Mack Reading
Mack, Maynard. “The world of Hamlet.” The Yale Review 41 (1952): 502-23.
Mysteriousness and its riddles, says Mack, seems to be built into Hamlet and suggests “man in his bafflement, moving in darkness on a rampart between two worlds, unable to reject, or quite accept, the one that, when he faces it, ‘to-shakes’ his disposition with thoughts beyond the reaches of his soul — comforting himself with hints and guesses.”
A second aspect of Hamlet’s world, according to Mack, is “the problematic nature and the relation of reality to appearance. He breaks this motif up into two categories: “apparition” and “seems.” The first, and most important, apparition is the ghost of Hamlet’s father. The ghost is real and is the beginning of Hamlet’s quest for realities. Its information pierces the appearance of Claudius’ court to show the realities of murder, incest, adultery, and a place where everyone is not what they seem, including Hamlet. The second apparition is the play within a play which Hamlet uses to test the ghost’s claims further, which confirms their reality. This leads to the scene of Claudius at prayer. He has the appearance of prayer but, in reality, he remains unrepentant and it would have been the perfect moment for Hamlet to strike. His reality was hidden, however, like almost everything else in the play, “behind an arras.”
But not behind an arras is the second appearance of the ghost in Gertrude’s closet. Gertrude is, however, unable to see the ghost which makes it difficult to grasp just how much she is involved in Claudius’ plot when “the reality is before [her] very eyes [she] cannot detect its presence.”
The second aspect of the problem of reality, Mack states, is the word “seems.” “The ambiguities of ëseem’ coil and uncoil throughout this play, and over against them is set the idea of ëseeing’.” Yet there remains an uncertainty in seeing like Hamlet’s own uncertainty in the ghost’s appearance and his mother’s ststement: “Nothing at all; yet all that is I see.”
Other important terms that Mack instances are “assume,” “put on,” and “shape.” “Assume” is three things in Hamlet’s world. The first is what we are not: “The de’il hath power T’ assume a pleasing shape.” Next is what we are: “If it assume my noble father’s person, I’ll speak to it.” And lastly what we are not yet, but may become, as Hamlet tells his mother: “Assume a virtue, if you have it not.” The “shape” of something is how we are used to perceiving it, or, more importantly, a disguise as used in the king and Laertes’ plot against Hamlet’s life. “Put on” is very ambiguous. Mack says: “Hamlet has put an antic disposition on, that the king knows. But what does ëput on’ mean? A mask, or a frock or livery–our “habit”? The king is left guessing, and so are we.”
There are two patterns of imagery, says Mack, the first is based on clothes and the second on painting. “The apparel oft proclaims the man,” Polonius says to Laertes; oft, but not always. The best illustration of this is Hamlet’s own “nighted color.” “Tis not alone my inky cloak, good Mother, . . . That can denote me truly. These indeed seem.” Hamlet’s visage is one of melancholy that might bring both appearance and reality together. Later we see Hamlet’s costume in disarray through Ophelia, which may not be what it seems. And upon Hamlet’s return from shipboard there may be a third aspect of the man in his simple traveler’s garb.
“A second pattern of imagery,” states Mack, “springs from terms of painting: the paints, the colorings, the varnishes that may either conceal, or, as in the painter’s art, reveal.” Art conceals for Claudius in his “painted word,” while Ophelia’s beauty is more complex. Is she the perfection that her beauty suggests, or is she “beautied” like the harlot’s cheek? But art may produce the truth as it did in the play within a play.
The pattern of imagery is evolved in three words: “show,” “act,” and “play.” “The ideas of seeming, assuming, and putting on; the images of clothing, painting, mirroring” encompass all of the main characters in the play, Mack tells us, and they are all “drawn into the range of implications flung around the play by ëshow’.” “Act” is the actions performed by the characters that does not always show their inner intent. “Play” is something that every character does, and every major episode in the tragedy is a play.
The themes of mystery and appearance/reality pervade the play as does the motif of “mortality,” explains Mack. He says, “the powerful sense of mortality in Hamlet is conveyed to us, I think, in three ways. First, there is the play’s emphasis on human weakness, the instability of human purpose, the subjection of humanity to fortune–all that we might call the aspect of failure in man.” The chief way this theme is shown in through a profound consciousness of loss. The ghost expresses this in his lament for the loss of his “[most] seeming-virtuous queen,” and in Ophelia after Hamlet’s repudiation of his love for her.
“Hamlet’s problem, in its crudest form,” suggests Mack, “is simply the problem of the avenger.” But this problem becomes impounded by the other aspects of Hamlet’s world. Hamlet must not only deal with his father’s revenge but also with the mysteriousness, misleading appearances, and loss that are part of his world.
Not only must Hamlet come to terms with his unintelligible world, he must also act in it and deal with the inevitable guilt of his actions. During the course of his “acts” he kills a man (the wrong man), has driven Ophelia mad, and has sent Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to their graves. Although he never meant to taint himself with these acts, it became inevitable with the ghost’s challenge to act.
The third stage of Hamlet’s problem is that he must act in a mysterious world within human limits; “with shabby equipment always deteriorating.” Mack says, “[Hamlet] vacillates between undisciplined squads of emotion and thinking too precisely on the event. He learns to his cost how easily action can be lost in ëacting’.”
“In the last act of the play,” says Mack, “Hamlet accepts his world and we discover a different man.” He is now wearing a different dress, not one associated with an antic disposition, and he has a change of mood with a recognition that divinity shapes our ends. He seems to have accepted the boundaries of human action and judgment and not longer wishes to take the responsibility of the whole world’s condition upon his “limited and finite self.”
The best evidence of Hamlet’s new frame of mind is the graveyard scene. First, we see that Hamlet now understands and accepts the conditions of being a human. Secondly, and more important, it is Hamlet’s embracement of the mystery of life itself. In the graveyard “all come together in an emblem of the world.” Death uncovers all appearances and asks itself “what is real?”: “Is this the fine of his fines and the recovery of his recoveries, to have his fine pate full of fine dirt?” And lastly, there is a uncovering of human limitation; the fact all of men’s big ambitions and petty amusements all end up as dust.
In conclusion Mack says, “After the graveyard and what it indicates has come to pass in him, we know that Hamlet is ready for the final contest of mighty opposites. . .and in which, if [he] wins at all, it costs not less than everything.”
