Hamlet and the Soul-Sleepers

ABSTRACT

The article argues that the soliloquy, ‘To be, or not to be,’ in Shakespeare’s Hamlet is informed by soul-sleeping: the belief that on its separation from the body at death, the soul enters an unconscious state typically described as sleep or a sleep-like stupor, in which it remains until wakened and joined with the resurrected body, and then assessed at the Last Judgment. The doctrine was advocated in some of Luther’s works of the 1520s and 1530s and found acceptance among some early English Protestants, but was destined to be repudiated by later Protestant orthodoxy, and was universally condemned by mainstream Protestant thinking of Shakespeare’s day. The article surveys the history of this heterodoxy in England, demonstrates its continuing significance in the late-sixteenth and early-seventeenth century, elucidates the references to the doctrine in Hamlet’s soliloquy, and discusses their relevance to the broader understanding of the religious subtext of the play.     

Hamlet: plea for a measure of normality

The author first considers issues in psychoanalytic interpretations of literary characters, especially the question of treating the character as fiction (the aesthetic illusion) or as a real person. The position he adopts is to interpret Hamlet as a potential person, created by Shakespeare and an expression of Shakespeare’s actual – and intuitive – view of man.

With a synopsis of the tragedy and the context of its creation as background, the author then reflects on questions concerning the play. How does Shakespeare present the characters? Is Hamlet’s madness pretended or real? Which conflicts does he handle in the course of the play? Has Oedipal dynamics a role as motivational factor in his mind?

Hamlet is irrational, impulsive, emotional, inhibited, brooding, suspicious, revengeful, condemning and much more. But, in the view of the author, he is all this in a human, ‘normal’ way. There is nothing convincingly pathological or constricted in his character. ‘Un-normal’ is his intelligence and his wit. Hamlet – an intelligent, reflected, resourceful prince in late Renaissance – who has wrestle with a madhouse of political intrigues, family murders and deceitful friends.

Hamlet in Shakespeare’s text – a fairly normal person in quite a mad world.