A hopeful Hamlet?

Sir, – The controversy over the second of the two Hamlet questions on the Leaving Certificate higher-level second paper in English is certainly, up to a point, understandable. To affirm the play is “a surprisingly hopeful and positive drama” certainly goes against the grain, and in fact to characterise it in those terms (tout court) would be absurd (for admittedly the word “surprisingly” does alert us to an alternative view). Yet insofar as the question is phrased with a bias in that positive direction, it might even be regarded as misleading. A fairer phrasing would have required the candidate to argue “for or against” the proposition: that would have made for a more nuanced formulation. As it stands, the question might lead the candidate to the view that the obvious way to answer is in the affirmative.

That said, the question might certainly stimulate a potentially fascinating (if rather challenging) debate. There are of course positive aspects in the tragedy, if one is equipped to find them. The most obvious concerns the emergence of Fortinbras as a replacement for both Hamlets at the end of the play: as is common in Shakespeare’s tragedies, it is suggested that the political order at least will be stabilised (the “something rotten in the state of Denmark” is, for now at least, dispelled). More complex is the possibility that Hamlet has, in the course of the action, acquired a newfound sense of acceptance: as Hamlet remarks to Horatio just before the final duelling scene, “There is special providence in the fall of the sparrow” (which echoes the Gospel passage on the sparrow in Mat t.10:31: “not one falls to the ground without your Father knowing”). Having been subjected to wave after wave of dire contingency, Hamlet might be regarded as one who has latterly recovered his sense of cosmic order.

But there is no simple answer. Just prior to speaking of “providence”, Hamlet confesses to Horatio: “thou wouldst not think how ill all’s here about my heart”. It is possible to feel that Hamlet dies with a recognition of his own human vulnerability and inadequacy. It would be tempting in a modern version of the play to have him in the final scene dangle, from a shaking hand, a smoking cigarette. And that might lead us to the conclusion that the most positive aspect of Hamlet’s death is that it offers him an escape from an existence which, once tolerable, is now no longer so. He has, at least, escaped; and “flights of angels [may?] sing him to his rest”. – Yours, etc,

BRIAN COSGROVE,