‘HAMLET’ AND THE POWER OF WORDS by Inga-Stina Ewbank,

About the author: Inga-Stina Ewbank, (13 June 1932 – 7 June 2004) was a Swedish-born academic and educator in Great Britain, Munich, Hong Kong and the United States, as well as an author and translator. She is believed to have been to date the only holder of an English chair of English Literature to have spoken no language other than Swedish until the age of 19.

In this text, the author discusses the language of Hamlet, with the objective to explore the part which speech plays in the life of this play and the function of speech as part of Shakespeare’s vision in the play. She starts with an example at the opening of act IV, when Claudius pleads with Gertrude, whom he has found in considerable distress; in this example the author explains ‘a modern play, where husbands and wives tend to find that on the whole they don´t speak the same language, the shock of insight might well have led her to make some statement of no-communication’ (Ibsen’s Nora – that early non-communicating wife). As well, the scene in one sense speaks of non-communication between husband and wife. Gertrude has drawn apart, with her unspeakable knowledge and suspicion, much as Macbeth has when he bids his wife 'Be innocent of the knowledge, dearest chuck. But, in its dramatic context, the language does a great deal more than that. There is, as Polonius has said, 'some more audience' in the theatre, and to them - to us- the language speaks eloquently of the strange complexities of human life, of motives and responses and the re-alignment of relationships under stress. It speaks of Gertrude's desperate attempt to remain loyal to her son but also (however misguidedly) to her husband and to his chief councilor. The author still says that ultimately the power of the words is Shakespeare’s, not Gertrude’s, and it operates even through the total muteness of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern who, like parcels, are, most Stoppard like, sent out and in and out again in the course of the scene. That Shakespeare was aware of this – although, unlike many of his fellow poets and dramatists, He was apparently not an inter-lingual translator – is suggested; in the first place, by the various ways in which He uses the Word translate in his plays. Alexander Schmidt’s Shakespeare – Lexicon separates three clearly defined meanings: 1. to transform or to change, as Bottom is ‘translated’, or as beauty is not translated into honesty in the nunnery scene; 2. to render into another language (or rather to change by rendering into another language); and 3. To interpret or explain, as in the Claudius line I have been discussing, or as Aeneas has translated Troilus to Ulysses. The author also says according George Steiner, in After Babel, maintains that ‘inside or between languages, human communication equals translation’. Hamlet bears out the truth of this. Hamlet himself is throughout the play trying to find a language to speak to others in; and round him – against him and for him – the members of the court of Elsinore are engaging in acts of translation. The first meeting with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, would be a specific example of this general statement. Words govern the action of the play, form the ironical watchword - 'Long live the King'- which allays Francisco's fears at the opening, to hamlet's dying voice which gives the throne of Denmark to Fortinbras at the end; and, beyond, to the speech which will be given by Horatio when it is all over, explaining 'to th' yet unknowing word/ How these things came about'. Words control fates and the development of the characters, and not only when they are spoken by the Ghost to Hamlet and turned by him into a principle of action (Now to my Word: I,). Words can open Gertrude’s eyes, help to drive Ophelia mad, unpack Hamlet’s heart (however much he regrets it); and if Claudius finds that words without thoughts never to heaven go’, this merely validates those words which have thoughts. Sometimes the words deceive, sometimes they say what is felt and meant, sometimes they are inadequate - but the inadequacy reflects on the speaker rather than the language. According the author, No other Shakespearian hero, tragic or comic, has to face so many situations in which different speakers have different palpable designs on him, and where He so has to get hold of the verbal initiative. No other Shakespearian hero is so good at running his antagonists right down to their basic premisses and striking the dumb, as with Rosencrantz and Guidenstern in the recorder scene. He won´t be played upon, and so he listens in order, with lightning speed, to pick up a key-word and turn it into a pun or some other device for playing upon others. But, unlike many other Shakespearian tragic heroes, Hamlet also listens in a more reflective way – listens and evaluates, as Othello does not (but Hamlet surely would have done) with Iago. Other characters meet to plot or to remonstrate, or they step aside for an odd twitch of conscience. To Hamlet, conversations may become extensions of moral sympathy. The author finishing her text with “In this Power to Express so much and yet also to call a halt on the edge of the inexpressible where, to misquote Claudius, we must learn to say “This fit we do not understand’. This, I think, is the hallmark of Shakespeare as a translator, into tragedy, of the human condition.”

REFERENCE: Ewbank, Inga-Stina. "‘Hamlet’ and the Power of Words.” Shakespeare Survey Volume 30: Henry IV to Hamlet. Ed. Kenneth Muir. Cambridge University Press, 1977.