Posted by Nedo on September 27, 19100 at 16:53:39:
In Reply to: Re: understanding being posted by Tom on August 01, 1999 at 18:33:15:
It is always a pleasure for me to come across the comments of a seeker. By that I mean one like yourself who approaches the person of Bill Shakespeare, and the souls of those characters he creates, not to come up with answers, but rather to discover enduring questions.
For my part, the question of being in Hamlet is not just stated by the protagonist, but acted out by the pantheon of characters. From Claudius and Gertrude, who seem to care little for their own sense of being beyond feeding their insatiable lusts, through Polonius for whom being is no more than platitudes, Horatio for whom it is but an object of study and reflection, to Octavia who would drop it in the dustbin like a worn out gown, to R&G who hardly exist at all, even to Laertes who exists only in romanticised passions.
Even at the fringes we find the grave diggers existing in their wit and poor Yorick who exists only in the hearts of those that remember.
I, for one, hardly consider Hamlet a tragedy. My own sensibilities seem entirely too delicate to endure the likes of Lear, Othello, or R&J, but Hamlet seems on an entirely new plane.
I disagree that the tragedy is either in the protagonist's inability to act swiftly and decisively, or in his succumbing to violent acts in the end. To my senses both are equally distasteful. I think I identify with Hamlet because I too want desperately to give the benefit of the doubt and that, most probably, because my own self-doubts would benefit from such a gracious benefit.
But how does this sound for an overall scenario?
In the end the stage is littered with human refuse simply because in the end all doubt will cease. All that will remain will be pure purpose.
But there it is. The eternal purpose. Everything in me would quail at the thought of eternal purpose being embodied in a worthless piece of real estate on the Baltic as the foot soldiers of Fortinbras must force themselves to believe. Yet there we are. And somewhere out there is my own sense of being.
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