In Hamlet, human weakness, death,
disease, and unnatural relationships are the dominant motifs in the play. The chief
crimes in his family, Hamlet says, are murder and incest. He says Denmark is a prison
full of spies. He tells his girlfriend (and mother) to go live in a nunnery. So, the
play Hamlet comments on the inevitability of human weakness. It's
implicit solution, it seems, is to take "arms against a sea of troubles," to fight on
even though--in the end--all there is suffering and death. Suffering leads to
wisdom.
Here are some
examples:
Hamlet
originally blames his mother for marrying too soon after his father's death. Her human
weaknesses: fear of being alone, adultery, incest, denial of the truth, and
disloyalty
O, what a rogue and peasant slave am
I!...Am I a
coward?
He comments
on his own weaknesses: too self-absorbed to act; too afraid of suffering and death; too
full of conscience
Looking before and after, gave us
not
That capability and god-like reason
To fust in us unused. Now,
whether it be
Bestial oblivion, or some craven scruple
Of thinking
too precisely on the event,
A thought which, quarter'd, hath but one part
wisdom
And ever three parts
coward,
Hamlet calls himself
and others "beasts": cowardly, devoid of reason, base, and easily manipulated. Hamlet
sees all too well the human weakness around him. He knows he will be disappointed by
others. He knows he will disappoint himself. So, why try? His problem: does he have
enough courage to fight against this losing battle?
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