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(All parts in English)

HAMLET (2)

Here we are again, since the last time, with HAMLET.
HAMLET does not appear here by chance, although I told you it was introduced at this point by the formula “To be or not to be,” which imposed itself on me in connection with Ella SHARPE’s dream. I was led to reread part of what has been written about HAMLET from an analytical perspective, as well as what had been written earlier. The authors, at least the best ones, naturally do not neglect what had been written much earlier, and I must say we are led quite far, sometimes even losing myself a little, though not without pleasure.

The problem is to gather what is relevant to our precise goal.
Our precise goal being to give, or to restore, meaning to the function of desire in analysis and analytical interpretation.

It is clear that, for this, we should not face too much difficulty because…
I hope to make you feel this, and I will state my intention right away:
…I believe that what distinguishes The Tragedy of HAMLET, Prince of Denmark is essentially that it is the tragedy of desire.

HAMLET, which…
although we are not absolutely certain, but according to the most rigorous cross-references…
…should have been performed in London for the first time during the winter season of 1601.
HAMLET, whose first quarto edition…
this famous edition, which was virtually what one might call a “pirate edition” at the time, meaning that it was not produced under the control of the author but drawn from what were called prompt-books, the prompter’s scripts…
this edition…
…it is amusing, after all, to know these little tidbits of literary history…
…remained unknown until 1823, when one of these sordid copies was discovered, due to the fact that they had been extensively handled, likely taken to performances.

And the folio edition, the grand edition of SHAKESPEARE, did not begin to appear until after his death in 1623, preceding the major edition where the division into acts is found. This explains why the division into acts is much less decisive and clear in SHAKESPEARE than elsewhere.

In fact, it is not believed that SHAKESPEARE intended to divide his plays into five acts. This has its importance because we will see how this play is structured.

The winter of 1601 is two years before the death of Queen ELIZABETH. Indeed, we can roughly consider that HAMLET…
which holds a crucial significance in SHAKESPEARE’s life…
…doubles, so to speak, the drama of this juncture between two eras, two sides of the poet’s life, as the tone completely changes when JAMES I ascends the throne.

And already something is emerging, as one author puts it, which shatters the crystalline charm of ELIZABETH’s reign,
of “the virgin queen,” who achieved those long years of miraculous peace following what had been…
in the history of England as in many other countries…
…a period of chaos into which it was bound to fall back quickly, with all the drama of the Puritan revolution.

In short, 1601 already heralds the death of the queen, which could not have been foreseen,
through the execution of her lover, the Earl of Essex, occurring the same year as the play HAMLET.

These markers are not entirely pointless to recall, especially since we are not the only ones
to have attempted to restore HAMLET to its context. What I am telling you here, I have not seen highlighted in any analytical author. Yet these are kinds of primary facts that hold significant importance.

In truth, what has been written by analytical authors cannot be said to have been enlightening,
and it is not today that I will critique the direction taken by a kind of analytical interpretation,
line by line, of HAMLET. I mean…
“I am trying to recover such and such an element,” without, in truth, being able to say anything more than…
…as the authors insist, the understanding of the whole, the coherence of the text, drifts further and further away.

I must also say about our Ella SHARPE, whom I hold in high regard, that on this matter…
in her paper, which is admittedly “unfinished” and was found after her death…
…she greatly disappointed me. I will still address it because it is significant. It is so much “in line”
with what we are led to explain, given the trend seen in the direction taken by analytical theory,
that it is worth emphasizing. But we will not start there.

We will begin with JONES’s article published in 1910 in the American Journal of Psychology—an article that marks a date and a monument, and which is essential to have read. It is not easy to obtain it these days. And in the small reprint he made of it, JONES, I believe, added something else, some complements to his theory of HAMLET.

In this article, The Oedipus Complex as an Explanation of Hamlet’s Mystery,
he adds as a subtitle: A Study in Motive.

In 1910, JONES tackled the problem masterfully pointed out by FREUD, as I showed you last time,
in that half-page in which it can be said that, ultimately, everything is already there, since even the points on the horizon are marked, namely the relations between SHAKESPEARE and the meaning of the problem he faced:
the significance of the feminine object.

I believe this is something absolutely central. And if FREUD directs us toward Timon of Athens as a horizon,
it is along this path that Ella SHARPE undoubtedly tried to venture. She made SHAKESPEARE’s entire work
a sort of vast cyclothymic oscillation, identifying the ascending plays,
that is to say, those one might consider optimistic, the plays where aggression turns outward,
and those where aggression turns back on the hero or the poet, the plays of the descending phase.
This is how we might classify SHAKESPEARE’s plays, even occasionally dating them.

I do not believe this approach to be entirely valid, and we will stick for the moment to where we are.
That is, first with HAMLET to try…
I may give some indications about what follows or precedes, about Twelfth Night and Troilus and Cressida,
because I believe it is almost impossible not to take them into account—they shed great light on the problems
we will first introduce concerning the text of HAMLET alone.

With that grand style of documentation that characterizes his writings…
there is in JONES a solidity, a certain breadth of style in the documentation
that highly distinguishes his contributions…
JONES provides a sort of summary of what he very rightly calls “the mystery of HAMLET.”

It comes down to one of two things:
– Either you realize the breadth the question has taken,
– Or you do not realize it.

For those who do not realize it, I will not repeat here what is in JONES’s article; in one way or another, inform yourself.

I must say that the volume of writings on HAMLET is unparalleled—the abundance of literature is astonishing.
But what is even more astonishing is the extraordinary diversity of interpretations that have been given. I mean, the most contradictory interpretations have followed one another, have surged through history, establishing the problem of the problem, namely:
why does everyone insist on understanding something about it?

And they produce the most extravagant, the most incoherent, the most diverse results. One cannot say
that it does not go exceedingly far; we will have to return to this within the very framework of what I will quickly recall regarding the aspects of this explanation that JONES summarizes in his article.

Almost everything has been said. And to push it to the extreme, there is a Popular Science Monthly…
which must be some sort of semi-medical popularization publication…
…that published something in 1880 called The Impediment of Adipose.
At the end of HAMLET, we are told that HAMLET is fat and out of breath, and in this journal, there is an entire discussion about HAMLET’s adipose condition! In 1881, a certain VINING discovered that HAMLET was a woman disguised as a man, whose goal throughout the play was to seduce HORATIO, and that HAMLET’s entire story was schemed to win HORATIO’s heart. It’s quite a charming story!

At the same time, we cannot say that this is entirely irrelevant to us. It is certain that HAMLET’s relationships with people of his own sex are tightly interwoven with the problem of the play.

Let us return to more serious matters, and with JONES, let us recall that these efforts of criticism have clustered around two main aspects. Whenever there are two aspects in logic, there is always a third, contrary to what one might think; the third is not as excluded as it seems. And it is obviously the third aspect that is interesting in this case.

The two aspects have had no minor advocates. On the first aspect, there are those who, in sum, have examined HAMLET’s psychology. It is evidently to them that priority and our highest esteem should be given. Among them, we encounter GOETHE and COLERIDGE, who, in his Lectures on Shakespeare, took a very characteristic position that I find JONES could have explored more thoroughly.

Curiously, JONES mainly delved into an extraordinarily abundant commentary on what was written in German, which was prolific and even verbose. The positions of GOETHE and COLERIDGE are not identical. However, they share a significant similarity in emphasizing the spiritual nature of HAMLET’s character. In broad terms, for GOETHE, it is “action paralyzed by thought.” As is well known, this idea has a long lineage. It has been remembered—not without reason, of course—that HAMLET lived for a time in Wittenberg.

This term, referring to the intellectual and his problems, associated with an overindulgence in the intellectualism represented by Wittenberg, which was not without justification regarded as one of the centers of a certain style of education for German students, has had a great legacy. HAMLET is, in sum, the man who perceives all elements, all complexities, the motives behind the game of life, and is therefore suspended, paralyzed in his actions by this knowledge. This is a specifically Goethean problem, one that has resonated deeply, especially when you add the charm and appeal of GOETHE’s style and personality.

As for COLERIDGE, in a lengthy passage I do not have time to read to you, he aligns with this perspective,
but with a much less sociological and much more psychological character. To me, there is something that stands out in COLERIDGE’s entire discussion of this question, and which I take pleasure in emphasizing:

“I must admit to you that I feel within myself some taste for the same thing.”

This highlights in him a psychasthenic nature, an inability to commit to a path, and once engaged, to see it through to the end.

The intrusion of hesitation, of multiple motives, is a brilliant piece of psychology that, for us, captures the essence, the core of its meaning, in this remark casually made by COLERIDGE:
“After all, I have some taste for this—that is to say—I find myself in it…” He confesses it in passing, and he is not alone.

A similar remark can be found in someone who was nearly contemporary with COLERIDGE and who wrote remarkable things about SHAKESPEARE in his Essays on Shakespeare: HAZLITT. JONES, mistakenly, makes no mention of him, even though HAZLITT wrote the most remarkable things on this subject at the time.

HAZLITT goes even further, saying that ultimately, to talk about this tragedy… we have been so saturated with this tragedy that we can hardly know how to critique it, no more than we could describe our own face. There is another note in the same vein, and these are lines I will place great emphasis on.

I will quickly move over the other aspect, which involves an external difficulty raised by a group of German critics, the two main ones being KLEIN and WERDER, who wrote in late 19th-century Berlin.

This is roughly how JONES groups them, and he is right. They focused on highlighting the external causes of the difficulty of the task HAMLET set for himself and the forms that HAMLET’s task would take.

It would be about making her people recognize the guilt of CLAUDIUS, the man who, after killing her father and marrying her mother, reigns over Denmark.

There is something here that does not hold up to scrutiny, for the difficulties HAMLET would have in accomplishing his task…
that is, in making the guilt of a king recognized, or, in one of two ways, either intervening in the manner he must, through murder, and then being able to justify that murder…
are clearly very easily resolved by simply reading the text: HAMLET never poses such a problem to himself! The principle of his action, namely that what he must avenge…
against the one who murdered his father and who, at the same time,
has taken his throne and his place beside the woman he loved above all…
…must be purged through the most violent action and through murder, is not only never questioned by HAMLET, but I believe I could read you passages that show he calls himself a coward, a weakling;
he rages on stage in despair over his inability to resolve himself to this action. But the principle of the matter is beyond doubt—he does not pose the slightest problem about the validity of this act, of this task.

On this point, there is a man named LŒNING, whom JONES highly regards, who made a comment at the same time, decisively addressing the theories of KLEIN and WERDER. I should note in passing that JONES offers a strong recommendation of these remarks. Indeed, he cites some of them, which appear to be quite perceptive.

But all this does not have extraordinary importance since the question is truly surpassed from the moment we take the third position, the one through which JONES introduces the analytical perspective. These slow explanations are necessary because they must be followed for us to establish the foundation on which HAMLET’s problem rests.

The third position is this: although the subject never doubts for a moment that he must accomplish it, for some reason unknown to him, this task repels him. In other words, the issue lies within the task itself and not in the subject or in external events. Needless to say, when it comes to external events, there could be much subtler versions than the ones I have just outlined to clear the ground.

There is thus an essentially conflictual position regarding the task itself. And it is in this way…
in a method that is ultimately very solid and should nonetheless teach us something…
that JONES introduces the analytical theory.

He shows that the notion of conflict is not at all new; the internal contradiction within the task had already been noted by several authors who had seen very clearly…
like LŒNING, if we are to believe the quotations JONES provides…
…that one can grasp the problematic, conflictual nature of the task through certain signs. These signs had not required psychoanalysis to be recognized for their signal-like quality—namely, the diversity, multiplicity, contradiction, and false coherence of the reasons the subject gives for postponing the task, for not accomplishing it when it presents itself.

The notion, in sum, of the superstructural, rationalized, and rationalizing character of the motives given by the subject had already been noticed by psychologists well before psychoanalysis, and JONES is very adept at highlighting and emphasizing it. However, the real question is where the conflict lies. Authors on this path recognize that there is something that emerges in the foreground, and a sort of underlying difficulty which, without being strictly unconscious, is considered deeper, partially unmastered, not completely elucidated, nor perceived by the subject.

JONES’s discussion bears the characteristic quality of what, in his work, would become one of the defining traits he uses most effectively in his articles, which played a major role in making the very notion of the unconscious acceptable to a broad intellectual audience. He strongly articulates that what certain subtle authors have highlighted is that the underlying motive, hindering HAMLET’s action, is, for instance, a matter of law: does he have the right to do this?

And God knows the German authors did not fail…
especially since this occurred during the height of the Hegelian period…
…to invoke all kinds of registers on which JONES freely ironizes, showing that if anything should enter the mechanisms of the unconscious, it is not lofty motives, characterized by high abstraction, involving morality, the state, or absolute knowledge. Instead, it must be something much more radical, more concrete, and it is precisely this that JONES then introduces.

Since it was roughly around that same year that Freudian perspectives began to make their way into America, it was also that same year that FREUD published a summary of his theory on dreams and gave his article on the origins and development of psychoanalysis, written directly in English if my memory serves me correctly, as part of the famous Clark University Lectures.

I believe one cannot pinpoint, in an analysis that truly goes as far as was possible at that time, one that highlights…
in the text of the play, in the unfolding of the drama, to demonstrate its Oedipal significance…
what we might call “the mythical structure of the Oedipus complex.”

I must say we are not mentally scrubbed clean enough to easily smile at the mention of HAMLET in connection with TELESPHORUS, AMPHION, MOSES, PHARAOH, ZOROASTER, JESUS, HEROD…
they all appear in the same bundle…
and ultimately, what is essential is that two authors, writing around 1900, produced a Hamlet in Iran in a well-known journal, referencing the myth of HAMLET to Iranian myths surrounding the legend of PYRRHUS. Another author also emphasized this legend in an obscure and now-untraceable journal.

The important point is that JONES, in introducing a new critique of HAMLET in 1910,
presents a critique entirely aimed at leading us to this conclusion:

“We arrive at this apparent paradox: the poet and the audience are both profoundly moved by feelings arising from a conflict whose source they are unaware of, unawakened to, and do not know the nature of.”

I think it is essential to note the step taken at this level. I am not saying it is the only step possible, but that the first analytical step consists of transforming a psychological reference not into a reference to deeper psychology, but into a reference to a mythical structure presumed to hold the same meaning for all human beings.

Yet, there must still be something more, because HAMLET is certainly not the Pyrrhus Saga,
the stories of CYRUS and CAMBYSES, nor of PERSEUS and his grandfather ACRISIUS—it is something else entirely.
If we talk about it, it is not only because there have been countless critiques but also because it is fascinating to see what HAMLET becomes in the process.

In the end, you have no real idea of this because, through a curious sort of phenomenon,
I believe I can say, based on my own experience, that it is unplayable in French.
I have never seen a good HAMLET in French, nor anyone who performed HAMLET well, nor a text that could truly be heard.

For those who read the text, it is something overwhelming, something to make you fall over, bite the carpet, and roll on the floor—it is unimaginable! Not a single verse of HAMLET, nor a single line, in English fails to have a stunning power of impact, a violence of expression that makes it utterly astonishing at every moment.
You feel as though it were written yesterday, as if it were impossible for anyone to write like that three centuries ago.

In England—that is, in the country where the play is performed in its original language—a performance of HAMLET is always an event. I would go even further…
because, after all, one cannot measure the psychological tension of the audience except perhaps at the box office…
and I will say what it means for the actors, which teaches us doubly.

Firstly, it is absolutely clear that performing HAMLET for an English actor is the crowning achievement of their career. And when it is not the crowning achievement of their career, it is because they wish to retire on a high note by offering their farewell performance, even if their role is that of the First Gravedigger.
There is something significant in this, and we will need to understand what it means, as I do not say this by chance.

What is curious is that, in the end, when an English actor takes on HAMLET, they perform it well—they all perform it well. Even stranger is that people speak of the HAMLET of so-and-so, as though there were as many HAMLETs as there are great actors. The HAMLET of GARRICK is still evoked, as is the HAMLET of KEMBLE, and so on—this too is extraordinarily revealing.

If there are as many HAMLETs as there are great actors, I believe it is for a similar reason.
It is not the same reason, for playing HAMLET is different from engaging with it as a spectator or a critic.
But the convergence of all this—the striking point I ask you to remember—is that one might ultimately believe
that it is due to the structure of the problem that HAMLET, as such, poses regarding desire.

Namely, the thesis I am advancing here is that HAMLET operates on different levels, within the very framework I am trying to introduce to you, where desire is situated.

It is because this place is articulated in an exceptionally precise way…
in such a manner, I would say, that everyone finds their place in it, recognizes themselves in it…
that the apparatus, the net of HAMLET’s play, becomes this kind of network, this snare, where human desire…
within the coordinates FREUD reveals to us, namely its relation to the Oedipus complex and castration…
is fundamentally articulated.

But this presupposes that it is not merely another rendition, another iteration, of the eternal drama-conflict archetype,
the hero’s struggle against the father, the tyrant, the good or bad father.
Here, I am introducing elements that we will see unfold later. It is that SHAKESPEARE pushes these things
to such an extreme that what is important here is to show the atypical features of the conflict, the altered way
in which the fundamental structure of the eternal saga—present since the origins of time—appears.

Thus, in a way, the coordinates of this conflict are modified by SHAKESPEARE to allow for the emergence
of how, under these atypical conditions, the problem of desire—so fundamentally problematic—plays out.
For desire is not merely something man is possessed or invested by, but something he must situate and find for himself.

He must find it at great cost and to great pain, to the point that he can only find it at the extreme—
that is, in an action that, for him, can only conclude and be realized on the condition of being mortal.
This prompts us to take a closer look at the play’s progression. I would not want to delay you too much,
but we must still identify its main salient features.

Act I concerns something we might call the introduction of the problem, and here, in the midst of the intersections, accumulations, and confusions where the play revolves, we must return to something simple: the text itself.
We will see that this composition deserves our attention, that it is not something floating aimlessly, wavering this way or that.

As you know, events open with a guard scene, a changing of the guard on the terrace of Elsinore,
and I must say that it is one of the most masterful openings of all SHAKESPEARE’s plays,
because not all of them begin so masterfully.

The guard change occurs at midnight, and there are some very striking and beautiful elements in it.
For instance, it is those coming for the change who ask, “Who’s there?” when it should logically be the other way around.

This is because, indeed, nothing is happening normally—they are all anxious about something they are expecting,
and this thing does not keep them waiting for more than forty lines.

Although it is midnight when the changing of the guard takes place, the clock strikes one as the ghost appears.
From the moment the ghost appears, we are propelled into a very rapid movement with some quite curious pauses.

Immediately afterward, we have the scene where the king and queen appear. The king declares it is high time to move past their mourning: “We can weep with one eye but laugh with the other.” HAMLET, present there, expresses his feelings of revolt against the haste of his mother’s remarriage and the fact that she has married someone who, compared to what his father was, is an utterly inferior figure.

At every moment in HAMLET’s remarks, we see his exaltation of his father highlighted as a being of whom he will later say:

“All the gods seemed to have set their seals upon him
to show how far the perfection of a man could reach.”

This line will be spoken later in the text by HAMLET, but even in the first scene, there are similar words.
It is essentially through this sense of betrayal and degradation…
feelings evoked in him by his mother’s conduct, her hasty marriage, two months, we are told, after his father’s death…
that HAMLET presents himself. This is where the famous dialogue with HORATIO occurs:

– “Thrift, thrift! The funeral baked meats did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables.”

I do not need to recall these well-known themes. Next, immediately, we have the introduction of two characters, OPHELIA and POLONIUS. This occurs during a kind of little lecture that LAERTES…
who is quite an important character in our story of HAMLET, someone who, as we will see later, has been interpreted—rightly so, of course—as playing a particular role relative to HAMLET in the mythical unfolding of the story…
addresses to OPHELIA, the young woman whom HAMLET, as he himself says, was in love with, but whom he now, in his current state, rejects with much sarcasm. Both POLONIUS and LAERTES come to this unfortunate OPHELIA to deliver sermons about prudence, warning her to be wary of this HAMLET.

Then comes the fourth scene: HAMLET’s meeting on the terrace of Elsinore—where he is joined by HORATIO—with the ghost of his father. During this encounter, HAMLET shows himself to be passionate and courageous, as he does not hesitate to follow the ghost wherever it leads him, engaging in a rather horrifying dialogue.
I must emphasize that the element of horror is articulated by the ghost itself: it cannot reveal to HAMLET the horror and abomination of the place where it dwells and what it suffers, because HAMLET’s mortal faculties would not be able to bear it.

The ghost gives him a charge, a command. It is interesting to note right away that this command consists of making the queen’s scandalous lust cease, by whatever means necessary, and ensuring that, in all of this, HAMLET keeps his thoughts and impulses in check and refrains from indulging in excessive thoughts regarding his mother. Of course, much has been made by authors of the troubled undertone in the ghost’s instructions to HAMLET, particularly the notion that HAMLET must guard himself in his dealings with his mother.

But there is one aspect that does not seem to have been articulated sufficiently: that this, from the outset, is already centered around a problem to be solved. The question is what to do about something that here appears to be essential, despite the horror of what is articulated and the formal accusations pronounced by the ghost against CLAUDIUS, the murderer. It is here that the ghost reveals to his son that he was killed by this man.

The ghost’s charge is not an instruction in itself; rather, it is something that, from the start, places the mother’s desire at the forefront. This is absolutely essential, and we will return to it later.

The second act consists of what could be called the organization of surveillance around HAMLET.

We have, in essence, a sort of prologue in the form of…
this is rather amusing and shows the mirrored structure of the POLONIUS, LAERTES, OPHELIA group relative to the HAMLET, CLAUDIUS, and THE QUEEN group…
instructions given by POLONIUS, the chief minister, to someone regarding the surveillance of his son, who has gone to Paris. He explains how this surveillance should be conducted. This is a kind of little bravura piece on the eternal truths of espionage, which I need not dwell on.

Next come GUILDENSTERN and ROSENCRANTZ, who were already introduced in Act I.
They are not simply the inconsequential figures they are often thought to be; they are old friends of HAMLET.
And HAMLET…
distrustful of them, mocking them, ridiculing and disorienting them, plays an extremely subtle game with them under the guise of madness. We will later examine what this problem of HAMLET’s madness or pseudo-madness means…
at one moment appeals to their old friendship with a tone and manner deserving of attention, if we had the time, as it proves that he does so without the slightest trust in them.

He never for a moment relinquishes his position of cunning and playfulness with them. However, there is a point where he can speak to them in that particular tone. ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDENSTERN, in probing him, act as agents of the king, and HAMLET keenly perceives this, prompting him to ask them outright:

– “Were you sent to me? What business have you here with me?”

The two are sufficiently shaken for one to ask the other:

– “What should we say to him?”

But it passes, as everything always does in a way that ensures a certain boundary is never crossed, a boundary that might loosen the fundamentally and continuously knotted tension of the situation. At this moment, ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDENSTERN introduce the players they encountered on their way, players whom HAMLET knows.
HAMLET has always had an interest in the theater, and he welcomes these players in a remarkable way.
Here too, one would need to read the first samples they offer of their talent.

One part deals with a tragedy concerning the fall of Troy, the murder of PRIAM—and regarding this murder, there is a very beautiful scene in English where we see PYRRHUS suspend a dagger over the figure of PRIAM, and remain thus:

“So as a painted tyrant, Pyrrhus stood
And like a neutral to his will and matter,
Did nothing.”
“Thus, as a painted tyrant, Pyrrhus stood
And, as though neutralized between his will and what needed to be done,
Did nothing.”

As this is one of the fundamental themes of the affair, it deserves to be highlighted in this first image, that of the actors, which inspires in HAMLET the idea of using them in what will constitute the core of the third act—this is absolutely essential—what the English, in a stereotyped expression, call “the play scene,” or “the play within a play.” HAMLET concludes here:

“The play’s the thing
Wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the king.”

This kind of cymbal crash that ends a long tirade by HAMLET—written entirely in blank verse, as I note, but where we find this rhyming couplet—is something of great introductory value. I mean that it is upon this that the second act concludes and the third act, where “the play scene” is realized, begins. This monologue is essential. Through it, we see both:

– The intensity of HAMLET’s feelings,
– And the violence of the accusations he directs at himself, as shown in these lines:

“Am I a coward?
Who calls me villain? Breaks my pate across?
Plucks off my beard and blows it in my face?
Tweaks me by th’ nose? Gives me the lie i’ th’ throat
As deep as to the lungs? Who does me this, ha?”

“Am I a coward?
Who dares call me a villain?
Who breaks my head open?
Who plucks my beard and tosses pieces of it in my face?
Who twists my nose?
Who drives lies down my throat all the way to my lungs?
Who does all this to me?”

This gives us the general tone of this play, which is enough to knock you over. And immediately afterward, he speaks of his current stepfather:

“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.”

We had spoken of these “kites” in connection with A Memory of Leonardo da Vinci. I believe it refers to a kind of hawk. It is about his stepfather, this victim, and this slave who is meant to be sacrificed to the muses.

And here begins a series of insults:

“Bloody, bawdy villain!
Remorseless, treacherous, lecherous, kindless villain!”

“Bloody, whorish villain!
Remorseless, base, and vile villain!”

But these cries, these insults, are directed as much at himself as at the one the context suggests. This point is extremely important; it is the culmination of the second act. What constitutes the essence of his despair is this: he has seen the actors weep while describing the sad fate of HECUBA, in front of whom her husband PRIAM is cut to pieces.

For after holding the frozen position for so long, his dagger suspended, PYRRHUS takes a malicious pleasure…
as the text tells us:

“When she saw Pyrrhus make malicious sport
In mincing with his sword her husband’s limbs,”

…in cutting up…
“mincing” is, I believe, the same word as “émincer” in French…
…before this woman…
who is described to us as wrapped in some kind of comforter around her gaunt sides…
…the body of PRIAM.

The theme is all about this for HECUBA, but what is HECUBA to these people?
Here we have people brought to the height of emotion over something that does not concern them in the least.

It is at this point that HAMLET’s despair is triggered—his despair at feeling nothing equivalent. This is important for introducing what it is about: namely, the “play scene” for which he gives the reason. Almost caught up in the atmosphere, he suddenly seems to realize what can be done with it. What is the reason that drives him?
Certainly, there is a rational motivation: “to catch the conscience of the king.” That is, by having this play performed with some modifications introduced by himself, he aims to observe what will unsettle the king and make him betray himself.

And indeed, this is how things unfold. At one point, with great commotion, the king can no longer contain himself. The crime he committed is portrayed to him in such an exact manner, with HAMLET’s commentary, that he suddenly cries out, “Lights, lights…” and storms out in a great uproar, prompting HAMLET to say to HORATIO: “There is no doubt anymore.” This is essential.

I am not the first to have raised—in our analytical framework—the question of the function of this “play scene.”
RANK addressed it before me in an article titled Das Schauspiel in Hamlet, published in Psychoanalytische Bewegung Myth in 1919, Vienna-Leipzig, pages 72 to 85. The function of this “Schauspiel” was articulated by RANK in a way that we will need to revisit. It is clear, in any case, that it raises a problem that goes beyond its functional role in the structure of the play.

Many details show that it is nevertheless necessary to determine to what extent and how we can interpret these details. That is to say, whether it is enough for us to do as RANK does: identify all the traits that show how, within the very structure of watching a play, there is something evocative of a child’s early observations of parental copulation. This is the position RANK takes. I do not say it lacks value, nor even that it is false; I believe it is incomplete and, in any case, it deserves to be situated within the broader framework.

Namely, within HAMLET’s attempt to organize, to structure, to give precisely the dimension I have elsewhere called:
“the disguised truth, its fictional structure”—relative to which alone he finds a way to reorient himself, beyond the question of how effective the action may or may not be, to expose and reveal CLAUDIUS. There is something here, and RANK rightly touched on it concerning HAMLET’s orientation toward himself. I mention this only to highlight the interest of the issues raised here.

Things do not proceed so simply, and the third act does not conclude without the consequences of this development appearing in the following form: HAMLET is urgently summoned to his mother, who, of course, can no longer bear it…
those are literally the words used: “…speak no more!”
…and during this scene, as HAMLET approaches his mother’s chamber, he sees CLAUDIUS, who appears to be coming, if not to repentance, then at least to remorse. We witness the entire scene known as “the repentant prayer” of this man who is caught, as it were, in the very nets of what he possesses—the fruits of his crime—and who raises to God some kind of prayer for the strength to disentangle himself from it.

And finding him, literally on his knees and at his mercy, without the king seeing him, HAMLET has vengeance within his grasp. It is here that he stops, reflecting: would killing him now send him to heaven, whereas his father had insisted so much on the torments he suffered in some unclear hell or purgatory? Wouldn’t this act send him straight to eternal bliss? That is precisely what I must not do!

It was indeed the perfect moment to settle the matter, and I would even say that everything about “To be or not to be”—which I introduced to you last time, not by chance—is essential in my view. Everything essential is here, entirely. I mean that, because what happened to his father is precisely this: to come to tell us that he is fixed forever in this moment, this tally drawn beneath the ledger of life, leaving him summed up by his crimes. This, too, is what HAMLET confronted with his “To be or not to be.”

Suicide is not so simple. We are not exactly dreaming along with HAMLET about what happens in the afterlife, but rather considering this: that putting a terminal point to something does not prevent the being from remaining identical to everything articulated through the discourse of their life. And here, there is no “To be or not to be”—the “To be” remains eternal, no matter what.

And it is precisely this confrontation with eternity that HAMLET faces. That is, he is not merely the vehicle of the drama, the one through whom passions flow, the one who—like ETEOCLES and POLYNICES—continues in crime what the father completed in castration.

It is because HAMLET is deeply concerned with the eternal “To be” of CLAUDIUS that, in a completely coherent way at that moment, he does not even draw his sword from its sheath. This is indeed a key point, an essential point. What he wants is to wait, to catch the other in the excess of his pleasures—in other words, in his ongoing relationship to this mother, who here is the pivotal point, namely the mother’s desire. Indeed, he will have with his mother that poignant scene—one of the most extraordinary things ever written—where he shows her the mirror of what she is. And in this dialogue, between the son who unquestionably loves his mother as his mother loves him—this is explicitly stated, beyond any expression—he incites her, quite literally, to break free from what he calls “this damned monster of habit”:

“That monster, custom, who all sense doth eat
Of habits devil, is angel yet in this,
That to the use of actions fair and good
He likewise gives a frock or livery
That aptly is put on. Refrain tonight,
And that shall lend a kind of easiness
To the next abstinence: the next more easy.
For use almost can change the stamp of nature.”

In essence, HAMLET says to her, with remarkable bluntness, “Stop lying with CLAUDIUS, and you will see—it will become easier and easier.”

This is the point I want to introduce to you. There are two lines that seem essential to me. I have not yet spoken much about poor OPHELIA, but everything revolves around this. At one point, OPHELIA says to him:

“But you are a very good chorus.”
Meaning, “You are commenting on this play very well.”

He responds:

“I could interpret between you and your love,
If I could see the puppets dallying.”
“I could interpret what is happening between you and your love, as much as I am now watching the puppets playing their little game.”

In other words, what is happening on stage concerns “you and your love.” Similarly, in the scene with his mother, when the ghost appears—because the ghost appears at a moment when HAMLET’s reproaches are beginning to soften—it says:

“O, step between her and her fighting soul;
Conceit in weakest bodies strongest works.
Speak to her, HAMLET.”

That is to say, the ghost, who appears there exclusively for HAMLET—because usually, when the ghost appears, everyone sees it—tells him:

“…slip yourself between her and her battling soul…”

The term “conceit” is unequivocal. “Conceit” is used throughout the play and specifically in reference to the soul. Conceit is precisely the concetti, the pointed expression of style, and it is the word employed to refer to precious or elaborate style:

“…Conceit in weakest bodies strongest works. Speak to her, HAMLET.”

This moment, where HAMLET is repeatedly asked to step in, to act, to intervene, reveals the true nature of the drama. And despite the intervention, the meaningful call—it is meaningful for us because this is what it is all about: intervening “between her and her.” This is our work, “Conceit in weakest bodies strongest works”—this appeal is addressed to the analyst!

Here, once again, HAMLET falters and leaves his mother, saying: “After all, let him fondle you; he’ll come, kiss your cheek with his greasy lips, and stroke your neck!” He abandons his mother, literally allowing her to slip back, so to speak, into the abandonment of her desire. And this is how the act ends, except for the unfortunate event in which POLONIUS, hiding behind the tapestry, makes the mistake of moving—and HAMLET drives his sword through his body.

We arrive at Act IV.

At this point, something begins quite playfully: the “hunt for the body.”
HAMLET has hidden the corpse somewhere, and it truly begins with a “hunt for the body” that HAMLET seems to find very amusing. He exclaims:

“We’re playing hide-and-seek, and everyone’s chasing after it.”

Eventually, he tells them:

“Don’t tire yourselves out; in fifteen days you’ll start smelling it—it’s under the stairs. Let’s not talk about it anymore.”

There is a line here that is important and to which we will return:

“The body is with the king, but the king is not with the body. The king is a thing.”

“The body is with the king, but the king is not with the body; the king is a thing.”

This line is genuinely part of HAMLET’s schizophrenic remarks. It is also not without significance for our interpretation, as we will see later. Act IV is one in which many things happen quickly:

– HAMLET’s departure for England,
– His return before anyone has time to react. We know why:
he uncovered the plan and realized he was being sent to his death.

His return is accompanied by several dramatic developments:

– OPHELIA, in the meantime, has gone mad—let’s say due to her father’s death and probably something more.
– LAERTES has revolted and staged a little coup.
– The king quells the revolt by convincing him that HAMLET is to blame, but insists it cannot be made public because HAMLET is too popular. Instead, the matter must be settled discreetly through a rigged duel where HAMLET will perish.

This is exactly what is set to happen. The first scene of the final act consists of the cemetery scene.
I referred earlier to the First Gravedigger; you are all familiar with the astonishing dialogue exchanged between the characters digging OPHELIA’s grave, tossing skulls with every word. One of these skulls is picked up by HAMLET, who delivers a speech about it.

Speaking of actors, in all the history of theater costume attendants, it is said that there has never been a HAMLET and a First Gravedigger who weren’t at daggers drawn. The First Gravedigger never tolerates the tone HAMLET uses with him. This is a small detail worth noting, as it shows the power of the relationships brought to life in this drama.

Let us come now to something I will draw your attention to next time: that after this long and powerful buildup, Act V delivers the essence of the matter—this ever-fading desire, this exhausted, unfinished, unfinishable quality in HAMLET’s position.

Why do we suddenly see it become possible? That is, why do we suddenly see HAMLET accept, under the most implausible conditions, LAERTES’ challenge?
And under even stranger conditions, as HAMLET finds himself the champion of CLAUDIUS.

We see him defeat LAERTES in every round…
he strikes him four or five times, even though the wager was that he would be struck no more than five to twelve.
…and then he ends up impaled, as planned, on the poisoned tip—not without a sort of confusion, in which the blade returns to HAMLET’s hand, and he also wounds LAERTES.

And it is because both are mortally wounded that the final blow comes, dealt to the one who has been the true target from the beginning: CLAUDIUS.

It is no coincidence that I previously evoked a sort of painting—one like that of MILLAIS, with OPHELIA floating on the waters.

I would like to propose another image to conclude our discussion today. I would like someone to paint a picture where one can see a cemetery on the horizon, the grave pit here, and people leaving, much like those at the end of the Oedipal tragedy who disperse and cover their eyes so as not to see what is happening—namely, something akin to the liquefaction of Mr. VALDEMAR in relation to Oedipus.

Here, however, it is something else. Something happens that has not been given enough attention. HAMLET, who has just returned in haste thanks to the pirates who helped him escape the assassination attempt, stumbles upon OPHELIA’s funeral. For him, this is the first news of it! He had no idea what had happened during his short absence.

We see LAERTES tearing at his chest and leaping into the grave to embrace his sister’s corpse one last time, crying out his despair at the top of his lungs. HAMLET, quite literally, cannot tolerate this display over a girl whom, as you know, he has treated very poorly until now. He rushes after LAERTES into the grave, letting out a genuine roar, a war cry, in which he says the most unexpected thing. He concludes by saying:

“What is he whose grief bears such an emphasis?
Whose phrase of sorrow conjures the wandering stars,
And makes them stand like wonder-wounded hearers?”
And he declares:
“This is I, Hamlet the Dane.”

Never before has he identified himself as Danish—he detests the Danes. Yet all of a sudden, he is absolutely transformed by something that I can say is highly significant in relation to our schema: it is insofar as something, $, is in a particular relationship with a ($◊a), that he suddenly makes this identification, allowing him, for the first time, to fully rediscover his desire.

For some time, they remain in the grave, grappling with one another. They disappear into the pit, and in the end, they are pulled apart to be separated. This would be the scene depicted in the painting: the grave from which things seem to escape. We will see how this can be conceived and what it might mean.