“Hamlet is a play more about
internal than external conflict”. How far and in what ways do you agree with
this view?
Although Hamlet’s internal conflict – the potential deterioration of
Hamlet’s sanity, his indecision over whether to act against Claudius – is often
provoked by external conflict – the death of Claudius, and his
“o’erhasty” marriage to Gertrude – the internal struggle of Hamlet himself has,
over time, become more and more the essential conflict of the play, epitomized
in the immortal line “to be, or not to be”. Whether debating the role of
passion versus reason in Hamlet’s inaction, or quoting select, popularized
lines (“there are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio”), it is the
internal conflict, rather than the feuding or indeed the external political
drama, which has made Hamlet ever more popular.
The internal conflict is certainly provoked
by external conflict, the “foul and most unnatural murder” of King Hamlet by
his brother. Beginning the play mid-conversation (“who’s there>”) creates an
immediate sense of a place unsettled, the audience entering into something they
don’t understand. A ghost is the conventional beginning to the revenge tragedy
but also symbolizes the external conflicts of the world in which Denmark
currently exists, something is “rotten” and must be solved before the country –
and the rulers of it – can be peaceful.; Even in Claudius’ initial speech, the
internal and external conflicts are clear: his announcement of his marriage to
Gertrude is measured, stately and poetic in blank verse but riddled with
internal contradictions: “With mirth in funeral, and with dirth in marriage”.
Though he might try, Claudius can’t mask the internal conflict of his
increasing difficulty, which comes to a climax in the chapel scene where he
feels unable to pray and ask for forgiveness, because he does not feel guilt as
he should and is unwilling to give up “my crown, mine own ambition, and my
queen.” Although arguably Claudius’ conflict becomes externalized in his
own plots against Hamlet, first to remove him to England to be murdered and
then conspiring with Laertes, he is attempting to resolve his own internal
conflict: his desire to get away with murder and enjoy its spoils without the
punishment he knows he should expect.
While for Claudius, internal conflict
provokes external resolution, the external conflicts experienced by Hamlet
manifest themselves in internal conflict. His initial soliloquy
expresses his conflict between obeying what he knows to be God’s law, and his
own desire to end his life; “that the Everlasting had not fix'd His canon
'gainst self-slaughter”. Hamlet’s soliloquies become increasingly tormented as
he argues with himself, and the actions he believes he must take as a result of
the ghost’s instructions. As Hamlet progressively appears to become more mad,
his physical appearance onstage often changes markedly as well. Although
Hamlet’s madness is questioned – he frequently speaks prose when ‘mad’ – and it
suits him – yet retains his intellectual ability to play with words and perform
linguistic gymnastics with both Gertrude and Claudius.
Further external conflicts in the play have
been diminished over time, for example the political conflicts between Norway
and Denmark, often reducing Fortinbras’ role even to the point of removing him
completely (Zeffirelli, Olivier) and giving his final lines and role to
Horatio. In contrast, the inner conflict of Hamlet’s decision-making has become
the heart of the play. Hamlet’s initial conflict is the misery over his
father’s death, an “unmanly grief” according to Claudius, and even his mother
asks him to put aside his mourning clothes. Yet as the ghost reveals its
murder, Hamle’ts conflict increase exponentially; does he kill Claudius and
avenge his father? Should he disobey his father’s command to leave Gertrude to
her conscience? Hamlet’s indecision has provoked critics to comment on his
overly rationalized thought process in the chapel scene, with Johnson arguing
that his desire to send Claudius to hell made the scene “too terrible to
utter”, while Romantics including Coleridge see Hamlet as paralyzed by the
strength of his emotions. Yet the latter problem of Gertrude seems to provide
most of Hamlet’s internal conflict, coming to terms not only with his mother’s re-marriage
but her potential complicity in his father’s death and her sexuality. Whether
this is, as Freud suggested, a result of Hamlet’s Oedipus complex or instead an
Elizabethan disquiet over an older woman’s apparent sexual appetite (“You
cannot call it love; for at your age / The hey-day in the blood is tame”). Again,
while the internal conflict becomes externalized in Hamlet’s vicious attack on
Gertrude – including his sexual imagery tinged with disgust (“rank sweat of an
enseamed bed”) and sometimes portrayed with physical violence – it is Hamlet’s
inner conflict which drives the scene.
Ultimately, although the conflicts in
‘Hamlet’ are myriad, and will no doubt further shift in interest as
Shakespearean scholarship continues, it is C.S. Lewis who encapsulates the
question of whether internal, or external, conflict is the prevailing force. In
‘Hamlet’, “the real and lasting mystery of our human situation has been greatly
depicted” – ‘Hamlet’ endures because in it, Shakespeare explores the mysteries
of grief and loss, love and jealousy, madness and sanity – qualities which all
humanity may experience, may even recognize externally, but which we must all
struggle with within ourselves.
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