The Marxist literary lens analyzes literature by understanding the historical conditions and factors that produce it and the structural cause of society behind it. This style of criticism is concerned with the interactions of societal “levels” and social relations, and how class struggle, oppression, and inequality are portrayed (Eagleton 18). Karl Heinrich Marx’s theories and ideas of politics and psychology, specifically known for criticizing the capitalist society and how “labourers, who must sell themselves piecemeal, are a commodity” are used by the upper class, made him known as the founder of Marxism (Marx 18). He frequently quoted or alluded to Shakespeare’s plays in his writings and was heavily influenced by Shakespeare, as referenced to in Marx’s Shakespeare (Ledwith). Thus, a thorough Marxist critique of The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, would reveal how Marxist critiques of class struggles, commodification, and the gentry could be applied to Shakespeare’s plays and consequently, exhibit links between Marxist and Shakespearean philosophy.
Although Shakespeare lived many years before Marx, both historical eras indicate radical changes, class conflict, and materialistic tendencies, and “twentieth-century historians such as R.H. Tawney and Christopher Hill have demonstrated that profound economic, social, and cultural revolution was taking place during Shakespeare lifetime” (Hatlen 91). In Shakespeare’s time, the feudal system was common and people often struggled to free themselves from their monarchs, as they often lacked loyalty to one. Shakespeare had a commoner father that saw the corruption and immorality of the ruling class, which impacted and led Shakespeare to depict the struggle between and within social classes in his works. Marxist criticism concerns class struggle perceived throughout history and since the historical situations around Shakespeare’s time reflect those that are portrayed in his plays, Marxist criticism is applicable to Shakespeare’s Hamlet.
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In Hamlet, class struggle and gaps in social classes are prominent. Characters such as Horatio, Marcellus, Guildenstern, and Rosencrantz are all lower in class than Hamlet and his family. Hamlet and his family are part of the royal class and the way that they address and treat the lower class is as objects and tools used to achieve their goals. For example, when Claudius and Gertrude call upon Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to spy on Hamlet to achieve their goal of figuring out what has made Hamlet “mad”. Higher ranked individuals oppress the lower rank ones and use them as their own commodity however they like, and enforce this by using their superior position to the lower class in order to make them obedient and obey the command of their authorities. As a result, their role and impact in the play have been intentionally ignored by the upper class and their marginalized voices silenced.
Claudius, as King of Denmark, uses his higher rank and power to oppress his “rival” in the play, Hamlet. When Hamlet refuses to be obedient, Claudius does everything he can to suppress him, ultimately wanting to kill Hamlet. Through the Marxist lens, Hamlet wanted to overthrow and overcome Claudius’s oppressive rule. When Hamlet becomes aware of the corruption of the royal class (in this case, the murder of King Hamlet), he separates himself from the ruling class by faking madness and resists the efforts by the ruling class (specifically Claudius) to control and oppress him. The issue of commodification, a cornerstone of Marxism, is clearly shown in Claudius as he commodified all the people around him for his own benefit and sacrifices them for his own benefit. Claudius commodifies Gertrude and marries her with political implications in order to use her power against Hamlet, while he uses Hamlet to show that he and Laertes have a common enemy. In the reverse, he also uses Laertes to indirectly kill Hamlet, instead of doing it himself. He uses Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to spy on Hamlet to figure out the source of his “madness”, and “keeps them, like an [apple], in the corner of his jaw, first mouthed, to be last swallowed” (4.2.17-19). When Hamlet explains this to him, wants them to understand that Claudius only uses them for as long as he needs them, then “swallows” them once they have gleaned but he needed. He second-handedly commodified Ophelia when he allows and agrees with Polonius to use Ophelia in order to find the reason for Hamlet’s madness and to determine if the cause was truly their love. Therefore, Claudius uses his power and social rank to manipulate others to get what he wants and for his own benefit.
Similarily to her husband, Gertrude also commodifies others for her own benefit, therefore establishing the fact that she is not just a victim to Claudius’s manipulation. Although she was still grieving over her husband’s death, she agrees to hastily marry Claudius to preserve her power and ensure her position as Queen of Denmark. Also like Claudius, she is not reluctant to use Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to uncover the reason for her son’s madness and agrees with Claudius’s manipulation of them: “... I beseech you instantly to visit/My too much changed son” (2.2.35-36). Her active participation in encouraging Claudius’s manipulation of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern imply how she uses her social power as queen to have those from the lower classes do the work, similar to the relationship between proletariat (the working class, symbolized by Rosencrantz and Guildenstern) and bourgeoisie (the employers of the proletariat, Claudius and Gertrude). Then, when Ophelia went truly mad, the queen first refuses to speak with her, showing the lack of empathy once Ophelia had done her part in the scheme to expose the reason behind Hamlet’s madness and only using her for as long as they need her, similar to how Claudius treats Rosencrantz and Guildenstern (4.5.1).
The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark also shows parallels between King Claudius and the real-life Henry VII of England, who married his dead brother’s wife, Katherine of Aragon (The Bill/Shakespeare Project). An immediate connection is made to Claudius marrying Gertrude, his dead brother’s wife, and both unions were described as “incestuous” and the legitimacy of both unions was questioned. In Gertrude’s case, she had a son by her first husband before the second, and if she did have a son with Claudius, it would lead to succession issues and conflicts. For Henry VIII, the doctrine at the time meant that it would be incestuous for Henry to marry his brother’s wife, just as Hamlet protests that his mother’s marriage to Claudius is incestuous.
Shakespeare introduces the theme of ancestral revenge with Laertes and Fortinbras. While Laertes, when he learns of his father’s death, he bursts into the palace with armed men to demand an answer from the king:
LAERTES.
I thank you. Keep the door. [Exeunt his Followers]
O thou vile king,
Give me my father.
QUEEN. Calmly, good Laertes (4.5.13-16)
In comparison, Fortinbras does not believe in ancestral revenge and only sees it as a way for political advancement, and finds it easy to take action:
Rightly to be great
Is not to stir without great argument,
But greatly to find quarrel in a straw
When honor’s at the stake (4.4.54-56)
Although there is no “great argument” for Fortinbras to lead an army against Poland, Fortinbras doesn’t need a good reason and immediately gets into action. Hamlet stands in between these two and is tormented by his passivity and lack of action:
To take him in the purging of his soul,
When he is fit and season for his passage?
No. (3.4.85-87)
Hamlet shows in inaction by delaying his chance to kill Claudius. It is possible to interpret this torment that Shakespeare expressed through Hamlet in terms of decay of absolutism around 1600, which underlined the degeneracy of the English court. Most importantly is the analysis of Polonius, who is both shrewd and foolish. His traits show that he has adapted to the aristocracy way of life--he is partly bourgeois but also concerned for his family name. Reasonably, Laertes and Ophelia have the same feudal characteristics. Ophelia has her blind obedience to her brother and father, and Laertes’s violent rage and duty to his family when he takes revenge for the death of Polonius. By depicting the family of Polonius in similarity to the bourgeois, Shakespeare criticizes the gentry and primary accumulation. The time period that Shakespeare lived in saw the rise of the bourgeoisie, which had torn apart feudal ties and left no other bonds than self-interest and egotistical calculation, and within the family, “torn away from the family its sentimental veil, and has reduced the family relation to a mere money relation (Marx 16).
Although Shakespeare lived any years before Marx, the class struggle exists in both eras as Marx and Engels stated in the Communist Manifesto, “the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles” (Marx 19). Through analyzing Shakespeare’s play Hamlet with a Marxist lens and its critiques of class distinction, the power struggle between social classes, and commodification of the lower social classes, corruption, and oppressive ideologies, Shakespeare’s Hamlet depict and represent ideas of social reformation and form which Marxism agrees with.
Works Cited
- Shakespeare, William. The Tragical History of Hamlet Prince of Denmark, edited by A.R. Braunmuller, Penguin Books, 2001.
- Hatlen, Burton. “Feudal and Bourgeois Concepts of Value in The Merchant of Venice.” Shakespeare: Contemporary Critical Approaches, edited by Harry. R. Garvin and Michael D. Payne, Bucknell University Press, 1980, pp. 91.
- Marx, Karl, and Engels, Friedrich. The Communist Manifesto. Translated by Samuel Moore in cooperation with Frederick Engels, vol. One, Progress Publishers, 1969.
- Ledwith, Sean. “Marx's Shakespeare.” Counterfire, 21 Apr. 2016, www.counterfire.org/articles/analysis/18300-marx-s-shakespeare.
- Royanian, Shamsoddin, and Omrani, Elham. “Class Oppression and Commodification in Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Merchant of Venice”, World Scientific News, 2016, http://www.worldscientificnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/WSN-50-2016-186-196.pdf
- Eagleton, Terry. Marxism and Literary Criticism. London, Routledge Classics, 2002.
- TheBillShakespeareProject. “Hamlet: Elizabethan/Historical Analog?” The Bill/Shakespeare Project, 17 April 2015, thebillshakespeareproject.com/2015/04/hamlet-elizabethan-historical-analog/.
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