In the first chapter of PrinceHamlet.com’s Hamlet: The Undiscovered Country, Stephen F. Roth examines the idea that the character of the Danish Prince was originally meant to be a teenager, not a man of thirty years, as the accepted version of the play states.
So there’s all sorts of evidence in and surrounding the play showing that Hamlet is a teen. But beyond all this “hard” evidence, there’s Hamlet’s character. In addition to being brilliant, noble, acceptably eloquent, and all those other things we love about him, at least until the final act he’s naïve (”meet it is I set it down/That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain!” 1.5.115), peevish, petulant, wildly changeable from moment to moment, maddeningly and intransigently judgemental, a know-it-all theater critic, and a shallow philosopher who actually believes he can solve the eternal human problems that nobody else has succeeded at. If that’s not a teenager, what is?
If you read Stephen’s paper in its entirety, you will find many good bits of evidence suggesting that Hamlet’s character was originally meant to be younger than twenty. Why is this important to Stephen? “The play,” he writes, “doesn’t make sense if Hamlet is thirty.”
I agree that the question of age is important, but the significance of Hamlet’s age, for me, means something different. I’m a huge fan of the Kenneth Branagh interpretation of Hamlet, and after seeing it I believe the play can and does make sense emotionally with Hamlet as a thirty-year-old if the character’s motivations are properly portrayed. Notice that Branagh’s Hamlet stares at a reflection of himself as he recites the infamous Act III, Scene 1 soliloquy.
To be, or not to be–that is the question:
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles
And by opposing end them.
(III.1.56-60)
This mirror-talking is brilliant and appropriate to the thirty-year-old-Hamlet because the character is testing his own resolution to perform a horrible act of vengeance, not naively stating the obvious as Stephen Roth’s interpretation of Hamlet might suggest. Here, Hamlet is reciting previously understood knowledge back at himself, not discovering the knowledge for the first time. Contrast Branagh’s delivery with this woefully-low-production-value Darek Jakobi interpretation, in which Hamlet asks the above lines of monologue to the audience as if it were a question. Here, Hamlet does sound naive; he’s thirty years old and only just discovering that the choice between action and inaction in the face of adversity is a difficult one. If I had never seen Branagh’s Hamlet, I might agree with Stephen Roth.
The Hamlet who forsakes the carefree ideals of his youth and struggles to give rebirth to his passion as an individual capable of great deeds would probably resonate more with thirty-year-olds of the modern era than with teenagers. This Hamlet, who is not experiencing first-time discovery, but rather is applying his old ideas to an important rebirth of purpose, feels more like a man whose midlife crisis looms on the horizon; whose mortal clock suddenly strikes noon and calls for action. (For Hamlet, his father’s murder and ghostly visitation are simply the catalysts to his rebirth of self-purpose.) Indeed, we all assume when we are young that we will do something great in our lives. So when, in the course of our lives, do we find that we have not yet done anything great by our own standards? When do we panic and attach ourselves to a single cause and fervently fight to gain a sense of self-worth? The big three-oh, I think. The bridge between old and young. What passionate youth could possibly have enough life experience to declare his previous existence frivolous and to forsake the memory of his former days to make room for a single cause? On the contrary, today’s youths are expected to live their first twenty years in a childlike state, following the rules of school and parents, easing into responsibility, before they are expected to do anything great. And those youths who do something great in their early years are expected to incorporate that experience into their blossoming lives, not to replace their minds entirely with the idea now and forever. So when I read Hamlet’s vow to his father’s ghost,
Remember thee?
Ay, thou poor ghost, while memory holds a seat
In this distracted globe. Remember thee?
Yea, from the the table of my memory
I’ll wipe away all trivial fond records,
All saws of books, all forms, all pressures past
That youth and observation copied there,
And thy commandment all alone shall live
Within the book and volume of my brain,
Unmixed with baser matter. Yes, by heaven!
(I.5.95-104)
I hear the words of a man who, having lost his way, has just rediscovered that he is alive and willing to use up his life in the name of something great. Only a man who has already lived, already passed through the material pleasures and trivial pains of youth and has begun to question the importance of his own existence could possibly forget those “baser” youthful pursuits for the sake of something great–something as single-minded as the struggle to achieve total vengeance.
Perhaps, once, the character of Hamlet was written as a teenager. But I’m glad it was changed. Because people grow up slower nowadays and Hamlet’s personal quest–his motivation–will be accepted more readily by an audience of modern thirty-somethings who know what it’s like to wake up in the face of change and yearn for a reason to rekindle the battle against inaction and inadequacy.
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