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In Hamlet, William Shakespeare vividly describes the epoch and cultural values, moral philosophy, and ideas of life and death dominated in Elizabethan England. During this period of time, religion and theology had a great impact on worldviews and perception of reality. The questions of life and death, meaning and importance of these notions determined attitude towards life and human existence. Thesis Human existence and purpose of life were considered unimportant because the human soul had a divine nature, thus, they were afraid of death as an unknown state of human existence.
During the Elizabethan period, people did not value human existence seeing it as one stage of the divine cycle. Elizabethan theology considered only three conditions or stages of mankind on earth, all else being irrelevant: the far-off nostalgic condition of innocence and perfection in Eden; the corruption of original sin; and the partial restoration which some enjoy through divine mercy (Elgin and Woolf, 2005). The criterion of holiness thus became for clergymen the dominant principle by which men were to be classified. And each of the three conditions was described as having its own appropriate doctrine, whose nature depended on the presence or absence of grace (Elgin and Woolf, 2005). In Hamlet, Shakespeare writes: “To my sick soul, as sin’s true nature is, / Each toy seems Prologue to some great amiss: / So full of artless jealousy is guilt,/ It spills itself in fearing to be spilled” (Shakespeare, 1995). Shakespeare states that only people mentioned the need for grace to help the will in its choices did they add an alien element of supernatural cause (for instance, a ghost). But it is important to observe that people usually mentioned such grace as an aid rather than as the primary determining factor in the decision, that they gave it relatively inferior emphasis, that they did not hold it to be a principle reaching down through the whole personality as a transforming cause. Hamlet comments: “Heaven make thee free of it! I follow thee.– / I am dead, Horatio.–Wretched queen, adieu!—“ (Shakespeare, 1995). Sin and grace operated only upon the soul, directly and immediately, not through physical complexion or external stimuli. This was one phase of acceptance of the religious faith, already remarked, that the soul which was the subject of their studies must seek a return to God as its final end (Elgin and Woolf, 2005).
The religious doctrine of sin and grace takes shape as one element of the general doctrine of Providence. Every man was expected to use all means such as prayer, church attendance, good reading, good company, and self-discipline to attain grace, though the means might unpredictably be ineffective (Harmsworth, 1999). Hamlet rejects these traditional rituals applying his own worldviews and values to human existence and its meaning. He comments: “But that the dread of something after death,–/ The undiscovered country, from whose bourn / No traveler returns,–puzzles the will” (Shakespeare, 1995). For him, human existence is like a miracle, fundamentally not to be understood. Man’s uniqueness, the quality of God’s moral government of the universe for human good, the possibility of miracles, the authority of Scripture to teach the truth about the physical world, these and many cognate issues all seemed at stake. Upon the answers then and since given have depended in large measure on the later history of religious faith (Harmsworth, 1999). God’s bestowal of grace was a supernatural act, invisible, unknowable, unforeseeable. Nothing physical was poured into the soul, but by mysterious means, it was given a new form that turned it once more towards God. “Whether ’tis nobler in mind to suffer / The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune / Or to take arms against a sea of troubles / And by opposing end them” (Shakespeare 1995). Like Hamlet, an ordinary man was imprisoned in that inner misery which is our natural life; at the next, quite beyond all hope or deserving, unlocked by tears, he was transfigured, was stripped of falseness, and being empowered to reach God, at last, came home. (Hanson, 1998).
People did not value existence, but they were afraid of death and the Beyond. For people, not only an important question about any man was how he stood in the sight of God, whether he was in a state of sin or of sanctity (Hanson, 1998). The question “to be or not to be” vividly reflects worldviews and attitudes towards life typical for this historical period. Hamlet comments: “And a man’s life is no more than to say One” (Shakespeare, 1995). For this period, the question was not so much the human relationship to God as what man was in himself, what were the parts or faculties of his inner mechanism, how he thought, felt, remembered, willed, and whether these processes moved freely or were impeded by some malady. “Exposing what is mortal and unsure / To all that fortune, death, and danger dare, / Even for an eggshell” (Shakespeare). About the causes determining the soul’s function, content, and status during that brief sojourn, however, there was between the two in some respects a full collision and a focus of interest so utterly different as to produce two distinct though overlapping interpretations of human nature.
In sum, Hamlet vividly describes that during the Elizabethan period, people were limited by religious doctrines and theological interpretations of reality which dictated life philosophy and worldviews. The idea of divine nature of the soul and sin infringe fundamentally on their concept of human character as a self-contained, naturally functioning order, for the evaluation of its state as good or evil could be simply superimposed on the description of its processes.
References
- Elgin, K., Woolf, A. (2005). Elizabethan England. Facts on File.
- Hanson, E. (1998). Discovering the Subject in Renaissance England. Cambridge University Press
- Harmsworth, A. (1999). Elizabethan England: A Study in Depth. Hodder Murray; Teacher edition.
- Shakespeare, W. (1995). Hamlet. Web.
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