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Wild Justice
 Why does Hamlet delay his revenge so
long?
Shakespeare commentators have debated this question for ages,
coming up with such ingenious answers as that Hamlet has an Oedipus
complex that makes him ambivalent about killing his uncle, King Claudius, who
has murdered his father to get the Danish crown. Hamlet chides himself for
taking so long about it, blaming his own cowardice, though he is actually
prone to rash impulses as well as
hesitation.  Is
he merely seeking
pretexts for delay — such as doubt of the Ghost’s veracity
— or are his reasons sound?
Most of
the critics share Hamlet’s view that avenging his father’s
death is his duty. This is understandable but odd, because the play subtly
presents an opposite view: that revenge is evil. Hamlet is actually delayed by
his own conscience. Strange to say, only a few of the critics have perceived
this.
“Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord; I will repay.”
Every Christian knew that verse, which should also settle another old debate:
whether Hamlet’s father’s Ghost is in Purgatory or Hell. The
Ghost says he is being “purged” of his “foul
crimes” for “a certain term,” which implies he is in
Purgatory, ultimately saved and not damned forever.
But the
truth slips out when he complains of dying without the sacraments,
And he demands revenge: “If thou hast nature in thee, bear it not.” Hamlet,
in a frenzy, vows to put the Ghost’s commandment “all
alone” above everything he has ever learned. But soon he has doubts.
Was the Ghost a devil, lying to tempt Hamlet to his own damnation? He
stages a play to test Claudius by reenacting the alleged murder.
Hamlet reflects the religious turmoil of its time.
Christians were furiously debating everything — ghosts, Purgatory,
sacraments, and other matters the play is exquisitely ambiguous about. But
all agreed that revenge was sinful, and a ghost urging sin could come only
from Hell.
![[Breaker quote for Wild Justice: Hamlet and his conscience]](2006breakers/060912.gif) So
whether this Ghost was
“honest” about the fact of murder is beside the point.
Claudius’s guilt doesn’t justify revenge. And after that guilt is
proved, the ugly nature of revenge becomes clear.
First
Hamlet finds Claudius trying to pray, and decides against killing him then
— lest he go to Heaven! Full revenge for his father, he tells himself,
requires killing Claudius when he is sinning, so he will be
“damned.” Samuel Johnson called Hamlet’s speech to this
effect “too horrible to be read or uttered.” (It also implies that
Hamlet’s father is indeed in Hell.)
Then
Hamlet mistakes Polonius for Claudius and kills him. Now Polonius’s
son Laertes wants revenge — on Hamlet! And Laertes is not one to
hesitate:
“I’ll be revenged,” he insists, even if it means going to
Hell.
Laertes
is a dark mirror of Hamlet, vividly exposing the evil of Hamlet’s
supposed duty. He plots with Claudius to poison the unsuspecting Hamlet.
“And yet,” he says at the crucial moment, “it is almost
against my conscience.” So even Laertes knows better.
Violence,
the play says, brings unforeseeable and uncontrollable consequences;
“our devices still are overthrown. / Our thoughts are ours, their ends
none of our own.” In this mysterious world, we never fully know what
we are doing. Our intentions are one thing; results are another.
So every
plan misfires, and everyone dies. The Ghost finally gets the revenge he
sought, when his son kills his murderer; but his son and wife die too, and the
kingdom of Denmark falls to his old enemy, Norway. Though Laertes also gets
his revenge, he joins the mounting casualty toll.
This
tremendous play, a symphony of cross purposes, might have been written to
illustrate Francis Bacon’s maxim that revenge is a kind of “wild
justice.” If it punishes the guilty, it also claims the innocent. As
Shakespeare says elsewhere, “Thou shalt have justice — more
than thou desirest.” Or as Hamlet puts it almost flippantly,
“Use every man after his desert, and who should ’scape
whipping?”
The
Ghost, then, is a voice not of justice, but of evil. He belongs among
Shakespeare’s fatal seducers, with Cassius, Iago, and the Weird
Sisters who mislead Macbeth.
Joseph Sobran |
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| Copyright © 2006 by the
Griffin Internet Syndicate, a division of Griffin Communications This column may not be reprinted in print or Internet publications without express permission of Griffin Internet Syndicate 
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