Weaving Themes through Hamlet

Hamlet is in a certain way the meeting point, the synthesis, the weaving together of many thematic threads in Shakespeare’s work. We have the question of the corruption of words, which we saw in its comedic permutation in Feste’s merry wordplay and in tragic resonance in Richard III, who clothes his villainy in Holy Writ, seems a saint when most he plays the devil. In Hamlet the idea is expressed by Polonius when he says, “‘Tis too much proved that with devotion’s visage / And pious action we do sugar o’er / The devil himself” (3.1 49-51). Feste says, “That that is is,” and “nothing that is so is so,” while Plonius says, “Why day is day, night night, and time is time” (2.2 89) and Hamlet says, “Seems, madam? Nay, it is. I know not ‘seems,’” (1.2 76) which of course points to the central question of the most famous soliloquy in the play, “to be or not to be.” So much depends on that verb “to be.” Indeed it seems the most important of the “words, words, words.” There’s a suggestion that it’s the one that should bend our attention toward “that within which passeth show” (1.2 85) But we might also see a bit of Falstaff’s famous soliloquy on honor. We also see the themes of the blood-line, and the spilling of one’s own relative’s blood (e.g. Claudius’ blood-caked hands) which we saw also in Richard III, along with the themes and mood of Macbeth in the supernatural elements of witchcraft and the visitation of his ghost father. And then of course there’s the relationship of Hamlet to those supernatural spheres, when the earth “seems to me a sterile promontory” (2.2 290), when he no longer feels connected to the earth and to his blood relations, when he feels an existential isolation and Angst creep into his consciousness. He is haunted by an apparition from a world he cannot understand. He feels the confrontation with the physical—recalling “ashes to ashes” he asks, “what is this quintessence of dust?” (2.2 298). To him the earth is a prison and he longs for release, and yet there is this question of dreaming, of the dreams of the afterlife, of the fires referred to by his father’s ghost, which purge the soul of its “foul crimes” (1.4 12). And with the question of dreams and of acting which comes into the play later on, we might find the themes of A Midsummer Night’s Dream playing out in darker, more tragic variations. One might go on and on in this way and uncover the intricate and subtle weaving of Shakespeare’s major themes in Hamlet.