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Hamlet: Inner Turmoil Essay, Research Paper

Hamlet: Inner Turmoil

Within the play Hamlet there exists many puns and phrases which have a

double meaning. Little ploys on words which tend to add a bit of entertainment

to the dialogue of the play. These forked tongue phrases are used by Shakespeare

to cast an insight to the characters in the play?to give them more depth and

substance. However, most importantly these phrases cause the reader or audience

to think. They are able to show a double meaning that not all people would pick

up on, which is the purpose of the comments.

Little is known about Shakespeare’s life, other than he was a great

playwright whose works serve to meld literary casts for ages to come. This was

his occupation, he wrote and directed plays to be performed. This was his sole

form of income that we know of, it was his way of putting the bread on the table.

If people did not like what Shakespeare wrote, then he would not earn any money.

If the people didn’t like what they saw, he became the starving artist.

Shakespeare wrote these dialogues in such a manner as to entertain both the

Nobility, as well as the peasants.

The Shakespearean theater is a physical manifestation of how Shakespeare

catered to more than one social class in his theatrical productions. These

Shakespearean theaters has a unique construction, which had specific seats for

the wealthy, and likewise, a designated separate standing section for the

peasants. This definite separation of the classes is also evident in

Shakespeare’s writing, in as such that the nobility of the productions speak in

poetic iambic pentameter, where as the peasants speak in ordinary prose. Perhaps

Shakespeare incorporated these double meanings to the lines of his characters

with the intent that only a select amount of his audience were meant to hear it

in either its double meaning, or its true meaning.

However, even when the tragic hero Hamlet’s wordplay is intentional, it is

not always clear as to what purpose he uses it. To confuse or to clarify? Or to

control his own uncensored thoughts? The energy and turmoil of his mind brings

words thronging into speech, stretching, over-turning and contorting their

implications. Sometimes Hamlet has to struggle to use the simplest words

repeatedly, as he tries to force meaning to flow in a single channel. To Ophelia,

after he has encountered her in her loneliness, “reading on a book,” he repeats

five times “Get thee to a nunnery,” varying the phrase very little, simply

reiterating what was already said by changing “get” to “go.” This well known

quote, to this day cannot be deciphered in its entirety, for nunnery is a place

where nuns live, yet it is also a brothel. Hamlet seems to knowingly cast a

shade of confusion into the minds of the audience?or is it in fact clarity

within confusion. That is, the audience is able to better understand the

thoughts and inn er struggle of Hamlet via these conflicting terms.

After Hamlet has visited his mother “all alone” in her closet and killed

Polonius, after she has begged him to “speak no more”, and after his father’s

ghost has reappeared, Hamlet repeats “Good night” five times, with still fewer

changes in the phrase than “Get thee to a nunnery” and those among accompanying

words only.

So Hamlet seems to be struggling to contain his thoughts even by use of

these simple words, rather than enforcing a single and simple message as a first

reading of the text might suggest; and the words come to bear deeper, more

ironic or more blatant meanings. It is from these phrases which even manage to

confuse the complex mind of Hamlet that we begin to get a glimpse into the

intentions of Hamlets mind, and seeing just exactly the way he ticks.

Much of the dramatic action of this tragedy is within the head of Hamlet,

and wordplay represents the amazing, contradictory, unsettled, mocking nature of

that mind, as it is torn by disappointment and positive love, as Hamlet seeks

both acceptance and punishment, action and stillness, and wishes for

consummation and annihilation within a world he perceives to be against him. He

can be abruptly silent or vicious; he is capable of wild laughter and tears, and

also playing polite and sane. The narrative is a kind of mystery and chase, so

that, underneath the various guises of his wordplay, we are made keenly aware of

his inner dissatisfaction, and come to expect some resolution at the end of the

tragedy, some unambiguous “giving out” which will report Hamlet and his cause

aright to the unsatisfied among the reader / audience . Hamlet himself is aware

of this expectation as the end approaches, and this still further whets our

anticipation for what is to become.

A commonly recurring theme throughout the play is that of honesty. It is

introduced in the beginning of the play and as the play continues, its use

becomes more and more common, as well as more and more ironic. This theme within

the play itself is ironic, for as Marcellus said “Something is rotten in the

state of Denmark” and this corruption we see so exhibited in the play is far

from honest.

When Hamlet applies the word honest to the main characters of the play, his

use of becomes undeniably ironic, and much of the dark humor of the play derives

from Hamlet’s wordplay.

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