Hamlet as the fool

          Your interpretation of Hamlet changes depending on how you interpret Hamlet's role in the play. One valid reading of the play is Hamlet as the fool. Throughout the play Hamlet embodies many different definitions of what a fool is. One definition of a fool is someone who lacks sense of judgment. By this definition, Hamlet is fool when he allows his emotions to dictate his action rather than rational thought or decision making. Hamlet is seen like this in the beginning of the play when he first encounters the ghost of his father. Hamlet had been suspicious of his mother and Claudius because they were quickly able to overcome the sorrow of King Hamlet’s death. When the ghost tells Hamlet that Claudius murdered Hamlet’s father, it enrages him. Hamlet makes a vows to avenge this father, “I’ll wipe away all trivial, fond records,/ all saw of books, all forms, all pressure past/ That youth and observation copied there,/ And thy commandment all alone shall live/ Within the book and volume of my brain,/ unmixed with baser matter”. In this state Hamlet is ruled by his emotions; he isn’t thinking of the implications that killing Claudius could have. He simply wants to rid the nation of what he perceives at the corruption in Denmark.  Hamlet is also a fool(lacking judgment or sense) when he stabs Polonius. Driven by heightened emotions, Hamlet stabs and kills him thinking that Polonius is Claudius. Hamlet envies Horatio because he is able to properly balance his emotions and his judgments, “ And blessed are those/ Whose blood and judgment are so well commedled/ That they are not pipe for Fortune’s finger/ To sound what stop she please”. These scenes where Hamlet lacks judgment contrasts Hamlet in the rest of the play when he is very calculated; He doesn’t immediately try to kill Claudius because he wants to prove that Claudius is guilty which shows that he is calculated yet he stabs at the figure hiding in the curtains before he know who it is which demonstrates his impulsiveness.

          Another definition of a fool is someone who subverts convention in order to bring about change or reveal truth. Hamlet fits this description in many ways; his goal throughout the play is to kill Claudius to not only avenge his father, but to rid the state of corruption. In doing so he would be able to bring about change by altering who is in leadership. While everyone one else openly obeys Claudius  or are manipulated by him, Hamlet chooses to appear to be mad and plans Claudius’s demise. It is ironic however that from the time he meets the ghost of his father he is bent killing Claudius; but by the time he kills him it is too late because Hamlet is already dead (he was already hit by the poison saber) and England had already began to attack Denmark.  The death of Claudius and the infiltration of England represents a new beginning and the change that Hamlet died for.