Moral Questions in Hamlet
Hamlet the play and Hamlet the character have always attracted the attention of critics with a strongly moral bent. This is inevitable. The play deals with crime and its punishment, with complex questions of right and wrong, moral decisions, moral responsibility for actions, questions of conscience. Critics and readers must respond accordingly.Most of the moral issues raised in Hamlet arise from the role imposed on its central character: the role of revenger. To appreciate the full implications of these issues, we have to remember that the play confronts us with two starkly conflicting moralities, two radically opposed views of the task which defines Hamlet's role in the play: to be the avenger of his father's death. On the one hand, Shakespeare presents his characters against an obviously Christian background, a background much more distinctively Christian than that of any of the other tragedies. The outlook of the characters has been conditioned by Christian teaching, and the play itself is based on an acceptance of the Catholic teaching on the after-life: the Ghost returns from Purgatory, for example. Marcellus celebrates miracles at Christmas, and the burial of
Hamlet, finding Claudius praying, has a perfect opportunity to kill him. The world of Hamlet, then, is a Christian one, and the characters view themselves and the significance of their actions and beliefs against Christian teachings and practices. Hamlet embodies two incompatible moral systems, one Christian, the other pagan. He alters the commission: the English King is to put Rosencratz and Guildenstern to death, giving them no time to confess their sins or make their peace with God (5, 2, 46-7). He spontaneously accepts as a sacred duty the task of avenging his father, promising to make this his only occupation (`And thy commandment all alone shall live/Within the book and volume of my brain', 1, 5, 102-3). Hamlet himself is in no doubt about this question, whatever doubts he may entertain about the Ghost's `honesty'. The two are bearing a packet containing sealed orders for Hamlet's execution in England ( `No leisure bated . There is a sense in which Hamlet is at war: his kind of revenge would have been regarded by Shakespeare's contemporaries as being covered by the rules of warfare. It is possible to explain these difficulties and the moral confusion surrounding the revenge theme by reminding ourselves that Shakespeare's contemporaries seemed able to accommodate both Christian and pagan ideas of revenge side by side and find justification for each. Ophelia is in accordance with prescribed Christian ritual in relation to a woman in her circumstances. Claudius at prayer clearly believes in traditional Christian teaching on sin and repentance: without atoning for his crimes, he knows that he cannot earn forgiveness. His Christian alternative is to refrain from acting against Claudius and to live in patience, leaving vengeance to God. Shakespeare pointedly conveys this idea by the use of military imagery in relation to the practices of Rosencrantz and Guidenstern:For 'tis the sport to have the engineer Hoist with his own petar (3, 4, 207-8).
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