Famous First Lines: Hamlet

It is significant that several other characters get to speak (at great length, and -- depending on the production -- in a mysteriously boring manner) before Hamlet gets a word in (under his breath, too). He is absent in the first scene, which takes place on the battlements -- outside of the court, the political center of the realm, and which discusses recent history and regional socio-political upheavals (that little fracas with Norway, for instance) before getting to the juicy stuff (A ghost! Where? There! Yikes!).

Hamlet is also significantly absent for many lines in Scene Two, while Claudius drones on (and on) about how it's just too bad his brother went and died and all, and how no one opposed his own nomination for the crown (yes, Denmark had an elected monarchy at the time), so no one can complain about it now.

The facts are all open before us: the machinery of state has been moving, without Hamlet's contribution. In fact, he's been absent, away at school (Wittenburg -- that school for famous fictional characters -- yep: Marlowe's Dr. Faustus studied there, too), so has missed his father's death, coming home for the funeral and the swiftly following marriage of Claudius and Gertrude.

But now the time is "out of joint" (as Hamlet succinctly phrases it himself). The clockwork of Elsinore has had a spanner thrown into the works, and the portents are ominous: young Fortinbras of Norway looks like taking advantage of the transitional state of Denmark until he is bribed into invading Poland instead, and oh! yeah -- Hamlet, senior is haunting the battlements in full armor, because his murdered soul is in limbo. There's something rotten in the state of Denmark, as somebody observes at the time.

Those are the outward circumstances which the audience learns of before seeing Hamlet. Now, Hamlet's state of mind is complicated. Let's make a list of what has just happened to him in the space of two months:

• his father has died unexpectedly (Junior doesn't know for a fact yet that it's murder)
  
• his mother has married Claudius immediately (in Elizabethan England this was still considered a form of incest -- to marry your brother's widow -- and was the technicality on which Henry VIII was able to have his marriage with Catherine of Aragón annulled).
• he doesn't understand why his mother has married so quickly -- a fact that we need to linger over for a while, as it helps us understand the whole play. The fact that Shakespeare doesn't tell us why Gertrude has rushed "twixt incestuous sheets" with Uncle Claudius isn't important: what matters for the audience viewing the play is that an insurmountable stack of circumstance is piled up all around Hamlet and he can't comprehend the individual events when he tries to analyze them. This one is key, as it has shattered his whole idea of home/ parents/ happy childhood. What Hamlet does next is demonize Claudius and demean his mother. He blames his mother for shifting her affections from his father (who becomes god-like in Hamlet's descriptions of him) to a "bloat toad." Claudius deserves the insult. We simply don't know whether or not Gertrude deserves it, too (although she does talk about her "o'er hasty marriage"). Hamlet was excluded from her decision to marry.
  
• Claudius is now the king. Another fact we can examine in some detail. Young Prince Hamlet would have been brought up to believe that he would be king after Hamlet senior. To arrive home to find that someone else is now wearing the crown emphasizes Hamlet's exclusion from political matters at Elsinore.
• Ophelia has been instructed not to talk to Hamlet. Bummer. We learn later that Hamlet really did have feelings for the girl; what's important now, though, is the fact that again he is being excluded

To add insult to injury, Claudius talks to Laertes (Ophelia's brother) before even acknowledging Hamlet's presence. But finally, when all other affairs have been addressed, he turns to his nephew:

• But now, my cousin Hamlet, and my son-

• Hamlet. [aside] A little more than kin, and less than kind!

"Cousin" here is an Elizabethan term for general kinship, not necessarily as specific as "nephew." "Son" here is, of course, "step-son." Hamlet's comment is indirect. So is everything he does in this play. He takes the indirect route to prove that Claudius killed his father (by putting on a play and feigning madness -- not really the process they follow in Law and Order or CSI Miami), not killing Claudius when he has a real opportunity (while Claudius is praying) because that would have sent his uncle's soul to heaven (according to the Elizabethan understanding of these matters).

The comment is sarcastic, to say the least. If we consider sarcasm to be representative of Hamlet's frustrated aggression at the circumstances it's little wonder. Even the final resolution of the tragedy is rigged by Claudius and Laertes, who set up a poisoned-sword tournament, otherwise the play never would have ended. . . .

So Hamlet's first words in the play are a comment on the action, rather than being direct involvement in the action; specifically a sarky aside about his uncle. Interestingly, he is extremely perceptive when it comes to knowing when other people are being less than direct -- he knows Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are lying to him about the reason for their visit; he knows that Ophelia has been "planted" for him to discover (in the scene where she tries to give him back the gifts he gave her) and that Polonius and probably Claudius, too, are spying on him; he suspects enough about the attempted trip to England to switch the letters (resulting in the deaths of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern). He is a director, rather than an actor in, his own drama. Unfortunately, the framework of the play is an Italianate Revenge Tragedy and Hamlet is not a revenge hero. He's way too cerebral.