In the midst of his anguished, ‘O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I!’ soliloquy (2.2.485–540), 1 Hamlet appositively equates ‘a fiction ’ (specifically the First Player’s monologue recounting Pyrrhus killing Priam) to ‘a dream of passion ’ (2.2.487). On first glance, Hamlet seems to use ‘dream’ here to highlight the inconsequential nature of fiction : how, he wonders, can the Player summon passionate tears for the long-dead Hecuba when his own (ostensibly) non-fictional situation engenders in him a dearth of avenging passion ? In posing this question, Hamlet hints at one of the most central questions to the study of literature, emotion , and ethics : is literature monstrous in its capacity to elicit actual passion for inconsequential circumstances? But Hamlet himself is less worried about literature’s monstrous passions than he is about his own monstrous lack of passion . He launches into a self-deprecating tirade in which he scorns himself as a ‘John-a-dreams’ (i.e., ‘a person given to daydreaming or idle meditation’ [OED, ‘John-a-dreams’]) for failing to avenge his dead father (2.2.503). Again, dreams are depreciated. Despite his agony, Hamlet cannot (or will not) simply guilt himself into conjuring an avenging passion and killing Claudius , since he worries that the ghost’s account of Claudius ’ treachery might itself be a fiction designed to damn him to eternal horror in the dreams that may come in the sleep after death (2.2.533–538). Hence, Hamlet delineates a plan ‘to catch the conscience of the king’ (2.2.539–540)—a plan that hinges on fiction’s ability to activate affective signifiers of Claudius ’ guilt that have been otherwise concealed . In posing his plan, Hamlet hints at the following political question: can literature be used as a sort of lie detector test on those intent on concealing guilt ? Hamlet’s capacity to leap quickly from a monumental question about literature, emotion , and ethics to a much more obscure, but equally fascinating question about literature’s capacity to function politically by cutting through concealment is indicative of Hamlet’s distinct interest in a host of philosophical and practical questions about emotion , expression, performance, and interpretation.
But let us give pause here for a moment. Perhaps Hamlet’s description of a fiction as ‘a dream of passion ’ is not simply a pejorative way of characterising literature, and our passionate attachments to literary characters, as inconsequential. After all, dreams, like literature, can make a huge impact on the ‘real world’. Indeed, Hamlet tells Rosencrantz and Guildenstern that he could count himself ‘a king of infinite space’ despite being ‘bounded in a nut shell’ if not for his ‘bad dreams’ (2.2.252–254). 2 Refuting Guildenstern’s subsequent assertion that ‘the substance of the ambitious is merely the shadow of a dream’, Hamlet posits that ‘A dream is but a shadow’, though he neglects to say what casts the shadow-dream (2.2.255–258). In Hamlet, dreams are often shrouded in uncertainty, as when Hamlet wonders what dreams might come after death (3.1.63–68), or when he asserts that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in Horatio’s philosophy (1.5.165–166). Likewise, Hamlet’s comments on the player’s ‘dream of passion ’ are replete with uncertainties. According to the First Player’s dramatic account of Pyrrhus killing Priam, Hecuba’s grief at seeing her husband so brutally slain ‘(Unless things mortal move them not at all) / Would have made milch the burning eyes of heaven / And passion in the gods’ (2.2.454–456). In expressing uncertainty as to whether divine beings deign to empathise with mere mortals, the speech reflects Hamlet’s wider preoccupation with the interpretive pitfalls inherent in any attempt to discern another’s passion . Indeed, barring unusual circumstances in which a person’s pain causes the sun and the stars to signify divine compassion by crying , it is impossible to definitively determine whether divine beings grieve with us or sadistically revel in causing our pain à la ‘flies to th’ wanton boys’ (King Lear, 4.1.35). 3 Such uncertainties abound: it is unclear whether the Player weeps out of genuine compassion ‘for Hecuba ’ (as Hamlet seems to think [2.2.493–495]), or resorts to thinking of a more personal memory or fantasy to conjure tears ; it is unclear whether the Player’s words and appearance effect in Polonius a ‘compassion fatigue’ that causes him to beg the Player to stop, or Polonius does so out of scorn for the Player’s poor performance; and finally, as Indira Ghose notes in her chapter in this volume and elsewhere, ‘there is no evidence that Claudius ’ reaction to the play-within-the-play is provoked by guilt rather than alarm at a thinly veiled threat delivered by his own nephew’. 4 Of course, similar uncertainties haunt any work of narrative art, but Hamlet is, as Kathryn Prince argues, thematically concerned with ‘confusion – especially regarding emotions as they are perceived, expressed and received’. 5
Despite the play’s thematic preoccupation with emotional uncertainty (or perhaps, somehow, because of it), Hamlet has long been celebrated for its capacity to elicit emotion . Writing in 1711, the Earl of Shaftesbury calls it
[t]hat Piece of his [i.e., Shakespeare’s], which appears to have most affected English Hearts, and has perhaps been oftenest acted of any which have come upon our Stage, is almost one continu’d Moral; a Series of deep Reflections, drawn from one Mouth, upon the Subject of one single Accident and Calamity, naturally fitted to move Horror and Compassion . 6
Shaftesbury is an early participant in the critical tradition on Hamlet and emotion that provides the foundation upon which this volume is built. 7 Much more recently, the play has been at the centre of many important discussions on early modern emotion and ‘emotionology ’. 8 For example, Gail Kern Paster cites Hamlet in support of her well-known argument for the prevalence of a materialist understanding of emotion in early modern England, 9 as do scholars like John Lee who argue that Hamlet finds ‘the materialist theories of his age unsatisfactory’. 10 Of course, many critics have explored the emotional dynamics of the play itself, often focusing on specific emotional states including grief , melancholy , and dread . 11 Other scholars have speculated on how the author’s emotional state is reflected in the play. 12 Some focus on what Hamlet can tell us about the emotional mores of early modern England (and vice versa), 13 w...