ENG 396 Final Paper

8/12/2019 ENG 396 Final Paper

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Aidan Clevinger

Professor Kiefer

ENG 396

December 4, 2013

Hamlet as a Stoic Suicide

The overwhelming majority of interpretations of ShakespearesHamlethave set the play

in a thoroughly Christian context. At first glance, there seems a wealth of textual evidence to

support this practice. References are made throughout the play to Christian themes and subjects:

characters discuss the power of Christmas as the celebration of our Saviors birth (1.1.159)

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Hamlet is a student at Wittenberg (1.2.113): Martin Luthers university and a bastion of

Lutheranism after the Reformation; such issues as Purgatory (1.5.11-13, 76-79), repentance

(3.3.65-66), and the rights and privileges of Christian burial (5.1.1-5) feature prominently

throughout. It is indeed difficult to determine the precise nature ofHamlets religious

background, and scholars debate whether the tragedy is Catholic or Protestant at heart.

Nevertheless, most agree that the play is founded on some form of Christian worldview.

As such, literary criticism upon the play often focuses on the nuances of its Christianity

and the relationship of that religion to the characters and main plotespecially the relationship

between the explicitly Christian themes and the plays central subject material: namely, revenge.

Professor Kiefer asserts that [the] play posits a genuinely Christian milieu wherein revenge is

incompatible with religious principle . . . .2 Unlike the traditional heroes of revenge tragedy,

1William Shakespeare,Hamlet, ed. Sylvan Barnet, 4th ed. Signet Classics (1986 reprint, New York: New American

Library, 1998).2Frederick Kiefer, Creating a Christian Revenger: The Spanish Tragedy and Its Progeny vs.Hamlet, Shakespeare

Yearbook 13 (2002): 171.


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upon themselves except from impatience and haughtiness?10

Finally, Luther (whose theological

opinions were much studied at Hamlets university in Wittenberg) blames suicide on the devil,

whose goal it is to rob Christians of eternal life: Since the devil is not only a liar, but also a

murderer (John 8:44), he constantly seeks our life . . . It happens that he often breaks mens

necks or drives them to insanity, drowns some, and moves many to commit suicide . . . .11

As evident even in my very brief survey, the history of Christian thought on suicide is

complex and multi-faceted. Despite this complexity, however, it is possible to paint a composite

picture of theological attitudes toward self-destruction. Suicide is everywhere condemned as a

sin against God, in which a mortal man, prompted by the devil, despises Gods gifts of life and

salvation in order to commit self-murder: an act which is inherently contrary to faith in God.

While it is impossible to gauge the beliefs of this or that particular audience, the summary

position above provides an argument with which the average Elizabethan would be quite

familiar, and to which he would very likely agree in part, if not in whole.12

Given the extreme weight of theological strictures against suicide, it is highly

inauspicious that Hamletthe protagonist of an ostensibly Christian tragedyshould cotton so

quickly to self-murder as an answer for his woes. His first soliloquy evinces a lack of respect for

Gods commandments, as well as a lack of faith in Gods providence and provision essential

virtues for a practicing Christian. Moreover, his complaints against the bounties of nature (How

weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable / Seem to me all the uses of this world! 1.2.133 -34; see also

10John Calvin, CO 46:719, quoted in Jeffrey R. Watt, Calvin on Suicide, Church History 66.3 (1997): 466.11Martin Luther,Large CatechismIII.115.12That these beliefs and attitudes concerning suicide were not just those of the educated or the religious elite is

amply demonstrated by the punishments attached to suicide in Elizabethan England. Until 1961, suicide was illegal

under common law; those who were found guilty were denied burial in hallowed ground and could have their

property seized by the state. Such laws were common in Christian Europe, and can find roots as far back as classical

Athens.


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2.2.301-19) are examples of ingratitude, a sin against which the Scriptures frequently warn.13

Hamlets undue attention to the complaints which move him to consider suicide is contrary to the

attitude of the Eucharistic prayer, common to both the Roman and Lutheran Masses: It is truly

meet and right, fitting and salutary, that we should at all times and in all places give thanks unto

Thee, O Lord.

Hamlets defiance of Christian admonitions for gratitude and against suicide compounds

when he first encounters the Ghost14

. This episode too has suicide at its center. When the Ghost

beckons Hamlet to follow it, Horatios first fear is lest the spirit should tempt Hamlet to engage

in his own murder: What if it tempt you toward the flood, my lord, / Or to the dreadful summit

of the cliff . . . And there assume some other horrible form, / Which might deprive your

sovereignty of reason / And draw you into madness? (1.4.69-70, 72-74). Hamlet, however,

cares not a whit for this danger, and again demonstrates his disdain for Gods gift of life: What

should be the fear? / I do not set my life at a pins fee . . . . (1.4.64-65). Furthermore, his faith in

the safety of his soul (1.4.66-67) is not founded upon faith in Christ, but upon reckless hubris:

one of the marks of the suicidal pagan according to Christian theologians.

The pagan subtext undergirding Hamlets attitudes and actions is brought to the forefront

in the first scene of Act 3. The important of his To be or not to be (3.1.56)speech is ingrained

13St. Paul, for instance, uses the example of the Israelites in the desert in order to admonish the Corinthians against

complaining: Neither murmur ye, as some of them also murmured, and were destroyed of the destroyer. 1 Cor.

10:10 (King James Version). St. James decries grumbling as an act which brings the judgment of God: Grudge not

one against another, brethren, lest ye be condemned: behold, thejudge standeth before the door. James 5:9 (King

James Version).14I do not have time, in this essay, to give a full treatment of the Ghost and its origins. I will, however, point out

that the ambiguity surrounding it is a perfect parallel to the broader religious ambiguity which permeates the play.

Roy Battenhouse gives an excellent and succinct summary of the problems the Ghost brings to any interpretation of

Hamlets religious agenda: The Ghost is a moral linchpin as well as a dramatic one. The entire ethical structure of

the story's action depends on him . . . . Roy Battenhouse, The Ghost inHamlet: A Catholic Linchpin? Studies in

Philology 48.2 (1961): 161. Incidentally, Battenhouse argues that the Ghost would fit better . . . certain

descriptions of hell as pagan authors pictured that place. Moreover, there are other items in the Ghost's behavior and

talk which fit not at all with Catholic notio ns of a Ghost from Purgatory. Battenhouse, The Ghost inHamlet,162-

63.


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in English culture, and hardly needs introduction on those grounds. What might escape the

reader, particularly if he is committed to an interpretation of the play as Christian, are the sources

from which Hamlet derives his inspiration. The philosophy he espouses in these lines is

remarkably similar to that offered by the Roman poet Seneca in hisMoral Letters to Lucilius. In

that work, the ancient author asserts that mere living is not a good, but living well.

Accordingly, the wise man will live as long as he ought, not as long as he can.15

He goes on in

the same letter to rhapsodize about the value of suicide as a means of asserting ones moral

freedom: Let the soul depart as it feels itself impelled to go; whether it seeks the sword, or the

halter, or some drought that attacks the veins, let it proceed and burst the bonds of its slavery . . .

Must I await the cruelty either of disease or of man, when I can depart through the midst of

torture, and shake off my troubles?16

This attitude is not limited to Seneca, but is a common

feature of Stoic philosophy, particularly as it was developed in ancient Rome. Lucan, for

instance, includes an episode in hisPharsalia in which, upon discovering that they are

surrounded by the enemy and cannot escape, Caesars soldiers decide to kill themselves in order

to secure an honorable death. The admonition from the Roman commander to his troops that

they should take their own lives is an eloquent testimony to Stoicismspositive views of suicide:

No man's life is short / Who can take thought for death, nor is your fame / Less than a

conqueror's, if with breast advanced / Ye meet your destined doom . . . What glorious deeds / Of

warlike heroism, of noble faith, / Time's annals show! All these shall we surpass.17

Over

against Christianity, Stoicism asserted that suicide is both entirely natural and praiseworthy in

the face of troubles, oppression, undue pain, or tyranny.

15Seneca,Moral Letters to Lucilius 70.4.16Seneca,Moral Letters70.12, 15.17Lucan,Pharsalia4.535-38, 565-67.


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It is this ethic which Hamlet adopted in his soliloquy in Act 3, Scene 1. Suicide,

according to Hamlet, is to take arms against a sea of troubles, / And by opposing end them

(3.1.59-60). By taking ones own life, one is defying the slings and arrows of outrageous

fortune (3.1.58), and gaining eternal triumph over ones enemies, whether corporal or spiritual.

Furthermore, death is no judgment of God, but rather a sleep / No moreand by a sleep to

say we end / The heartache, and the thousand natural shocks / That flesh is heir to! (3.1.61-63).

The man who can sincerely speak these words is no Christian, but a pagan philosopher; he

follows not the words of Christ, but those of Seneca, Lucan, and Zeno.

Of course, given Hamlets inclination toward suicide, the question must be raised: what

prevents him from taking his life that very moment? Here we encounter the central spiritual

conflict of the play. Hamlet is held back from death by the vestiges of Christian belief and

ethics. After contemplating and praising suicide as a release from earthly troubles, Hamlet

pauses to reflect upon the uncertainties of what awaits him in the afterlife: Ay, theres the rub, /

For in that sleep of death what dreams may come / When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, /

Must give us pause (3.1.65-68). Death is, after all, the undiscovered country,from whose

bourn / No traveler returns (3.1.79-80).18

Hamlet will not take his own life so long as he

remains convinced of the risk of incurring divine punishment by doing so. The play is, at this

point in the action, on the precipice between two worldviews: the Christian, with which Hamlet

began and which even now holds him back, and the Stoic, which has come home to roost in the

princes troubled mind.

18The fact that Hamlet does not immediately turn to the Ghost as an example of one who bears witness to the nature

of life after deathor, at the very least, to some portion of it reveals what little intrinsic faith he has in that

specters testimony. This doubt, coupled with his silence upon and presumed unbelief in the promises of Scripture

regarding the souls of the departed, shows that Hamlet has fallen far from the Christian faith.


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Two episodes decide the question of the plays religious outlook. First, there is the

aftermath of Ophelias death. The first scene of Act 5 begins with what appears to be a genuine

inquiry: Is she to be buried in Christian burial when she willfully seeks her own salvation?

(5.1.1-2) The scene, however, quickly degenerates into farce. The Clown uses word games to

make a mockery of traditional notions regarding the morality of suicide and the commandments

of the Church on Christian burial. There is, first and foremost, the irony of his initial question:

why should it be doubtful whether or not Ophelia will receive burial in hallowed ground, when

her death was an attempt to willfully see[k] her own salvation (5.1.2)? Does not such an

action reveal faith rather than doubt, and a yearning for eternity? The lampooning of Christian

doctrine continues in the Clowns ridiculous misappropriation of legal and philosophical terms

(se offendendo, Argal,) and the hideous impropriety of singing beside the grave, all of which

serve to bring an element of absurdity to the doubt and confusion of the Christian characters. It

is not just the Clown, however, who rejects conventional truths. Laertes also, though in serious

and heartfelt fashion, in contrast to the ribaldry of the Clown, defies Christian teachings in order

to champion his sisters innocence. Against the mincing of the priest, Laertes declares that

Ophelias flesh is fair and unpolluted (5.1.241), and asserts that that she will attain eternal life:

A ministring angel shall my sister be / When thou liest howling! (5.1.243-44)

This rejection of Christian doctrine is given its fullest expression in the resolution of

Hamlets revenge. The plays final scene shows him marching, willingly, toward death, in spite

of Horatios warnings (5.2.218-19) and his own misgivings (5.2.213-14). His words, indeed,

have a Christian gloss in the allusion to the Sermon on the Mount in line 221, but his mindset is

thoroughly pagan. Hamlets preparations for death include no reference to prayers, repentance,

sacraments, faith in Christ, or hope for salvation. He makes a brief confession of faith in the


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beginning of the scene: Theres a divinity that shapes our end, / Rough-hew them how we will

(5.2.10-11). But this confession contains nothing that is distinctively Christian. The Stoics, who

were fatalists, devoutly believed in the existence of God, Divinity, or Divine Reason, and

could agree wholeheartedly with such a statement. Moreover, Hamlets own words suggest that

he does not believe in the Christian afterlife: Since no man of aught he leaves knows, what / ist

to leave betimes? Let be (5.2.224-25). The Prince of Denmark expects his immortal existence

to be entirely different from that promised by Scripture, and submits, not to God the Father, but

to an unnamed, impersonal Fate: Let be.

Hamlets pagan beliefs persist even to his dying moments. On the brink of eternity, he

repeats his resignation, Let it be (5.2.349), and is even able to call death felicity (5.2.348).

When Horatio, who explicitly identifies himself as an antique Roman (5.2.342), willing to

embrace death of his own choosing, offers to join Hamlet in suicide, the latter dissuades him, not

by an appeal to Gods law or Christian morals, but by reminding Horatio of his obligation to heal

the dead princes wounded honor. Thetextual evidence suggests overwhelmingly that Hamlet

dies, not a Christian, but a Stoic.

And it is as a Stoic that he is blessed by the remaining characters on stage. Horatio

delivers a benediction to his departed friend: Good night, sweet Prince, / And flights of angels

sing thee to thy rest (5.2.360-61). Likewise, Fortinbras offers a military salute and carriage to

the prince 5.2.396-404): the nearest he can come to the defiance of Laertes at Ophelias paltry

funeral. Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, has chosen the pagan ideals of honor and freedom in death,

and he has attained the rest for which he has longed. While I do not suggest thatHamlet offers

insight into Shakespeares personal convictions, the Bard has constructed a tale which doubts,

interrogates, and finally rejects Christianity in favor of Roman Stoicism.


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Bibliography

Aquinas, Thomas. Summa Theologica: Complete American Edition. Translated by Fathers of the

English Dominican Province.

Battenhouse, Roy. The Ghost inHamlet: A Catholic Linchpin? Studies in Philology 48.2

(1951): 161-92.

Calvin, John. CO 46. Quoted in Jeffrey R. Watt, Calvin on Suicide. Church History 66.3

(1997): 463-76.

Kiefer, Frederick. Creating a Christian Revenger: The Spanish Tragedy and Its Progeny vs.

Hamlet. Shakespeare Yearbook 13 (2002): 159-180.

Lucan.Pharsalia. Translated by Sir Edward Ridley. London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1896.

Luther, Martin. The Large Catechism. Edited by Paul T. McCain. Translated by William

Hermann Theodore Dau and Gerhard Friedrich Bente. St. Louis: Concordia Publishing

House, 2005.

Pollin, Burton R. Hamlet, a Successful Suicide. Shakespeare Studies 1 (1965): 240-260.

Seneca.Moral Letters to Lucilius. Translated by Richard M. Gummere. The Loeb Classical

Library. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard UP, 1925.

Shakespeare, William.Hamlet. Ed. Sylvan Barnet. 4th ed. Signet Classics. 1963. Reprint, New

York: New American Library, 1986.

St. Augustine. The City of God. Translated by Marcus Dods.

Taylor, Myron. Tragic Justice and the House of Polonius. Studies in English Literature, 1500-

19008.2 (1968): 273-81.

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ENG 396 Final Paper