Hamlet's Dialectical Approach to Killing His Uncle

“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in our philosophy.”


(Hamlet, act 1 scene 5)

I find it odd that for his dissertation Lev Vygotsky focused on the aspect of staging he deemed as less important as we discussed last week. I wonder if he came to his conclusions regarding the two types of staging after his time in graduate school was complete.

 At any rate, I found this piece to be tedious.  It's the first time I've felt this way when reading LV's work.  In similar style to that which we've read throughout the semester, Vygotsky spent a lot of time (around 20 of the 26 pages) reviewing the critical analyses of his contemporaries and predecessors, and then explaining why they are wrong.   It wasn't until page 21 that he came to a conclusion which aligns with my opinion as to why Hamlet is one of the greatest plays ever written.  And while he spent some time addressing the importance of the emotional aspects of character development in his points regarding dramatis personae and his references to Petrazhitskii, it is my humble opinion that his analyses regarding Hamlet and why the audience so intimately connects with the protagonist fall short of the target.

 It is the pathos of the protagonist, and Shakespeares ability to capitalize on the emotional facets of the associative aspects of the audience's imagination that makes this piece so moving.  Having both read and seen theatrical and film productions of this play, I found it odd early in the piece when Vygotsky made frequent mention of the "riddles" of Hamlet.  As someone experiencing this play in the 20th century, I find this work to be one of Shakespeare's most relatable.  
At least for late 20th and 21st century audiences, the humanity that manifests aesthetically through Hamlet's suffering is easy for audiences to connect with.  His (or Shakespeares) procrastination on which LV placed so much emphasis is never something that I interpreted as a weakness of character or a form of stasis.  On the contrary, I think it functions narratively to highlight Hamlet's morality and complex character, and aesthetically to highlight the pathos of his struggles, both of which are effectively humanizing.  

At any rate, the procrastination that LV spent so much time with allows Shakespeare to take the time to develop Hamlet's character.  And it gives the audience more to latch on to in terms of their imagination.  Now that Vygotsky has taught me more about how the imagination functions as well as inner speech, it is interesting to think back to when I saw the play.  When witnessing the production as an audience member, I remember empathizing so much with Hamlet's emotional suffering.  There is an associative process to this empathy in which the emotions being felt with and for Hamlet are connected to the everyday experiences of the audience member. More interesting still is how challenging it is to articulate the nature of these feelings and associations because they take place on the internal plane.  Trying to articulate even now gives no justice whatsoever to how profoundly moved I was when I watched the play for the first time.  

Another thing that bugged me a bit about this piece is LV and the critics' analysis of the denouement of the piece.  That is that Hamlet's messy killing of the king/ his uncle "leaves us with the feeling of duty unfulfilled, or, at best, fulfilled by default."  I disagree with the critics on this entirely, perhaps because I experienced this piece in the era of postmodernism.  The killing of the king brings about a resolution that is bitter sweet and strikingly more tragic in that although the protagonist fulfills his original motive, his achievement is tinged by his own impending death.  The fact that Hamlet kills the king as his dying act makes this delayed action more meaningful and profound.  It also renders the protagonist as more human, more anti-heroic, and more relatable.  To me this act perfectly sums up what makes this play so great, and it is moving in the most peculiar way.   For like in real life, Hamlet does not plow forth and fulfill his destiny in heroically dramatic fashion.  He stews; he is paralyzed by his emotions, he acts and retracts, he gets distracted, he goes mad for a bit, and in a backwards and unromantic way, he fulfills his destiny and then passes into the darkness behind the curtain. 



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