Hamlet's complexity is borrowed from our own messy lives and thrust onto the stage with the eloquence only Shakespeare could muster. For the young Dane is something of an everyman, as every man should be, apart from his inability to play the rather hollow game of the sycophant, the liar, the suck. Hamlet recognizes that one may smile and be a villain, and it is for that reason, despite all his talk of suicide and gloom that we find him such a hero (but not in the traditional sense of the word).

In attempting to address if Hamlet was a play about 'spiritual defeat', I was left in something of a quandary. What the hell does that mean? After pondering for quite some time, I thumbed through some of the key passages looking for clues (having no obvious critical analyses to refer to), brooded a bit, as Hamlet the Dane was wont to do, and it suddenly struck me. I have no one answer. In fact, I'd like to approach this from three directions, each giving a different angle on the key words in this question - spiritual defeat.

Firstly, the appearance of the ghost marks something universally regarded as spiritual, but in what context? It has been suggested that the ghost is actually a projection of the various fears and superstitions held by all those that look upon it, that it was a projection of psyches who had lost a rational means of expressing their rather dire suspicions concerning past events, so the past came bodily to haunt them - specifically young Hamlet. Jung would probably refer to this as the 'shadow', specifically a personification of that which must remain taboo, unsaid, unseen and unsuggested. The Jungian shadow is representative of those aspects of the self that the conscious ego is unable to recognize, however positive these aspects may sometimes be. Jung himself describes it thus:

"The shadow is a moral problem that challenges the whole ego- personality, for no one can become conscious of the shadow without considerable moral effort. To become conscious of it involves recognizing the dark aspects of the personality as present or real."

In this respect, the ghost of King Hamlet provides another example of the supernatural 'furniture' that adorns texts within the gothic genre. Ghosts, as well as creatures such as vampires or werewolves, are embodiments of those parts of the psyche we would rather ignore and/or repress due to their morally questionable nature. While everyone seems to have suspicions concerning the death of King Hamlet and subsequent reign of his brother Claudius (and marriage to Gertrude), none are prepared to state this categorically, apart from vague allusions (spurned on by the appearance of the spectre):

HORATIO In what particular thought to work I know not.
But, in the gross and scope of mine opinion,
This bodes some strange eruption to our state.
...
MARCELLUS Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.

Linking this to the topic, my first interpretation of 'spiritual defeat' comes from a quote I have hanging on the wall in my kitchen - "Man doth not yield himself to the angels, nor unto death utterly, save only through the weakness of his own feeble will" . This quote seems especially applicable to Hamlet in that, left of scant resources himself, he turns to the supernatural for answers.

HAMLET Angels and ministers of grace defend us!
Be thou a spirit of health or goblin damned,
... Thou comest in such a questionable shape
That I will speak to thee. I'll call thee Hamlet,
King, father, royal Dane. O, answer me!
...
What may this mean
That thou, dead corse, again in complete steel,
Revisits thus the glimpses of the moon,
Making night hideous, and we fools of nature
So horridly to shake our disposition
With thoughts beyond the reaches of our souls?
Say, why is this? Wherefore? What should we do?

With that proclamation Hamlet yields utterly to the angels, or to death, or to whatever pleasing shape stands before him. Now he has proof from a source that dare not be questioned that his suspicions have been righteous, and that he has cause to act. It is in yielding utterly to the prophesy of this supernatural visitation that Hamlet has been defeated by the spiritual, and has released his grip on the 'real' to seek help elsewhere.

The second interpretation involves the defeat of the spiritual by the temporal, but itself having a dichotomy in meaning. While the general notion to be explored here is that those things held to be spiritual in nature (and alluding to the divine nature of man) are overtaken or replaced by material drives and baser concerns, there exists two principle contexts in which this can be understood. First, consider the change from Hamlet's 'To be or not to be' soliloquy, in comparison with the discussion he has later with the grinning skull of Yorick, or his continual references to worms after stowing the body of Polonius. Suddenly, we have turned from contemplation of the afterlife, the undiscovered country, to a sobering reflection on man as a 'quintessence of dust', with no greater hereafter than to rot and to be fed upon by who knows what assortment of creepy-crawlies. Consideration of the spirit has been abducted and replaced by talk of things carnal and all too horrid. The idea of the spiritual has become a contemplation of yet another philosophical conundrum, comparable to the one brought up in last weeks analysis of 'spiritual defeat', namely - 'Is the world essentially meaningless and must we therefore forge meaning?' Our latest question is - 'Does man have an eternal soul, and what evidence do we have for this when the reality of the situation seems to be that we are nothing but flesh and blood?' Consider Shakespeare's mood in writing the play as further evidence for the existence of this conundrum in Hamlet, having lost his own child and therefore turning to reflections upon the darker aspects of man - as dust, devil or angel. Hamlet may have been led to such speculations by confrontation with the ghost, which itself left him doubting its authenticity and seeking proof, or when he gazed upon Polonius bleeding like a stuck pig on the floor of the Queen's bedroom. Suddenly the world's a bloody place indeed, and an interesting juxtaposition takes place when moments after the murder of Polonius the ghost is once more seen in the presence of the young Dane. However, why can't Gertrude see it when the guards (Marcellus and Bernardo) and even good Horatio witnessed its earlier manifestation?

MARCELLUS Peace, break thee off. Look where it comes again.
BERNARDO In the same figure like the king that's dead.
...
HORATIO It beckons you to go away with it...
MARCELLUS Look with what couteous action
It waves you to a more removed ground...
...
HAMLET Do you see nothing there?
QUEEN Nothing at all. Yet all that is I see.

Does this support the contention that only those harboring dark suspicions concerning the state of Denmark can see the prophetic spectre? I would suggest that it does, which would make the bloody prophecy of the ghost self-fulfilling.

The scene with Yorick's skull marks the moment at which we see the 'spiritual defeat' of Hamlet, particularly when it turns to talk on Alexander and Caesar turned to dust.

HAMLET And now how abhorred in my imagination it is! My gorge
rises at it... Now get you to my lady's table and tell her, let
her paint an inch thick, to this favour she must come.
... To what base uses we may return, Horatio!
... as thus; Alexander died, Alexander was buried,
Alexander returneth to dust... Imperious Caesar, dead and
turned to clay...

Another context to this idea of spiritual overthrow is the consideration of temporal power overtaking spiritual good. In murdering Hamlet's father, Claudius has usurped the goodly spirit of the true man for something as petty (in the cosmic scheme of things) as personal power, wealth and a not so virtuous queen. What sort of effect would this have on Hamlet's ideas of what is right and wrong? Could this be the explanation for his 'knighted color'? A disillusionment with a world in which goodly, spiritual qualities in man can be so easily overthrown?

HAMLET ... What a piece of work is a man, how noble in
reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express
and admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how
like a god: the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals! And
yet to me what is this quintessence of dust?

The last category of interpretation that needs some consideration refers to Hamlet's assumed madness, and Ophelia's true madness, and its implications on our understanding of 'spiritual defeat'. If we consider that we are beings divided from the beasts only in our capacity for rational thought, what happens when that faculty goes haywire?

KING (Claudius) ... poor Ophelia
Divided from herself and her fair judgement,
Without the which we are pictures or mere beasts...

After becoming mad, has Ophelia therefore lost her soul? Consider that the basis for the early church's assertion that man was better than other animals in his potential for rational speculation and imagining, that is, that the conception of the human soul was linked to the human capacity for revolutionary thinking and reflection upon matters divine - his rationality. We each possess a divine spark, and while the distinction may be made between spirit and mind, where is this line drawn, specifically in relation to the environment in which Hamlet takes place? How does speculation on the nature of the soul then reflect on Ophelia's death? Did she die by her own hand or was it an accident? Or had she in fact lost her soul the moment she lost her grip on reality? If so, this would reflect poorly on Hamlet himself who, upon seeing ghosts and acting mad, may have also lost his rationality (despite the 'method' in his madness). The spiritual defeat here relates not only to the lose of the mortal soul in succumbing to madness, but in the realization that our lack of precise definition concerning our own pneuma may suggest that we in fact have very little understanding of the spiritual as it is. If we don't know what the soul is, how can we hope to preserve it or save it from defeat?

Whatever interpretation you adhere to, I do not doubt that Hamlet is a play of spiritual defeat, as it involves the overthrow of what is considered good in mankind, in reason and in spirit, by the murderous hand of the temporal, whether that be the material world (and the associated lusts and greed borne from it), the bestial nature of man, the mind itself or, similarly, the consensus reality within which we all apparently exist.

Bibliography

Deakin University, Narrative and Subversion, Study guide, Learning Resources Services, Deakin University, published 1996.

C. G. Jung. Civilisation in Transition. Vol. 10, The Collected Works of C. G. Jung. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1962.

C. G. Jung. Modern Man in Search of a Soul. Translated by W. S. Dell and Cary F. Baynes. New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1993.

Shakespeare, William. Hamlet. Edited by T. J. B. Spencer. The New Penguin Shakespeare. London: Penguin Books Ltd, 1980.

Watson, Donald. A Dictionary of Mind and Spirit. Optima, a division of Little, Brown and Company (UK) Limited, London, 1993.