Seeming & Knowledge

I found Hamlet to be more confusing than Richard III. In the latter we have a character who understands his world thoroughly and can manipulate it to his advantage. The world presented to us in the opening act of Hamlet, however, is one in which there is a disruption of knowledge, which makes everything uncertain and indefinite. It is very much like the world of Much Ado About Nothing, in that both their characters operate on information received from other people that cannot be adequately verified--hearsay. The entire plot of MAAN is propelled by characters listening in on one another’s conversations. The romantic relationships are triggered not through direct contact, but through eavesdropping.  Similarly, the characters in Hamlet obtain knowledge from what others have said to them: Horatio answers Marcellus’s question about why they are preparing for war by relating “the whisper” that has been spreading throughout Denmark; neither Horatio nor Marcellus know for sure what the crowing of the cock signifies, but both speculate by referring to what they “have heard” and what “some/they say”; Hamlet only learns of his father’s ghost after Horatio and Marcellus tell him of it, and it is the ghost who tells him that Claudius murdered his father. There is a consistent deferment of information, so that it’s like you can’t pinpoint exactly where a belief originated from. Even the first appearance of the ghost is not the first time it has been seen by characters in the play.

Horatio is aware that this kind of knowledge is unsubstantiated, and that breeds a sort of skepticism in him. He qualifies the myth about the crowing cock by saying he only believes it “in part.” When the soldiers first approach him about the ghost, he does not believe them and tells them that they’ve had a “fantasy.” The soldiers, meanwhile, appeal to someone with an education, an upperclassman, to speak to the ghost. Knowledge, then, is determined by class, with the soldiers’ insistence that they’ve seen a ghost being dismissed even while they ask for the disbelieving Horatio’s help. He--the “educated man”--needs something more than words: he needs the empirical evidence that comes with sight. He has to see the ghost for himself in order to believe the soldiers, and it is telling that the ghost first appears on stage right when Barnardo is about to tell Horatio how he first saw it. They see the ghost at midnight, again recalling MAAN in that Claudio “saw” Hero with another man at that same time of night, which alerted me that perhaps the appearance of the ghosts was a deception. Claudius also believes in empiricism, as evidenced when he says “for what we know must be, and is as common/As any the most vulgar thing to sense,” telling that Hamlet should stop mourning his father’s death because he can perceive through his senses that it is a natural occurrence. This affirms the difference between classes: both Claudio, the king, and Horatio, who goes to the same school as Hamlet (a nobleman?), appeal to the senses to determine truth and reality. But Hamlet despises Claudio. He cannot adhere to the same precepts that the man who married his mother one month after his father’s death does, and this is why he so readily accepts that Horatio and the soldiers have seen his father’s ghost--he asks them to repeat what they’ve revealed to him, but he never discredits them, as Horatio had. This is also why  when he sees the ghost he automatically calls it “Hamlet, father, royal Dane” even though Horatio told him it  was only “a figure like your father.” Hamlet does not act as someone in his class should. This is important to note, because at the end of Act I he again shows how he is willing to disobey class norms by “insisting on informality” and telling them they should all leave together. this makes me think that the following acts are going to be tricky: how is Horatio the empiricist supposed to believe in Hamlet’s sanity when he looks like he’s insane?

The disruption of knowledge is underscored by Fortinbras’s actions: he actively challenges the rules that have been set up to order the world. It is clear that (old) Hamlet gained Fortinbras’s former inheritance legally. He adhered to the “sealed compact” and “bonds of law” that (old) Norway had agreed to, and so in disputing this through war Fortinbras questions the very legitimacy of the Danish king, which is ironic because Claudius really is illegitimate. The disorder in the legal world is mirrored in both in the familial sphere and the realm of sexuality. The “natural” relationship between men and women is disrupted and Hamlet finds himself with this convoluted family in which Gertrude (his mother) is married to Claudius (his uncle and her brother-in-law) so that Hamlet is both his nephew and his son, which allows Hamlet to mock his biological mother by calling her his “good-mother,” his step-mother, all of which in turn informs his relationship with Ophelia.

In the play there is a focus on sight that seems to haunt every character. Gertrude was a “seeming virtuous queen,” they all “see” the ghost, Hamlet insists he does not “seem” grieved, but "is" grieved, the world “seems” unprofitable to him,” Horatio “knows” old Hamlet because he’s “seen” him once. I remember the central role the word “seem” played in MFM; it would be interesting to chart it’s usage through all Shakespeare’s plays.