Shakespeare's 'Hamlet' and Renaissance skepticism

This study examines Shakespeare's Hamlet (c.1600-1601) in light of Renaissance traditions of skepticism. These traditions, mainly classical in origin and linked to Reformation debate, bear upon recurrent questions of knowledge and certainty theatrically raised in the play.;While some skeptical perspectives found in Hamlet have been associated with Florio's 1603 English translation of Montaigne's Essais, inadequate attention has been paid to the play's connections to other texts of skepticism in print in Renaissance England. This study examines such connections between Hamlet and the skeptical writings of Sextus Empiricus, Cicero, Diogenes Laertius, Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa, and Fulke Greville. The many skeptical ideas, commonplaces, and modes of doubt identified in Hamlet by such an examination suggest broader Renaissance issues of intellectual and theological certainty framing the play's action and dialogue.;For example, the frequent questioning of physical appearances by Hamlet and other characters reflects sixteenth-century debate over the importance given sense perception in the "new science." Similarly, Hamlet's questioning of reason's moral and investigative value recalls Calvinist views of man's sin-impaired intellect. And Hamlet's perplexities with the nature of ghosts, purgatory, and providence suggest the theological quandary that Counter-Reformers claimed resulted from Protestant dependence upon individual conscience in doctrinal matters.;Hamlet's very mode of thought follows the principal convention of skeptical argument--the counterbalancing of contrary opinions. Such thought relates to his self-acknowledged delay when Hamlet considers how the ghost may either be his father's spirit or a devil, how his own death may either end his troubles or bring new ones, and how his chance to kill the king at prayer may either serve or thwart his revenge. Hamlet's identification with skeptical traditions also clarifies his dialectic relationship with another major character in the play, Polonius, the court counsellor parodically associated with humanist traditions of received wisdom and reason. Within this dialectic of contrasting Renaissance perspectives, Hamlet's murder of Polonius may thematically suggest the skeptical eclipse of secular humanism's rational world-view.;Such skeptical traditions place Hamlet's final resignation to the mystery of providence into greater intellectual context as well. For his aquiescent posture in Act Five may be variously associated with the classical skeptics' ideal of "quietude" and the sixteenth-century Christian skeptics' attitude of fideism.