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Four centuries ago, William Shakespeare gave the world The Tragicall Historie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark (c.1603). In it, a tormented prince swayed between revenge and doubt after the assassination of his noble father, the king of the Nordic country. Prince Hamlet’s personality has been universally acknowledged to be perhaps the most complex in the history of human letters. More than two hundred years later, Edgar Allan Poe, a poet of New England, and also tormented by his personal circumstances, envisioned a noble, almost kingly character, Roderick Usher, in his story called The Fall of the House of Usher (1839). The tale presents the reader with a man whose life is devastated by mental insanity and by the knowledge that his death will mean the end of his dynastic line. It is the aim of this paper to examine Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Poe’s Roderick Usher, with a view to exploring their possible perception of their changing environments through possible areas of comparison and contrast. It should be noted that the areas that are addressed both in the tragedy and in the story are not limited to the characters in question, but may touch upon other elements surrounding these characters, the exploration of which has been found to be relevant to the scope of this paper.
Citation preview
SHAKESPEARE’S HAMLET AND POE’S USHER: PERCEPTION OF
SOCIAL TRANSFORMATION
Alejandro Manniello
Instituto Santa Trinidad
March 2006
CONTENTS
1. Introduction and research focus..............................4
2. Shakespeare’s Prince of Denmark ...........................6
3. Poe’s Roderick Usher........................................... 12
4. Concluding Words ............................................... 17
5. References......................................................... 21
Alejandro Manniello Instituto Santa Trinidad March 2006
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ABSTRACT
Four centuries ago, William Shakespeare gave the world The Tragicall Historie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark (c.1603). In it, a tormented prince swayed between revenge and doubt after the assassination of his noble father, the king of the Nordic country. Prince Hamlet’s personality has been universally acknowledged to be perhaps the most complex in the history of human letters. More than two hundred years later, Edgar Allan Poe, a poet of New England, and also tormented by his personal circumstances, envisioned a noble, almost kingly character, Roderick Usher, in his story called The Fall of the House of Usher (1839). The tale presents the reader with a man whose life is devastated by mental insanity and by the knowledge that his death will mean the end of his dynastic line. It is the aim of this paper to examine Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Poe’s Roderick Usher, with a view to exploring their possible perception of their changing environments through possible areas of comparison and contrast. It should be noted that the areas that are addressed both in the tragedy and in the story are not limited to the characters in question, but may touch upon other elements surrounding these characters, the exploration of which has been found to be relevant to the scope of this paper.
Alejandro Manniello Instituto Santa Trinidad March 2006
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SHAKESPEARE’S HAMLET AND POE’S USHER: PERCEPTION OF SOCIAL TRANSFORMATION
1. Introduction and research focus
The beginning of the seventeenth century in England saw the crucial
political transition from the long and firm rule of Queen Elizabeth I to
the start of a new dynasty. Although the passage from Tudor to
Stuart was not uneventful or irrelevant to historians, the matrix of a
new social system, capitalism, had already been formed long before
towards the end of the Middle Ages (McNall Burns, 1973). However, it
would be senseless to state that reaffirmation of a social system does
not include remains, or elements that belong to the previous ones:
the medieval tradition did not die altogether with the arrival of the
new system.
It is in the middle of this historical moment that William Shakespeare
gave the world The Tragicall Historie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark
(c.1603)1. In this drama the tormented Prince sways between
revenge and doubt after the assassination of his noble father, the
king of the Nordic country. Authors have in general agreed that
Prince Hamlet’s personality is perhaps the most complex in the 1 Although the play was first printed in 1603, there is evidence that the stage history of Hamlet seems to date back to 1589 (Lott, 1968)
Alejandro Manniello Instituto Santa Trinidad March 2006
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history of human letters. Numberless books and articles have been
written about the troubled prince, and it has been suggested that a
whole lifetime would not be enough for anyone to read all that has
been written about the drama and its protagonists.
More than two hundred years later, half a century after the birth of
the American nation, a poet of New England, whose soul was different
but not as tormented as the Shakespearean prince’s, embarked on a
literary career which would not bear its fruit or achieve any success
till well after the writer died (Regan, 1967). Edgar Allan Poe, famous
for his mystery and powerfully hallucinating poetry, gave birth to a
character, Roderick Usher, who has a clear but tormented perception
of the end of his dynastic line and of his own death. The protagonist
of The Fall of the House of Usher indeed realizes, by extension, that
he lives and is part of a social system whose days, like his own, are
numbered. Different elements in the character’s personality reveal
this tragic awareness.
The present paper aims to examine perception of socio-historical
change through the comparison between Shakespeare’s Hamlet and
Poe’s Usher, informed by the working hypothesis that both characters
might evidence some degree of awareness of the inevitable fall of a
socio-political system, and the subsequent emergence of a new one.
Alejandro Manniello Instituto Santa Trinidad March 2006
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The parameters of comparison will mainly be related to the
omnipresent themes of mental disorder on the one hand,
decomposition and decadence on the other. Additionally, reference
will be made to the characters' state of depression and lack of worldly
pleasure, as well as the instances where the natural order becomes
subverted, as is perceived by the characters in question.
It should be observed that there are multiple details in both
Shakespeare’s tragedy and Poe’s story which might definitely suggest
perception of social change. However, mostly elements connected to
the above characters and their immediate surroundings are to be
considered for the purpose of the present study.
2. Shakespeare’s Prince of Denmark
There are clear indicators that the Elizabethan and Jacobean
audiences were not new to the story of Hamlet (Lott, 1968). Indeed,
the story goes that an early tragedy about Prince Hamlet was written
and presented on stage to the people of London. Unfortunately, only
a few references to the performances have been found, the original
play having been lost. It might be a likely case that, by writing
Hamlet, Shakespeare in fact responded to a popular interest in the
life of a prince. Yet, there is little doubt that the subtle complexities
Alejandro Manniello Instituto Santa Trinidad March 2006
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of this character were largely enriched and enhanced by
Shakespeare.
The young prince is brought up in a typically feudal environment:
evidence of this can be found in his mastery of such feudal practices
as riding and fencing. However, as time goes by, and Hamlet
becomes a young student, he goes to study at the University of
Wittenberg, in Germany. This centre of higher education has
traditionally been considered one of the cradles of humanism, a
movement that mostly propounded and exalted the virtues and
qualities of man (Hooker, 1996). It goes without saying that this
movement is directly related to the Renaissance, a period that is in
turn born into the emerging capitalist system (McNall Burns 1973).
The cult of individuality would never have been possible in feudal
times. Therefore, young Hamlet, at the beginning of the play might
be positioned in between two opposing structures: his early
upbringing and the new humanistic intellectual life in Europe.
Nevertheless, unnatural though it is by Medieval standards, Hamlet
manages to kill Claudius in the end. Challenging all feudal values and
fuelled by his passion, he does commit regicide: he does become a
modern man.
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Although the real complicator of the drama points to the death of
Hamlet’s father, the prince’s conflict really starts when the imposing
figure of the ghost of Old Hamlet, standing in full armour, informs his
perplexed son that he has been murdered. The ghost poisons
Hamlet’s ear with this horrendous information, in the same way that
the late king himself is poisoned to death by his own brother. From
that moment onward, the young prince’s life will change altogether:
he doubts the ghost’s credentials, but he intends to avenge the late
king’s death.
Hamlet hits on the idea of putting “an antic disposition on” (I.v.172)
for a number of reasons that critics have never ceased to debate
(Lott, 1968): while some believe that he needed to stand away from
the rest in order to corroborate the ghost’s story and plan his
revenge, others suggest that his feigned madness comes from the
need to have more time. Some authors affirm that Hamlet’s insanity
is real, not pretended.
Pretended or genuine, there is madness in Hamlet. Under the
influence of Polonius, chief advisor to the king, both King Claudius
and his newly-wed Queen Gertrude Hamlet’s mother are
convinced that the young prince is definitely insane and assume that
the cause of his mental derangement is the prince’s intense and
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unrequited love for Polonius’ daughter, Ophelia. Hamlet indeed acts
very strangely towards Ophelia, coming to see her in ragged clothes,
frightening her and, above all, unleashing his anger at her consent to
be her father’s instrument of espionage, through insulting words that
lead her to a madness which cannot be seen as pretended, since it
finishes with her life. On the other hand, Polonius, another future
victim of Hamlet’s rage, realizes that the prince’s “mad” behaviour
does have a certain pattern: when Hamlet chooses to insult and
belittle him, treating the king’s official as a stupid old man, the really
stupid old advisor affirms that “[t]hough this be madness, yet there is
method in’t” (II.ii.203). This can be a likely perception that Hamlet’s
madness is not genuine. However, there comes a moment in the play
when tension and its resulting chaos, as well as inaction and
postponement, are the direct result of Hamlet’s special state of mind,
be it constructed or real.
The complex issues associated with the spirit are strongly contrasted
to a central theme related to organic matter: decomposition or
putrefaction, closely linked with the idea of corruption. Indeed, the
first mention of the topic in the play is made by a minor character,
Marcellus, in a clear allusion to political corruption: when he hears
about the political trouble that Denmark is going through, he sadly
points out that “something is rotten in the state of Denmark”
Alejandro Manniello Instituto Santa Trinidad March 2006
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(I.v.90). In direct allusion to Danish decadence, it is the Prince who
makes explicit reference to images of putrefaction and decay when he
treats Polonius as if he were a fishmonger and, after a brief reference
to “maggots” and “carrion”, Shakespeare makes powerful use of irony
by juxtaposition as Hamlet immediately goes on to ask Polonius about
his honesty. Allusions like this one are plentiful in Hamlet’s
conversations with Ophelia. Whether caused by the prince’s over-
Oedipal relationship with his mother, his unclear sexual inclination, or
both, it seems clear that Hamlet is aware of corruption and its
associations with organic putrefaction. This is clear, even when the
Prince cynically narrates about the likely presence of a king inside the
intestines of a beggar, one of the most memorable, sarcastic and
witty parts spoken by Hamlet (IV.iii.30-1). It is impossible to deny
that this remark is directly aimed at Claudius’ corruption, a direct
metaphoric extension of nature’s inexorable process of organic
decomposition, the basis of physical, social and even political
decadence.
The above elements in the play reside in Elsinore as well as in Prince
Hamlet’s particular state of mind: his depression and his incapacity to
enjoy worldly pleasures. The first time the audience sees Hamlet, he
is in the company of his mother, his uncle and practically the whole
Danish court. Yet, he is away from the rest and down-hearted. His
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depression stems from the death of his father and from his mother’s
hasty marriage to his uncle, the new king. No matter how hard
Claudius and Gertrude try to cheer up the young prince, Hamlet’s
spirits cannot be lifted. Greater is his depression when he meets his
father’s ghost: even if his acts of madness provide the play with acid,
witty and even humorous parts, the underlying state is one of
absolute depression. This can clearly be seen in Hamlet’s dramatic
soliloquies, in which he dramatically and sadly condemns female
“frailty” (I.ii.129-158), he accuses himself of inaction as he compares
himself with the talent of visiting actors (II.ii.521-580), or he thinks
about committing suicide (III.i.56-90). The clearest and most
dramatic confession to his incapacity for pleasure comes before the
climax of the play, that is, before the performance of ‘The Murder of
Gonzago’, by the group of travelling players. In a remarkably broken-
hearted soliloquy, he admits to his stupidly cynical “friends”
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, in surprising prose:
“… I have of late but therefore I know not – lost all my mirth, forgone all customs of exercises; and this indeed, it goes so heavily with my disposition that this goodly frame, the earth, seems to me sterile promontory; this most excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave o’ erhanging firmament, this majestic roof freted with golden fire why it appears no other thing to me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours […] Man delights not me; no, nor woman neither” (II.ii.289-302).
It is remarkable to see such a stunning self-confession especially
when, in the middle of it, Shakespeare makes Hamlet utter one of the
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most beautiful definitions of humanism: “what a piece of work is
man” (II.ii.286). This indeed accentuates, through shocking
contraposition, Hamlet’s profound depression.
3. Poe’s Roderick Usher
Edgar Allan Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher was written in 1839
in ‘Burton’s Gentleman’s Magazine’. In this story, a puzzled narrator
rides to the mansion of his old friend Roderick Usher, whom he has
not seen for many long years, and arrives only to see a decaying
house within a gloomy, lugubrious atmosphere. When he meets his
aristocratic friend, the narrator sees a completely changed man.
Roderick looks emaciated and decadent. Living in complete seclusion,
only in the company of a dying twin sister, Roderick’s disease is
explained to the narrator, who accompanies his friend along a sad
path to death, an individual death which marks the end of his
dynastic line, and even the physical destruction of the whole
mansion, a catastrophic even from which the narrator can barely
escape from.
The first element that the narrator perceives is the mental state of his
friend Roderick: he is gloomy, depressed, and he describes a strange
and abnormal hyper-sensibility that makes him avoid any relatively
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strong sensory stimulus. Usher simply cannot bear to stand in the
sunlight, and his hearing powers are overwhelmed by any loud sound
with the exception of that coming from certain stringed instruments.
The significance of the mention of stringed instruments makes the
reader turn back to the story’s epigraph, in which it is relatively
simple to discover the strong symbolic link between the tension of the
lute’s strings and Usher’s depressed and nervous state:
Son coeur est un luth suspendu; Sitot qu'ôn le touche il resónne. De Beranger.2
As time passes, the narrator becomes acquainted with Usher’s story,
and the reader is told that Usher is the last of his dynastic line: his
impending death will entail the end of a solid aristocratic family line.
Indeed there is a sister, his twin: Lady Madelaine of Usher. She has
been Usher’s sole companion for long years and now she is suffering
a disease as strange as her brother’s mental disorder. Yet her malady
is of a cataleptic nature. This immediately warns the reader of a
possible premature burial.
Additionally, there is a hint that “sympathies of a scarcely intelligible
nature had always existed” (Poe, 259) between brother and sister: a
2 His heart is a suspended lute;
Whenever one touches it, it resounds.
Alejandro Manniello Instituto Santa Trinidad March 2006
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possible reference to an incestuous relationship between them.
Disease and incest seem to constitute a solid structure that might
have its origin in family intermarriage, a common practice among the
aristocracy so as not to allow “plebeian” or “common” blood to come
into their lineage. This type of practice has, for example, generated
haemophilia among numberless male members of the European
aristocracy, given that constant marriage of cousins and / or other
close relationships may cause serious genetic alterations that may
translate into self-immune disease (Giangrande 1997).
Yet, incest might suggest a possible climax to the long tradition of
family intermingling. This peak of tension seems to be the last
attempt at closing in on and preserving the family line that was
inexorably coming to an end. This appears to be, from a sociological
perspective, the remains of an old feudal order refusing to come to
an end and be replaced by the new capitalist order (the so-called
“plebeian” blood). The Ushers’ malady and their imminent deaths also
seem to stand for and symbolise the end of a social system and of a
political order.
Mental insanity is undoubtedly present in The Fall of the House of
Usher, and can be seen clearly in the character of Roderick. Apart
from his depression and his strange hyper-sensibility, Poe makes
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direct reference to the loss of reason as a palpable reality. This vision
of mental derangement is closely and exquisitely associated with the
central theme of the interface between the end of a family line and
the complete destruction of their mansion: the strange link between
living and non-living entities. The noble human is seen as a palace in
the small poem ‘The Haunted Palace’, inserted in the story, and
supposedly recited by Usher to the narrator:
I. In the greenest of our valleys, By good angels tenanted, Once fair and stately palace Radiant palace --reared its head. In the monarch Thought's dominion -- It stood there! Never seraph spread a pinion Over fabric half so fair. […] V. But evil things, in robes of sorrow, Assailed the monarch's high estate; (Ah, let us mourn, for never morrow Shall dawn upon him, desolate!) And, round about his home, the glory That blushed and bloomed Is but a dim-remembered story Of the old time entombed. VI. And travellers now within that valley, Through the red-litten windows, see Vast forms that move fantastically To a discordant melody; While, like a rapid ghastly river, Through the pale door, A hideous throng rush out forever, And laugh --but smile no more.
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The first and the last two stanzas of this little inserted masterpiece
should serve to illustrate Poe’s construction of a palace obviously
representing the domains of the old landed aristocracy, and the
invading powers of madness. There is a striking use of personification
all the way through the poem, since this palace is indeed a human
head, with “Thought” as its king. Gradually this palace is invaded,
“assailed”, and the place undergoes changes which can easily be
perceived as the slow process of the end of reason, closely tied to the
decadence and fall of a social system. Insanity appears to be seen by
Poe as the old feudal regime’s incapacity to adapt to the new system,
and this leads to the final catastrophe.
An interesting element in Poe’s story is the relationship between
organic and non-organic matter. From the very beginning, the
narrator perceives something more than a gloomy atmosphere
pervading the Usher mansion: there were minute fungi overspreading
the stones of the house, and decayed trees standing around. These
elements, together with the small crack in the wall which will later on
gape out and destroy the house, illustrate the general decadence and
decomposition that will bring the story to its ending. However, the
nature of decay is not simply present for no apparent reason: Usher
firmly believes in a the power of “sentience” that inanimate objects
possess. In his particular view, his mental disorder, the end of a
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dynasty and the objects that make up and surround his house exist in
a sort of harmony that is slowly being upset or subverted now. Non-
organic matter indeed “feels”, in the sick man’s view. This
undoubtedly generates a vision of decomposition and putrefaction
that goes beyond what can be simply or scientifically explained. The
strange character affirms that all objects have a life, and this
“sentience” stands harmonious with their environment, be it animal,
vegetable or mineral.
4. Concluding Words
Shakespeare’s Prince Hamlet and Poe’s Roderick Usher share
interesting characteristics but present striking differences. Although
differences do outweigh similitudes, some elements in the above
examination seem to throw some light on the main focus of this
paper.
Indeed, it can be safely concluded that both characters evidence,
perhaps semi-consciously and indirectly, a certain degree of
awareness of a changing world, although they lived in different ages:
Hamlet goes through the conflictive plot of the tragedy at a time
when a new social order is emerging, and the Old Hamlet-Claudius
opposition represents the passage from the old feudal system to the
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new capitalist order. Unlike the Prince of Denmark, Poe’s Usher lives
a post-French Revolution reality: the old nobility has already been
displaced and replaced by an already strong bourgeoisie that holds
economic and political power (McNall Burns, 1973).
Whereas madness in Hamlet, pretended or genuine, clearly stems
from the murder of his father, and the marriage of his mother to the
murderer, mental disorder in Usher is deeply rooted in the end of a
dynastic line, which would also bring upon the complete destruction
of his physical and tangible surroundings. However, Hamlet’s
insanity, as well as Usher’s, is also related to the perception of the
end of an era. The permanent comparisons that he draws between
his father and the present king constantly speak of his nostalgia for
the times gone. Hamlet tells the king’s spies Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern that his depression is accompanied by a lack of
enthusiasm about the medieval sports he used to practise. Besides,
he is longing to go back to Wittemberg, as if a new humanist Europe
were calling him, and is finally able to break through Medieval
ideological barriers when he finally commits regicide, though at the
cost of his own life. Usher, on the other hand, is mentally
unbalanced, but he knows that his malady is directly connected with
his coming death, the end of his family line, which represents the
slow fall of a once powerful and hegemonic social class.
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As regards the characters’ depression, it should be interesting to note
that both of them feel deep nostalgia for the past. This omnipresent
ubi sunt attitude can be clearly perceived in Hamlet’s recollections of
his father in grim contrast with his uncle, and in the sad awareness
that his country is going through a period of absolute decadence
under Claudius. Roderick Usher also remembers old times with
sadness, and this is strongly reinforced by the inserted poem ‘The
Haunted Palace’, which depicts the once radiant palace of king
Thought being attacked and invaded by madness, in direct allusion to
Usher’s situation.
The ideas of decomposition, putrefaction and corruption play an
important part in both characters. Hamlet makes use of the topics of
decomposition and corruption (two practically synonymous terms) to
constantly refer to life, death and the sad state his beloved country is
in. There are numberless references to the putrefaction of organic
matter to illustrate issues ranging from misogyny to gruesomeness,
from life and death to the political present of Denmark. On the other
hand, in Poe’s Usher decomposition seems to form part of a more
complex structure. The lord of the mansion perceives not only the
inevitability of his death, but also has a clear vision of the “sentient”
nature of inanimate objects. In the same way that Shakespeare
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portrays nature revolting against the action of regicide in Macbeth
(Ludowyc, 1964), that is, the upsetting of the Medieval natural order,
Poe makes Usher’s environment conform to the Medieval vision,
although slightly anachronically, that is, long after the nobility ceased
to be the ruling class.
Both Shakespeare in the seventeenth century and Poe two centuries
later were able to create two remarkably complex characters: Prince
Hamlet and Roderick Usher. It may be stated that their decadent
mental disorder and depression, as well as the slow but inexorable
decomposition of their environment, allows these two characters to at
least partially or subconsciously perceive the transformations of their
socio-historical settings. Moreover, they are, above all, dramatically
and tragically affected, respectively, by a changing social structure,
and by an already changed world where there still existed suffering
and dying survivors of an old order.
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5. References Beebe, M. (1956). ‘The Universe of Roderick Usher’, in Regan, R. (Ed) (1967). Giangrande P.L.F. (1997). ‘The history of haemophilia’ (Online) Available at: http: //www.medicine.ox.ac.uk / ohc / history.htm Hooker R. (1996). ‘Humanism’ (Online) Available at: http: // www.wsu.edu:8080 / ~dee / ren /humanism.htm. Lott, B.(Ed.) (1968). New Swan Shakespeare: Hamlet. London: Longman. Ludowyc, E.F.C. (1964). Understanding Shakespeare. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. McNall Burns, E. (1973). Western Civilizations (8th Edition). New York: Norton. Poe, E.A. (1839). The Fall of the House of Usher. In Van Doren Stern, P. (Ed.) (1945). Regan, R. (Ed) (1967). Poe: A Collection of Critical Essays. Eaglewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Shakespeare, W. (C.1603). Hamlet. In Lott, B.(Ed.) (1968). Van Doren Stern, P. (Ed.) (1945). The Portable Poe. New York: Penguin.
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