『햄릿』의 극적 발전과 자아문제

The Development of Dramatic Action and Problematic Self in Hamlet

The flourishing of the English Renaissance drama was made possibly by the ambiguous nature of the self, both self-concealing and self-revealing at once. This kind of dilemma on the part of the playwright is represented by the conflict of self-will and the cosmic moral order on the part of dramatic characters. However, both this dilemma and conflict paradoxically make the deeper and richer characterization possible. Hamlet’s perplexing and playacting self is the source of mysteriousness of his heart into which we enter in doubt and never come out of its bourn with its secret. The Ghost is a kind of narrative of the past asking Hamlet to remember him. Hamlet’s revenge of his father is equivalent to rewriting the story of his father’s death written by Claudius. The Ghost is a modern self haunting here and everywhere, anxious and eager to reinvent and revise the past. It is an old mole progressing in the underground towards the light of the Enlightenment. By impersonating the Ghost, Hamlet can write his own story crying out, “Tis I, Hamlet the Dane.” However, Shakespeare gives the final voice to Fortinbras and so implies that the sovereignty of consciousness and a private self is still subject to the medival and militaristic heroism. Shakespeare is still hovering over the writings of his past as memory traces.