Neil Bowen on
Revenge and justice
In a pointed parallel to Claudius’ murder of his brother, Old Hamlet, the play- within-the-play, known variously as The Murder of Gonzago and The Mouse-trap, which Hamlet has asked the actors to perform, features a Machiavellian murderer, Lucianus, poisoning a king. Specifically, as Claudius had in murdering of his brother, Lucianus ‘pours the poison in his ears’. Hamlet himself makes doubly sure that the parallel strikes home by providing a choric commentary immediately after Lucianus’ lines: ‘A poisons him i’ th’ garden for his estate’ [III.2,260]. Having watched such a close re-enactment of his own secret and perfidious poisoning, Claudius is alarmed and, calling for lights rushes away, giving Hamlet the proof of his uncle’s guilt he needed to whet his appetite for revenge.
In Act I, the Ghost establishes vengeance as a form of ultimate justice. Thus we might expect a clear and sharp divide in the play between the noble avenging hero - entrusted to deliver this justice - and the Machiavellian villain who will be justly punished for their crime. Their different choice of weapon and the way they kill signposts their opposite characters: Whereas the noble avenger chooses the sword and fights in the open, the Machiavellian villain uses poison and kills in secret. Compare how the martial king, Old Hamlet, defeated the Norwegian King in single-handed combat to the cunning strategist Claudius who seizes power by an underhand and cowardly murder. Yet, repeatedly in Hamlet this opposition between hero and villain is undermined, collapses even, with the avenger taking on the language and tactics of the Machiavel. In the play-within-the-play, for instance, Lucianus may kill the king in a stealthy, Machiavellian way using poison, but, crucially, he is not the king’s brother. He is his nephew. This means Lucianus is a parallel to Hamlet, not Claudius. Moreover, his act of poisoning is motivated by vengeance. As Hamlet emphasises just before Lucianus speaks, ‘the croaking raven doth bellow for revenge’.
Ravens, of course, are associated with evil acts and they are deployed symbolically by Shakespeare frequently as harbingers of doom. Lady Macbeth, for instance, hears a raven croaking the ‘fatal entrance’ of King Duncan into her castle. Dark, hellish imagery is carried through in Lucianus’ lines in which he describes his ‘thoughts’ as being ‘black’ and his poison as composed of ‘midnight weeds’, ‘thrice blasted’ by the goddess of witchcraft, Hecate. So we have an avenger acting very much like a Machiavellian villain, a double for both Claudius and Hamlet.