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Reserve Text: Ronald Strickland, 'The Rest is Silence': Hamlet and the Problems of Communication in Revenge Tragedy Elizabethan revenge
tragedy occupies a central place in the great flowering of English tragedy
at the beginning of the seventeenth century. Paradoxically, however,
revenge tragedies often strike audiences as something less, or something
other, than real tragedies. As a sub-genre, revenge tragedy gives us
heroes who are nearly indistinguishable from its villains and who, for
a variety of reasons, end up alienating audience sympathy and engagement. This alienation occurs partly because revenge heroes are so manipulative, engaging in Machiavellian power struggles to achieve revenge. Just as important, while these heroes are obsessed with communication--expressing their grief, naming their, enemies to the world--they communicate their tragic suffering primarily to various audiences within the play, and only secondarily to the real audience. Thus, there is a built-in distance between the real audience and the revenge hero. |
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Further, in trying to make his grief communal the revenger reverses the dominant tragic tendency, which is to isolate the hero with a unique and particular sort of grief or suffering. This is one of the reasons that revenge tragedy has been called a weakened form of tragedy." In fact, I will argue in this essay, the chief reason the revenge genre strikes many readers and playgoers as not fully tragic has to do precisely with the way the genre typically handles the problems of communication: both communication between characters and between the hero and the theater audience. Further, I want to suggest that in Hamlet Shakespeare intensifies the genre's preoccupation with [2] problems of communication but transcends the attendant audience alienation or distance from the hero's tragic experience. To understand the
centrality of communication to the revenge genre one must recognize,
first, that revenge is itself a communicative act. The power struggle
between the revenge hero and his enemies is, typically, a struggle to
determine which of two conflicting versions of reality will be communicated
to a third- party interior audience. And, usually, the hero's revenge
is delayed as a result of some form of communication problem: either
he is uncertain of the identity of his enemy, or he knows but lacks
the power or credibility to accuse the villain. The typical revenge
plot, then, relates the revenger's successful quest to gain this power
and credibility. The actual revenge is always connected with the revenger's
desire for communication-in killing the villain the revenge hero expresses
his anger and grief and publicizes the villain's guilt. The communicative function of the revenge act is emphasized in revenge plays by the overt theatricality of the revenge scenest the play-within-the-play of The Spanish Tragedy, for example, or the carefully staged Thyestian banquet of Titus Andronicus, or the spectacle of cuckoldry that the dying duke is forced to view in The Revenger's Tragedy. These staged revenge scenes almost always involve one or both of the two kinds of communication with which revenge tragedy is inevitably concerned. First, the revenger successfully counters the villain's lies by revealing a truth of which the revenger has gained secret knowledge. One function of the Thyestian banquet in Titus
Andronicus,
for example, is to gather together an elite audience before which Titus
can effectively expose the lies and the crimes of the Empress and her
sons. Second, the revenger communicates his anger and his grief to the
villain or other interior audiences, often forcing other characters
to experience an injury similar to that which has caused the revenger's
own grief. Thus, in a nicely complicated variation on the "rape
of Philomel" theme, Titus murders the men who have raped and mutilated
his daughter, then cooks them and serves them to their mother. It is
appropriate to the conventions of revenge tragedy that Titus forces
Tamora to suffer, and that her suffering is in some ways parallel to
Titus' suffering. A sort of clever irony in accomplishing the revenge
is a trademark of the genre, and it is directly related to the revenger's
desire to communicate to interior audiences in addition to killing his
enemy. In order to precisely convey his tragic experience and insure
that his version of reality will prevail over that of his enemies the
revenger must control the conditions of communication and the conditions
of his interior audience's perception and response. inevitably, the
revenger resorts to manipulating other characters; he achieves his combined
goals of revenge and communication only by adopting villainous tactics
and by overcoming the kind of tragic suffering and isolation that evokes
the sympathy of the theatre audience. As a result, we are increasingly
distanced from his grief and our experience of the play may verge on
melodrama. To see how this alienation comes about, consider for a moment the proto-typical revenge play, Thomas Kyd's The Spanish [4] Tragedy.
Like most later revenge heroes, Hieronimo has trouble with communication.
Hieronimo at first doubts the truthfulness of a message identifying
the murderers of his son, Horatio. And when he does realize the true
identity of his enemies, Hierorimo struggles with the problems of communicating
both this knowledge Hieronimo is initially unable to express himself
to the King and the court because of his madness (III. xi) and because
of the interference of his enemy, Lorenzo (III. UP.' But in the play-within-the-play
at the end of The Spanish Tragedy Hieronimo does not merely achieve
revenge for the murder of his son, he also achieves self-expressive
communication; he arranges for the fathers of his son's murderers to
witness the deaths of their sons. He forces these fathers to experience
a loss like his loss. And in his epilogue to the play he publicly exposes
the guilt of Lorenzo and Balthazar. Thus, during the course of the play
Hieronimo progresses from an innocent victim, inept at communication,
to a cunning manipulator, skillfully controlling the perceptions and
responses of his interior audiences. An audience's response
to Hieronimo's tragic suffering is directly affected by his progression
from failure to success as a communicator. In Act II of The Spanish
Tragedy, Hieronimo's overwhelming distress evokes our sympathy.
Discovering the body of his son, Horatio, Hieronimo suffers a fit of
madness, which prevents him from communicating with other characters.
Hieronimo's outcries bring his wife, Isabella, to the garden where Horatio's
body has been found. At first he turns to her for solace. But he soon
begins to deny the reality of Horatio's [5] death despite the
contrary protests of Isabella and his servants, Pedro and Jacques (II.
v, 46-98)." He will not listen to the reason of his wife and servants,
and he cannot persuade them to accept his false version of reality.
Significantly, in this part of the play Hieronimo begins to speak more
often in soliloquy. He cries out in anguish against the injustice of
Horatio's unrevenged death:
And in another
soliloquy Hieronimo expresses his frustration over his inability to
communicate his grief:
These soliloquies emphasize Hieronimo's isolation; he seems to be trying to express feelings that cannot be communicated to [6]
Near the end of the third act, however, Hieronimo begins to emerge from the isolation of madness and to communicate his grief to other characters. In Act III, scene xii and in Act III, scene xiii Hieromimo tries to express his grief first to a painter, Bazardo, and then to an old man, Don Bazulto. Significantly, like Hieronimo, each of these men is grieving for a murdered son. They represent a potentially sympathetic audience for Hieronimo, in contrast to the insensitivity to and lack of awareness of Hieronimo's suffering in the Spanish royal court. Still, though, Hieronimo is unable to achieve a precise and satisfying expression of his sense of loss. And, since Hieronimo is unable to present his grievance to a higher authority, he remains isolated and frustrated, unlike Bazardo and Bazulto, who seek justice from Hieronimo himself. Hieronimo's desire for communication is emphasized by his request of Bazardo to paint a picture of villainy representing the murder of Horatio. But during this conversation Hieronimo remains mad, ending the interview by "beat[ing] the Painter in" (III. xiiA, 162) according to the stage direction. Even though he and Bazardo have experienced similar injustices, communication between them is hindered by Hieronimo"s solipsistic madness. In his subsequent encounter with Don Bazulto, however, Hieronimo is finally drawn into a calm and sympathetic conversation. When he reads a supplication brought to him by Don Bazulto Hieronimo first insists upon his own uniqueness, but finally acknowledges Bazulto's comparable grief:
Having acknowledged Bazulto's grief, Hieronimo slips back into madness, first mistaking Bazulto for Horatio, and them insisting that Bazulto is a Fury, sent to plague him for being remiss in revenge. Hieronimo persists in these delusions until Bazulto reminds him of his own murdered son, and the reminder of this shared experience rids Hieronimo, momentarily, of the rage that has made him alone and untouchable in his suffering. For a moment Hieronimo seems less isolated, more ordinary. He sympathizes with Bazulto:
Here Hieronimo continues to grieve; he reverts to the isolation of an inner dialogue of grief for Horatio at the end of this speech. But, for a moment, he has sanely and sympathetically commiserated with Bazulto, and the effect of his tragic isolation is lessened to a certain extent by the passing of his madness. It is Hieronimo's limited success in communicating his grief to Bazulto that marks the turning point in his pursuit of revenge. From this point on Hieronimo ceases to be a naive, distracted victim and becomes icreasingly clever, cunning, and manipulative. After this scene
with Bazulto, Hieronimo reasserts his difference from Bazardo and Bazulto;
now, however, he is distinguished not by his sorrow and isolation, but
by his calculating obsession with controlled communication and revenge.
As a result, he gradually forfeits his claim on the sympathy of the
real audience. Having overcome his true madness, Hieronimo assumes a
feigned pose of distraction, as when Castile sends for Hieronimo to
reconcile him with Lorenzo in Act III, scene xiv. In this scene Hieronimo
begins to manipulate other characters through deceptive communication.
First he deliberately mistakes Castile's conventional introduction in
a literal sense: Castile. To speak with you is this. Hieronimo. What, so short? Then I'll be gone;
I thank you for it. Then, Hieronimo
disingenuously professes his loyalty and friendship to Lorenzo: Castile. Should once have reason to suspect my son, Considering how
I think of you myself. Hieronimo. Grant me the combat of them, if they dare! Draws out his sword I'll meet him face to face, to tell me so! These be the scandalous
reports of such Should I suspect
Lorenzo would prevent My lord, I am ashamed it should be said. (III. iv, 135-47)
The revenge scene
at the end of The Spanish Tragedy underscores and fulfills Hieronimo's
desire to communicate his grief as well as to revenge Horatio's death.
As author, director, and actor in his own play-within-the-play, Hieronimo
exercises a high degree of control over his interior audience in , this
scene; he literally forces his audience to grieve. And when the King
presses Hieronimo for more information at the end of his play, Hieronimo
insists upon silence; first by biting out his own tongue, and then by
stabbing himself when he is pressed to written communication. Hieronimo
will tell only what he wishes, and no more. ' It is important
to compare the manipulative control that Hieronimo exerts over his enemies
in the revenge scene to the free give and take of his encounters with
Bazardo and Bazulto. With these bereaved fathers, Hieronimo speaks spontaneously
and without guile. He acknowledges Bazulto's own suffering. But by the
end of the play Hieronimo's quest for revenge and expression of his
grief has become an obsession that supercedes the tragic and human qualities
of his character. In manipulating other characters to control their
perceptions Hieronimo has become inhumanly powerful. Furthermore, by
making public his secret knowlege of Horatio's murderers and by forcing
their fathers to suffer as he has suffered, Hieronimo forfeits his status
as a tragic hero suffering in isolation. At the end of The Spanish
Tragedy an audience may applaud Hieronimo's success as a revenger,
but it will not be emotionally engaged in his tragic suffering or inclined
to experience his death as a tragic release or catharsis. This pattern by
which the audience is increasingly distanced from the revenge hero as
he succeeds in his revenge is found in virtually all of the Elizabethan
revenge plays spawned by the |
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In later revenge plays, however, the revenge hero may be involved in manipulative schemes of communication and revenge from the very beginning of the play. Such revemgers typically become so caught up in their schemes that they themselves become irredeemably villainous in their pursuit of villains. The line of distinction between the revengers and their enemies is blurred and the potential for tragic isolation is diminished. Vindice, the hero of Cyril Tourneur"s The Revenger's Tragedy (1607), is this kind of revenger. Vindice's motive is suppressed; his wife has been dead for several years and he never really grieves for her. And Vindice begins successfully manipulating other characters very early in the first act. He never suffers in isolation or struggles to communicate his grief. He practices a dissembling, deceitful kind of manipulative communication, aimed at cruelly punishing hisenemies, and he frequently gloats over his successes. His skill and delight in .manipulating other characters are conventional hracteristics pass' down from the allegorical "Vice" of medieval drama, and this association further distances him from the audience. Vindice is clever, capable, entertaining, and yet ruthless and inhuman in his pursuit of revenge.0 In Hamlet
there is a paradoxical mixture of the initially frustrated communicators
of the early revenge tragedies and the always capable communicators
of the later revenge tragedies.''* From the very beginning of the play
it is obvious that Hamlet is isolated from the rest of the court of
Denmark. No one else shares his uneasiness over his father's death and
his mother's remarriage. And, like Hieronimo and Titus Andronicus,
Hamlet's personal grief leaves him psychologically vulnerable to the
manipulative schemes of his enemies. On the other hand, unlike Hieronimo
and Titus Andronicus, Hamlet is never inarticulate. As Claudius observes,
his speech, though it ". . . lack"d form a little,/Was not
like madness" (III. i, 163-4). From the very beginning of the play
Hamlet demonstrates a cagey self-composure and a remarkable skill in
fashioning and carrying out his own manipulative schemes of communication.
Though he suffers in isolation like a tragic hero, he communicates like
a true revenger. This coexistence
of revenger and tragic hero characteristics is revealed in Hamlet's
mixed performance as a communicator. Though he is generally articulate,
there always remains In the soliloquy
after his encounter with Fortinbras' captain, for example, Hamlet delivers
a skeptical and fatalistic argument against the foolishness of fighting
for a worthless cause. The soliloquy exhibits the kind of clear-headed
reasoning one expects from a tragic hero whose suffering has given him
an acute insight into human vanity or frailty. Yet Hamlet speaks the
soliloquy in the tone of a passionate revenger, and he concludes by
again reproaching himself for delaying revenge: "O, from this time
forth,/My thoughts be bloody, or nothing worth" (IV. iv, 65-6).
The contradictory signals of Hamlet's soliloquies indicate that something
is tragically wrong, but Hamlet's deepest feelings cannot be,precisely
communicated to other chaqacters within the play, and perhaps not even
to the real audience. Another important
dramatic strategy by which Shakespeare directs Hamlet's attempts at
communication toward the real audience and isolates Hamlet's experience
of tragic suffering is ` In Act I Hamlet
is at first subjected to Claudius' man. ipulative reinterpretation of
his replies. In Hamlet's interview with Claudius, in Act I, scene ii,
Claudius is setting the terms and controlling the boundaries of their
dialogue. Hamlet is certainly attempting to express` his discontent,
with his melancholic and sarcastic comments, but there is no indication
that Claudius or Gertrude or the court audience is receptive to Hamlet's
complaints. Hamlet's interview with the King is a battle of wits between
two highly-skilled communicators. Claudius skillfully contrives for
his audience of courtiers a scenario representing himself as a secure
and benevolent ruler who is genuinely and lovingly concerned about the
prolonged melancholy of his nephew-son-heir, Hamlet. Claudius attempts
to draw Hamlet out with leading questions such as: "How is it that
the clouds still hang on you?" (I. ii, 66). But Hamlet responds
by stubbornly and skillfully expressing his discontent in punning double-talk:
"Not so, my lord, I am too much in the sun" (I. ii, 67). Gertrude
is rather more successful in drawing Hamlet out, and indeed she seems
to be the intended primary audience for Hamlet's communication. Still~
his responses to her are expressions of discontent, though not as curt
as his responses to Claudius. But Claudius` skill and determination
to control the impression left by this interview on the interior audience
of courtiers is clearly formidable, as his preemptive manner of ending
the interview indicates: Queen. Let not thy mother lose her prayers, Hamlet, I pray
thee, stay with us, go not to Wittenburg. Ham. I shall in all my best obey you, madam. King. Why, 'tis a loving and a fair reply! Be as ourselves in Denmark. Madam, come. No jocund health
that Denmark drinks to-day, Respeaking earthly
thunder. Come away. Here Claudius has
the upper hand, and he deftly recasts Hamlet's laconic reply into a
form of propaganda for his court. Soon, however,
Hamlet begins to practice a similar manipulation--censorship. At the
end of Hamlet's first meeting with the Ghost, !e takes considerable
pains to ensure that Horatio and Marcellus will not interfere with his
plans for revenge. Having exhorted them, with the Ghost's assistance,
to swear a vow of silence, Hamlet concludes by carefully spelling out
the kinds of implicit communicative acts that will be unacceptable: [Ham.] But come- As I perchance hereafter shall think meet To put an antic
disposition on- With arms encumb'red thus, or this headshake, Or by pronouncing
of some doubtful phrase, That you know aught of me--this do swear, So grace and mercy
at your most need help you. (I. v, 168-80) And by the time
Hamlet presents his "Mouse-trap," he is confidently controlling
the perceptions and responses of his interior audience. As Claudius
reinterprets the dialogue in Act I, scene ii, in Act %I%, scene ii Hamlet
makes certain that his audience gets the right message by providing
a running commentary on his play-within-the-play. Hamlet baits Claudius
skillfully and purposefully: King. Have you
heard the argument? is there no offense in't? But here, as in
Act I, Hamlet is also expressing his disgust and anger at his mother
for marrying his uncle. Ophelia often serves as a surrogate for Gertrude
as the target for Hamlet's outbursts of disgust with female infidelity,
as in his following comments: [Ham.] This is
one Lucianus, nephew to the king. (%%%.ii,244-54) In a sense,-Hamlet
and Claudius have exchanged positions since the beginning of the play.
Hamlet is now orchestrating their battle of wits and Claudius is reacting
in am off-balanced way. Hamlet is no longer a grief-stricken melancholic,
powerless and strikingly alone in his mourning habit, surrounded by
a gay and busy court. This is not quite the same Hamlet who contemplates
suicide in the "To be or not to be" soliloquy. He is now much
less a victim and much more a scheming manipulator. This development
is apparent in Hamlet's glee over the success of his "Mouse-trap."
At that moment (III. ii, 271-95) Hamlet seems to have forgotten his
grief; he is caught up in the business of revenge and he is communicating
to interior audiences rather than to the real audience. And the absolute
zenith of Hamlet's career as a conventional revenge hero comes shortly
after the "Mouse-trap" in the famous prayer scene.e Here,
as Claudius kneels in prayer, Hamlet prepares to kill him, then is checked
by the thought that Claudius will go to heaven if he dies while praying.
Ironically, at the point when he is most nearly the conventional vicious
rpvenger, Hamlet's vindictive attitude causes him to delay the revenge! It is somewhat
unwarranted, therefore, for the Ghost to appear shortly after this scene
to charge Hamlet with negligence." When the Ghost appears, Hamlet
has just killed Polonius, mistaking him for Claudius. And Hamlet shows
little sign of remorse or misgiving. In one sense, however, the Ghost
has good cause for concern. When the Ghost appears Hamlet is railing
at his mother in fairly harsh terms, and, indeed, he seems to be more
interested in expressing his disgust with her than in pursuing his mission
of revenge. This is ironically emphasized by the Ghost's initial instructions
to leave Gertrude alone and by the fact that the Ghost reappears to
interrupt Hamlet's tirade against her during the closet scene. Hamlet's
obsession with communicating his disgust, or his sense of betrayal,
to his mother places am exaggerated emphasis on communication to an
interior audience. It is a conventional element of revenge tragedy exaggerated
so that it will not quite fit into the conventional pattern. Through Hamlet's
obsession with communicating to his mother Shakespeare calls attention
to the fact that self-expression and communication of the revenger's
grief are really more important than the actual killing in revenge tragedies.
Thus, when Hamlet rails at Ophelia in the nunnery scene (a scene which
is, more than anything else, a dress rehearsal for ,his later performance
in Gertrude's closet) his antic disposition seems less a manipulative
ploy to disarm suspicion than the genuine distraction of tragic suffering.
So, even at his most revengeful, Hamlet is somewhat more than a ryvenge
hero, and his motives are not completely in line with the Ghost's instructions. King. Now, Hamlet, where's Polonius? Ham. At supper. King. Where is
Polonius? King. [To Attendants.]
Go seek him there. Significantly,
Hamlet openly taunts Claudius with his inverted riddle of how a king
may go a progress through the guts of a beggar and his overt implication
that Claudius is not fit for heaven. Hamlet gives the answer to his
riddle first, and, ironically, Claudius is confused. It is not the actual
meaning of Hamlet's riddle that confuses Claudius, rather it is Hamlet's
carefree attitude. Hamlet is now unconcerned about the danger of attacking
Claudius and unconcerned about how or whether Claudius comprehends his
meanings. He confronts Claudius openly and spontaneously, without the
typical revenger's care to ensure that his enemy responds in a predetermined
way to his communication. And at the end of this interview he allows
Claudius to send him to England without any sign of concern for his
safety. On board the ship bound for England and his appointed death, Hamlet chances to intercept his death warrant. The inadvertency of this discovery is a significant departure from the typical revenge genre pattern. At this stage in the typical revenge revenger is growing more certain in his control of play, the other characters and situations. this message is providential, as His success does not result from The revelation of discovering Claudius' letter reinforces the
he will later remark
to Horatio. Claudius' reaction
to this letter is revealing in terms of the change in Hamlet's attitude
toward communication. Earlier in the play, when Hamlet is dissembling
and manipulating, Claudius Love? his affections
do not that way tend, Was not like madness. There's something in his soul O'er which his
melancholy sits on brood, Will be some danger.
. . . And Claudius obviously understands Hamlet's threat in the Mousetrap, in addition to being stung with guilt by Hamlet's play. But when Claudius reads Hamlet's announcement that "You shall know Iam set naked on your kingdom" he seems nonplussed, for once: What should this
mean? Are all the rest come back? Or is it some abuse, and no such thing?
. . . . 'Tis Hamlet's character. "Naked"!' And in a postscript
here he says "alone." Can you devise me? Of course, he should be surprised that Hamlet has survived his murder plot. But beyond that, I think, Claudius is genuinely confused by Hamlet's straightforwardness. It is one indication that, unlike other revenge heroes, Hamlet is not growing |
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