The Reactionary Utopian
                    September 12, 2006


WILD JUSTICE
by Joe Sobran

     Why does Hamlet delay his revenge so long?

     Shakespeare commentators have debated this question 
for ages, coming up with such ingenious answers as that 
Hamlet has an Oedipus complex that makes him ambivalent 
about killing his uncle, King Claudius, who has murdered 
his father to get the Danish crown. Hamlet chides himself 
for taking so long about it, blaming his own cowardice, 
though he is actually prone to rash impulses as well as 
hesitation. Is he merely seeking pretexts for delay -- 
such as doubt of the Ghost's veracity -- or are his 
reasons sound?

     Most of the critics share Hamlet's view that 
avenging his father's death is his duty. This is 
understandable but odd, because the play subtly presents 
an opposite view: that revenge is evil. Hamlet is 
actually delayed by his own conscience. Strange to say, 
only a few of the critics have perceived this.

     "Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord; I will repay." 
Every Christian knew that verse, which should also settle 
another old debate: whether Hamlet's father's Ghost is in 
Purgatory or Hell. The Ghost says he is being "purged" of 
his "foul crimes" for "a certain term," which implies he 
is in Purgatory, ultimately saved and not damned forever.

     But the truth slips out when he complains of dying 
without the sacraments,

        No reckoning made, but sent to my account
        With all my imperfections on my head.
        O horrible! O horrible! Most horrible!

And he demands revenge: "If thou hast nature in thee, 
bear it not."

     Hamlet, in a frenzy, vows to put the Ghost's 
commandment "all alone" above everything he has ever 
learned. But soon he has doubts. Was the Ghost a devil, 
lying to tempt Hamlet to his own damnation? He stages a 
play to test Claudius by reenacting the alleged murder.

     HAMLET reflects the religious turmoil of its time. 
Christians were furiously debating everything -- ghosts, 
Purgatory, sacraments, and other matters the play is 
exquisitely ambiguous about. But all agreed that revenge 
was sinful, and a ghost urging sin could come only from 
Hell.

     So whether this Ghost was "honest" about the fact of 
murder is beside the point. Claudius's guilt doesn't 
justify revenge. And after that guilt is proved, the ugly 
nature of revenge becomes clear.

     First Hamlet finds Claudius trying to pray, and 
decides against killing him then -- lest he go to Heaven! 
Full revenge for his father, he tells himself, requires 
killing Claudius when he is sinning, so he will be 
"damned." Samuel Johnson called Hamlet's speech to this 
effect "too horrible to be read or uttered." (It also 
implies that Hamlet's father is indeed in Hell.)

     Then Hamlet mistakes Polonius for Claudius and kills 
him. Now Polonius's son Laertes wants revenge -- on 
Hamlet! And Laertes is not one to hesitate:

        To hell, allegiance! Vows to the blackest devil!
        Conscience and grace to the profoundest pit!
        I dare damnation.
     
"I'll be revenged," he insists, even if it means going to 
Hell.

     Laertes is a dark mirror of Hamlet, vividly exposing 
the evil of Hamlet's supposed duty. He plots with 
Claudius to poison the unsuspecting Hamlet. "And yet," he 
says at the crucial moment, "it is almost against my 
conscience." So even Laertes knows better.

     Violence, the play says, brings unforeseeable and 
uncontrollable consequences; "our devices still are 
overthrown. / Our thoughts are ours, their ends none of 
our own." In this mysterious world, we never fully know 
what we are doing. Our intentions are one thing; results 
are another.

     So every plan misfires, and everyone dies. The Ghost 
finally gets the revenge he sought, when his son kills 
his murderer; but his son and wife die too, and the 
kingdom of Denmark falls to his old enemy, Norway. Though 
Laertes also gets his revenge, he joins the mounting 
casualty toll.

     This tremendous play, a symphony of cross purposes, 
might have been written to illustrate Francis Bacon's 
maxim that revenge is a kind of "wild justice." If it 
punishes the guilty, it also claims the innocent. As 
Shakespeare says elsewhere, "Thou shalt have justice -- 
more than thou desirest." Or as Hamlet puts it almost 
flippantly, "Use every man after his desert, and who 
should 'scape whipping?"

     The Ghost, then, is a voice not of justice, but of 
evil. He belongs among Shakespeare's fatal seducers, with 
Cassius, Iago, and the Weird Sisters who mislead Macbeth.

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