mind of man in Hamlet, The

Renascence, Summer 2002 by Levy, Eric P

HAMLET grapples with his own task in its immediate context. Yet that effort entrains wider frames of reference whose signification critics have striven to clarify. In one such frame, Hamlet's agon reformulates the question, "What is a man?" (4.4.33) which he himself raises.1 As a rational animal, a man is one who thinks. But the play problematizes the proper exercise of thought by which man sustains this identity. The role of reason in Hamlet has attracted considerable critical attention. According to one school, inaugurated by Harry Levin and extended by scholars such as Chris R. Hassel, Walter King, Eve Sanders, William Morse, Kenneth Rothwell, Lars Engle, and Ronald Shafer, Hamlet debunks the Renaissance praise of human reason, epitomized by Pico della Mirandola.2 In contrast, Carole T. Diffey examines the role of "godlike reason" in the play.3 According to another school, ably represented by Lily Bess Campbell, John S. Wilks, and Jennifer Low, the play elaborates the classical doctrine regarding the responsibility of reason to control passion.4 According to a third school, forged by Herschel Baker, A.D. Nuttall, Mark Matheson, and Gordon Hartford, Hamlet foregrounds Stoic doctrines concerning the function of reason in the conduct of life.5

Unlike these preceding critics who have considered the play in terms of its debunking or appropriation of earlier notions of reason, I shall examine how, in Hamlet, the concept of reason, as transmitted by the AristotelianThomist synthesis, is subjected to a radical critique which problematizes the meaning of man as the rational animal. The investigation will involve sequential uncovering of the ways in which the function of reason is questioned and reconstituted in the play. At the core of this analysis is a reinterpretation of the relation between reason and the individual exercising it.

According to Aristotelian-Thomist doctrine, "man is principally the mind of man" (Summa Theologica I-II, 29, 5, resp.).' That is, in so far as man is a rational animal, reason operates synonymously in all human beings endowed with it. Hence, to be a man is to be defined through common function, not uniqueness. In this context, the imperative, "to thine own self be true" (1.3.78), entails fidelity to a general principle. For here the core of selfhood is universal reason. But Hamlet has severed the bond with universal reason, which always sees the truth in the same way. For him, thought is idiosyncratic, and its defining operation, judgment, works differently in each individual, as exemplified in his opinion of Denmark: "for there is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so. To me it is a prison" (2.2.249-251 emphasis added).

Ironically however, in Hamlet the "nutshell" (2.2.254) of the mind is itself the ultimate prison. For here the individual is confined within his or her own "course of thought" (3.3.83), and rendered vulnerable to the products of his or her own mentality: "Conceit in weakest bodies strongest works" (3.4.114). "[B]ad dreams" (2.2.256) and hallucinations ("the very coinage of your brain" [3.4.139]) are the most obviously noxious products of the mind. More insidious is the unchecked momentum of thought itself. Hamlet is intermittently aware of this influence, as when halting his own self-castigation for inaction: "About, my brains" (2.2.584).

Thus, in so far as "man is principally the mind of man" (Summa Theologica I-II, 29, 5, resp.), his identity is problematized by the hazards pertaining respectively to universal and particular reason. The former, through emphasis on general principle, prevents awareness of distinct individuality, while the latter, through emphasis on private preoccupations, threatens to trap individuality within the limits of its own concerns. In this context, the basic terms of Hamlet's ambiguity regarding his own rationality can be succinctly formulated: (a) to think for himself is to be vulnerable to his own mentality: "O God, I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space - were it not that I have bad dreams" (2.2.254-256); (b) to think for the sake of reason is to be defined by the universal preconceptions of rationality: "What a piece of work is man, how noble in reason . . ." (2.2.303-304). From this point of view, man is the rational animal whose identity is problematized by recourse to thought.

The ambiguous function of thought can be clarified from another angle. On the one hand, as parodied by Polonius's formula, "What majesty should be, what duty is, / Why day is day, night night, and time is time" (2.2.87-88), thinking discloses reality or "the essence of things" (to invoke F.H. Bradley's phrase from a different context).7 But on the other hand, as prompted by personal circumstance, thinking increases perspectival idiosyncrasy: "How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable / Seem to me all the uses of this world" (1.2.133-134 emphasis added). That is, under the pressure of local conditions, "godlike reason" (4.4.38), the faculty par excellence of objective insight, succumbs to what Whitehead terms an "excess of subjectivity," with the result that "the selective character of the individual obscures the external totality."8 According to the classical schema, the function of reason is to guide life, so that the highest potential of the individual can be fulfilled. But in Hamlet, the result of life is to modify the operation of reason by directing its focus to specific concerns. That is, to adopt the terminology of the play, "course of thought" (3.3.83) is characterized by selection prompted by "circumstance" (3.3.83). This dispensation is especially true of Hamlet whose thought is shaped by the exigencies of his own life: "How all occasions do inform against me" (4.4.32). It is parodied by Polonius's project to disclose Hamlet's thought: "If circumstances lead me, I will find / Where truth is hid [... ]" (2.2.156157 emphasis added).