liberal arts education

[the afflicted speculates, in an amusingly diseased manner, upon the cause of her illness through a literary effigy.]

It struck me as strange, even on the first read-through of the play, that so many of Hamlet’s school fellows were in Elsinore. Horatio, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, if not others, all knew our hero from Wittenberg. Perhaps it’s caused by the tilted time of life in which I read Hamlet, but I can’t help but think that Hamlet’s “melancholy” may simply be induced by his rigorous education.

The foundation of the “liberal arts madness” reading is simple: Horatio, the guardsmen (whose origin is ambiguous, but who are in league with Horatio and mentioned only in context of trusting and calling upon him), Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are all figments of Hamlet’s imagination. Hamlet, Sr.’s ghost is not real, as it was Horatio and the guards who pointed the apparition out to Hamlet.

Why the hallucination? Hamlet’s education has filled his head with conflicting viewpoints, and has boosted his propensity to think and question to the point at which he is constantly running a heated seminar discussion in his head. In this period of time, education still went by the book –– several, actually, the Great Books –– and held a decidedly Biblical slant. The Dane’s liberal arts education actually explains his madness quite fully, all things considered: a love for reason and absolutes accompanied by the frustrating inability to live by them, a tendency to make mythological, historical, and literary allusions left and right, a sharp tongue, a quick wit, and perhaps most of all his incongruous adherence to select parts of the Catholic faith.

I’ve discussed Horatio a fair piece in another journal entry, but to state briefly his role as liberal arts illusion: he is the reason taught in classical university, the ideal, unquestionable, ever-reliable force one goes to when all else fails. Hamlet goes to him for guidance, support and, ultimately, his remembrance.

On the other side of the spectrum, we have the ghost. Hamlet, Sr., as the ghost identifies itself, rises from Hell every night in order to walk the palace grounds and make his son aware of his manifest purpose. Clearly it is not a rational illusion; rather, it is the irrational, the promise of God, the representation of an incredibly difficult Kierkegaardian leap of faith taken up by our tragic hero. (One wonders if Kierkegaard, a Dane himself, didn’t develop this portion of his philosophy after a close reading of Shakespeare’s play on Denmark.) Interestingly, Horatio is the force who rationalizes the appearance of the ghost and who decides to tell Hamlet that it exists. Because of this juxtaposition, the ghost ultimately represents the shadow of religious dogma in higher education. This is appropriate, since this play was written right around the time of the Enlightenment, during which many figures, such as Galileo, insisted that God created science as a gift to and faculty of man, and that reason and religion not only could coexist, but had to by virtue of their similarly absolute, “holy” qualities.

This does, of course, present a problem which can be reasoned away but temporarily; it is difficult to keep in mind Galileo’s famous words, “I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use,” without interruption by some sort of doubt. The Enlightenment and the paradox thereof is a driving force of Hamlet’s “insanity” and, I propose, has created his self-loathing personality. I’ll follow the Kierkegaardian model of Hamlet’s activity, since it fits rather well; it’s also likely that Hamlet had run across its Biblical foundation in school, and may have used it to think through his dilemma at some point.

The leap of faith is attractive to Hamlet, as it is to most any liberal arts student, past or present. (Most liberal arts agnostics I know desperately want to believe, but have a Hamletesque problem: they just can’t get over their “better judgment” and other evidence to the contrary.) Inexorably linked to the irrational and the Cartesian body, yet cushioned with the promise of purity and acceptance not normally associated with a “bodily” existence (along with the prospect of a cushy afterlife), there’s little more a man could ask for. Faith is the solution to the existentialist problem. It is unsurprising that the irrational half of the liberal arts education is what pushes Hamlet to action, on the rare occasion that he is, in fact, pushed to action. Perplexingly, Hamlet’s comforting, purpose-granting belief takes the form of a quest for revenge. His college-induced quirks had to find some way to superimpose themselves upon his life, and the way his life was going, his ludicrous family was a natural place upon which to focus.

The catch of the leap of faith is twofold: the sacrifice and the uncertainty. Just as Abraham’s sacrifice was his beloved son, Hamlet’s sacrifice was his beloved Ophelia. The uncertainties of Abraham and Hamlet are also very similar: one is visited by a purported angel, the other by an apparition calling itself the viewer’s father. Both Abraham and Hamlet have doubts about their messengers, and question whether or not they are actually agents of Satan.

After that, the stories diverge. Abraham, a servant of God, takes his leap and is rewarded by the Great Almighty; Hamlet keeps on questioning ad infinatum, as a liberal arts student is inclined, to the point at which his mind and body are at war with one another. Whenever his emotions, driven by his faith and the paranoia compulsory to his quest, get ahold of him, he simply can’t stand to be in the same room with himself. Take, for example, the end of Act II. Hamlet has just suffered a lengthy outburst decrying the false emotions of a stage actor, among other things, when his self-loathing kicks in:

“‘Swounds, I should take it, for it cannot be
But I am pigeon-liver’d and lack gall
To make oppression bitter –– or ere this
I should have fatted all the region kites
With this slave’s offal! Bloody, bawdy villain!
Remorseless, treacherous, lecherous, kindless villain!
O, vengeance! ––
Why, what an ass am I! This is most brave
That I, the son of a dear father murder’d,
Prompted to my revenge by heaven and hell,
Must, like a whore, unpack my heart with words,
And fall a-cursing like a very drab,
A scullion! –– Fie upon ‘t! Foh!
About, my brain!”

Hamlet is so furious with himself for crying out in frustration that he relates himself to a woman –– and we all know Hamlet’s opinion on women. He seems to put together Galileo’s conjecture once more here, as he relates his mission to a God-given purpose. The unfortunate thing about this revelation relived is that it makes one tremendously frustrated that one ever forgot it in the first place, which we sense in his further cursing. At the last, before he starts hatching a plan wherein to catch the conscience of the king, he commands his brain to start functioning properly again –– a very liberal arts thing to do.

He relapses quickly, and momentarily errs on the side of rational proof –– to the extent to which it can be called such. The play is an experiment, and Claudius’s reaction is the result. Perhaps, had he acted as Abraham had, with absolute belief, he might’ve made the leap to Kierkegaard’s “knight of faith” status; alas, he fell, and so come we upon his title of tragic hero.

Our hero is a waffler; of this there is no doubt. His waffling is caused by his educated mind, and his educated mind is therefore the source of all his misery. Education is wonderful, isn’t it? It causes such sublime misery.

true love

[the afflicted attempts to impose order through reasoning accepted wholly from one intriguing source and sketchily affirmed through experience - a side-effect of the syndrome.]

Here is a study in opposites: Horatio and Hamlet. Their relationship is highly intriguing, and seems to be the one of greatest mutual affection in the entire play. One of my very favorite speeches in the play is essentially a declaration of Hamlet's love to Horatio, in Act III, scene 2:

"Dost thou hear?
Since my dear soul was mistress of her choice
And could of men distinguish, her election
Hath seal'd thee for herself. For thou has been
As one, in suff'ring all, that suffers nothing;
A man that fortune’s buffets and rewards
Hath ta'en with equal thanks; and bless'd are those
Whose blood and judgment are so well co-mingled
That they are not a pipe for Fortune’s finger
To sound what stop she please. Give me that man
That is not passion's slave, and I will wear him
In my heart's core, ay, in my heart of heart,
As I do thee."

I don't propose that there’s some manner of romantic or sexual tension between these two, but there is obviously a very strong bond of brotherhood, such as is shared, for example, by Frodo and Sam in The Lord of the Rings. If anyone decides to make cracks about Frodo and Sam, or Hamlet and Horatio, being gay, that is entirely their own decision, and I wash my hands of any responsibility which might be placed with me for putting ideas into their heads.

It is clear to me that the two get along so well because they are at once completely and totally different and completely and totally accepting of the other's self, possibly because they see so much virtue that they themselves lack. This is David Keirsey's definition of perfect love and understanding, as extrapolated from Carl Jung's temperament theory. This theory encapsulates four personality dichotomies, which combine to discuss many more opposing traits and issues with which Hamlet wrestles throughout the play. These include, but are by no means limited to: order and chaos, thought and action, masculinity and femininity, duty and impulse, sanity and insanity, and especially the Cartesian mind and body.

A brief rundown on the last: the Cartesian mind and body are accounted for by Jung and Keirsey by dividing the world into groups: Earthlings, or sensible, observant, "down-to-earth" people, and Martians, or abstract, nonlinear, introspective thinkers, are the two groups resulting from the first divide in the overall population. The next divide, interestingly, splits each group by a different characteristic. The Earthlings are split by their degree of respect for tradition into guardians (traditional) and artisans (exploratory); the Martians, on the other hand, are split by the essential Cartesian element, the third of the four personality variables. Martians who make decisions based on reason are called rationals, whereas those who act according to emotions are called idealists. Rationals, the epitome of the Cartesian mind, are the rarest of the four groups mentioned here. Reasonable Earthlings (dubbed operators and administrators) also fall on this side. Idealists and emotional Martians (conservators and entertainers) tend to be more ruled by the Cartesian body.

In my opinion, the psychologists probably decided not to divide Earthlings by the Cartesian element because Earthlings don’t care whether they're ruled by the mind or the body. Such metaphysical balderdash generally matters to them not in the least.

If I had to guess, I'd peg Hamlet as an ENFP (extravert intuitive feeling perceiving) type and Horatio as an ISTJ (introvert sensing thinking judging) type –– that is to say, Hamlet is loud, a nonlinear thinker, irrational, and constantly reexamines his beliefs, whereas Horatio is quiet, a linear thinker, sensible, and unerringly loyal to traditional institutions and old friends. The two are polar opposites; each of the four characteristics has only two options (introverted/extraverted, intuitive/sensing, thinking/feeling, judging/perceiving) and Hamlet and Horatio share no characteristic. This makes them strong candidates for mutual fascination and love –– provided neither tries to change the other into a copy of himself, a phenomena of human relations which has an obnoxious tendency to destroy initially loving and happy relationships. The problem is further described in Dr. Stephen Montgomery's book The Pygmalion Project.

To allow for easier understanding of type compatibility, Keirsey tagged each of the sixteen types with an occupation, a job that the average individual of that type would be inclined toward. Hamlet's type (which I share) is sometimes called "the journalist" or, more often,"the champion" –– a natural choice for the tragic hero. He, being an idealist, leans on the side of the Cartesian body. Horatio's type, I was amused to find, has been nicknamed "the inspector." This is too appropriate for words, since Horatio is counted upon time and time again to make use of his senses to confirm the hunches of other characters; he literally looks into or inspects issues about which there is some controversy, and his word is counted as trustworthy above all others. Who do we trust so well? Why, levelheaded thinking men, of course - Cartesian minds.

The first instance of dependence upon Horatio for inspection occurs in Act I, in both the first and fourth scenes. In the first, the night watchmen ask him, a man of learning, to confirm their sighting of a ghost, which he does; in the fourth, he is the first to see the ghost, after which the other characters also acknowledge its presence. Hamlet makes similar use of him in Act III, scene 2, during which he asks Horatio to watch his uncle for any signs of discomfort resulting from the play.

Whether or not his eyes are more reliable than anyone else's is a matter of debate, but Horatio himself is trustworthy to a fault. In spite of his clear impression that Hamlet is not possessed of all his marbles ("These are but wild and whirling words, my lord"), he respects and serves him as part of the monarchy, and as a friend. When Horatio receives a letter from Hamlet, whom he must by now realize is in bad favor with the court, requesting that he come meet him, the inspector leaves immediately, without question. In the end, he is entrusted with Hamlet's legacy, because, frankly, he can be.

So why does Horatio like Hamlet so much? There's the loyalty issue, but what initially attracted the pair to one another? It was probably Hamlet's quirky, poetic, outspoken intellect, and the implication of his mere presence that there is something spectacular and irrational to the world which will forever be a fascinating mystery to a staid mind such as Horatio's. A fantastic encapsulating line of their relationship is spoken by Hamlet near the end of Act I:

"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy."

Such a line, and such a disposition, simultaneously enthralls and frustrates Horatio, since it is beyond his otherwise keen comprehension. Horatio never says this aloud during the play because, unlike Hamlet, he's not inclined to make whimsical, poetical professions of emotion; he is both too quiet and too reasonable for it.

Usually, "morals" in Shakespeare are ambiguous, but here a lesson is clear. The implication of such a psychological phenomenon, and especially of this relationship, is that the Cartesian mind and body desperately need one another and work best in unison –– a rather romantic notion for such an angsty play.

(Interestingly, in Zeffirelli's Hamlet, Horatio is wholly stripped of his INTJ personality and, indeed, seems to have no personality at all; he, much as Rosencrantz and Guildenstern in the same film, is just a plot device.)