Being and Seeming in Hamlet Chapter

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Shakespeare Write Hamlet?

One of the most striking aspects of the play Hamlet as well as the character of Hamlet himself is the play's self-reflective quality. Hamlet is about putting on a play, and not simply the play which Hamlet stages to dramatize Claudius' guilt before the rest of the court. From the very beginning of the play, Hamlet is obsessed with the idea of being versus seeming and what is real and unreal. Alone of all members of the court, including his mother, Hamlet still wears black in mourning for his father and insists that he does so out of real sentiment, saying he does not even know what seems means:

For they are actions that a man might play:

But I have that within which passeth show;

These but the trappings and the suits of woe (I.2).

Hamlet believes that his grief is real, in contrast to the false show of kindness Claudius makes before the court towards Hamlet. When Hamlet later learns from the ghost about the actual way that his father was murdered, he is especially incensed that Claudius is a "smiling, damned villain" and hides who he truly is (I.5). Yet Hamlet himself also puts on a show, pretending to be mad so he can bait Claudius and Polonius with mocking words. Hamlet first gets the idea to put on The Murder of Gonzago when he is overcome with the grief that the Player-King puts on about a fictional person. Hamlet notes he has a real grievance unlike the actor.

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Later he is very concerned about directing the actors in how to act well, to ensure that the play that is being staged conveys Hamlet's intended meaning.

Thus Shakespeare uses the play to reflect upon his own role as a playwright and the appropriate relationship of art and life. Yet Hamlet never comes to a final conclusion about this issue. Although the play-within-the-play does convince Hamlet that the ghost's word is true and does unsettle Claudius, it really does not accomplish anything meaningful in terms of bringing Claudius to justice, except by accident. Hamlet kills Polonius, mistaking him for Claudius. Laertes vows revenge upon the man who killed his own father and in the duel between the two of them, Hamlet dies by Laertes' poisoned sword, but only after killing the murderer of his own father. It is left to Horatio to explain what has occurred to the horrified crowd, perhaps underlining the importance of telling the story and making people understand the truth through art, because 'reality' (i.e., the world of the play which Hamlet speaks of as real) can lie.

The language of being and seeming also runs throughout Hamlet, reinforcing this notion, not only in Hamlet's interactions with the players but also with all of the other characters in his life. He turns upon Ophelia because he views her feminine charms as an example of seeming: "I have heard of your paintings too, well enough; God has given you one….....

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