EXAMPLAR ESSAY ON CONSCIENCE OF CLAUDIUS

‘A great surprise of the play is that Claudius has a conscience.’

  Even Hamlet, who perceives Claudius in the play as a ‘Remorseless, treacherous,
lecherous, kindless villain’, assumes that Claudius does have a conscience for he asserts
that ‘The play’s the thing/Wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the King’. Claudius is not
merely a ‘satyr’ but, in terms of Elizabethan theology, he does have a ‘rational soul’, the soul
which separates Man from the animal kingdom. Furthermore, Hamlet’s attempt to trap
Claudius by prompting his conscience in ‘The Murder of Gonzago’ reminds the audience that
far from being a two-dimensional villain, Claudius is dramatised as a complex character; at
the heart of this complexity is the presentation of a murderer who is aware of his sin, is
tortured by this consciousness, yet is unable to seek redemption.

It is possible to play Claudius as a straightforwardly wicked villain, and in this sense the
revelation of his conscience might come as a ’great surprise’. Tennenhouse observed
‘What more heinous crime could be committed against the aristocratic body than a
fratricide that is also a regicide?’ Bogdanov, in his 1980s National Theatre production
emphasised the role of Claudius as an amoral Machiavellian and yet simultaneously
modern villain simply seeking power. This villainy is sustained even after the ‘Prayer
Scene’ where Claudius’s conscience can be presented as limited by his reluctance to
change as his words ‘fly up’ but his thoughts ‘remain below.’ Later in the play his actions
in the face of threat are not tempered by conscience in their cunning and ruthlessness.
He plots to send Hamlet clinically to his ‘present death’ at the hands of ‘England’ and
conspires with Laertes to kill Hamlet with the double duplicity of a ‘sword unbated’ and
a poisoned ‘chalice.’ Furthermore, the construction of Claudius through the words of
the Ghost and Hamlet are unequivocal. To the Ghost he is ‘an adulterate beast’ and, to
Hamlet, a ‘smiling damned villain’, ‘a satyr’ and a ‘bloody, bawdy, villain.’

However, such a view of Claudius is only part of the picture. The question of ‘conscience’
resonates far beyond the ‘Prayer Scene’. The concept clearly fascinated Shakespeare. The
word ‘conscience’ has two quite distinct but related meanings in Shakespeare’s plays:
the familiar meaning, and the dominant one in the consideration of this topic, is that
of an ‘inner moral voice’, but ‘conscience’ also denoted ‘consciousness’, the faculty of
intellectual awareness and understanding. Both of these meanings illuminate the
villains in Shakespeare’s tragedies – Iago is perhaps unique in having no inner moral
voice, though he is certainly conscious that his villainy is practising the ‘divinity of Hell’;
Edmund does, I believe, take us by surprise in ‘King Lear’ when he says before he dies,
‘some good I mean to do’ and Lady Macbeth’s conscience is dramatised in her tormented
sleepwalking and relentless ‘washing’ of her hands. The dramatisation of conscience in
characters who commit wicked acts deepens our interest in Shakespeare’s villains; this is
certainly the case with Claudius.

Furthermore, conscience, awareness of one’s sinfulness, is a recurrent concern in ‘Hamlet’ beyond the figure of Claudius; this creates a dramatic context for Claudius’s selfrevelation. The Ghost recalls that he was killed when ‘unhouseled’ ‘in the blossoms of my sin’. On his return from France, Laertes becomes more than just an archetypal revenge hero when he says, in an aside, just before fatally wounding Hamlet, ‘And yet it is almost against my conscience’. Hamlet, in soliloquy, reflects that ‘conscience does make cowards of us all’, and just before the tragic catastrophe he questions of Horatio, ‘Is’t not perfect conscience?’ (to take vengeance on the King)

Focusing on the characterisation of Claudius, though villainous, he is arguably far from two dimensional. His first speech to the Court shows what Mangan describes as a masterful command of rhetoric and paradox in convincing the Court of his grief and suitableness for office, ‘in equal scale weighing delight and dole’. Though his words may reveal what Sagar describes as the language of ‘a hypocrite and a villain’, Claudius’s performance shows that he is aware of what it is to be sincere and compassionate and can play that role. This is well realised in Patrick Stewart’s performance in Greg Doran’s 2009 ‘Hamlet’ where the speech is delivered using the full range of nuanced intonation to convey tender feeling shifting towards confident political control as he sends his ambassadors to deal with the threat of Fortinbras: ‘So much for him.'

Shakespeare contrasts this public command of rhetorical duplicity with a self-revealing aside in Act 3 Scene 1. Responding to Polonius’s observation that the appearance of piety often masks ‘the devil himself’ Claudius responds: ‘O tis too true. (aside) How smart a lash that speech doth give my conscience!’ It is the convention in Shakespeare that asides and soliloquies express sincere thoughts. Claudius’s insight seems to be the sincere expression of a burdened soul. It is not surprising given the dramatic contexts discussed above that the man who can dissemble depth of feeling in public can confide it sincerely as an aside to the audience. What remains to be seen is how this development of Claudius’s character will play out.

Both Olivier and Branagh chose to present Claudius in Act 3 Scene 3 attempting to pray away from the public stage in the privacy of his chapel. This is emphasised in Branagh by placing Claudius directly beneath a crucifix. The immediate dramatic context of this scene is significant; it is a credible self-revelation given that Claudius’s conscience has been aroused by The Murder of Gonzago and Hamlet’s theatrical antics and explicit commentary: ‘A poisons him i’ th’ garden for his estate.’

Claudius’s speech, the confirmation that he has a conscience as he acknowledges that his ‘offence is rank’, is fascinating on many levels. For Coleridge, the speech is a dramatic exploration of the essence of the Christian doctrine of expiation; it is ‘not what you have done, but what you are’ which will determine repentance. It contains insights into the political concerns of the play as Claudius comments on the ‘corrupted currents of this world’. Above all, the revelation of conscience expresses the personal anguish of the private soul beneath the public mask as Claudius recognises that he cannot repent but he can still appeal for divine intervention: ‘Help, angels, make essay.’

On balance, that Claudius has a conscience is not a surprise. Wilson Knight suggests that the ‘Prayer Scene’ creates sympathy for Claudius and distances us from the protagonist, Hamlet; he contrasts ‘this lovely prayer – the fine flower of a soul in anguish’ with Hamlet’s ‘late joy of torturing the King’s conscience.’ Others might find some satisfaction in the sight of an evil man in torment who is not prepared truly to repent and whose conscience is strictly limited. However, such is the dramatic power of this scene that, as Sagar comments, however deeply we have come to hate Claudius and however remote we feel ourselves to be from Elizabethan religious assumptions, the tragedy deepens as we sense in the theatre that Hamlet must not kill Claudius while he is at prayer wrestling with his tormented soul.