JUSTICE

JUSTICE

1. DELAY OF JUSTICE = Collateral suffering while Hamlet achieves revenge = unjust. C: “Revenge should have no bounds”/ play demonstrates that it should.

   • O shunned/ mad/ dead; Friends manipulated into betrayal/ murdered; P murdered; G rebuked, killed
     • http://www.academia.edu/1464542/Virtue_Justice_and_Moral_Action_in_Shakespeares_Hamlet
   • Victim of circumstances and of conflicting cultural imperatives/// Nonetheless, hero contributes to tragedy, prompting a moral examination of his actions.
     • inconsistent and ineffective execution of his task = the pursuit of personal revenge rather than the more legitimate end of civil justice?
       • Unclear about how to proceed with justice in wake of regicide.
         • temporal crossing of goals (killing C/chastising G)= tangled course of revenge. Inconsistency prayer/arras scenes= terrifying logic vs. 'a rash and bloody deed', melodrama, how actions affect innocents (ie. P)
     • seeks 'perfect justice' (guilt phase: must convince himself actions are justified/ punishment phase: must exactly fit crime, prayer scene)
       • Final justice= poetic (C. dies by same means as H. ) BUT great cost, so strict to intell.vision that loses sight of consq. to others?

2. Justice in revenge + controversial notions of revenge

   • Old king demands revenge in accord with traditional norms. Hamlet, in grievous state= all the more inclined to idealise father as warrior king/ must emulate and avenge by manly martial action. A heroic ethos still operative in Denmark expects him to avenge a violation of family honour withimpassioned dispatch
   • Christian notion that God is respon for Justice (NT) Hamlet= student of (Christian) humanism, strives for moderation, rationality. by accounts of English Renaissance: virtue figured as an important social ideal of intellectual + moral excellence.
   • H's conflict: inability to accept revenge vs. duty. Ifcan estb. C's guilt then as rightful heir to father's throne could lawfully enact justice on Claudius
     • Revenge called for is Ghost's revenge/ Hamlet is an agent for father and king. Ghost knew H. would need evidence before acting:
       • Ghost Revenge his foul and most unnatural murder... HAMLET Haste me to know't, that I, with wings as swift As meditation or the thoughts of love, May sweep to my revenge.

3. Pursuit of civil justice, PERSONAL v PRIVATE

   • even if pursuit of civil justice = right path, can't be dispatched with the quickness that vengeance requires to appease outrage.
   • world largely w/out civil justice: revengers create their own, ways that imitate divine justice (H. determined C's soul 'be as damned and black/ As hell, whereto it goes')
     • Prayer scene: audience acknowledges horror of 'Murder most foul' BUT the impromptu stabbing of C. would not resolve dram. problems, we would be torn by the horror of the sudden killing.....
     • RT: The moral pattern of sin/reward completed when Duke kisses skull of woman he poisoned for not consenting- Duke poisoned soul when he poisoned G= punishment aptly fits the crime BUT Vindice's role as agent divine retribution- ambiguous. Treats the Duke's anguish comically-" I ne'er knew yet adulterer without horns"but insists on extreme suffering...
   • 'wild justice': transgressing regulated society, disruptive to public order + centralised monarchy, idea 'blood feud' (deeply ingrained into soc) = in actions H/L, ultimately destructive BUT H. grapples w/position in a corrupt court ('Denmark is a prison') judicial system weak
     • law may benefit society as way of channeling passion of revenge... Francis Bacon: “Revenge is a kind of wild justice... law [ought] to weed it out.”
       • 'Where be his ...cases, his tenures and tricks?'
   • crucial problem: whether subject denied justice might resist state/ruler. Trad. Eliz. view= state has absolute power. KJ: denied there is a right to resist a tyrant
     • RT: D= despot+rapist, dispenses injustice, tolerates crime etc...setting claustrophobically conf. to court. Delib. avoids direct ref. events/ conc. on general system absolute rule. through satire- engages Jacob. concerns.

4. Dramatising Hamlet’s human errors in efforts to fulfil his moral task, play underscores difficulty of taking just action “in a world where destiny is molded by forces beyond man’s control or comprehension” / difficulty of fighting injustice w/out resorting to injustice