This document provides an in-depth analysis of political themes in Shakespeare's Hamlet. It discusses how Hamlet represents the struggle of a citizenry displaced by corrupt political leaders, using Prince Hamlet as a symbol. It examines the historical context of Elizabethan England and analyzes scenes to argue that the play highlights questions of a leader's legitimacy and responsibility to the common good. Key points analyzed include Hamlet's claim to the throne as the rightful heir, the religious concept of the king's "two bodies," and whether an immoral leader can properly rule a healthy state.

1. Hegemony of the Common Good in Hamlet
by Jeremy Borgia
The political atmosphere of twenty-first century America is increasingly polarized and
contentious. Participants in this political system, jaded by the barrage of back-and-forth polemic,
have begun to withdraw, leaving the ever-more-hyperbolic discourse to the most rabid and
incendiary of participants. This observation demands serious questions: does our human nature
predispose us to such bifurcating polarization, or is there a larger construct of systems at play,
devoted to preserving the current power structure through the strategy of “divide and conquer”-
ing the nation? Without devolving into notions of conspiracy, it would be valuable for the
American citizenry to evaluate what type of leaders are bound to ultimately emerge from the
aforementioned system, and whether this type of leader is best to encourage the development and
maintenance of a healthy state. This national inventory of identity is enclosed within larger
epistemological questions: can a healthy state be ruled over by a corrupt leader? Does the law
draw ultimate legitimacy from inherent morality? What is one’s responsibility in reforming a
system observed to be corrupt?
In Shakespeare’s Hamlet, we are introduced to a family struggle encased within a larger
political conflict; Prince Hamlet’s loyalties are impossibly tangled between his mother and late
father, his king, and his country. An examination of the political and historical context into which
Shakespeare bore Hamlet, as well as a close reading of the play itself, will shed some light on the
contemporary issue of American politics; indeed, the political maelstrom within Hamlet offers us

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important insights on our own situation. This examination will reveal Prince Hamlet’s role as a
symbol of citizenry, torn asunder by immoral political leaders.
Scholars have long discussed the depths of meaning in Shakespeare’s Hamlet, and much
of that discussion relates directly. Many scholars have studied Hamlet through the lens of
political theory, elucidating Shakespeare’s story in the context of the prevailing political theories
of his time. In fact, many of the recent articles germane to this argument identify Machiavellian
themes of politics and governance in the play. In The Prince, Machiavelli argues that a leader
who gains power by evil means can never achieve glory. So then, in this the foundation of
sovereignty by force as described by Machiavelli, practiced by Claudius,
we should hear the death-knell of ancient natural law and of the Stoic idea of a
common equality and dominion of mankind as understood and endorsed in the
sixteenth century …a sixteen-hundred year jurisprudential tradition in the West
dedicated to expounding natural law and protecting it from encroachments on it
by emperors, sovereigns and civil lawyers was pushed aside. (DiMatteo ¶ 53)
This is significant because Claudius’s crime, to an Elizabethan audience, would appear as more
than a political power play; rather, it was an upsetting of the contemporary understanding of the
root of political power. Claudius, then, usurps more than the throne, but the cultural significance
of it by upending the essence of the political ideologies of the Elizabethan era. He, in his own
words, "bestows" himself "seeing unseen" (3.1.32), referencing his subversive plot. Hamlet, then
is a tragedy on the losing side of things, “lamenting the demise of a political belief in man’s
ability to govern himself more by reason than by force” (¶ 54). Suzanne Ost, however, states
that, “The work of theorists such as Machiavelli paved the way for a political doctrine that

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espoused the securing of the sovereign’s power and protecting the stability of the state.
Significantly, defining sovereign power in accordance with the Machiavellian concept of reason
of state does not reveal Claudius to be an illegitimate figurehead of law” (Ost 185). She goes on
to posit that in The Prince (1513), Machiavelli forgives any evil acts of the sovereign provided
he commits them to ensure the well being of the state. So, “whilst Claudius is unlikely to be
‘celebrated among the most excellent men,’ for Machiavelli, provided that the evils he commits
to obtain the crown are all committed concurrently and not repeated, the manner in which he
acquired his regal title should not preclude obedience from his subjects” (Ost 185). These
disparate views will be vital to this argument, as they directly color King Claudius’s legitimacy.
Indeed, the litmus test offered by Machiavellian political ideology—namely, whether his crimes
were committed for his own evil benefit vs. for the wellbeing of the state—will be a valuable
mechanism in plumbing the depths of the epistemological and ontological implications of
Hamlet.
Inherent in any serious study of Hamlet are the epistemological questions that naturally
stem from the play. Steve Roth said, “Unlike all previous revenge tragedies…in Hamlet nobody
even knows that the primal murder has occurred. Claudius knows, of course. Hamlet knows (sort
of). And Horatio knows (even more sort of). But no other character knows that King Hamlet was
murdered—even (especially) at the end of the play” (Roth 1). This is vital to a study of Hamlet,
because, unlike other revenge tragedies, it is precisely this uncertainty—introduced with the first
line of the play, “Who’s there?,” and echoed ever since—that drives the plot of the play. Indeed,
for the remainder of the play, the audience is witness to Hamlet’s twin quests: avenging his
father, and, concurrently, confirming that the crime really did occur. One of the most discussed

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scenes in Hamlet is the so-called “mousetrap,” or the play within the play, which Hamlet
produces in the hopes of engendering a damning guilty response from his murderous uncle.
However, this exercise, intended to elucidate truth, fails. Roth, criticizing his fellow scholars for
their failure to see this point, and asserting the drastic implications, says,
The courtiers don’t see Gonzago as a reenactment of Old Hamlet’s murder; they
don’t even know about the murder. Just before the poisoning, Hamlet announces
that Lucianus is nephew to Gonzago. So what the courtiers see represented is the
king’s nephew poisoning the king and taking his crown. This is in a play put on
by the nephew of the current king, who only three months back preempted the
nephew’s succession and inheritance, and arguably whored his mother. To the
courtiers, the Gonzago play looks like a not terribly well-veiled threat against
the king’s life. (Roth 9-10)
This is significant, because Hamlet’s actions endanger the certainty necessary to his cause. In
attempting to prove—to himself and others—that the murder did in fact take place, Hamlet
provides Claudius a plausible false narrative, one that will ultimately lead to Hamlet’s demise.
The relevance to my own argument, though initially murky, becomes clear once one considers
the political implications of this epistemological statement; Hamlet hopes for his own political
legitimacy to be proven by proving Claudius’s crime. However, his failure to create his intended
narrative, or, his misstep in seemingly threatening Claudius, provides Claudius both bolstered
legitimacy in his rule and added strength in defending his role as potentate. Hamlet offers
Claudius an excuse to publicly dismiss and distrust Hamlet, and offers Claudius’s subjects an
alternate—if false—view of Claudius that weakens Hamlet’s claim that the king is an usurper. So

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then, to zoom back out to the larger implications, one’s very literal political authority rests on the
presentation and narrative of truth, rather than its existence.
In order to successfully demonstrate the political implications and themes contained in
Shakespeare’s Hamlet, allow me to pause for a moment to review the historical context into
which Hamlet was first introduced. The play is set in Denmark but, performed in England, would
be understood by the audience to comment more on the English political system than the Danish.
The system of government presented in Hamlet more closely resembles the English system of the
time of inherited kingship. John Dover Wilson, in What Happens in Hamlet, analyzes
Fortinbras’s eventual ascension in relation to James’s ascension following Elizabeth’s death as
proof that Shakespeare’s Hamlet is meant to represent the English system.
[James], like Claudius, owed his crown to the deliberate choice of the Council,
while the Council saw to it that he had the “dying voice” of Elizabeth, as
Fortinbras had that of Hamlet. The claims of Fortinbras and Horatio’s comment
upon them are indeed especially significant in this connection. Hamlet says:
“But I do prophesy th’election lights on Fortinbras, he has my dying voice.” And
when Fortinbras himself enters to find all the members of the royal house dead
before him, he declares: “For me, with sorrow I embrace my fortune. I have
some rights of memory in this kingdom, which now to claim my vantage doth
invite me.” To which Horatio replies: “Of that I shall have also cause to speak,
and from his mouth whose voice will draw on more.” The three passages are a
perfect illustration of the English constitutional theory of the age. Claudius being

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dead, Hamlet while living is de facto king. His dying voice, therefore, goes some
way to secure the rights of his successor. (36-37)
So, then, if Claudius failed to secure King Hamlet’s dying voice, Shakespeare’s English audience
would be wondering why Claudius took the throne when the king’s son, Prince Hamlet, was very
much alive. Indeed, on two occasions Hamlet describes his uncle as a usurper, a view which an
Elizabethan audience would likely share within this context. Speaking of Claudius, Hamlet says,
“A murderer and a villain, a slave that is not twentieth part the tithe of your precedent lord, a vice
of kings, a cutpurse of the empire and the rule, that from a shelf the precious diadem stole and
put it in his pocket” (3.4.97-102), as well as that he “hath killed my king, and whored my mother,
popped in between th’election and my hopes” (5.2.69-70). These lines illustrate clearly Hamlet’s
opinion of his potentate uncle, and would have likely inspired the sympathies of his Elizabethan
audience. This knowledge should color our understanding of the rest of the play, revealing it as—
more than a simple familial revenge story—one of clearly usurped power.
Futhermore, Hamlet’s bitter dialogues with his mother and uncle signify an awareness of
wrong against him. In 1.2, Claudius greets Hamlet, beginning “But now my cousin Hamlet, and
my son,” (64) to which Hamlet responds (in an aside to the audience), “A little more than kin,
and less than kind” (65). John Dover Wilson, speaking of this exchange, posits that “The
alliteration will fix the words in the memory of those who hear them, and later they will perceive
in the quibble ‘less than kind’ a sinister point not immediately apparent. But the surface meaning
is clear enough. It refers to Hamlet’s disappointed hopes of the succession” (32). To elucidate the
“sinister point,” we turn to the Oxford English Dictionary entry for “kind,” which offers two
insightful definitions that were used in the Elizabethan period: “Belonging to one by right of

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birth, descent, or inheritance; lawful, rightful,” and “That is, or exists, in accordance with nature
or the usual course of things” (OED). Thus the line “less than kind” references—in Hamlet’s
eyes—not only Claudius’s lack of legitimacy as a ruler, but also his unnatural usurpation. This is
further supplemented by what follows, as the king continues, “How is it that clouds still hang on
you?” (66) to which Hamlet responds with the more telling and defiant “Not so, my lord. I am
too much i’ the sun” (67). With the matter of succession and usurpation in mind, this line takes
on weighty significance, the dual meaning of “sun” to “son” would be unambiguous to
Elizabethan ears (Dover Wilson 32). Hamlet—unnaturally misplaced from his throne—comes to
represent national citizenry displaced and misused by corrupt political leaders. This occurs
because Hamlet’s right to the throne represents the natural order of the kingdom, usurped and
upended by Claudius’s unnatural rise to power. His displacement would symbolize to
Shakespeare’s audience a misappropriation of political power, ultimately harming and disturbing
the subjects of England. On a larger scale, this represents the harm done to a nation’s citizenry
when political power and authority is misplaced.
To supplement the assertion that Claudius’s usurpation of the throne was more than
criminal, but unnatural, it is valuable to place Hamlet in the context of theological beliefs
surrounding royalty, namely the relationship between the king’s physical body and the body
politic. Benjamin Parris explains that “the king was held to possess a natural body common to all
humans, as well as a mystical ‘superbody’ that perpetuates the life of the state and lends an aura
of divine perfection to the sovereign” (101). When the king’s physical body died, it was believed
that the body politic automatically descended upon the proper heir to the throne. With an
understanding of this tie between the king’s two bodies, the truly chaotic nature of Hamlet fully

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emerges: King Hamlet’s murder constitutes a failure of the body politic to protect the king’s
mortal body. Furthermore, if Hamlet was true heir and Claudius usurper, then the divine body
politic would rest with Hamlet. Thus, “the physical ties between the sleeping body of King
Hamlet, his son, and the body politic itself, map a crisis of state that is at once a crisis of bodily
life and ontological presence” (Parris 118). Essentially, this crisis lies at the heart of many
important ontological questions in Hamlet. The monarch’s legitimacy relied on his or her identity
as something more than human, or more than the physical body. If the body politic naturally
descended upon the rightful heir, Hamlet, then the king, Claudius, would be lacking the
supernatural power and identity crucial to the survival of the state. To an Elizabethan audience,
this situation would demand intense ontological questions regarding the true role of the monarch,
the monarch’s relationship with their subjects, and the basis of a monarch’s legitimacy. This
further reinforces the view of Hamlet as a symbol of a political body of citizenry; with the divine
body politic resting upon him, but separate from kingship, Hamlet represents the collective
English political identity and national well-being. Moreover, Hamlet’s threatened legitimacy,
role, and very life then come to represent a very real threat to the English national identity itself.
As Parris concludes, “The crisis of kingship in Shakespearean tragedy stems not from a common
truth of human frailty in the king, but rather from the problematic knot entangling biological and
cosmological forms of life with the long duration and eventual collapse of political
institutions” (135-6). In other words, the story of Hamlet becomes much more than a plot
revolving around a son avenging his father; indeed, it invokes fears and insecurities—then raging
in English society in the context of Elizabeth’s decline without a clear heir—regarding the very
real safety and health of the state.

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Let us now turn to the effect of Claudius’s rule upon Hamlet and, likewise, upon the
common good of his subjects. It is here that we will examine the questions posed in the
introduction: Can a healthy state be ruled over by a corrupt leader? Does the law draw ultimate
legitimacy from inherent morality? If law is inherently moral, then the legitimacy of a monarch’s
rule who gained the crown immorally could clearly be challenged. Suzanne Ost analyzes this
topic in conjunction with that of the king’s two bodies, questioning specifically whether the inner
corruption of Claudius’s physical body impacts his body politic.
If we consider the course of events which enabled Claudius to become king, then
Claudius’ succession to the throne clearly does not favour the common good…
The principle of justice requires the sovereign to look to the common good of
the relevant community, not to the good of any individual or group in disregard
of the well-being of others. Such an emphasis upon the common good and
justice is not new. Aquinas stipulated that “law is nothing other than a
promulgated rational ordering to the common good by the one who has charge of
the community.” Aquinas’ writings on the common good were influenced by
Aristotle’s conception that injustice caused by the desire for goods which ensure
prosperity interfered with the achievement of the common good. (190)
So, yes, the law does ultimately draw power from its inherent morality. Thus, the king likewise
draws power from his or her own morality, and immorality reduces one’s hegemony over the
body politic. Continuing along this same argument, we can conclude that a healthy state suffers
from the immorality of its leaders. Hamlet, as a symbol of a nation’s citizenry, suffers greatly at
the hands of Claudius’s immorality, harming Claudius’s own rule. In the storyline of Hamlet we

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can follow this immoral usurpation of authority to its natural and unfortunate conclusion:
Claudius dies, Hamlet dies, and power is taken by a foreign political leader. Ergo, the authority
of immoral leaders, if left unchecked, can ultimately result in the demise of a nation and society.
The question remains, then, what is one’s responsibility in reforming a system observed
to be corrupt? Should dutiful subjects merely accept their ruler, however he obtained power, or is
it their civic duty to oppose him? It is with this very question in mind that we turn to Hamlet’s
famous soliloquy, which gains new meaning through this lens of a political ontological crisis.
To be, or not to be? That is the question—
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And, by opposing, end them?…
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
Th’ oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law’s delay,
The insolence of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of th’ unworthy takes (3.1.57-61, 71-5)
In this speech, Hamlet hesitantly embraces violence as a solution to his political woes, though it
is not clear whether he plans to end his own life or Claudius’s. What is clear is that Hamlet is
torn between holding his tongue (“suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune”) and
claiming his throne (“to take up arms against a sea of troubles”). Andrew Hadfield extrapolates
further, saying, “the desire to achieve ‘quietus’ (settling a debt) through the use of a ‘bare bodkin’

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(dagger) does not indicate whether the intended target is his own breast or another’s, and the
mention of ‘oppressor’ and ‘office’ in the immediately preceding build-up of phrases indicates
that Hamlet’s mind is at least partly on the sins of Claudius” (575). Still, whether he or Claudius
is the intended target of his violence, this much is clear: Hamlet’s observation of immoral
injustice has brought him to action. Returning to Hamlet’s role as symbol of citizenry, this carries
weighty implications, implicating those that would sit idly by while political injustices rage
about them. Indeed, Hamlet specifically invokes “the law’s delay,” suggesting his understanding
that leaving the health of a nation in the hands of a political system is not an acceptable response
to corruption.
Ultimately, subjects of the modern American political system can read Hamlet as a voice
of warning. As we allow immoral multifarious demagogues to steer our political system, we will
continue to witness usurpers reallocate political power to themselves at our expense. Like
Hamlet, we can turn the dagger on ourselves by dawdling in contentious designs to pursue
vengeance in epistemological fog, or, we can quickly and resolutely turn the dagger on the guilty
system, reclaiming for ourselves the mantle of democratic body politic. Just as Hamlet calls us to
action, it also offers a glimpse of the consequences of inaction. Left unchecked, Claudius’s
power—immorally obtained and preserved—destroyed his nation. Likewise, allowing immoral
potentates to prevail can ultimately precipitate the demise of our society.

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Works Cited
DiMatteo, Anthony. "Shakespeare and the Public Discourse of Sovereignty: ‘Reason of State’ in
Hamlet." Early Modern Literary Studies 10.2 (2004). Literature Resource Center. Web.
27 March 2014.
Hadfield, Andrew. “The Power and Rights of the Crown in Hamlet and King Lear: ‘The King:
The King’s to Blame.’” The Review of English Studies 54.217 (2003): 566-86. JSTOR.
Web. 25 March 2014
“kind, adj.” OED Online. Oxford University Press, March 2014. Web. 10 April 2014.
Ost, Suzanne. “But is This Law: The Nature of Law, Sovereign Power and Justice in Hamlet.”
Law and Humanities 1 (2007): 183-208. Hein Online Law Journal Library. Web. 25
March 2014.
Parris, Benjamin. “‘The Body is with the King, but the King is not with the Body’: Sovereign
Sleep in Hamlet and Macbeth.” Shakespeare Studies 40 (2012): 101+. Literature
Resource Center. Web. 25 March 2014.
Roth, Steve. “Who Knows Who Knows Who's There? An Epistemology of Hamlet.” Early
Modern Literary Studies 10.2 (2004). Literature Resource Center. Web. 25 March 2014.
Wilson, John Dover. What Happens in Hamlet. Cambridge: University, 1959. Print.