Background:
In Act 3
of Hamlet, Hamlet arranges for the Royal Court to watch The
Murder of Gonzago. The characters of this "play within a play"
find themselves in a similar situation to the the one that plagues the Royal
family of Denmark. Because the plots of the two plays mirror each other, Hamlet
uses the play to incite feelings of guilt in Claudius and gain proof against
him as the barbarous murderer of the late King Hamlet. In one scene,
the player King and player Queen are engaged in a conversation in the
garden; the player King foreshadows his death and suggests that the player
Queen find a new husband in the case that it may happen. In order to counter
the player Queen's protests of her undying love for him, he argues that
passions are easily forgotten, and finding new love is natural with time.
Player
King:
"What to ourselves in passion we propose/ The passion ending, doth the purpose lose."
At first,
this seems like quite a depressing take on life, one in which no feeling or act
of love or passion could be permanent, as prevented by the eroding power of
time and by the inevitability of death and loss. And even beyond the scope of
the player Queen's dilemma, the player King's worldview is incredibly realistic
-- passions do fade with time, and loss of purpose to a certain action or end
quickly follows. Everyone has experienced a time when (s)he has given up on an
endeavor mere days after showing seemingly certain resolve -- Nick Carraway's
unopened finance books and my untouched knitting needles can attest to that.
However,
in order to move forward in any meaningful way in life in the long term, people
have to consider matters of responsibility and commitment over passion. The
road to any long-term goal involves making daily sacrifices that doubtlessly
chip away at initial passion and make the goal difficult to commit to. Passion,
by definition, is a fickle matter, and to define one's actions solely by
passion is not only irresponsible, but incredibly selfish. Imagine an
individual who, after years of marriage, leaves his/her spouse and their three
children on the simple basis that (s)he no longer "feels passion" for
the spouse. Marriage and Love are not phases that one can simply pass through.
They're sparked by passion, but are sustained by a sense of responsibility to
another person and constant compromise.
It's hard
to say whether the late King Hamlet forgave the Queen too easily -- she forgets
her love for her husband within months. The player King gives the player Queen
little credit in mental fortitude in protecting her self-proclaimed loyalty
against assault, portraying her as someone who has little control over her
life, which is dictated solely by emotion. (The violence of either grief or
joy/ Their own enactures with themselves destroy.) Likewise, the late King all
but states that his wife is a weak character, easily led astray by his brother's
lust and depravity. Do we forgive her for her inaction against the unforgivable
acts of Claudius? Is her "weakness" a viable excuse for disloyalty to
the late King's memory? No - in the end, we are all in control of our actions. The idea that emotion can and should dictate our lives is infinitely flawed. Good intentions mean nothing if we can't act on them and, more importantly, constantly remember them through both highs and lows, through all degrees of passion, no matter how fleeting.
