Reserve Text: Ronald Strickland, 'The Rest is Silence': Hamlet and the Problems of Communication in Revenge Tragedy

Elizabethan revenge tragedy occupies a central place in the great flowering of English tragedy at the beginning of the seventeenth century. Paradoxically, however, revenge tragedies often strike audiences as something less, or something other, than real tragedies. As a sub-genre, revenge tragedy gives us heroes who are nearly indistinguishable from its villains and who, for a variety of reasons, end up alienating audience sympathy and engagement.

This alienation occurs partly because revenge heroes are so manipulative, engaging in Machiavellian power struggles to achieve revenge. Just as important, while these heroes are obsessed with communication--expressing their grief, naming their, enemies to the world--they communicate their tragic suffering primarily to various audiences within the play, and only secondarily to the real audience. Thus, there is a built-in distance between the real audience and the revenge hero.

   

Further, in trying to make his grief communal the revenger reverses the dominant tragic tendency, which is to isolate the hero with a unique and particular sort of grief or suffering. This is one of the reasons that revenge tragedy has been called a weakened form of tragedy." In fact, I will argue in this essay, the chief reason the revenge genre strikes many readers and playgoers as not fully tragic has to do precisely with the way the genre typically handles the problems of communication: both communication between characters and between the hero and the theater audience. Further, I want to suggest that in Hamlet Shakespeare intensifies the genre's preoccupation with

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problems of communication but transcends the attendant audience alienation or distance from the hero's tragic experience.

To understand the centrality of communication to the revenge genre one must recognize, first, that revenge is itself a communicative act. The power struggle between the revenge hero and his enemies is, typically, a struggle to determine which of two conflicting versions of reality will be communicated to a third- party interior audience. And, usually, the hero's revenge is delayed as a result of some form of communication problem: either he is uncertain of the identity of his enemy, or he knows but lacks the power or credibility to accuse the villain. The typical revenge plot, then, relates the revenger's successful quest to gain this power and credibility. The actual revenge is always connected with the revenger's desire for communication-in killing the villain the revenge hero expresses his anger and grief and publicizes the villain's guilt.

The communicative function of the revenge act is emphasized in revenge plays by the overt theatricality of the revenge scenest the play-within-the-play of The Spanish Tragedy, for example, or the carefully staged Thyestian banquet of Titus Andronicus, or the spectacle of cuckoldry that the dying duke is forced to view in The Revenger's Tragedy. These staged revenge scenes almost always involve one or both of the two kinds of communication with which revenge tragedy is inevitably concerned. First, the revenger successfully counters the villain's lies by revealing a truth of which the revenger has gained secret knowledge. One function of the Thyestian banquet in Titus


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Andronicus, for example, is to gather together an elite audience before which Titus can effectively expose the lies and the crimes of the Empress and her sons. Second, the revenger communicates his anger and his grief to the villain or other interior audiences, often forcing other characters to experience an injury similar to that which has caused the revenger's own grief. Thus, in a nicely complicated variation on the "rape of Philomel" theme, Titus murders the men who have raped and mutilated his daughter, then cooks them and serves them to their mother. It is appropriate to the conventions of revenge tragedy that Titus forces Tamora to suffer, and that her suffering is in some ways parallel to Titus' suffering. A sort of clever irony in accomplishing the revenge is a trademark of the genre, and it is directly related to the revenger's desire to communicate to interior audiences in addition to killing his enemy. In order to precisely convey his tragic experience and insure that his version of reality will prevail over that of his enemies the revenger must control the conditions of communication and the conditions of his interior audience's perception and response. inevitably, the revenger resorts to manipulating other characters; he achieves his combined goals of revenge and communication only by adopting villainous tactics and by overcoming the kind of tragic suffering and isolation that evokes the sympathy of the theatre audience. As a result, we are increasingly distanced from his grief and our experience of the play may verge on melodrama.

To see how this alienation comes about, consider for a moment the proto-typical revenge play, Thomas Kyd's The Spanish

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Tragedy. Like most later revenge heroes, Hieronimo has trouble with communication. Hieronimo at first doubts the truthfulness of a message identifying the murderers of his son, Horatio. And when he does realize the true identity of his enemies, Hierorimo struggles with the problems of communicating both this knowledge Hieronimo is initially unable to express himself to the King and the court because of his madness (III. xi) and because of the interference of his enemy, Lorenzo (III. UP.'

But in the play-within-the-play at the end of The Spanish Tragedy Hieronimo does not merely achieve revenge for the murder of his son, he also achieves self-expressive communication; he arranges for the fathers of his son's murderers to witness the deaths of their sons. He forces these fathers to experience a loss like his loss. And in his epilogue to the play he publicly exposes the guilt of Lorenzo and Balthazar. Thus, during the course of the play Hieronimo progresses from an innocent victim, inept at communication, to a cunning manipulator, skillfully controlling the perceptions and responses of his interior audiences.

An audience's response to Hieronimo's tragic suffering is directly affected by his progression from failure to success as a communicator. In Act II of The Spanish Tragedy, Hieronimo's overwhelming distress evokes our sympathy. Discovering the body of his son, Horatio, Hieronimo suffers a fit of madness, which prevents him from communicating with other characters. Hieronimo's outcries bring his wife, Isabella, to the garden where Horatio's body has been found. At first he turns to her for solace. But he soon begins to deny the reality of Horatio's
and his
rief.

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death despite the contrary protests of Isabella and his servants, Pedro and Jacques (II. v, 46-98)." He will not listen to the reason of his wife and servants, and he cannot persuade them to accept his false version of reality. Significantly, in this part of the play Hieronimo begins to speak more often in soliloquy. He cries out in anguish against the injustice of Horatio's unrevenged death:

Oh eyes! no eyes, but fountains fraught with tears;
Oh life! no life, but lively form of death;
Oh world! no world, but mass of public wrongs,
Confus'd and fill'd with murder and misdeeds.
Oh sacred heavens! if this unhallowed deed,
If this inhuman, barbarous attempt,
If this incomparable murder thus
Of mine, but now no more my son,
Shall unreveal'd and unrevenged pass,
How should we term your dealings to be just,
If you unjustly deal with those that in your justice trust?
(III. ii, 1-11)

And in another soliloquy Hieronimo expresses his frustration over his inability to communicate his grief:

Where shall I rum to breathe abroad my woes,
My woes, whose weight hath wearied the earth?
Or mine exclaims, that have surcharged the air
With ceaseless plaints for my deceased son?
The blust'ring winds, conspiring with my words,
At my lament have moved the leaveless trees,
Disrob'd the meadows of the f%ower'd green,
Made mountains marsh with springtides of my tears,
And broken through the brazen gates of hell.
Yet still tormented is my tortured soul
With broken sighs and restless passions,
That, winged, mount and, hovering in the air,
Beat at the windows of the brightest heavens,
Soliciting for justice and revenge:
But they are plac'd in those empyreal heights,
Where, countermur'd with walls of diamond,
I find the place impregnable; and they
Resist m. woes, and give my words no way. (III. vii, 1-17)

These soliloquies emphasize Hieronimo's isolation; he seems to be trying to express feelings that cannot be communicated to

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audiences within the play. Though he continues to interact with other characters as he performs his duties as Knight Marshall, he is always preoccupied Vith his own grief. He often speaks incoherently or mutters to himself, as in the following passage opening the scene of Pedringano's trial:

Thus must we toil in other men's extremes,
That know not how to remedy our own,
And do them justice, when unjustly we,
For all our wrongs, can compass no redress.
But shall I never live to see the day.
That I may come, by justice of the heavens,
To know the cause that may my cares allay?
This toils my body, this consumeth age,
That only I to all men just must be,
And neither gods nor men be just to me. (III. vi, 1-10)

Near the end of the third act, however, Hieronimo begins to emerge from the isolation of madness and to communicate his grief to other characters. In Act III, scene xii and in Act III, scene xiii Hieromimo tries to express his grief first to a painter, Bazardo, and then to an old man, Don Bazulto. Significantly, like Hieronimo, each of these men is grieving for a murdered son. They represent a potentially sympathetic audience for Hieronimo, in contrast to the insensitivity to and lack of awareness of Hieronimo's suffering in the Spanish royal court. Still, though, Hieronimo is unable to achieve a precise and satisfying expression of his sense of loss. And, since Hieronimo is unable to present his grievance to a higher authority, he remains isolated and frustrated, unlike Bazardo and Bazulto, who seek justice from Hieronimo himself.

Hieronimo's desire for communication is emphasized by his request of Bazardo to paint a picture of villainy representing the murder of Horatio. But during this conversation Hieronimo remains mad, ending the interview by "beat[ing] the Painter in" (III. xiiA, 162) according to the stage direction. Even though he and Bazardo have experienced similar injustices, communication between them is hindered by Hieronimo"s solipsistic madness. In his subsequent encounter with Don Bazulto, however, Hieronimo is finally drawn into a calm and sympathetic conversation. When he reads a supplication brought to him by Don Bazulto Hieronimo first insists upon his own uniqueness, but finally acknowledges Bazulto's comparable grief:

What's here? "The humble supplication
Of Don Bazulto for his murder'd son." ....
No, sir; it was my murder'd son!
Oh my son, my son, oh my son Horatio!
But mine, or thine, Bazulto, be content.
Here, take my handkercher and wipe thine eyes,
Whiles wretched I in thy mishaps may see
The lively portrait of my dying self. (III. xiii, 78-85)

Having acknowledged Bazulto's grief, Hieronimo slips back into madness, first mistaking Bazulto for Horatio, and them insisting that Bazulto is a Fury, sent to plague him for being remiss in revenge. Hieronimo persists in these delusions until Bazulto reminds him of his own murdered son, and the reminder of this shared experience rids Hieronimo, momentarily, of the rage that has made him alone and untouchable in his suffering. For a moment Hieronimo seems less isolated, more ordinary. He sympathizes with Bazulto:


Ay, now Iknow thee, now thou namest thy son:
Thou art the lively image of my grief;
Within thy face my sorrows I may see.
Thy eyes are gumm'd with tears, thy cheeks are wan,
Thy forehead troubled, and thy mutt'ring lips


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Murmer sad words abruptly broken off,
By force of windy sighs thy spirit breathes;
And all this sorrow rises for thy son,
And selfsame sorrow feel I for my son.
Come in, old man, thou shalt to Isabel.
Lean on my arm; I thee, thou me shalt stay;
And thou, and I, and she, will sing a song,
Three parts in one, but all of discords fram'd
Talk not of cords, but let us now be gone;
For with a cord Horatio was slain.
(III. xiii, 161-75)

Here Hieronimo continues to grieve; he reverts to the isolation of an inner dialogue of grief for Horatio at the end of this speech. But, for a moment, he has sanely and sympathetically commiserated with Bazulto, and the effect of his tragic isolation is lessened to a certain extent by the passing of his madness. It is Hieronimo's limited success in communicating his grief to Bazulto that marks the turning point in his pursuit of revenge. From this point on Hieronimo ceases to be a naive, distracted victim and becomes icreasingly clever, cunning, and manipulative.

After this scene with Bazulto, Hieronimo reasserts his difference from Bazardo and Bazulto; now, however, he is distinguished not by his sorrow and isolation, but by his calculating obsession with controlled communication and revenge. As a result, he gradually forfeits his claim on the sympathy of the real audience. Having overcome his true madness, Hieronimo assumes a feigned pose of distraction, as when Castile sends for Hieronimo to reconcile him with Lorenzo in Act III, scene xiv. In this scene Hieronimo begins to manipulate other characters through deceptive communication. First he deliberately mistakes Castile's conventional introduction in a literal sense:

Castile.
Hieronimo, the reason that I sent

To speak with you is this.

Hieronimo. What, so short?

Then I'll be gone; I thank you for it.
(III. xiv, 123-6)

Then, Hieronimo disingenuously professes his loyalty and friendship to Lorenzo:

Castile.
Hieronimo, I hope you have no cause,
And would be loth that one of your deserts

Should once have reason to suspect my son,

Considering how I think of you myself. Hieronimo.
Your son Lorenzo! Whom my noble lord?
The hope of Spain, mine honorable friend?

Grant me the combat of them, if they dare!

Draws out his sword I'll meet him face to face, to tell me so!

These be the scandalous reports of such
As love not me, and hate my lord too much

Should I suspect Lorenzo would prevent
Or cross my suit, that loved my son so well?

My lord, I am ashamed it should be said. (III. iv, 135-47)


This deception is a means of gaining manipulative control. By pretending to be naive and distracted, Hieronimo causes Lorenzo and Balthazar to overlook his plot for revenge.
Consequently, they become unwitting participants in his revenge plot' tricked into rehearsing and acting out their own deaths.

The revenge scene at the end of The Spanish Tragedy underscores and fulfills Hieronimo's desire to communicate his grief as well as to revenge Horatio's death. As author, director, and actor in his own play-within-the-play, Hieronimo exercises a high degree of control over his interior audience in , this scene; he literally forces his audience to grieve. And when the King presses Hieronimo for more information at the end of his play, Hieronimo insists upon silence; first by biting out his own tongue, and then by stabbing himself when he is pressed to written communication. Hieronimo will tell only what he wishes, and no more. '

It is important to compare the manipulative control that Hieronimo exerts over his enemies in the revenge scene to the free give and take of his encounters with Bazardo and Bazulto. With these bereaved fathers, Hieronimo speaks spontaneously and without guile. He acknowledges Bazulto's own suffering. But by the end of the play Hieronimo's quest for revenge and expression of his grief has become an obsession that supercedes the tragic and human qualities of his character. In manipulating other characters to control their perceptions Hieronimo has become inhumanly powerful. Furthermore, by making public his secret knowlege of Horatio's murderers and by forcing their fathers to suffer as he has suffered, Hieronimo forfeits his status as a tragic hero suffering in isolation. At the end of The Spanish Tragedy an audience may applaud Hieronimo's success as a revenger, but it will not be emotionally engaged in his tragic suffering or inclined to experience his death as a tragic release or catharsis.

This pattern by which the audience is increasingly distanced from the revenge hero as he succeeds in his revenge is found in virtually all of the Elizabethan revenge plays spawned by the
success of and written on the formula of The Spanish Tragedy.4 '

   


In the earlier revenge plays, such as The Spanish Tragedy and Titus Andronicus (both printed in 1594), the revenge hero suffers in isolation, at least initially, upon discovering the murder which will evoke the qevenge. The motivation for revenge is heavily emphasized and unquestionably just, and the revenger does not begin successfully manipulating other characters and communicating his grie' to interior audiences until late in the play. Often the revenger's struggle to communicate is selfconsciously emphasized, as in Titus Andronicus's futile and ridiculous attempt at self-expression by shooting message-bearing arrows toward the gods. Initially unable to express their grief, these early revenge heroes at least begin with the potential for tragic isolation, and the promise of engaging the audience with their tragic situation. Soon, however, they sacrifice this promise as they immerse themselves in the business of revenge.

In later revenge plays, however, the revenge hero may be involved in manipulative schemes of communication and revenge from the very beginning of the play. Such revemgers typically become so caught up in their schemes that they themselves become irredeemably villainous in their pursuit of villains. The line of distinction between the revengers and their enemies is blurred and the potential for tragic isolation is diminished. Vindice, the hero of Cyril Tourneur"s The Revenger's Tragedy (1607), is this kind of revenger. Vindice's motive is suppressed; his wife has been dead for several years and he never really grieves for her. And Vindice begins successfully manipulating other characters very early in the first act. He never suffers in isolation or struggles to communicate his grief. He practices a dissembling, deceitful kind of manipulative communication, aimed at cruelly punishing hisenemies, and he frequently gloats over his successes. His skill and delight in .manipulating other characters are conventional hracteristics pass' down from the allegorical "Vice" of medieval drama, and this association further distances him from the audience. Vindice is clever, capable, entertaining, and yet ruthless and inhuman in his pursuit of revenge.0

In Hamlet there is a paradoxical mixture of the initially frustrated communicators of the early revenge tragedies and the always capable communicators of the later revenge tragedies.''* From the very beginning of the play it is obvious that Hamlet is isolated from the rest of the court of Denmark. No one else shares his uneasiness over his father's death and his mother's remarriage. And, like Hieronimo and Titus Andronicus, Hamlet's personal grief leaves him psychologically vulnerable to the manipulative schemes of his enemies. On the other hand, unlike Hieronimo and Titus Andronicus, Hamlet is never inarticulate. As Claudius observes, his speech, though it ". . . lack"d form a little,/Was not like madness" (III. i, 163-4). From the very beginning of the play Hamlet demonstrates a cagey self-composure and a remarkable skill in fashioning and carrying out his own manipulative schemes of communication. Though he suffers in isolation like a tragic hero, he communicates like a true revenger.

This coexistence of revenger and tragic hero characteristics is revealed in Hamlet's mixed performance as a communicator. Though he is generally articulate, there always remains
something that Hamlet-cannot quite express, and that he finally realizes is impossible to express. Hamlet's soliloquies underscore his difficulty in expressing his inner feelings and '
` emphasize his isolation from the rest of the characters in the play. At the same time, the soliloquies diminish the distance between Hamlet and the theater audience. They allow the audience to share his thoughts,'and the problems he wrestles with engage us in a tragic situation. But he also uses the soliloquies, Vice-like, simply to inform the audience of his revenge plans (cf. "The play's the thing/Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the King!").

In the soliloquy after his encounter with Fortinbras' captain, for example, Hamlet delivers a skeptical and fatalistic argument against the foolishness of fighting for a worthless cause. The soliloquy exhibits the kind of clear-headed reasoning one expects from a tragic hero whose suffering has given him an acute insight into human vanity or frailty. Yet Hamlet speaks the soliloquy in the tone of a passionate revenger, and he concludes by again reproaching himself for delaying revenge: "O, from this time forth,/My thoughts be bloody, or nothing worth" (IV. iv, 65-6). The contradictory signals of Hamlet's soliloquies indicate that something is tragically wrong, but Hamlet's deepest feelings cannot be,precisely communicated to other chaqacters within the play, and perhaps not even to the real audience.

Another important dramatic strategy by which Shakespeare directs Hamlet's attempts at communication toward the real audience and isolates Hamlet's experience of tragic suffering is `
his use of Horatio as a confidant. Even though Hamlet appears to have in Horatio a sympathetic ear for communicating his grief, communication between them is effectively limited. Thus, the
ultimate impossibility of communication is stressed and the audience is more deeply engaged in Hamlet's tragic situation. Ha/let's conversations with Horatio perform two practical dramatic functions; they announce details pertaining to the revenge plot, an. they relate Hamlet's struggle with his tragic suffering to the audience. In both respects Hamlet's conversations with Horatio are essentially extensions of the soliloquies. Though Hamlet speaks to Horatio of his innermost feelings, Horatio never discusses the subject of Hamlet's grief at any length. In most of their scenes together, Horatio is merely a polite interlocutor, a sort of rhetorical stage device, interjecting a brief question or assent when Hamlet's speeches require a respite or a turn. Hamlet does not so much share his tragic suffering with Horatio; he shares it with the audience.
Yet, Hamlet's close rapport with the real theater audience audience is not gained at the expense of failing to communicate to interior audiences. Like Vindice, and unlike Hieronimo and Titus Andronicus, Hamlet is generally poised and discreet in public. And like Vindice, he manipulates other characters and communicates to interior audiences from the very beginning of the play. Yet Hamlet is also the subject of manipulation at various times during the play, and in Hamlet there is less of a clear progression from the protagonist as a dismayed victim to the protagonist as a manipulating communicator-revenger.

In Act I Hamlet is at first subjected to Claudius' man. ipulative reinterpretation of his replies. In Hamlet's interview with Claudius, in Act I, scene ii, Claudius is setting the terms and controlling the boundaries of their dialogue. Hamlet is certainly attempting to express` his discontent, with his melancholic and sarcastic comments, but there is no indication that Claudius or Gertrude or the court audience is receptive to Hamlet's complaints. Hamlet's interview with the King is a battle of wits between two highly-skilled communicators. Claudius skillfully contrives for his audience of courtiers a scenario representing himself as a secure and benevolent ruler who is genuinely and lovingly concerned about the prolonged melancholy of his nephew-son-heir, Hamlet. Claudius attempts to draw Hamlet out with leading questions such as: "How is it that the clouds still hang on you?" (I. ii, 66). But Hamlet responds by stubbornly and skillfully expressing his discontent in punning double-talk: "Not so, my lord, I am too much in the sun" (I. ii, 67). Gertrude is rather more successful in drawing Hamlet out, and indeed she seems to be the intended primary audience for Hamlet's communication. Still~ his responses to her are expressions of discontent, though not as curt as his responses to Claudius. But Claudius` skill and determination to control the impression left by this interview on the interior audience of courtiers is clearly formidable, as his preemptive manner of ending the interview indicates:

Queen. Let not thy mother lose her prayers,

Hamlet, I pray thee, stay with us, go not to Wittenburg.

Ham. I shall in all my best obey you, madam.

King. Why, 'tis a loving and a fair reply!

Be as ourselves in Denmark.

Madam, come.
This gentle and unforced accord of Hamlet
Sits smiling to my heart, in grace whereof,

No jocund health that Denmark drinks to-day,
But the great cannon to the clouds shall tell,
And the King's rouse the heaven shall bruit again,

Respeaking earthly thunder. Come away.
(I, ii, 119-28)

Here Claudius has the upper hand, and he deftly recasts Hamlet's laconic reply into a form of propaganda for his court.

Soon, however, Hamlet begins to practice a similar manipulation--censorship. At the end of Hamlet's first meeting with the Ghost, !e takes considerable pains to ensure that Horatio and Marcellus will not interfere with his plans for revenge. Having exhorted them, with the Ghost's assistance, to swear a vow of silence, Hamlet concludes by carefully spelling out the kinds of implicit communicative acts that will be unacceptable:

[Ham.] But come-
Here, as before, never, so help you mercy, How strange or odd some'er I bear myself-

As I perchance hereafter shall think meet

To put an antic disposition on-
That you, at such times seeing me, never shall,

With arms encumb'red thus, or this headshake,

Or by pronouncing of some doubtful phrase,
As "Well, well, we know," or "There be, and if they might,''
Or such ambiguous giving out, to mote

That you know aught of me--this do swear,

So grace and mercy at your most need help you. (I. v, 168-80)

And by the time Hamlet presents his "Mouse-trap," he is confidently controlling the perceptions and responses of his interior audience. As Claudius reinterprets the dialogue in Act I, scene ii, in Act %I%, scene ii Hamlet makes certain that his audience gets the right message by providing a running commentary on his play-within-the-play. Hamlet baits Claudius skillfully and purposefully:

King. Have you heard the argument? is there no offense in't?
Ham. No, no they do but jest, poison in jest__no offence i' th' world.
King. What do you call the play?
Ham. "The Mouse-trap." Marry, how? tropically:
this play is the image of a murther done in Vienna; Gonzago is the duke's name, his wife, Baptista. You shall see anon. 'Tis a knavish piece of work, but what of that? Your Majesty, and we that have free souls, it touches us not. Let the gall'd jade winch, our withers are unwrung.
(III.ii,232-43)

But here, as in Act I, Hamlet is also expressing his disgust and anger at his mother for marrying his uncle. Ophelia often serves as a surrogate for Gertrude as the target for Hamlet's outbursts of disgust with female infidelity, as in his following comments:

[Ham.] This is one Lucianus, nephew to the king.
0ph. You are as good as a chorus, my lord. //am. I could interpret between you and your love, if I could see the puppets dallying.
Oph. You are keen, my lord, you are keen. Ham. It would cost you a groaning to take off mine edge.
0ph. Still better, and worse.
Han. So you mistake your husbands. Begin murtherer, leave thy damnable faces and begin. Come, the croaking raven doth bellow for revenge.

(%%%.ii,244-54)
Hamlet's divided purpose is clearly evident in this passage. On the one hand, he is disgusted with Gertrude, and be is eager to communicate this disgust to her, or to Ophelia in her place. The displacement involved in Hamlet's lewd and misogynistic banter with Ophelia emphasizes his frustration and isolation in being unable to communicate his disgust to Gertrude. But the business at hand is to communicate to Claudius. Thus, Hamlet is sure to point out that the approaching murderer is "Lucianus, nephew to the king,".and eager tointerpret his threat for Claudius, interrupting his sexual repartee with Ophelia to urge on the villain. Whether or not there isan overt threat involved in Hamlet's words, "Come, thq croaking raven doth bellow for revenge," is open to debate. But the comment clearly indicates Hamlet's desire to control his audience's (Claudius') response to the vMouse-trap." Revenge is not yet in order in the context of the "Mouse-trap" ,play; the initial crime is just about to occur. But the threat of revenge is an important element of the message that Hamlet intends to communicate to Claudius. In his commentary upon the "Mouse-trap" Hamlet is clearly making sure that Claudius gets the right message from his play, just as Claudius made sure that his courtiers got the right message from the interview with Hamlet in Act I' scene ii. And, as Claudius' reaction to the play makes clear, Hamlet's communicative strategy is successful.

In a sense,-Hamlet and Claudius have exchanged positions since the beginning of the play. Hamlet is now orchestrating their battle of wits and Claudius is reacting in am off-balanced way. Hamlet is no longer a grief-stricken melancholic, powerless and strikingly alone in his mourning habit, surrounded by a gay and busy court. This is not quite the same Hamlet who contemplates suicide in the "To be or not to be" soliloquy. He is now much less a victim and much more a scheming manipulator. This development is apparent in Hamlet's glee over the success of his "Mouse-trap." At that moment (III. ii, 271-95) Hamlet seems to have forgotten his grief; he is caught up in the business of revenge and he is communicating to interior audiences rather than to the real audience. And the absolute zenith of Hamlet's career as a conventional revenge hero comes shortly after the "Mouse-trap" in the famous prayer scene.e Here, as Claudius kneels in prayer, Hamlet prepares to kill him, then is checked by the thought that Claudius will go to heaven if he dies while praying. Ironically, at the point when he is most nearly the conventional vicious rpvenger, Hamlet's vindictive attitude causes him to delay the revenge!

It is somewhat unwarranted, therefore, for the Ghost to appear shortly after this scene to charge Hamlet with negligence." When the Ghost appears, Hamlet has just killed Polonius, mistaking him for Claudius. And Hamlet shows little sign of remorse or misgiving. In one sense, however, the Ghost has good cause for concern. When the Ghost appears Hamlet is railing at his mother in fairly harsh terms, and, indeed, he seems to be more interested in expressing his disgust with her than in pursuing his mission of revenge. This is ironically emphasized by the Ghost's initial instructions to leave Gertrude alone and by the fact that the Ghost reappears to interrupt Hamlet's tirade against her during the closet scene. Hamlet's obsession with communicating his disgust, or his sense of betrayal, to his mother places am exaggerated emphasis on communication to an interior audience. It is a conventional element of revenge tragedy exaggerated so that it will not quite fit into the conventional pattern.

Through Hamlet's obsession with communicating to his mother Shakespeare calls attention to the fact that self-expression and communication of the revenger's grief are really more important than the actual killing in revenge tragedies. Thus, when Hamlet rails at Ophelia in the nunnery scene (a scene which is, more than anything else, a dress rehearsal for ,his later performance in Gertrude's closet) his antic disposition seems less a manipulative ploy to disarm suspicion than the genuine distraction of tragic suffering. So, even at his most revengeful, Hamlet is somewhat more than a ryvenge hero, and his motives are not completely in line with the Ghost's instructions.
Soon, of course, the Ghost's fear that Hamlet will neglect his revenge is realized. Hamlet's pursuit of revenge is moderated, at least temporarily, after the closet scene, and at the same time he seems to develop a new understanding of the nature of communication. The change is evident in comparing his responses to Claudius' questions about Polonius in Act IV scene iv to his interview with Claudius in Act I. In Act I Hamlet expresses an attitude of sarcasm and bitterness in the underlying meanings of his puns. Here, by contrast, he seems resigned to the general human condition of corruption, and less concerned about communicating his perspective to Claudius:

King. Now, Hamlet, where's Polonius?

Ham. At supper.
King. At supper? where?
Ham. Not where he eats, but where 'a is eaten; a certain convocation of politic worms are e'en at him. Your worm is your only emperor for diet: We fat all creatures else to fat us, and we fat ourselves for maggots; your fat king and your lean beggar is but variable service, two dishes, but to one table--that's the end.
King. Alas, alas!
Ham. A man may fish with the worm that hath eat of a king, and eat of the-fish that hath fed of that worm.
King. What dost thou mean by this?
Ham. Nothing but to show you howa king may go a progress through the guts of a beggar.

King. Where is Polonius?
Ham. In heaven, send thither to see; if your messenger find him not there, seek him i` th` other place yourself. But if indeed you find him not within this month, you shall nose him as you go up the stairs into the lobby.

King. [To Attendants.] Go seek him there.
Ham. `A will stay till you come.
(IV. iv, 16-38)

Significantly, Hamlet openly taunts Claudius with his inverted riddle of how a king may go a progress through the guts of a beggar and his overt implication that Claudius is not fit for heaven. Hamlet gives the answer to his riddle first, and, ironically, Claudius is confused. It is not the actual meaning of Hamlet's riddle that confuses Claudius, rather it is Hamlet's carefree attitude. Hamlet is now unconcerned about the danger of attacking Claudius and unconcerned about how or whether Claudius comprehends his meanings. He confronts Claudius openly and spontaneously, without the typical revenger's care to ensure that his enemy responds in a predetermined way to his communication. And at the end of this interview he allows Claudius to send him to England without any sign of concern for his safety.

On board the ship bound for England and his appointed death, Hamlet chances to intercept his death warrant. The inadvertency of this discovery is a significant departure from the typical revenge genre pattern. At this stage in the typical revenge revenger is growing more certain in his control of play, the other characters and situations. this message is providential, as His success does not result from The revelation of discovering Claudius' letter reinforces the


But Hamlet's interception of

 

he will later remark to Horatio.
his own manipulative schemes.
change in Hamlet's attitude toward communication that emerges after the killing of Polonius. Hamlet retains some traits of the revenge hero; he dispatches Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to their deaths without a second thought. But he seems to assume, new attitude of openly daring fate. He abandons such indirect techniques of communication as his punning double-talk and his Mouse-trap. Now he oppnly challenges Claudius with a letter announcing his return.

Claudius' reaction to this letter is revealing in terms of the change in Hamlet's attitude toward communication. Earlier in the play, when Hamlet is dissembling and manipulating, Claudius
is not really fooled. He understands the real meaning behind Hamlet's puns and "mad" tirades. After the nunnery scene, for example, Claudius discounts Polonius's theory that Hamlet is mad for love:

Love? his affections do not that way tend,
Nor what he spake, though it lack,d form a little,

Was not like madness. There's something in his soul

O'er which his melancholy sits on brood,
And I do doubt the hatch and the disclose

Will be some danger. . . .
(III. i, 162-7)

And Claudius obviously understands Hamlet's threat in the Mousetrap, in addition to being stung with guilt by Hamlet's play. But when Claudius reads Hamlet's announcement that "You shall know Iam set naked on your kingdom" he seems nonplussed, for once:

What should this mean? Are all the rest come back? Or is it some abuse, and no such thing? . . . . 'Tis Hamlet's character. "Naked"!' And in a postscript here he says "alone." Can you devise me?
(V. vii, 49-53)

Of course, he should be surprised that Hamlet has survived his murder plot. But beyond that, I think, Claudius is genuinely confused by Hamlet's straightforwardness. It is one indication that, unlike other revenge heroes, Hamlet is not growing