DE Weekly: Hamlet, Shakespeare, & Fortune
Below is an archived email originally sent on July 14, 2025.
Hamlet, Shakespeare, & Fortune
Should we capitalize on our free will, or resign ourselves to what fate has in store for us? Is it better to take things into our own hands, or let nature run its course and whatever happens, happens? Does whatever we choose to do––does anything we choose to do––make a difference?
Such are just a few questions explored and answered in some fashion by William Shakespeare in his longest play, The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark.
Last month, I wrote about existentialist themes in Shakespeare’s Macbeth. We can look at Hamlet in the same lens.
In Hamlet, the ghost of the recently-deceased King of Denmark (Hamlet’s father) appears to Hamlet’s friend Horatio and some castle guards, and eventually, appears to Hamlet himself, confirming he is indeed the ghost of his dead father.
The ghost tells Hamlet how Claudius (his brother and Hamlet’s uncle) murdered him so he could be King. Hamlet swears vengeance for his father, and to give himself more room to explore the truth of these allegations, he feigns madness.
Between all of this and the last Act of the play, a lot transpires. Hamlet kills Polonius, father of his love interest Ophelia and his adversary Laertes, also a counselor to King Claudius.
Hamlet learns Claudius is devising a plot to have him killed, and a duel is eventually arranged between Hamlet and Laertes.
To fix the duel, Claudius and Laertes devise a plan to kill Hamlet with either a poisoned rapier or poisoned wine.
I don’t want to spoil everything, so I’ll leave it at this: in this last bit of the play, plans go off the rails, and most of the characters die.
So, what is Hamlet about? What existential themes does it explore, and what questions can be answered in reading this play?
It goes without saying that the play is about Hamlet himself. The story unravels the way it does precisely because of his character.
Hamlet is indecisive; fatally so. Even after learning of his father’s murder, he’s unable to properly carry out any sort of plan to avenge him like he swore to.
He keeps searching for evidence, for a “green light” to justify what he knows he has to do, but he can’t do it. His indecision ultimately leads to others learning what he is truly up to.
Hamlet’s struggle is an internal one. He is torn apart by his own doubt and uncertainty and is unhappy with life; he is not even sure whether life is worth living or whether anything he does will make a difference in the grand scheme of things.
This is what Hamlet’s famous “To be, or not to be, that is the question” speech addresses.
In that speech, Hamlet is contemplating suicide. He perceived his plight (in some manner, his existence) to be absurd, and weighed the pros and cons of keeping on.
All this confusion leads him to make mistakes, much to his own detriment.
As Hamlet is struggling internally with whether he himself should carry on, he accidentally kills Polonius in an act of impulse.
He pushes away Ophelia, who deeply loves him, out of his growing suspicion and disillusionment with everyone around him and their motives.
In the end, all this indecisiveness and questioning of life’s worth proves costly: many people lose their lives, and no problem really gets solved.
What did Shakespeare accomplish with this, his longest play he ever wrote? Well, other than being a master stroke of storytelling, it’s also a true story.
And when I say “true,” I mean true in the way that all good fiction is true––true in the sense that it accurately portrays human nature and the way we, as humans, exist in the world.
Just like in Macbeth, Shakespeare uses his characters to illustrate multiple people with different motivations in life all acting in utterly human ways. The end result is a true story of human nature.
So, what’s this got to do with existentialism? Everything. Just like existentialism has everything to do with existence and being human.
Our biggest obstacle in life is often ourselves. Even when we have a clear picture, a grand idea of what we need to do, we don’t always do it.
We choose to hold off, not to act, to stagnate––and waste precious time of the one existence we have.
I believe that life is worth living. That life does have meaning. We just have to be willing to act on it.
“To be, or not to be, that is the question:
Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind 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,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause––there’s the respect
That makes calamity of so long life.”
Thanks for reading.
Sincerely,
Brandon J. Seltenrich
P.S.––
The entirety of Hamlet is available online, for free, at the Folger Shakespeare Library website. Happy reading.
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