an absence of morality entirely? Has Shakespeare dissolved the classic battle between good and evil? Perhaps it’s more complicated than that. Epic poems, hero stories and classic tales of revenge before Shakespeare’s time had well-established hero archetypes, but in Hamlet, Shakespeare favors human complexity over tradition. As we move into Act V, perhaps we’ll see minor characters emerge as the last remaining examples of morality in the play.