Thornton 1

Melissa Thornton
Dr. Holt
AP English Literature
29 February 2016
Making Sense of Our Perceptions
To enter into the world of Hamlet and its criticism, we must acknowledge that it [is]
hardly possible for two critics to agree upon the same interpretation of the play; [and] one cannot
altogether agree with himself for two successive readings as evidenced by the plurality of
arguments over Hamlets character and even the events of the play themselves (Trotman 135).
Opening with the line, Whos there? Hamlet locates the audience in an experience defined by
questions and identitytwo lenses that provide a glimpse into how every individuals reading of
Hamlet results in a new, nuanced conclusion (Shakespeare I.I.1). Only by accepting the
subjectivity of Hamlets meaning can we realize that Shakespeare intentionally created the play
as an enigma, emphasized by its empirical nature and the mystery of Hamlets character.
Structurally, Hamlet generates an atmosphere of uncertainty for the audience from the
language of the opening scene to the diction recurring throughout the play. As we experience
Hamlets first scene, we repeatedly hear questions: Who is there?, What, has this thing
appeared again tonight?, Is not this something more than fantasy?, Who ist that can inform
me?we find ourselves in medias res and losing verisimilitude, the scene preparing us for the
greater confusion to follow (I.I.15,23,56,81). Delving deeper into the play, we encounter more
complex questions: What a piece of work is man, To be or not to be, What should such
fellows as I do crawling between earth and heaven?; the ontological nature of the questions
prevents us from reaching any right answer as all would be subjective (II.II.265; III.I.57;

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III.I.128-129). Further, Shakespeares language itself elicits manifold interpretations from the
audience through the use of a variety of polysemous wordsfrom act and play to seems
and seedirecting us to view the play as purposefully indecipherable.
Since [w]e make sense of our own personal identities in much the same way as we do of
the identity of characters in stories, the nature of the play as a narrative of Hamlet himself
allows us to examine the enigmatic aspects of the plot as we would our own lives (Dauenhauer).
According to Jerrold Seigel, to understand our world and ultimately ourselves, we make order
out of the constant flow of perceptual experience (Seigel 14). In Hamlet, our perceptual
experience consists mainly of riddles: why does Hamlet delay his action? Is his madness real or
feigned? How can we reconcile the contradictions in his character? We lack any objective
knowledge to inform the answers to these questions, forcing us to depend on our sensory
perception to make sense of both the plot and Hamlet empirically.
If we attempt to use our senses to unravel the plays mystery though, we find the
dichotomy between Hamlets words and actions keeps us from discerning his character. We think
that Hamlets acts of madness are merely him [putting] an antic disposition on due to his
conversation with Horatio, yet his treatment of Ophelia, murder of Polonius, and killing of
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern calls into question whether he acted with purpose or has truly lost
all [his] mirth (I.V.179; II.II.258-259). When it comes to enacting revenge, Hamlet swears that
the ghosts commandment [for revenge] all alone shall live/ Within the book and volume of
[his] brain, yet as time passes, he finds that the native hue of resolution/ Is sicklied oer with
the pale cast of thought and in the end does not act (I.V.102-104; III.I.85-86). Finally, we are
forbidden to know anything concerning his earlier relations with Ophelia, which makes us
question the verity of his feelings when he tells her he did love [her] once and that he loved

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[her] not in the same conversation (Bridges 155; III.I.115-116; III.I.119-120). As the
discrepancies in Hamlets character muddle our ability to use what we hear or see to find definite
answers to the plays riddles, we each come to our own conclusions about Hamlets actions and
therefore construct our own individual narratives of Hamlets story.
Only as we come to the conclusion of Hamlet can we see the importance of our
subjective interpretations of the play; just as is it is with our individual identities, until the story
is finished, the identity of each character or person remains open to revision (Dauenhauer).
Before Hamlet dies, he calls on Horatio, the only one we believe to be well-acquainted with the
plays events,[t]o tell [his] story (V.II.323). As a result, Horatio becomes the narrator of
Hamlet and the play becomes a [perpetual] self-in-formation, living in the space between what
it has been able to become and what it or others think it might be (Seigel 31). While we know
Horatio to have a fairly objective understanding of Hamlets story, every re-telling of a story
inherently becomes a new interpretation, such that the story of Hamlet never truly ends.
We can find evidence of the plays versatile interpretations in two of its appropriations,
Salman Rushdies Yorick and Jasper Ffordes Something Rotten. In Yorick, the narrator
substantiates the infiniteness of the plays story in the narrators claims that he will abbreviate,
[] explicate, annotate--& also hyphenate, palatinate & permanganate the narrative as his
ancestors have done for generations (Rushdie 3). Further, he re-purposes the plays story so that
the background details and sense of time expand beyond the limits of Hamlet itself and the
original plays events originate from Hamlets murder of his own father. An explanation for that
phenomenon exists in Something Rotten in which Hamlet realizes that the more complex and
apparently contradictory the character, the greater the possible interpretationss after the storys
speaker explains to him how each interpretation of an event, setting or character is unique to

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each of those who read it because they clothe the authors description with the memory of their
own experiences (Fforde 390). Every time we read the play, we see it differently as our
identities are constantly being influenced by new experiences, and the uncertainty the play
creates through its unanswered questions allows for constant re-interpretations of the same text.
Due to Hamlets inherent subjectivity, any argument that one singular meaning exists for
the play or Hamlets character fails to acknowledge that arguing one opinion over another only
highlights the fact that as readers differ in their lives and destinies, so they differ and will
continue to differ in the views of a play which seems to embrace them all (Gordon 196).
Hamlet teaches us that literature is a mirrorwe get out of it what we see in it, and we see in it
who we are. Just as we constantly seek answers to the questions posed in Hamlet, we try to find
objective knowledge in a fundamentally subjective world. As Rushdie argues through Yoricks
allusion to Tristram Shandy, we come to know the world and ourselves by associating the ideas
we attain through sensory perception, demonstrating how Hamlets purposeful ambiguity lends it
to being an embodiment of the self, as the self is an embodied subjectivity.

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