First of all, I know it's a different thread I am posting this in, but I appreciate the variety of responses that were given on my post about the hard problems faced in modern philosophy and science.
Now, for this thread, I would like to add in something to this thread on "Fairy Tales for the Spirit" that I believe fits in with the discussion. Although this is not specifically about a folk tale, or mythology, it still has relevance to the heart of the discussion in my opinion.
I'm not sure if anyone here has read Owen Barfield's book "Romanticism Comes of Age", he wrote a fascinating chapter on how William Shakespeare's plays express or embody the Consciousness Soul; the experiences of isolation, loneliness, materialism, loss of faith in a spiritual world, and uncertainty, are embodied very poetically within these plays. The Consciousness Soul human lives 'in the dark' and no longer feels the older instinctive promptings from the spiritual world that people seemed to have in the past. Barfield uses Shakespeare's
as the main example, providing justification for this, and justification for his claim that Shakespeare's imagination was, unconsciously, a vessel for the Consciousness Soul era (which was something only just starting to unfold at the time). This, of course, also applies to other poets and artists of that time period.
I would like to share excerpts from the book because Barfield expresses it so excellently, and also because I am not as deeply familiar with Shakespeare as he seemed to be. If anyone reading this has an opinion to share, I'd be interested to hear.
[...] It is particularly interesting to observe how this mood of isolation in excessive consciousness, of individual uncertainty, of ‘will-lessness' is what gives the play of Hamlet its characteristic 'form'. So much so, that critics who are insensitive to this mood are often heard complaining that the play has no form, that as a work of art it is a failure. For example, the farewell scene between Ophelia and Laertes and between Polonius and Laertes is often criticised as a mere excrescence and the same has been said of the scene between Polonius and Reynaldo, in which the former directs Reynaldo to spy upon Laertes' doings in Paris by employing all sorts of exceedingly cunning pretences and devices. Such critics do not see how the reciprocal relations between Ophelia, Laertes, Polonius and Hamlet are carefully modulated variations of the central consciousness soul theme of isolation, uncertainty and distrust of all outside the self, including other selves.
From the mild but nevertheless slightly stinging retort made by Ophelia to Laertes : —
“ . . . . But, good my brother,
Do not, as some ungracious pastors do.
Show me the steep and thorny way to heaven ;
Whilst, like a puff’d and reckless libertine.
Himself the primrose path of dalliance treads.
And recks not his own rede.”
...to Laertes' stilted and even priggish sowing in his sister of distrust for Hamlet’s motives — thus revealing at the same time his own lack of confidence in her : —
“ . . . . Perhaps he loves you now ;
And now no soil nor cautel doth besmirch
The virtue of his will : but you must fear.
His greatness weighed, his will is not his own ;
..........
Fear it, Ophelia, fear it, my dear sister.
And keep you in the rear of your affection.
Out of the shot and danger of desire.
..........
Be wary, then ; best safety lies in fear. . ."
it is really remarkable how the whole speech is directed towards inculcating fear. Laertes is a “ Safety First ” man. From the careful watering of these seeds of misprision by old Polonius (“ Aye, springes to catch woodcocks ! ”) to Ophelia’s perhaps weak abandonment of her faith in Hamlet and too ready obedience to her father, the whole scale is played, until the diapason closes in the pathetic scene, not actually played on the stage but described so graphically by Ophelia herself, in which, after she has suddenly returned him all his letters and gifts, Hamlet comes to her in his wild and dishevelled state, seizes her hand and simply stares questioningly into her eyes :
“ He took me by the wrist, and held me hard ;
Then goes he to the length of all his arm ;
And, with his other hand thus o’er his brow.
He falls to such perusal of my face,
As he would draw it. Long stay’d he so ;
At last — a little shaking of mine arm,
And thrice his head thus waving up and down —
He rais’d a sigh so piteous and profound,
That it did seem to shatter all his bulk,
And end his being : that done, he lets me go :
And, with his head over his shoulder turn’d,
He seem’d to find his way without his eyes ;
For out o’ doors he went without their help,
And, to the last, bended their light on me.”
Superficially we know that Hamlet is asking himself — and the eyes — the question : Are you honest ? Have you simply been acting in obedience to Polonius’s commands ? Or are you after all only a heartless coquette ? But actually — and this comes out both in the quality of the poetry and in the whole structure of the play (the place , for instance, at which this speech occurs) he is asking much more than this. He is asking the question : Is there such a being as Ophelia at all ? A body no doubt ; I have hold of it; but is that island inhabited? He is being forced back into an unwelcome solipsism. He looks into her eyes and he asks the question that is asked, in this age, many thousands of times a day all over the Western world by people who cannot see the other being — the telephone question : “ Are you there ? ” And so we are led by this play through the whole gamut of uncertainty and mistrust, not excluding the central uncertainty of all — Hamlet’s mistrust of the revelation he receives from the other, the spirit-world from which, as from his fellow creatures, he is severed by his excessively insulating self- consciousness.
In the same way it has often been complained that the episode of the Players’ entrance and their long practice speeches made at Hamlet’s request is tacked on for no artistic reason and spoils the shapeliness of the play. Critics who make such a complaint have not noticed what the First Player’s speech is about. Let us consider it for a moment. Hamlet him self selects the particular passage to be spoken, from which we see that a dim recollection of the scene it conjures up is already running in his mind. But with what else has his mind been preoccupied ? With the practical result of uncertainty — indecision. He is come to the moment in his life at which his destiny calls on him to act, to act positively without excessive hesitation, without being held up and paralysed by an excess of sympathy with the other’s point of view (mere consciousness). The world of Denmark is out of joint and his action is needed to put it right. He does not want to. He wants to do nothing, to retire, to have, or say he is having, a nervous breakdown. Moreover, he himself is alive to this danger ; he knows well that alleged moral scruples may mask a mere supine inactivity — that “conscience" may “make cowards of us all.” He knows that he is in need of a little 'ruthlessness.’ Instinctively, therefore, he draws on the Player to put before him an imagination of the opposite state of mind to this of his own ; and the Player at his request recites that scene from the fall of Troy, in which Pyrrhus has to kill the aged and venerable Priam — as Hamlet knows he ought to kill his uncle. The verse describes in ranting terms how Pyrrhus seeks out Priam amid the smoking ruins and strikes at him, and how, though he strikes wide, the old man falls "with the whiff and wind of his fell sword.” And now comes the crux of the speech. Pyrrhus pauses. He is, so to speak, becalmed.
" . . . for lo ! his sword,
Which was declining on the milky head Of reverend Priam, seem’d i’ the air to stick :
So, as a painted tyrant, Pyrrhus stood ;
And like a neutral to his will and matter,
Did nothing.”
This is the picture with which it is so important that Hamlet should be confronted. For it is an imagination of his own condition. It is surely no accident that the last two words are given a line to themselves.
What does this mean for the form of the play? We are nearing the centre of the drama. And now there is put before Hamlet’s soul the very picture of the crucial moment of the consciousness soul. It is his chance. Lost in uncertainty, no longer moved by divine promptings or commandments from within, the dramatic question that stands before him is the question whether he will now choose to act and to act out of his own initiative ; not for any abstract reason or logical compulsion but freely imitating a picture set before him and known (“ What’s Hecuba to him or he to Hecuba ? ”) to be no more than a picture.
For myself at any rate this has long been one of the most dramatic moments in the whole play. In this moment, Hamlet is the Consciousness Soul. He is every soul that has lost all its bearings, all its motives and springs of action, its very raison d'être and which now has indeed to decide for itself the stark question “ To be or not to be.” The soul has to assert its own existence as a separate, self-moved, spiritual entity. Nobody else will do that for it. But it can find no reason for asserting itself and its own existence—no balance of pleasure over pain and so forth.—If it could, it would not be consciousness soul, and (what matters) it would not be free. Reason compels. Instead of reasons, therefore, it has pictures set before it — imaginations or examples, which it may imitate in freedom if it chooses. Such imaginations, mirroring its own true nature, are—other souls, the events of history, inspired works of art. In fact the play of Hamlet, properly understood, may itself function as such a picture. It may bring to the consciousness of its spectators in the age of the Consciousness Soul the drama of their own souls, just as the play in the play was used to “catch the conscience of the King.”
In order to make it perfectly clear what is meant, a further distinction must be drawn here. Hamlet has been called 'representative’ of mankind as a whole at this particular stage of their development. He is so in the sense that not only he, but every soul, in order to become a free, self-moved moral
agent, must first go through this purely negative experience — must be, 'becalmed.' Every soul is faced at some time with this problem of transition from obedience (whether the obedience was to instinct, to the Law, or to a categorical imperative) to free imitation. And the imitation will always be of some picture or example. But inasmuch as he is the representative, Hamlet is also more than a mere random sample of Consciousness Soul humanity. As the type and symbol of this experience, his crisis must represent the experience in its intensest possible form. And this is achieved by Shakespeare’s selecting as the particular picture which is set before Hamlet at the psychological moment, not the soul of another human being, not the Christ, not any symbolical glimpse of the glorious future open to his soul, but simply a stark imagination of the bare consciousness soul experience itself. Hamlet is shown, in the picture of Pyrrhus, the bare sequence. Action—paralysis or becalming—renewed initiative and action. And that is all. That is the only imagination that is put before him—his own experience. For there is certainly nothing very admirable or inspiring per se in the deed which Pyrrhus performs.
Involution, a sort of Chinese box structure, is thus characteristic of the whole form of this play. What is its central point, the crisis in the middle of the third or middle act ? It is the play within the Play ; and the plot of this play within the Play recapitulates in brief the story on which the Play itself turns. And as if this were not enough, this play within the Play is itself preceded by a Dumb Show (the play within the play within the Play) which recapitulates the same plot more briefly still. I am not concerned to suggest that Shakespeare was fully aware of all he was doing, but there is no question that the form of Hamlet, taking the word 'form' here in quite an obvious, external sense, is able to cast an almost magical spell—especially on the young. It induces a sort of 'ecstasis' — a sense of looking on at ourselves in the same moment.
What does Hamlet himself do at this crisis of his life? He fails. He does not imitate the imagination. The Player’s speech goes on : —
“But, as we often see, against some storm,
A silence in the heavens, the rack stand still.
The bold winds speechless, and the orb below
As hush as death, anon the dreadful thunder
Doth rend the region ; so, after Pyrrhus’ pause,
Aroused vengeance sets him new a-work ;
And never did the Cyclops’ hammers fall
On Mars’s armour, forg’d for proof eteme,
With less remorse, than Pyrrhus’ bleeding sword
Now falls on Priam.”
The words “with less remorse" should be especially noted. But, unlike Pyrrhus, Hamlet does not take any action. He only curses himself for not doing so. He needs something to drive him to action. He needs a violent force of external circumstances, such as was provided by the King’s treacherous plot through Rosenkrantz and Guildenstem, the pirates’ attack on his ship, and again at the very end of the play.
Hear his own account of some of the things that happened on the voyage to England : —
"Up from my cabin,
My sea-gown scarf’d about me, in the dark Grop’d I to find out them , had my desire ;
Finger’d their packet ; and in fine withdrew
To mine own room again , making so bold,
My fears forgetting manners, to unseal
Their grand commission ; where I found, Horatio,
O royal knavery ! an exact command, —
Larded with many several sorts of reasons.
Importing Denmark’s health and England’s too.
With, ho, such bugs and goblins in my life.
That, in the supervise, no leisure bated.
No, not to stay the grinding of the axe,
My head should be struck oft.
Being thus be-netted round with villainies, —
Ere I could make a prologue to my brains
They had begun the play — I sat me down.
Devis'd a new commission, wrote it fair . . .
I had my father's signet in my purse,
Which was the model of that Danish seal ;
Folded the writ up in form of the other ;
Subscrib'd it ; gave 't the impression, plac'd it safely.
The changeling never known. Now the next day
Was our sea-fight ; and what to this was sequent
Thou know’ st already."
The sea-fight he had already described in a letter : —
"Ere we were two days old at sea, a pirate of very warlike appointment gave us chase. Finding ourselves too slow of sail, we put on a compelled valour ; in the grapple I boarded them ; on the instant they got clear of our ship, so I alone became their prisoner . . ."
Promptitude, courage, startling initiative, and after it is all over a curt, pungent report of the incident—a masterpiece, as Coleridge has pointed out, of coherent brevity! Here is the amateur introvert of the Elsinore soliloquies in rather a different light! Certainly he is not the man to set right a disjointed world by obeying the summons of a purely spiritual intuition ; but let someone else 'begin the play' ; demand of him a compell'd valour ; put him to sea with the toughest definite job to do and in the tightest possible corner you can think of— and you get the Nelson touch.
Perhaps enough has now been said to explain the difference between saying, on the one hand, that 'uncertainty' or 'mistrust' is the theme of Hamlet and, on the other, that it is a representation of the consciousness soul. But it is by no means all that could be said. There are many important aspects and qualities of the play which have not been touched.
A recent reviewer in Punch concluded his criticism by recounting, apparently with some self-approval, that he could not say how the final scenes of the performance under notice had been played, since he had followed his usual practice of leaving before the gravediggers’ scene, thus escaping the vulgar ranting about death and the melodramatic claptrap which mar the conclusion of this otherwise fine play. This critic was, I think, an exceptionally insensitive one. Others do at least accept the gravediggers and the pile of corpses at the end as an integral part of the play, even if without quite knowing why. The truth is, of course, that Hamlet without the gravediggers, without the whole atmosphere of death and corruption which permeates the play even into the very metaphors which the poet selects, and of which the scene in the graveyard is not more than a fitting climax— Hamlet without all this is only a little less inconceivable than Hamlet without the Prince of Denmark.
Our immediate and quite unsophisticated perception is enough to tell us that this is so. But it is quite another matter when we attempt to explain why. And vagaries such as those of the Punch critic suggest that we are reaching a stage when attempts will have to be made to explain why. For, crude as such criticism may be, we must at least accept this about it, that it is there. It is written, and it is read. The time may come therefore when it will have to be answered.
The objection that the gravediggers' conversation, Hamlet’s soliloquy over Yorick’s skull, and the fight in the grave are mere sensations, introduced without reference either to the plot or to the inner psychological development of the play, is at first sight plausible. Certainly they cannot be derived from the 'uncertainty' theme and, as long as we see no further than that they will also be felt to mar the unity of the play. But, as has already been pointed out, to say that Hamlet is a representation of the consciousness soul is to say very much more than that it is built up on the theme of 'uncertainty’ or 'diffidence.’ That is only one aspect of the consciousness soul.
. Thanks for sharing! The Greek myths are always interesting and complex. Even their Divinities were clothed in very human qualities (for good esoteric reason).