How Greif Devours Identity in Hamlet: An Informal Short Essay
Inspired by If We Were Villians, I took it upon myself to freshen up on my Shakespeare. So, last night I finished reading Hamlet for the first time since my freshman year of college! It was a trip to relive all of my old annotations and notes on the play, and to dive back into Shakespeare after such a long time. Thank Folger Shakespeare Library for footnotes!
A few things caught my attention, especially the theme of identity and grief being so intertwined. So let's talk about it for a moment~~
As somone who has experianced a little too much grief in my lifetime, it was cathartic to read Hamlet and appreciate others processing loss. Shakespeare, the master of words and human emotion that he is, has painted the transformative... if not transfiguring... powers of grief on the human mind. This is not exclusive to the character of Hamlet himself, though his madness is the center of the play, but includes all the characters.
Since I have made myself promise this will be a short essay, i'll localize my thoughts on a specific passage:
"Not where he eats, but where he is eaten. A certain convocation of politic worms are e'en at him. Your worm is your only empoeror 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" (Act 4, Scene 3).
So, here's the thing... I took this a little differently than Shakespeare may have intended in this scene. The talk of the "worms" which feast on us when we are dead made me think of The Corpse Bride by Tim Burton.
In Emily's ear is a maggot that acts as her concience. He eats at her mind and replaces her thoughts with his own. I couldn't help but feel that is exactly what grief has done to these characters. Like worms, fattening upon each character, sorrow, revenge, fear, and guilt all crawl into the ears of the court and feast until there is nothing left.
For example, take Hamlet at the end of this play. Hamlet is "not where he eats," which would be an action of taking the King's life and digesting what has happened to his father, but ends "where he is eaten" by the guilt of not being able to override his character and seek revenge on Claudius until the last moment. Try as he might to change the course of fate (hah, get it course lol), the ending remains the same. Which leads to the line "two dishes but to one table."
We see this all throughout the novel as different sets of characters come to the table: Claudius x King Hamlet, Hamlet x Claudius, Hamlet x Mother, Opheilia x Hamlet, Laertes x Hamlet... etc. Even the lesser characters die in pairs like Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Two lives devoured together at the same table.
I think this is an interesting way of looking at volitile emotions and understanding how people struggle to cope. Grief can eat at you, literally, and it not only leads to a physical deterioration but to a death of self. No matter how clever and careful you are going about it, no matter what reasons you have, acting against one's character will always eat at one's concience. Especially when you look around and see the other people in your life feasting on the same meal at the same table.
So while grief can feel like a worm in our minds, it's also more common among our companions than we see. Too blinded by our own struggles, we let emotions devour our sense of self, and can't see how our behavior reflects and is reflected back to us. We are what we eat, in all senses.
Which is why I think that Hamelt is an exceptional play on how emotions can play (or prey) on us!
Updated edition of the Folger Shakespeare Library edited by Barbara A. Mowat and Paul Werstine used in this essay :)
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