Hamlet에 나타난 惡의 實在와 外觀 = The Reality and Appearance of Evil in Hamlet

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

As we know, the setting of Hamlet is the castle of Elsinore in medieval Denmark. But it should be regarded not as a historical Denmark but as a contemporary world that exists in Shakespeare's imagination.
The ghost of elder Hamlet at the beginning is the key to the whole paly. As Maynard Mack says, it is the supreme reality, representative of the hidden ultimate power. Hamlet begins with an explosion in the first act and the rest of the play is the reverberation of it. As the ghost comes from it's grave, returning to the same place, so this play begins with death symbolized by the time of midnight of a freezing cold winter and ends with terrible havoc.
I explored the source of evil in Hamlet embodied by Claudius as serpent by interpreting the tree of knowledge of good and evil planted in the garden of Eden as an archetypal symbol. The reality of evil is sinfulness, the evil's appearance is hypocrisy painted with goodness, and the destination which evil reach is nothingness.
Following the preface, I introduced the idea of Elizabethan World Order in the second part of my essay in order to define the meaning of the cosmic order, and to throw light on the relation between the microcosm or man and the macrocosm or physical universe. By Claudius's violation of the natural order, his state is'rotten'and evil is established. This evil flows not merely horizontally through humanity, but vertically also. It runs through time after time, generation after generation. The poison let loose in Denmark destroys indiscriminately the good, the bad and the indifferent.
Man could move upwards, through the control of reason, towards angelic apprehension and even godlike qualities. However, the weapon of man's reason falls downwards towards the level of the beast due to the poison of evil. We see in Hamlet a twofold flaw of reason. For one thing, it fails to show the prince how to deal with evident external evil and it also fails to enable him to control evil within himself. Accordingly the tragic waste in Hamlet can be seen as a failure to fulfil a noble and godlike human potential.
The tragedy of Hamlet goes further than the disintegration of the Renaissance ideal. The corrupted man disguises his evilness with good appearances. To Claudius appearance is the reality of the situation. He uses savage political plots to change "seeming" into "being". The body of Claudius's Denmark functions and is sustained through interdependence of usurper and blind supporters. Most people in Denmark are quite content with the surface appearances of life and refuse even to consider the ends to which mortality brings all men, Shakespeare unvells man's hypocrisy by using the images of clothing, painting, mirroring.
The final destination of evil is death and nothing. In Hamlet the reality and existence of man is death. In the last act of play, we discover a transfarmed man. The greatness of Hamlet as a human being rests not so much in what he does or fails to do as in what he understands. When Hamlet returns from his deadly voyage, he accepts human limitation and realizes that evil cannot be terminated because he cuts down Claudius. The power of evil can be destroyed only through death. He admits and transcends death by spiritual recognition. He is no longer one of passionate, rebellious Renaissance idealist of Wittenberg. Hamlet himself survives the rest only a few moments, and before he dies, there is the roll of drums of Fortinbras which heralds the end of the old story and the beginning of the new.