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The Perspective Is Out Of Joint: A Comedic Reading of Hamlet by Daniel Vogt

The only way to begin this presentation is to just say that I think Hamlet is a hilarious
dark comedy. I acknowledge, that by the Aristotelian definition of tragedy, that the massacre at
Denmark is clearly a metaphysical catharsis of biblical proportions. But when I imagine what the
very first production of Hamlet may have looked like, sounded like, or how it was received, I see
a writers inside joke turned inside out.
It is well understood that Shakespeare was, as great artists are, a writer who stole from
other playwrights, living or dead. He used their groundwork to build masterpieces. According to
literary scholar Stephen Greenblatt, Hamlet is based on the medieval tale of a prince who
avenges his late father and restores order to his kingdom. The Hamlet we know went through
several changes. In the medieval tale, Old King Hamlet was murdered publicly rather than
secretly by Feng, his envious brother. Feng justified the murder, claiming that the king was
abusing the gentle queen. That meant that the prince, Amleth, was expected to challenge his
fathers killer, but would not be able to until he was of age (Greenblatt 303). On the Elizabethan
stage, writes critic Fredson Bowers, blood demanded blood: (741). The murderous Feng
understood this strict social code, and if the boy did not quickly come up with a stratagem, his
life would be worth nothing. In order to survive long enough to take his just revenge, Amleth
feigns madness, persuading his uncle that he cannot ever pose a threat (Greenblatt 303). In the
end, Amleth proves Fengs villainy to the world and runs his uncle through with a sword.
The most significant departure from the Amleth-Feng version is that the Hamlet character
is not a boy when he learns his destiny. He is a young man contemplating suicide. Initially the
evil uncle is unaware of Hamlets knowledge, giving Hamlet the opportunity to slay Claudius in
secret, the way Claudius slew King Hamlet. But because Prince Hamlet exists in a Christian

world, Hamlet struggles to hatch a plan that would keep his soul clean while damning his uncle
to hell. Rather than being put under public pressure to strike when he is ready, he is put under
the dueling internal pressure of his conscience and the memory of his father, resulting in a hero
that famously idles rather than swiftly takes the chances he is given. When Claudius deems
Hamlet threatening, the play turns into a mystery-thriller, and the bodies begin to drop. Hamlet
finally slays Claudius, but at the cost of nearly every key character, including himself. Hamlets
tragic error, his hamartia, is not that he murdered Polonius, or missed his chance at fulfillment,
but it is that he never considered the history leading up to his fathers death.
In my research I came across an 1873 analysis of Hamlet by D. J. Snider who wrote, a
character becomes tragic to the spectator when they are rent by the same contradiction which
destroys the hero. If the audience stands above the hero, and comprehends all his complications
and mistakes, we begin to enter the realm of comedy (71). In other words, a character is deemed
tragic when the audience is transcended into the mind of the character, and is led to his or her
doom. The Aristotelian definition of tragedy calls for the arousal of fear, pity, and terror in order
to accomplish katharsis, or the purgation of emotions. However, comedy is produced when the
audience can stand above the protagonist, like watching a mouse navigate a maze rather than
identifying with the mouse itself. Although Hamlet qualifies as tragedy under the Aristotelian
definition of the genre, it qualifies as a comedy when retrospectively analyzed.
Sniders quote reminded me of the government agent characters at the end of the Coen
Brothers film, Burn After Reading (2008), a dark comedy in which three murders, two divorces,
and one severe case of insanity develop over a series of lies, presumptions, and misguided
feelings. The agents assess the damage and resolve that they can never recover the complete
truth, even though it is apparent to the audience that it all started because Frances McDormands

character wanted affordable--if not free--cosmetic surgery. The agents ask themselves what they
have learned from this pointless catastrophe: We learned not to do it again[Hell], if I know
what we did.
In Hamlets final scene, Prince Fortinbras literally stands above the fallen hero while
Horatio promises to tell the new king how so much revenge backfired into the accidental
katharsis of Elsinore. There is no humor in the actual bloodshed, but by standing above the
characters and comprehending their illogically deceitful actions from one misunderstanding to
the next, the audience derives humor from the absurdly karmic punishment of the ensembles
actions. Through the lens of the Coen Brothers, the moral of Hamlet is clear: bad things happen
to a family that steals. If the family remains treacherous, then karma will get the better of them.
Ergo, the greatest threat to Denmark is Denmark. Fortinbras was never a legitimate threat to
Denmark. The guards in Act 1 Scene 1 are more for protection from the unpredictable bandits
than from Fortinbras. In Scene 2, Claudius finds the princes threats amusing, and later proves
that Fortinbras is submissive to his elderly uncle. Fortinbras is all bark and no bite, but has every
right to incite violence against Denmark for taking his birthright. Yet the play is about Hamlet
avenging his fathers murder, seemingly overlooking the fact that King Hamlet was also a
murderer. There is nothing rotten in the state of Denmark because Denmark itself is a godless
state thanks to King Hamlets treachery.
Now consider the narrative of Hamlet through the perspective of its most forgettable
character, Fortinbras. Around the time Prince Hamlet and Prince Fortinbras were born, King
Fortinbras was slain by King Hamlet, who took his land and Prince Fortinbras birthright. Since
blood demanded blood on the Elizabethan stage, young Fortinbras entire childhood,
adolescence, and emerging adulthood was likely spent preparing to exact revenge on King

Hamlet. Once he was old enough to attack Denmark himself, he hastily and indiscriminately
gathered lawless resolutes to fight with him, and demand the surrender and return of his
rightful lands. This is the beginning of Act 1, when King Claudius alerts Fortinbras senile uncle,
the new king of Norway, to the young princes plans. Uncle Fortinbras arrests young Fortinbras
before any attacks can be lost. In Act 4 we learn that Fortinbras is then paid by his elderly uncle
to invade a worthless piece of Polish land. He is given a note, requesting Claudiuss permission
to cross through Denmark. It is then that Prince Fortinbras and Prince Hamlet meet face-to-face.
After reaching Poland, Fortinbras turns around, surprises the gates of Denmark, breaches them,
and navigates his way to the hall to look Claudius in the eye and demand the return of his
birthright. He has spent his entire life preparing for the moment when the king says, No. He
enters the hall and sees Horatio holding one of four dead bodies. The king is already dead, and
the throne is empty.
Hamlet inadvertently did all of the work before Fortinbras could attempt to avenge his
father. Fortinbras laments that if given the chance to prove it, Hamlet would have made a great
king. The prince sorrowfully claims the throne, politically uniting Denmark and Norway, and
commands his troops to honor Hamlet like a soldier. Fortinbras reaction is problematic because
no person should have a bigger grudge against the deceitful, selfish, and hasty Hamlets than
Prince Fortinbras. So why is Prince Fortinbras sad at the end? Because he had nothing against
Prince Hamlet, who gave his dying voice to declare Fortinbras the new king. Furthermore, he is
inadvertently emasculated because his entire life spent preparing to take back the throne has been
proven needless. His attempts to prove his might are casually thwarted again and again
throughout the play.

As if that was not absurd enough, Hamlets fatal mistake was failing to realize that
Fortinbras is also after King Claudius, and realizing that his father was potentially as despicable
as Claudius. Within the text, Hamlet shows no interest in obtaining the throne of Denmark. The
princes are approximately the same age, both infants when King Fortinbras was killed, and the
two men share the experience of having lost a father. So conceivably, Prince Hamlet could have
attempted diplomacy with Fortinbras and possibly hatch a coup to purify Denmark. Hamlet, a
hero of inaction, could supply Fortinbras, a hero of some action, with all the necessary details to
assassinate King Hamlet and restore order. By letting Fortinbras kill Claudius for himself,
Hamlet could fulfill the wishes of his late father and potentially fix the relationship between
Norway and Denmark. But instead, Hamlet watches Fortinbras march through Denmark to
reclaim a pointless piece of land and decides that he should be more like Fortinbras: Why yet I
live to say, This things to do, / Sith I have cause, and will, and strength, and means / To dot.
Examples gross as earth exhort me. (4, 4, 44-46).
The fatal mistake that we of the 21st century make is that the very first audience to see
Hamlet only knew the medieval Amleth-Feng version and its particular details. According to
Greenblatt, what would have irked Shakespeare the most about the medieval tale was the long
period of time between boy Amleth learning his destiny, and older Amleth actually fulfilling his
destiny. The middle was devoted to Amleth growing up, tricking Feng, again and again, showing
that he is not a threat. What may have been an interesting play to see the first time would be
increasingly boring upon repeated views, resulting in a painfully two-dimensional hero. Granted,
Hamlet also begins with the prince learning his destiny at the beginning, and fulfilling it at the
end, but the difference is that he is the same age between these two points. However, Fortinbras
learns his destiny as a boy, and fails to fulfill it as a man. Thus, I believe that Hamlet is not an

anagram for Amleth, but rather that Shakespeare turned Amleth into Fortinbras. Although
Fortinbras is traditionally referred to as Hamlets foil, literary professor Anselm Haverkamp
writes that Fortinbras is the alter ego of Hamlet, of one who was not born to play the hero.
Yet he became one [despite himself], and he is only instated into his own rights after the
fact by one whose succession he admits with his dying word, thus in death reacquiring
the princely inheritance of which he was robbed during his life. The play ends with the
corpse that Fortinbras, in a most emblematic manner, lays out, the corpse of a King who
Hamlet had never been in this play (Haverkamp 179).
Shakespeare parodies Amleth, a then classic Elizabethan hero of action, by belittling his
role to a nonthreatening brat who guiltily accepts the throne he did not earn for himself, and
replacing him with a foil whose own worst enemy was himself, delivering a finale that more than
doubles the bloodshed of the original tale for less than a ducats worth of logic. Prince Hamlet
directly criticizes his past life when Hamlet and Fortinbras cross paths in Act 4 Scene 4: What
is a man /If his chief good and market of his time / Be but to sleep and feed? a beast, no more.
Sure He that made us with such large discourse, / Looking before and after, gave us not / That
capability and godlike reason / To fust [mold] in us unusd (4, 4, 33-39). Hamlet recognizes the
wisdom of his creator to limit human capacity lest it go to waste as exemplified by the stagnant
life Prince Fortinbras, formerly known as Amleth.
Hamlet is rich in biblical symbolism that significantly enhances the weight of drama, but
it is evident that Shakespeare was clever enough to rewrite a popular drama with a simple 1-2
plot and construct it into what Snider declared, the Sphinx of modern literature. A tragedy one
way, a comedy another, Hamlet is a wondrous behemoth that stands as tall today as it did when it
was first built. The inside is a dark maze that leads to tombs at nearly every turn. But when

viewed from the outside, the Sphinx is a cat with the head of a Pharaoh, sporting
disproportionately long arms and a ridiculously small head. Hamlet, the Sphinx of modern
literature, is a monument to the creature of Oedipus, a creature who asks a riddle that can only be
answered by the answer itself.

Works Cited
Bowers, Fredson. "Hamlet as Minister and Scourge." Modern Language Association 70.4 (1955): 740-49.
Web.

Burn After Reading. Dir. Joel Coen and Ethan Coen. Prod. Joel Coen and Ethan Coen. By Joel
Coen and Ethan Coen. Perf. George Clooney, Frances McDormand, John Malkovich, and
Tilda Swinton. Focus Features, 2008. DVD.
Shakespeare, William. Hamlet: Complete, Authoritative Text with Biographical and Historical
Contexts, Critical History, and Essays from Five Contemporary Critical Perspectives.
Ed. Susanne L. Wofford. Boston: Bedford of St. Martin's, 1994. Print.
Greenblatt, Stephen. Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare. New York:
W.W. Norton, 2004. Print.
Haverkamp, Anselm. "The Ghost of History: Hamlet and the Politics of Paternity." Law and
Literature 18.2 (2006): 171-98. Print.
Snider, D. J. "Hamlet." The Journal of Speculative Philosophy 7.1 (1873): 71-87. Web.
Snider, D. J. "Hamlet." The Journal of Speculative Philosophy 7.2 (1873): 67-88. Web.