Hamlet's Character Progression

Throughout Shakespeare's Hamlet, Hamlet changes spiritually, philosophically, and psychologically. Hamlet goes to school at Wittenburg, the city in Germany where the protestant reformation started. He struggles with his protestant worldview when he first encounters his father's ghost saying, "be thou a spirit of health or goblin damned" (I.iv.40). According to protestants, ghosts do not exist aside from demons. Hamlet also wants to go against religious beliefs (this time catholic) when he monologues, "O, that the Everlasting had not fixed His canon against self-slaughter! O God, God, How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable seem to me all the uses of this world!" (I.ii.132-4). Throughout the play Hamlet oscillates between being almost ready to murder himself and others to being an introverted and isolated madman. The spiritual and philosophical aspects of his life strongly affect the psychological. They are intertwined by the controversy between what Hamlet feels (revenge) and what he has learned is right (either by catholic or protestant standards).

This spiritual/philosophical conflict drives his psychological change. For example, Hamlet puts on an "antic disposition" feigning madness. He hides in his madness as he plots his revenge against King Claudius, but his spiritual convictions in the first half of the play keep him from carrying it out. While Shakespeare's audience wonders if Hamlet is truly mad or just feigning it, there are three events at the climax of the play that change Hamlet's philosophical worldview. Hamlet uses a group of traveling players to confirm Claudius' guilt, he tells Ophelia to "get the to a nunnery," and he accidentally kills Polonious "taking him for his better" (the King). From then on, Hamlet's approach to life is different - he is driven by his revenge. The only reason he does not kill the king in Act three is because Hamlet is afraid that Claudius would go to heaven, and Hamlet would not let that happen. He decides to kill King Claudius "when he is drunk asleep, or in his rage, or in the' incestuous pleasure of his bed" (III.iii.89-90). In the end, Hamlet kills Claudius, Laertes, Ophelia, Rosencrantz, and Guildenstern.

Hamlet's understanding of the spiritual world was challenged with the ghost, but his overall spiritual knowledge stayed the same throughout the play. What changed was the stance he took toward it (his philosophy). After Act three, Hamlet no longer valued life. He constantly repeats his thought that everyone returns to dirt sometime. One instance is when he is contemplating Yorick's skull; "To what base uses we may return, Horatio! Why may not imagination trace the noble dust of Alexander till 'a find it stopping a bunghole" (V.i.162-64). Finally, throughout the play, changed psychologically from completely sane to feigning madness, to completely mad. At the end, his posed madness conquers him and Hamlet talks to the dead and thoughtlessly kills 4 people.