『햄릿』과 셰익스피어 비극의 정치성

Abstract

Song Chang SeopWritten just a year after the completion of Shakespeare's history plays, Hamlet (1600-01), the earliest of four great tragedies, incorporates into its arguably inchoate tragic form some crucial elements of the historico-political imagination tested by the bard in Richard II and Two Parts of Henry IV. Distracted by the heavily introspective Hamlet, the readers are easy to lose the political significance of characterization, language and the time-space of Hamlet, the basic structures of which Shakespeare, consciously or unconsciously, adapted from those previously used in the making of history plays. Reusing the basic structures of history plays, Shakespeare seems to have been forced to separate the hero Hamlet obsessed with his private family problems from the political context surrounding his princely locus. Hamlet is presented by Laertes or Claudius as a type of the rulership closely affiliated with and representing the desire of the commoners. Ironically, however, Hamlet himself hardly appears to be conscious of his hegemonic rulership grounded on the support of the commoners. In Hamlet as a tragedy, the political desire of the commoners seems surprisingly radical in its nature as they are represented to attack the medieval kingship of Claudius even almost to his face. But the sense of politics in Hamlet is quite ambiguous in that neither the ambition, legitimate or not, of the rulers of Denmark nor the desire of those ruled is fulfilled; the sovereignty instead goes to the foreign rulership of Fortinbras who takes up his right to the kingdom of Denmark as if by sheer coincidence. Focused upon the plebeians' revolting scene, Hamlet appears radical in its political implications. Focused on the inner psychic landscapes of Hamlet the hero, however, the play loses its otherwise deep-layered political significance deriving from the history plays.