Intro
Hermeneutics goes just bonkers over Hamlet. And seriously, who doesn’t? But it’s extra special in this branch of theory because—yup, you guessed it—it’s the ultimate play of ambiguity. Is Hamlet really mad? Is the ghost his murdered father or demon tempting him with the truth? Is the hesitant hero a swell dude or a sadistic villain? What was the exact nature of Ophelia’s relationship with Hamlet? Is your head spinning yet?
Seriously, these are all questions you’d think the play would answer, but it totally doesn’t. We learn, for example, that the ghost is telling the truth in so far as Hamlet’s father was murdered. Plus, the prince of Denmark sufficiently baits the new king to reveal his aching conscience, leading Hammy to assume that he’s proven the ghost is his father beyond the shadow of a doubt. Tah-dahhh!
Students of the play have usually taken this interpretation, but proving that the ghost was right about the murder doesn’t totally, completely, 100% prove that the ghost is actually Hamlet’s pop. It could conceivably be a demon plotting the prince’s physical and spiritual ruin. Maybe he’s just hallucinating (he is kind of a loopy guy). The play plays with these unanswered questions. And guess what? That’s just scratching the surface.
Here’s a scene when Hamlet’s trying to argue his way out of getting blamed for killing Polonius (who totally deserved it anyway), but Hamlet’s own motives—and dare we say, sanity?—also get called into question in the diatribe that follows.
Quote
Give me your pardon, sir: I've done you wrong;
But pardon't, as you are a gentleman.
This presence knows,
And you must needs have heard, how I am punish'd
With sore distraction. What I have done,
That might your nature, honour and exception
Roughly awake, I here proclaim was madness.
Was't Hamlet wrong'd Laertes? Never Hamlet:
If Hamlet from himself be ta'en away,
And when he's not himself does wrong Laertes,
Then Hamlet does it not, Hamlet denies it.
Who does it, then? His madness: if't be so,
Hamlet is of the faction that is wrong'd;
His madness is poor Hamlet's enemy.
Sir, in this audience,
Let my disclaiming from a purposed evil
Free me so far in your most generous thoughts,
That I have shot mine arrow o'er the house,
And hurt my brother.
Analysis
Here we have the young prince of Denmark asking Laertes, whose father he killed (oopsy-daisy), to forgive him and recognize the wrong as having come from madness and not malice or design.
Of course, Hamlet isn’t telling Laertes (or the audience) that the reason he killed Polonius wasn’t plain old innocence, but that he had really meant to kill the king. Try arguing your way out of that one. Instead, he wants everyone present to attribute the deed to that big scary bogeyman of madness and count Hamlet among those wronged by the villain of mental incompetence.
In short, he’s arguing for an interpretation that hides what really happened. Or rather, he’s attempting to create a new reality by fooling the court into accepting the interpretation he offers.
Here we see at dangerous, poisonous play the relationship between interpretation and creation of reality. And sure, it’s extra poisonous for the characters within the play (at least 80% of whom are dead, mostly by poison, at the end of the play), but Shakespeare is also warning us of the dangers of interpretation in the rest of life, too.
To hermeneuticize or not to hermeneuticize, that is the question!