I, Claudius?

At the end of this past school year, my brain addled by the almost 1,000 AP Literature essays I had read during second semester, I assigned my students one final — but slightly different — piece of writing. I asked them to write about which character from Shakespeare’s Hamlet resonated with them personally and why.

I think the sign of a good essay prompt is that it tempts even the teacher to write. And so it tempted me. Look, it had been a long school year; writing an essay was the last thing I wanted to do. But if you’ve ever read, seen, or experienced the tale of the Danish prince, you will probably understand my compulsion to write. The play delves so deeply into the human experience that if we interact authentically with it in any way, some form of response is necessary.

So what follows was initially designed to be an exemplar essay that I could use for my students next year—hence the citations — so the tone may seem a little un-bloggy, if that makes sense.

Humans are designed to live in community. Whether you hold the view that the traditional, nuclear family is best, or you see benefit in other, non-traditional family arrangements, it’s easy to see that humans thrive when they are in supportive, loving, and united communities. The antithesis of living in community is living in isolation. Isolation robs humans of the empathy that contact with others provides. It traps people inside their own minds. Most of all, it deprives us of essential support systems that even the strongest among us needs. Perhaps the most dangerous form of isolation is when it afflicts those who seem to live in (or have convinced you that they are part of) a healthy community. William Shakespeare’s The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, is full of characters who appear to the outside world to be in a thriving community yet live in isolation and suffer its pernicious consequences. Gertrude, bereft of her first husband, is shunned by her own son and cannot be honest with her new husband. Ophelia, without the guidance of her absent older brother, is shamelessly used by her father and dies broken and alone. Hamlet, of course, is the first to show the effects of isolation. For him, Denmark certainly is “a prison” (II.2.262), but it is the twin monsters of grief and mistrust that greedily devour any meaningful connection he has with other people. Much as I see myself in Hamlet — that’s a story for another day — it is Claudius and his relationship with isolation that fascinates me. In not only suffering from but also in actively fomenting his own isolation, the usurping King of Denmark showcases our — and my own — tendency to shut ourselves off from others. The cost of this is simple but devastating; it is nothing less than our humanity.

Claudius has spent time curating the perfect image of a king: he is a shrewd diplomat, an effective ruler, a loving husband, and an apparently indulging step-father.   A closer look at his actions, however, would suggest otherwise.  We, of course, find out quickly that he murdered the previous King Hamlet — his brother — and then hastily married Gertrude, his former sister-in-law.  His villainy is clear, but I think it is intentionally maintained and increased by a lack of real intimacy with others.  Even when he refers to himself in the first person plural (the “royal we”), as he does throughout the play, it creates a false sense of togetherness. “We” and “us” suggests connectivity and communal decision making, but nothing could be further from the truth; at the heart of all Claudius does lies the one thing most humans crave: control. Claudius’ court is one of surveillance and spying, where “madness in great ones must not unwatched go” (III.1.202), where the watchmen can only "whisper" (I.1.91) their theories for why they seem to be in a state of war, and where he and Polonius, "lawful espials,...see[ing] unseen" (III.1.35-36), observe Hamlet's interactions with others.  This all serves to provide the King with information, but it also ensures that he protects himself from unwanted intimacy. Or any intimacy, for that matter.  Polonius does all his dirty work for him and passes on the "tea" so that Claudius can stay informed.  In the same way, I often rely on my wife to have those conversations with friends, the kids, even my own family members and then relay that information to me.  It's easy, clean, and the emotion greatly diminished now that it's a second-hand account.  I'm up to date but not really involved.  Facebook — when I was active on it — was the perfect way to do this: people giving you permission access to their intimate moments, albeit perfectly curated ones, without really making any of the kinds of meaningful connections that make life both rich and messy.

As a side note, it is perhaps worth pointing out that Claudius actually perpetuates isolation in others, even as he criticizes it. As Hamlet “persever[s] in obstinate condolement” in mourning for his late father, Claudius castigates him, calling it “unmanly grief” and accusing Hamlet of having “a heart unfortified” (I.2.96-100), and insisting that he stays with his family in Denmark "in the cheer and comfort of [his] eye" (120).  Claudius's inability to appreciate — itself a byproduct of his lack of emotional connection with his new stepson — the mechanics of grief merely deepens Hamlet’s own isolation.  To many, Claudius is simply saying the wrong thing, but his words are indicative of the real damage we can do when we attempt to help those who are suffering.  When my wife's brother died suddenly in 2005, I didn't know what to say, even to my wife or my in-laws.  My clumsy attempts at condolence were no better than Claudius's, and they exposed my lack of real intimacy in those relationships at that time and forced my wife into her own isolation of grief.  It was a dark period in our marriage.

As a Christian, I am usually comforted by the knowledge that God is with me and that He is the ultimate protector and comforter.  The times when I have felt separated from God have led to the most profound feelings of remoteness, and Claudius, it would appear, has done just this.  We first get the sense that Claudius is more complex than simply being a villain in Act III, Scene 1, when in a brief aside he refers to his duplicity and his "heavy burden" (62).   Then, in Act III, Scene 3, there is a remarkable moment where Claudius kneels alone, wrestling with profound ideas of sin, repentance, and forgiveness.   Admitting that his "offense is rank" (40), he claims that his guilt — the very conviction that he has done something wrong — is paralysing his attempts to make amends.   He knows full well that God has the ability to make his soul "white as snow" (50), but cannot bear the prospect of admitting to his crimes and giving up the benefits he has reaped from them.   He finds the notion of simply saying "Forgive me my foul murder" (56) ludicrous even as he knows that true repentance is the only way in heaven, where power and influence cannot "[buy] out the law" (64).  The climax of the speech comes with these heart-rending lines:

Try what repentance can.  What can it not?

Yet what can it, when one cannot repent?

Simply put, while Claudius longs to be free from the guilt and shame of his murderous, adulterous actions, he cannot bring himself to ask for forgiveness.  It is the story of so many of us when it comes to wrongdoing, of any kind.  It is amazing that we actually choose to feel guilty and to live with regret instead of asking for forgiveness.  We would rather stay isolated than return to the fold.  We would rather stay with brokenness than risk the renewed intimacy of healing.  The darkness feels safer than the light.  God's light of forgiveness exposes every corner of our hearts and many of us would rather hold on to those dark recesses, even if it risks separation from Him.  Even on his knees, Claudius still chooses isolation.

The start of Claudius's soliloquy: "O, my offense is rank..."

After this profound experience, Claudius's isolation is so entrenched that he cannot bring himself to talk honestly to his wife.  At the beginning of Act IV, Gertrude and Claudius have their only private conversation (fewer than 40 lines) in the entire play.  Much of what the king says to his wife here seems to be either the product or the instigator of isolation: there no grief for his trusted advisor Polonius, whose death at Hamlet's hands Gertrude is recounting; rather, he is focused on self-preservation and how to best limit the damage to his own image, saying that "this vile deed we must with all our majesty and skill both countenance and excuse" (1.30-33).  The real give away, though, is not the lack of any mention of his deep regrets and inner turmoil — we can perhaps understand why he wouldn't confide in Gertrude his past murder of her husband and his future plan to murder her son — but the use of the decidedly cold and impersonal "your son" (3).  Earlier, in an attempt to ingratiate himself to his new stepson, he refers to him as "my son" or at least tries to get Hamlet to see him as a father (I.2.66, 111-112, 121).  He has now emotionally withdrawn from both Hamlet, which makes any possible understanding of Hamlet's erratic behaviour impossible, and his wife, who, perhaps sensing her husband's duplicity, seems to be withdrawing from him, too.  In our most difficult times, we need to be honest and transparent with those around us, especially with those with whom we would claim intimacy.  I feel this keenly, particularly with the malicious impact of depression, which often forces me deeper into myself and stiffens my mask instead of making me seek support and solace from friends, even from those who love me and who know me best.

Death, of course, is the ultimate isolation.  In the play’s denouement in Act V, Scene 2, Hamlet, who has just come to terms with his own mortality (234-238), dies in the arms of his best friend, whereas Claudius’ last orders, “Do not drink” (317) and “Help me, friends” (355),  are notable in that they are not obeyed. Claudius dies alone, hated, and victim of the ultimate truth: that tyrants’ paranoia is rooted in the fear of those they rule.  One of Hamlet's obsessions is ensuring that Claudius dies "unshrived" — without a chance to confess his sins — and I wonder whether, in his final moments, with the poison coursing through his veins, Claudius thinks back to his missed opportunity where he was so close to repenting in Act III, Scene 3.  Either way, as John Steinbeck suggests about people who die unloved, "his dying must be a cold horror".

I also think that isolation is becoming more and more a Western problem.  In April 2018, I spent a week in northern Jordan with Syrian refugees. When I returned home and started back at work, I was convinced that the trauma I had witnessed and heard about was far beyond anything my students in middle-class San Marcos had experienced.  And perhaps it was.  However, I quickly found myself feeling far more pity for many of my students who were experiencing hardship and suffering.  Most of the Syrians I met lived in the community of an extended family.  They shared meals and beds, but they also shared the heavy burden of grief and trauma.  Many of my students have iPhones, but they don't have extensive support systems.  Like most of the characters in Hamlet, many of them go through stress, anxiety, and pain on their own, often pretending that everything is fine.  It is no way to live.

Truthfully, I actually often take real pleasure in being remote.  I'm an introvert, so I do need to be alone in order to relax and recharge.  However, I often seek sequestration because I just don't want to be around others and because I don't feel like being vulnerable or even honest.  This is, of course, patently unhealthy.  Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German theologian martyred by the Nazis just weeks before the end of the Second World War, put it this way: "One who seeks solitude without fellowship perishes in the abyss of vanity, self-infatuation, and despair."  It is here that we meet Claudius, where we are forced to acknowledge that even our very needs can have dark consequences.

Shakespeare, as he does so often with antagonists, humanizes Claudius in a profound and powerful way.  The beauty of literature is that it allows us to see ourselves in even the most villainous, which then helps us see the villainous things in ourselves.