Monday, November 17, 2014

What are two different readings of Act 5, scene 2 of Hamlet by Shakespeare?

In this scene, Hamlet has something of a premonition that things are not going to go well for him in the duel to which Laertes has challenged him.  Horatio encourages Hamlet not to go through with the fight if he's having these feelings, but Hamlet says, "We defy augury.  There is a special providence in the fall of a sparrow.  If it be now, 'tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come.  The readiness is all.  Since no man of aught he leaves knows, what is 't to leave betimes?  Let be" (5.2.233-237).  He means that God has a hand even in the death of something as small as a sparrow, and so death will come to him when it should come.  It is possible, then, to read Hamlet's feelings toward death as either resignation or acceptance.  He senses that the duel will end badly, but he will not back out of it.  He says that it is not possible for a man to know what he leaves behind, and so it makes no matter if he leaves his life early; this sounds like a sort of hopeless resignation.  On the other hand, it sounds as though he's come to accept death as part of life, as something providential, and this sounds like healthy acceptance.


Then, when Hamlet does perish as a result of his involvement in the duel with Laertes, we might read it as a tragedy: the life of a man who'd shown such promise has been cut short.  Or, we could read his death as a natural and providential outcome, as something which was supposed to happen when it did, as a result of the events that came before.  We might see it as necessary to the cleansing of Denmark that must occur in order for the country to move forward with new leadership into a better, less corrupt, era.

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