So far this semester, Hamlet is my favorite of Shakespeare’s plays. Of course, I’ve only read a few others: Richard III, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and I’m currently finishing up Macbeth. But I enjoy examining the characters in Hamlet the most. Maybe it also helps that I’ve seen the film adaptation (the Zeffirelli version), with Mel Gibson in the title role and Glenn Close as Gertrude, a version I thoroughly enjoyed, the kiss between Hamlet and Gertrude (mother and son!) notwithstanding. I think the director took some liberties with that scene, but I’ll get back to that in a bit.
I’ve got a paper due this weekend and I’m still debating on whether to write about Hamlet or Macbeth. As I said, the characters in Hamlet are more interesting to me, but there is a character in Macbeth that stands out for me–namely, Lady Macbeth. However, since I’ve had more time to process Hamlet, I think I’ll likely write about it instead. The character of Hamlet has been discussed exhaustively, so I want to take a look at Ophelia. It seems she’s hardly in the play (compared to the amount of stage time given to Gertrude or Claudius, for example) but I find her fascinating all the same. Obviously, the suicide makes her a tragic character and Helena Bonham Carter played her brilliantly, so I’m sure that’s another reason why I’m drawn to her. Some of my classmates and I disagreed on this subject, though–whether or not Hamlet truly loved Ophelia, thereby making his comments at her gravesite sincere, or whether he basically strung her along and indirectly pushed her to kill herself. I’m of the mind to say that he did care for her, but the sting of his father’s murder, coupled with his mother’s “incestuous” marriage, led him astray to the point where he could no longer pursue Ophelia’s affections.
hmm, this post is turning into a brainstorming session for my paper, isn’t it?
oh, but getting back to the film version and Hamlet’s kiss with Gertrude–my instructor posed a question about this part of the play, whether the bedroom scene between Hamlet and Gertrude can be interpreted as evidence of an Oedipus Complex. I don’t think it is–there’s not enough evidence in the text itself to support that notion. Hamlet is certainly obsessed with his mother’s remarriage, but it’s more in the context of it being an affront to her dead husband so soon after his death, rather than any fixation Hamlet himself has on her. So I don’t think that part of the scene in Zeffirelli’s version is really true to canon, but it does serve to make the viewer uncomfortable and possibly question the relationship between mother and son in that moment.
Overall, I like the character of Hamlet, flaws and all. He’s always dubbed as the great Nondecider (if that’s even a word), aka He Who Just Can’t Make a Decision. But I think he had great potential–that is, he could have been a great man in another life–and he’s fascinating to read, which makes it that much more tragic when he meets his end.
