Hamlet and the Renaissance

Hamlet and the Renaissance: Do you think that his desperate view of man might render him unable to act?

Hamlet, even before he is haunted by his dead father's ghost, seems revolted by humanity in the early scenes of Shakespeare's tragedy. Hamlet has already begun to suspect his stepfather Claudius of something evil, and is angry at his mother for remarrying so quickly, even though the rest of the Danish court does not seem equally upset at what only Hamlet considers an incestuous marriage. Later, when confronted with a visit from his old school friends Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, Hamlet parodies the conventional Renaissance ideal of the noble workings of the human form, calling humanity a quintessence of dust. Even if he once believed that humanity was good, the Hamlet the audience sees throughout the duration of the play is someone who mourns the fact that the everlasting never prohibited self-slaughter in his first soliloquy and later muses as to whether he should exist at all, in "To be or not to be," in a world where the dust of Julius Caesar means nothing, as he states in the graveyard.

Hamlet clearly melancholic view of the future of humanity, although he is capable of acknowledging goodness, as he does when he praises Horatio's character before the play-within-a-play, and he even praises Fortinbras' action in the name of the Norwegian's own father, although it goes against the interest of the Danish state. Finally, Hamlet admits that Laertes has a right to be angry on Polonius' account, as Hamlet's rash actions killed Laertes' father, even while Hamlet strove to avenge his own father. Thus, rather than a desperate view of human morality, Hamlet's inaction seems to arise from a combination of paralyzing depression about the nature of acting in a meaningless world and internal self-doubt. He also has an over-active intellect that enables him to rationalize both the murderous instincts of people going against his own interests like Laertes, and as well as his own revulsion at murder, as when he foolishly decides not to kill Claudius at prayer.