Why Hamlet Is The Best Play Shakespeare Ever Wrote
By: Jean-Paul Cote
Tags: Literary Analysis, Humor, Nonfiction, Shakespeare, Literally Literary

Photo Credit JP Cote

William Shakespeare, easily one of the greatest writers to have walked this Earth, wrote countless plays throughout his lifetime. Plays that we, as a society, four hundred years later, continue to read, study, and adapt. Of his plays that have survived the ages many are deemed good, many more deemed great. But I am here to argue that there is one play which stands above all others. One play that sets itself apart from the rest. One play that made Shakespeare the legend he is today. One play to rule them all! Too dramatic? Okay, I’ll tone it down a bit. But seriously there is one play that is the single greatest work William Shakespeare ever composed, and that play is Hamlet.

Now would be a great time to go into an extensively detailed summary of the plot of Hamlet, but I’m just going to assume that anyone reading this story has taken a high school English class. On the off chance that you haven’t read the play, you’ve definitely read the sparknote version of it. So, in the sake of saving you all from boring, redundant reading, I’m just going to get right into it. The first reason that Hamlet is the best, is also the most simple. It was bold.

In order to fully understand how bold a move Hamlet was, you have to understand the time period that the play was written in. During the early 1600’s a man by the name of Charles I was the king of England. Now Charles was not an authority figure like the ones we have today. People could not go on late night talk shows clowning him, or criticize his Twitter activity, or laugh at memes that made fun of his stupid hair. No, Charles was the King and this meant that his reign was heavenly ordained. This meant that to disparage him in any way was not simply to go against the country of Britain, it meant that you were going against God himself. And at a time when the existence of God was not something up for debate, but a concrete fact of life, this was kind of a big deal.

So, with all of this in mind, let’s review the following quote from Act 4 Scene 3. Hamlet says to his friend Claudius, “A man may fish with the worm that hath eat of a king and eat of the fish that hath fed of that worm… nothing but to show you how a king may go progress through the guts of a beggar.” In this passage Hamlet is not only comparing kings to beggars, by explaining how they could both end up worm food, he is literally comparing kings to one of the lowest forms of life that we know of; worms. These lines are not simply controversial, they are absolutely blasphemous. It is surprising that Shakespeare got away with writing these lines with his head still attached much less that this play was adored and performed in public venues throughout England. Of course, Shakespeare was able to say that it was the character Hamlet who felt this way and not he himself. But there is no mistaking it, this was one hell of a gutsy move.

Apart from being a daring venture, the play shows some evidence that Shakespeare was well ahead of his time, philosophically speaking. In the first scene of Act 3 Hamlet is trying to act like he’s gone mad and parades around the courtyard ranting to himself. But the contents of this rant have become the most iconic lines of the play itself. “To be or not to be-that is the question: Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles And, by opposing, end them… To die, to sleep-to sleep, perchance to dream. Ay, there’s the rub, for in that sleep of death what dreams may come.” These lines are incredibly beautiful, and they illustrate his argument. Life is pain. To be alive is to experience pain, grief, and misfortune. Why not end it all? Why not avoid all the misery and simply put oneself to sleep? Life is meaningless, and we all die eventually, so what’s the point. Why not just avoid the agony and end it all.

But to understand why it is so interesting that these words were written, we once again have to imagine the time period. We currently live in a society where (for the most part) religion and politics/culture are separated. This was not the case in the 1600s. Nobody questioned the nature of life after death because that question had already been answered by the church. And certainly, no one questioned whether suicide was a favorable option to the pain of living because suicide is considered to be one of the harshest sins of the Christian faith. Sure, just like with the earlier quote Shakespeare could’ve sidestepped claiming that it was a fictional character in a fictional story, but the mere fact that he wrote these words shows the kind of thoughts that were swimming around in his mind. As any fiction writer will tell you, every character in one’s story is a little piece of themselves. For Shakespeare to compose such a gripping speech about the nature of life and death, he must have had some doubts of his own about the Christian religion. In this scene, Shakespeare proved that he possessed a philosophical mind on par with any of the greats who have lived throughout history.

Hamlet was a bold move and it certainly showed that Shakespeare had some philosophical prowess. But more than that, the play showed that Shakespeare had some serious intellectual prowess as well. In scene 1 of act 5 Hamlet is in a graveyard talking to his friend. He sees a skull on the ground, picks it up, and examines it. Hamlet then says, “Dost thou think Alexander looked o’ this fashion i’ th’ earth?… Alexander died, Alexander was buried, Alexander returneth to dust; the dust is earth; of earth we make loam.” When Hamlet says Alexander he is referring to Alexander the Great. Possibly one of the most famous Kings to have ever lived. The connection being referred to here is that this skull could be anybody. It could just as easily be a peasants skull as it could a king because when it comes down to it we are all just dust that will eventually return to the earth from whence we came. What this quote proves is that Shakespeare had the ability to remove himself from the veil of society and to look at things from an unbiased perspective. He realized there is no heavenly ordainment. There is nothing that sets a beggar apart from a king except for the clothes they wear on their backs. All men die, and thus all men are created equal.

So basically, Shakespeare was an atheist who disagreed with the idea of monarchy and realized that all men are created equal and a society that positions certain human beings over others based on something silly like wealth or class is absolutely ridiculous. Shakespeare was well ahead of his time intellectually, philosophically, artistically and many more cally’s that I don’t feel like listing right now. But no other play proves this to such an extent. If you want to read some badass 1600’s literature, look no further than Hamlet.