ABSTRACT
‘I do not know / Why yet I live to say this thing’s to do, / Sith I have cause and will and strength and means / To do’t’, declares Hamlet in his last monologue. After his bouts of introspection, the extent of which is unprecedented in Elizabethan drama, this is an arresting thing for Hamlet to say. His meticulous self-examination, rather than yielding a deeper insight into his mind and soul, ends in perplexity. We may see why Hamlet would come to such a conclusion from the perspective of early modern moral philosophy. The problem is that none of the models of governance (Socratic, Stoic, Senecan and Aristotelian) available to an Elizabethan courtier would account for Hamlet’s inaction. When Hamlet recognises that neither passion, nor reason, nor the two in conjunction can induce him to execute his revenge, he knows no further. This would explain why Hamlet would come to the conclusion that he does not understand his own behaviour. However, what remains unexplained within this framework is how is it theoretically possible for Hamlet to experience self-awe (that is, being at a loss with one’s own feelings, thoughts, and acts), when he also claims that he alone has access to ‘that within’, that innermost self which ‘denotes’ him ‘truly’. I shall argue that Wittgenstein’s views on interiority allow us to clarify this question. Moreover, Wittgenstein’s arguments that introspection cannot yield knowledge in a philosophical sense, and that self-knowledge can be reached only in dialogue, point to the crucial importance of the experience of self-awe in connecting the self to the outside world. Approaching Shakespeare’s play from the perspective of Wittgenstein’s later philosophy, we realise that in Hamlet, too, the experience of being at a loss with the own feelings and thoughts actually opens up the self to the world without. After his moment of self-awe in his last monologue, Hamlet does turn from the futile pursuit of knowledge through introspection to the dialogic exploration of the self: he begins to discuss his emotional life with Horatio. In conversation with Horatio, Hamlet can make sense of his behaviour towards Laertes; he can also give voice, for the first time, to his disappointed hopes for the crown. To put it more generally, self-awe compels us to make contact with others. Those passions (or thoughts or acts) which amaze and surprise us connect our mind to the outside world. Hamlet’s ongoing self-examination culminates in his last monologue, where he reflects, for the very last time, on his failure to execute his revenge: […] Now whether it be Bestial oblivion or some craven scruple Of thinking too precisely on th’event (A thought which quartered hath but one part wisdom And ever three parts coward) I do not know Why yet I live to say this thing’s to do, Sith I have cause and will and strength and means To do’t. Examples gross as earth exhort me – (4.4. 38–45) 1 This passage reverberates with the ghost’s admonishing words ‘Do not forget’ and rehearses Hamlet’s earlier argument that thinking is an obstacle to action. Indeed, Hamlet’s last monologue has been often criticised for the recapitulation of already familiar ideas, and some recent editions even call its overall significance into question, making much of the fact that it is entirely missing from both Q1 and the Folio. 2 The comment ‘I do not know / Why yet I live to say this thing’s to do’, if noted at all, is construed as Hamlet’s inability to choose between two options: Hamlet does not know whether it is ‘bestial oblivion’ or ‘some craven scruple’ that stands in the way of his revenge. I believe, however, that this remark is more substantial, and the monologue does ‘reveal something new about Hamlet and his state of mind’. 3 In my reading, the phrase ‘I do not know …’ has a considerably larger scope of reference: it signals a profound lack of self-knowledge. Hamlet realises at last that he does not understand his own behaviour, he discovers that he has become an enigma to himself.
