It is a new Hamlet because it is a Hamlet who does not care for his father entirely. Insufficient care for a father has much to do with what happens in the play, and what doesn't; also with how the play goes on.

     It is Hamlet Revisited because we come to where he is, and you come to where he is, and look at him again, and hear him again. And we look and hear somewhat differently.

     Hamlet is thoughtful. What the world is like matters to him. He sees what is strange in the world. He thinks of himself in the world, this world. The world is in him hour after hour. He must say something of it.

     Hamlet is critical of his mother. So many sons have been.

     Hamlet's father knows something is not as it should be. With all his military doings, Hamlet's father is vexed. His son is something else to him, as he is something else to his son. We are all something else to each other.

      Hamlet's father comes to earth to be seen again. His brother and his wife have been against him. His life has been taken from him by his brother Claudius. Hamlet's father looks to his son to have things changed towards rightness. But his son is different from him too. Hamlet's scholarship is not his father's smiting "the sledded Polacks on the ice." Thoughtfulness is not being victorious over a lofty Norwegian in single combat.

     The Ghost is armed, "cap-a-pe." Hamlet can be "ungartered."

     It is necessary to find out how well Ophelia represented love.

     The unknown in us is a ghost. The unknown, in telling us about itself, is like a ghost. The ghost of Hamlet's father is about ourselves as unknown.

     We have armor. Hamlet's father has armor. It is portentous. It is grandly of laughter, though as sad as all time.

     We must be seen more completely. Anything, on earth, in heaven, in hell, can be used by a person if he wishes to be seen more completely.

     Man and Shakespeare have thought so.

 

                RELEVANT POEM

We may have a stern father,
As we look for a tender one.
Our father may be military,
As we ourselves are thoughtful.
Your name is many things.
Mine is Hamlet.
Yorick carried me on his back a thousand times.
My father never did.
He was majestic.
He was aloof.
He was concealed, maybe.
I may be concealed.
I do not want to be.

         SECOND RELEVANT POEM, SEEMINGLY
              CYNICAL: HAMLET'S HAPPY HOME

How home has not been seen through the years!
Writers who look carefully at texts will not see the domestic.
This is so now.
It was so in deep Victorian time.
There is F. J. Furnivall:
Keen enough, God wot, in other ways.
But this is Furnivall on the home of Hamlet,
In Furnivall's edition of the Shakespearean text of Delius
      (Cassell, Petter, Galpin & Co.)
"The description above of Hamlet's home at Elsinore,
His own account of his rides on the jester Yorick's back,
Of his noble father,
Of his mother's affection for him,
Show how happy the boy's home must have been,
      And how well he understood the beauty of this `brave
      o'er-hanging firmament,' and 'what a piece of work
      is man! how noble in reason, how infinite in faculty,
      in form and moving how express and admirable!'"
Furnivall, Furnivall, how thou dost not see!
And yet thou gettest Yorick the jester into the home.
Does Hamlet tell of how he rode on his father's back?
Could he ride on the back of him who combated Norway?
Is there any sweetness of feeling he shows to his father
      like the sweetness of feeling, the meditative tenderness
      he shows to Yorick as he looks at the skull?
And you say he is a noble father.
You yourself have edited texts with lines in which the
      father says he has sinned,
That he is not accepted in heaven.
And you have seen Hamlet call his father "old mole,"
And jovially call him "truepenny."
Does this mean Hamlet saw his father as noble only?
Furnivall, Furnivall, thou art like J. Dover Wilson,
Like so many of the bony contemporary commentators,
Even though thou art a hale and not bony Victorian.
And thou sayest: "his mother's affection,"
And yet thou hast questioned Gertrude.
When does a mother stop being a person?
When does the weakness of a mother come to be seen by a son
      always observing?
Furnivall, Furnivall,
Look at these lines of Shakespeare and of the elder
      Hamlet:
"I am thy father's spirit,
Doom'd for a certain term to walk the night,
And for the day confined to fast in fires,
Till the foul crimes done in my days of nature
Are burnt and purg'd away."
Crimes, crimes, sins, sins, Furnivall.
Is the father telling what is so,
Does he mean what he is telling,
Furnivall, Furnivall, Wilson, Wilson?
And what should a son think of these crimes, these sins?
Were there no facts in the time of Elizabeth?
Are the facts only in Strindberg, Ibsen?
And Furnivall, Furnivall,
This is what you say of the lady with the "mother's
      affection":
"His mother's lust"; "he despises his mother."
When did all this, Oh Furnivall, begin?
When did Gertrude begin to be Gertrude?
When did Hamlet begin?

____________________________________________________

 

A FATHER APPROACHES

1.  Every son sees his father in a certain way, and it has been presumed for many years that the way Hamlet saw his father was affectionate, respectful, loving. It has been thought, too, that Shakespeare saw Hamlet's father as a right father, right as fathers should be. So we look at the play and present the play to see how Hamlet and Shakespeare thought.

     The Ghost of Hamlet's father has come to Elsinore, Denmark.

     We have early in the play Horatio, Bernardo, Marcellus, saying this:

Horatio. What, has this thing appear'd again tonight?
Bernardo. I have seen nothing.
Marcellus. Horatio says 'tis but our fantasy,
    And will not let belief take hold of him
    Touching this dreaded sight, twice seen of us.

     These lines are faint and early. We are at the beginning of something.

      Yet this can be seen: Shakespeare chooses to present Hamlet's father as stern, not tender. Hamlet's father is described as a thing; he is termed a dreaded sight. Ah, we know that this is not conclusive, but there are so many ways of presenting a ghost other than (1) to soldiers; (2) in armor. Were Shakespeare trying to accent a father's affection to a son, paternal tenderness, he certainly might have had the Ghost come otherwise.

    But Shakespeare knew and he chose.

2. The King is a father and the father is a King. It is the King that is accented in the early lines of the play. To have Hamlet's father be felt as King first may very well be the reason why he shows himself not to his son first, but to others. Anyway, it is not the King that a son is close to.

Enter Ghost

     Marcellus. Peace, break thee off! Look, where it comes again!
     Bernardo. In the same figure, like the King that's dead.

      A King, so far, has come from the other world, not a father.

3. And Horatio says the Ghost has a "fair and warlike form."

Marcellus. Question it, Horatio.
Horatio. What art thou that usurp'st this time of night,
      Together with that fair and warlike form
      In which the majesty of buried Denmark
      Did sometimes march? By heaven I charge thee, speak!
Marcellus. It is offended.

      In these lines the Ghost marches sternly and with dignity. It has "the majesty of buried Denmark." And it is offended, because it is questioned.

     So let us think of fathers. Fathers can be stern. Sometimes they walk with upright dignity. And they can be offended. A son has a feeling when his father's offended.

4. As the scene goes on, the father of Hamlet is further depicted as martial; as impressive; as redoubtable; as an object of fear. He seems, as Ghost, like the man who "ambitious Norway combated," and who "smote the sledded Polacks on the ice." Not all fathers have done this.

     Twice before he has walked by with this "martial stalk."

Marcellus. Is it not like the King?
Horatio. As thou art to thyself.
      Such was the very armour he had on