The Prince Hamlet
To be good or not to be good, that is
the question that pervades Hamlet’s life in the play. Machiavelli, author of The Prince, held the belief that the end must justify the means,
and that a leader may not do good to benefit his kingdom all the time, but
rather do evil or bad in order to comply with his subjects and allow an end
result to be beneficial. Hamlet exemplifies
this idea in the play, as he attempts to right prior wrongs committed to him
and his family, while performing a malignant task in order to achieve this end;
murder of his uncle and current king of Denmark. The play Hamlet regales the audience with
a tale of loss and revenge, while asking the question of whether Prince Hamlet
lives up to Machiavelli’s model of a prince or not, and to what extent.
The
Prince by Machiavelli was a
work on political philosophy and, in sorts, guidelines for a ruler. The work expressed Machiavelli’s idea that a
ruler would occasionally need to “come to grief among so many who are not good”
in order to be a better leader. In
essence, Machiavelli said that a leader cannot be completely good to be effective. In reality, most, if not every, leader of any
nation has, in some way, followed Machiavelli’s instructions, even without
realizing. Leaders need to attend to
their people, and constantly do partially-immoral, and often corrupt, actions
(albeit this is generally without a thought of the public). Thus, Hamlet does comply with The Prince’s idea of an unholy and partially-bad-natured
leader by default. Hamlet, however,
realizes the evil that he wishes to do, but continues on, possibly going
farther than the Machiavellian “prince” idea.
Hamlet does many wicked acts in the
tragedy Hamlet, however, when the play begins, he is very
different. At the beginning, Hamlet does
not want to believe that his uncle killed his father, and he was just mulling
in grief for several months after his father’s death. Only once his father’s ghost told him that
Claudius killed him did Hamlet seek revenge (after much careful thinking,
though). Hamlet, in the course of the
play, killed Polonius, father of Laertes and Ophelia, seemingly without remorse,
as a result of his own madness that he claimed to be fake. This is the point where Hamlet’s qualities
akin to the leader in The Prince start to differ; Hamlet not only “came to grief” but influenced that “grief” by adding in his own personal indifference, making it less of a quality for a ruler, but more of a quality of a madman.
Hamlet goes even further with this “madness” by letting his two friends
be killed, possibly leading to Ophelia’s death, and killing Laertes and the
king. If Hamlet just killed the king, then
he could be considered to be living up to the prince’s ideals in Machiavelli’s
work, because he seldom did evil, and when he did it was to create a beneficial
end, but he killed too many people and without remorse that should have been
there, so The Prince cannot be
completely applicable to Hamlet.
Machiavelli was a man who believed that
any end must justify the means. This
ties in to Hamlet because Hamlet sought out revenge for most of the
play, thinking it was the way to right the wrong of his father’s murder. The same idea applies to this as with the
idea that Hamlet simply became immoral to become a better ruler; Hamlet seems
to have gone too far. Hamlet, if he
simply killed his uncle, the one responsible for his father’s death, would have
had an end that justified his means (murder).
As a result of Hamlet killing or leading to the deaths of several
people, the end that arose (Hamlet’s own death) was called for. In this regard, the end of Hamlet
justified Hamlet’s means, but the end of Polonius, Ophelia, and many others was
not justified by Hamlet’s vengeful acts.
When Hamlet
was written, Machiavelli’s The Prince
was probably not used as a model for Hamlet, however, Hamlet does model some of
the qualities of a leader that The Prince expresses are necessary. Hamlet lowers himself to Claudius’ level by
seeking to kill him, and he does become immoral, as The Prince believes is needed in a leader, but he takes it several
steps further by leading to the deaths of several more people, and does so
without remorse. Hamlet even, in a way,
shows that the end does justify the means, even if the end is now what was intended. Hamlet, even if not intentional, was created
in such a way that Machiavelli’s beliefs hold true and prominent.
