ABSTRACT
There is an old adage that “The problem with the Irish Question is that the Irish seem to keep changing the question” and like the Irish, Hamlet’s specialty seems to be changing the question. Not ruthless enough to slaughter his way to the throne, he is nevertheless ruthless in his questioning. The only character with more verbal agility than Hamlet is the grave digger, a representation of the death which is Hamlet’s only inevitability. No other character can rhetorically pin the down the clever and questioning prince, but the freedom Hamlet seeks eludes him. A cautious guard of the purity of his own motives, Hamlet cannot overturn that pragmatist king who popped in between his expectations and the crown except at the expense of either his innocence or his own life. His imaginative flexibility with language therefore brings him the freedom only to describe and subvert the royal administration under which he finds himself. Just as in Richard II, the conflict in Hamlet is one between an idealist and a realist, between a character marked for his rhetorical flexibility and a character marked for his pragmatic grasping of power. Hamlet presses the idealist into service to the victory of pragmatism by demonstrating the impossibility of a successful revolt.
