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Hamlet, Don Quijote, La vida es Sueño: The Quest for Values
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
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Why, of the many significant writings of the seventeenth century, do Hamlet, Don Quijote, and La vida es sueño belong together in a comparative study? Certainly not merely because they are the most famous works of Shakespeare, Cervantes, and Calderón, three of the century's most famous men. Beyond doubt, the differences separating them are sharp and obvious: form and technique, style and concept, guiding esthetic impulses of authors who were disparate in their temperament and their lives. But if we fix our attention on the ideological problems embodied in the careers of the three heroes, Hamlet, Don Quijote, and Segismundo, we immediately discern strong bonds of relationship, to the point where not only similarities but even contrasts take on significance, reflecting light from one work upon the other, and finally upon the intellectual outlook and preoccupations of the time.
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1 One school of literary interpretation may hold that these similarities are due to a common derivation from the baroque. However, the converse would perhaps be more logical: the baroque is the formalization of a tension resulting from the ideological and emotional problems that presented themselves, at that historical juncture, in the particular forms we shall discuss. The spiritual and ideological situation, in a word, is basic to the stylistic; the problems in the three works may explain the baroque, but “baroque” does not explain the problems. While such a spiritual situation may itself be termed baroque by some devotees of that term, many critics feel that the word, if it is to conserve a clear meaning, should be limited to the style and esthetic attitude that in some cases resulted from these inner problems. See J. Mark, “The Uses of the Term ‘Baroque’,” MLR, xxxiii (1938), 547-563.
2 The words “anguish” and “anxiety” are used by many writers more or less interchangeably, to denote psychological tension. The word “anguish” has been popularized in Existentialist literature. Sartre defines it as the result of our feeling of total responsibility, in association with the feeling of abandonment (délaissement) in the absence of God or a meaningful universe; he uses the word “anxious” as the equivalent adjective. See L'Existentialisme est un humanisme (Paris, 1951), pp. 28 ff. W. H. Auden has given us the phrase, “The Age of Anxiety.” F. Le Van Baumer defines “anxiety” as “a state of mind combining loneliness of spirit with a sense of loss of control” over the individual or collective destiny, due to the loss of a standard of value (Main Currents of Western Thought, New York, 1952, pp. 577-578). These words are not used, then, with the technical denotation they have in psychoanalysis, but to indicate a mental and emotional distress. Such tension may derive from the responsibility for action in the absence of meaning or guidance (there is no clear goal), or from the inner conflict of incompatible impulses that make decision impossible. There is often self-blame: the person feels that he should be able to act appropriately.
3 H. Granville-Barker, Prefaces to Shakespeare (Princeton, 1947), I, 31, 232.
4 There is an article by Ivan Turgenev, “Hamlet and Don Quijote,” in The Anatomy of Don Quijote, ed. M. J. Benardete and Angel Flores (Ithaca, N. Y., 1932), pp. 98-120, which has an entirely different purpose than this study. Its theme, the opposition of Hamlet and Don Quijote as the prototypes of the egoist and the altruist, is not, I think, particularly fruitful. There is also a brief discussion in Salvador de Madariaga's On Hamlet (London, 1948), pp. 7-11. Madariaga points out that “the parallel between Hamlet and Don Quijote is one of the clearest ways of approach not only to the knowledge of either of them, but also to the study of Europe” and to man's “permanent problems.” For Madariaga the point of comparison is the problem of the balance between the individual and society, Hamlet representing the pressure of society on the individual, Don Quijote the pressure of the individual on society, with tyranny and anarchy as the two termini. The Ghost stands for the hand of tradition. Social pressure makes Hamlet passive; lack of social pressure makes Don Quijote active.
5 Quotations from Hamlet in this article are from the text edition of G. L. Kittredge (Boston: Ginn, 1939).
6 Aristotle does not require a tragedy to end in failure. See Poetics 1451a, 1452b.
7 Granville-Barker, p. 234.
8 Perhaps even to an indirect attempt at suicide, through his provocations of the king.
9 This act ends, indeed, with the appearance of resolution and purpose. But what is Hamlet resolute about? Only about putting on the play. This may be considered as the intelligent thing to do; or as a beautiful model of rationalization to postpone action, a way of deluding himself that he is being resolute (“If he but blench, I know my course”), perhaps with the unconscious hope that the action may turn out to be unnecessary. Margaret Webster once remarked that Hamlet finds relief in planning the play “because it is a concrete action. He is rid for a moment of the feeling of indecision” (The New Invitation to Learning, New York, 1944, p. 55).
10 I take this to be an unconscious subterfuge, because he could have stayed to kill Claudius after his prayer; and because it is consistent with his failure throughout to find or invent a suitable occasion. I realize the point may be argued the other way. However, even granting the conscious sincerity of Hamlet's argument, and its validity for him, the essential fact is still his unconscious eagerness to find an excuse, his readiness to accept it, his inner relief.
11 When I speak of the “collapse,” “destruction,” or “loss” of Hamlet's values, I do not imply that he personally ceases to hold them dear; rather that he has given them up as a workable formula, realizable among men.
12 G. R. Elliott has pointed out that he would be partly duplicating Claudius in motive and actions. Scourge and Minister (Durham, N. C., 1951), p. 27.
13 Montaigne had shown that custom and reason are contraries. Recently, a scholar accused Corneille's Don Rodrigue of not being truly Cartesian, because he accepts the honor code and current moral norms instead of questioning their validity. Had Don Rodrigue done so, however, he would not have been a Cornelian hero, but might have turned out instead to be another Hamlet! See Robert Champigny, “Corneille et le Traité des Passions,” FR, xxvi (1952), 116.
14 Cf. Hiram Haydn: “he is too highly conscious a man to be willing to proceed without being convinced of an ultimate meaning and pattern of human life into which this single act can fit coherently and congruously” (The Counter-Renaissance, New York, 1950, pp. 627-628). Francis Fergusson points out that Hamlet cannot believe that literal punishment of Claudius will cure the evil: The Idea of a Theatre (Princeton, 1949), p. 128.
15 H. B. Charlton, Shakespearean Tragedy (Cambridge, 1949), p. 9.
16 This subject has, of course, been explored in detail, for Shakespeare, by Theodore Spencer: “Hamlet and the Nature of Reality,” ELH, v (1939), 253-277; Shakespeare and the Nature of Man (New York, 1949).
17 Spencer has listed many of these instances. Some examples are woe and the trappings of woe, smiling and villainy, the player's grief for Hecuba, the seeming of the flesh and the reality of the skull, the seeming of rank and power and the reality of the dust, the paint and the face, etc.
18 This was the medieval view; that of Don Quijote belongs to the Renaissance. Cf. Roy W. Battenhouse, “Hamlet's Apostrophe on Man: Clue to the Tragedy,” PMLA, lxvi (1951), 1073-1113.
19 For a fuller treatment, see my “Don Quijote, Epic of Frustration,” RR, xlii (1951), 178-188. Cf. Karl Jaspers: “The individual is opposed to universal laws, norms, necessities: untragically, he represents mere willfulness opposing the law; tragically, he represents the genuine exception which, though opposing the law, yet has truth on his side” (Tragedy is not enough, Boston, 1952, pp. 47-48).
No,
Nor even now am I awake,
Since such thoughts my memory fill,
That it seems I'm dreaming still:
Nor is this a great mistake;
Since if dreams could phantoms make
Things of actual substance seem,
I things seen may phantoms deem.
Thus a double harvest reaping,
I can see where I am sleeping,
And when waking I can dream
(2098-2107, tr. D. F. MacCarthy)
21 There is a curious parallel here to the episode of the merchants in Don Quijote (i,4). The soldiers offer Segismundo visible proof of their assertions and he rejects them as invalid (2348-52).
22 Cf. R. W. Battenhouse, op. cit., passim; Crocker, pp. 187-188; Spencer, “Hamlet and the Nature of Reality,” p. 267. Battenhouse points out that in Renaissance theory man is a rational soul, merely using a body, while for Aquinas he is a combination of flesh and spirit. This dualism is typical of the literature of the “baroque age.”
23 R. W. Battenhouse (p. 1093): “The beast in us is sense, the man in us is reason,” a typical Renaissance view; and when man does not use reason, he is beast, not man at all, as Hamlet says, content with sleeping and feeding. The contrast with the medieval Christian outlook is perhaps not so sharp as Battenhouse suggests. Cf. Dante (Inferno 26):
Considerate la vostra semenza;
Fatti non foste a viver come bruti,
Ma per seguir virtute et conoscenza.
24 Cf. R. Alewyn's article in the Dictionary of World Literature, ed. J. Shipley (New York, 1943), p. 66.
25 “The human self is in a sense born and not made. In another sense it is made and not born…. In one context we are bidden ‘to be ourselves,’ in another ‘to make something of ourselves.’ The first command implies that the natural self is but raw material out of which a true or genuine self is to be made.” W. M. Urban, Fundamentals of Ethics (New York, 1930), p. 148.
26 Types of Philosophy (New York, 1939), p. 13.
27 Cf. Haydn, p. 732: “the same mankind which has infinite dreams must live and die in a physical world that imposes set limitations upon him.”
28 Spencer, Shakespeare and the Nature of Man, p. 108.
29 The interpretation of Hamlet's decision to kill the King, in Act v, is not easy. Some critics have taken it as the sign of a new resolution, a new mastery of himself. But the decision is not new, and the only added element is the urgency of self-preservation. His statement seems devoid of eagerness, and he again repeats his justifications to give himself conviction. And he does not carry out his decision, by a plan of his own (as he should if he were truly resolved), or in such a way as to save his life. He postpones his action until some indefinite time after the duel, despite the premonition that he may not come out of it alive. We have no feeling of certainty that he would ever carry it out under circumstances less desperate than those of the final scene. He is vague, saying only, “the interim is mine.” Somehow, he feels, the end will come about, and if his own death is to result instead, he will make no effort to prevent it. “The readiness is all” is resignation, not resolution. The final scene shows not purpose and control, but desperate and unplanned action. Revenge and justice come about—exactly as he had said—through no plan of his, but by the devious ways of “Providence,” through Claudius' own planning.
30 Don Quijote, for instance, insists that as an exceptional man, he can transform apparent reality (i, 25). “I know within myself that I am enchanted, and this is enough for the certainty of my conscience” (i, 49). He can re-create Dulcinea—really meaning he can create her (ii, 32).
31 What Mark Van Doren says of Hamlet is of course equally true of Don Quijote: “It is the essence of tragedy that he should be … although always himself, yet at the same time one who can reveal the perils of attempting to be more than oneself” (New Invitation to Learning, p. 54).
32 I borrow this phrase from Prof. Lawrence Nelson of Sweet Briar College.
33 The Great Chain of Being (Cambridge, 1945), p. 199.
34 R. Battenhouse, p. 1104.
35 Cf. Pico: “Thou shalt have the power to degenerate into the lowest forms of life, the animal; thou shalt have the power, out of thy soul's judgment, to be reborn into the higher forms of life which are divine” (“On the Dignity of Man,” in E. Cassirer, The Renaissance Philosophy of Man, Chicago, 1948, p. 225). Similar ideas were expressed in Spain by Vives.
36 The question of suicide develops later out of his reasoning, as he generalizes.
37 F. J. Hoffman, Freudianism and the Literary Mind (Eaton Rouge, 1945), p. 203.
38 It is visible throughout the contemporary renascence of Catholic thought. The particular theme of a recent book (Nathan A. Scott, Jr., Rehearsals of Discomposure, New York, 1953) is that the fundamental human experience is one of anxiety, solitude and death, and the only solution is found in the Christian faith. However, one should not forget that pre-Christian and non-Christian cultures may also have found “composure,” and that discomposure may be man's greatest challenge.
39 K. Weizsäcker, The History of Nature (Univ. of Chicago Press, 1949), p. 69.