Essays

The Terror of Nothing

An Existential Reading of Hamlet and Gravity 

William Shakespeare's Hamlet announces itself with a question: 

"Whose there?" demands Bernardo, responding to the ghost. Considering some interpretations, it seems appropriate Hamlet should begin with such a question. 

Shakespeare has found resonance with each succeeding century. Particularly Hamlet: a play "committed to individual freedom" (Existentialism in Hamlet, 2015, p. 27). The opening line is primarily Hamlet's question to himself as, through his quest for authenticity, he must embrace the shared limitations of human thought.

This paper will explore how Hamlet can be taken as a rumination on the idea of individuality, regarding the interior sense of mind and spirit but also, more broadly, the place of Man in the context of the universe. These are themes much attributed to Shakespeare; Hamlet is considered one of the more potent examples. However, literary critics did not always react to Shakespeare in the same way. The article Existentialism in Hamlet (2015) makes an important summation of the play's historical context, stating that while the Feudalist mindset was fading from popular consciousness, the spectre of capitalism was beginning to emerge. "Moreover, the Reformation and also Humanism, with their emphasis on the value of individual self, were becoming the dominant discourse" (p. 26). Shakespeare was clearly influenced by such philosophies, placing emphasis on the troubled minds of his characters – Macbeth – and the dilemma of personal authenticity, seen in Hamlet.

Witmore (2012) explains the formidable position early modern theatre – particularly Shakespearean – found itself in. In the transgressive culture of Shakespeare's time, literature and theatre was an evocative way to explore modern themes like human existence, capitalizing on "the reflexive power of sense, either through direct citation or allegorical exposition". Witmore elaborates: the characters of Shakespeare "frequently draw attention to the sensed fact of affect in the moment as it ripples through the body or overtakes the soul" (p. 420). 

This concept of the "inner touch" is perhaps the truest quiddity of Shakespearean theatre: its passion for peculiarity, enabling theatre to pose the existential question of "to be or not to be" with psychic and cultural underpinnings. It is this ambiguous quality - this compatibility with which his work can be revived and reinterpreted - that Shakespeare permit the reader to explore such diverse questions. Through the postulations of several modern commentators, this paper will explore how Hamlet can be read from an existential perspective. For comparison, Alfonso Cauron's film Gravity (2013) will also be examined. Though in a different context to Hamlet, Gravity explores some important ideas of humans "being" - their place in the vast, mostly empty universe.

One particular theme modernists pay attention to is whether humans are virtually trapped within their own pasts, and cannot progress into a future state without constantly readdressing what brought them where they are to begin with. Sedinger (2007) explores two contrasting approaches to this concept, distinguishing between proponents of historicism and presentism. She argues that in the context of Hamlet, "the present does not occupy the same epistemological terrain as the past" (p. 460), planting her interpretation somewhere between both theories. She does, however, share the belief that historical significance cannot be realised until its subject is seen from the distance of a future time.

One may refer to Hamlet's  titular character pondering the apparent pointlessness of life, examining the skull of Yorick: "I knew him, Horatio; a fellow of infinite jest," quotes Hamlet. He then transgresses into a charade of how this once-loved clown has through time disintegrated. Nothing remains but a reeking skull that makes him sickened to behold. "Where be your gibes now?" asks Hamlet; "your gambols, your songs, your flashes of merriment that were wont to set the table on a roar?". This scene subverts the concept forwarded by Sedinger, demonstrating that the passage of time has needed to pass in order for existent meaning – or, in this case, its absence – to be realised in regards to this departed human.