One does not just walk into Mordor. The same might be said of Hamlet criticism. But in my naive, Hobbit-like way, I read Nicholas Brooke’s essay on Hamlet, and only that. Like a shady contractor, Brooke complains that the last guy did the baseboards and appliances all wrong, but he’d be happy to tear it all out and do it right, for a few extra grand. Many critics have been convinced “that Hamlet offers us profound philosophical thinking,” but—but!—while the
I concede that Shakespeare's characters are usually doing something other than Philosophy, but the To Be/Not soliloquy is an odd one for Brooke to call unphilosophic, since it clearly argues something like:
P1. Life is suffering.
P2. The only responses to suffering are to endure it, to destroy its causes ["take arms against a sea of troubles"] or to kill oneself.
P5. Suicide may open oneself to further, possibly worse suffering ["what dreams may come"].
______________
C. Life is suffering without a good solution.
Hamlet's "solution", in the Action that follows, is to hedge his bets and take all three options. He draggingly endures the suffering, then embarks on a suicide mission against all that's rotten in Denmark.
Hamlet's argument against suicide reminds me of that argument at the heart of Buddhism, that Life's suffering can't be stopped by death since we're bound to a cycle of repeating life & death.
I concede that Shakespeare's characters are usually doing something other than Philosophy, but the To Be/Not soliloquy is an odd one for Brooke to call unphilosophic, since it clearly argues something like:
P1. Life is suffering.
P2. The only responses to suffering are to endure it, to destroy its causes ["take arms against a sea of troubles"] or to kill oneself.
P3. Enduring suffering doesn't solve it.
P4. Destroying suffering's causes seems hopeless. [the sea is pretty big!]
P5. Suicide may open oneself to further, possibly worse suffering ["what dreams may come"].
______________
C. Life is suffering without a good solution.
Hamlet's "solution", in the Action that follows, is to hedge his bets and take all three options. He draggingly endures the suffering, then embarks on a suicide mission against all that's rotten in Denmark.
Hamlet's argument against suicide reminds me of that argument at the heart of Buddhism, that Life's suffering can't be stopped by death since we're bound to a cycle of repeating life & death.
Great piece! (The problem with the Oedipus interpretation is that he doesn’t love his mother. I think Bloom points this out.)
Gabriel Josipovici is a particularly intelligent recent commentator on the play, in its many 'foldings'.
https://www.juliangirdham.com/blog/gabriel-josipovicis-hamlet-fold-on-fold
Similar thoughts on hamlets paralysis
https://ranas9.substack.com/p/the-curse-of-knowledge