Evaluating Artistic Value in Shakespeare's Hamlet

Perhaps it is a question which does not immediately present itself while perusing a beautiful painting by DaVinci or Picasso, listening to music by Mozart, Beethoveen, or The Beatles, reading Shakespeare, Poe, or Harper Lee, and watching films by Hitchcock or M. Night Shyamalan etc. etc. etc. But (go figure) for some reason it occurred to me: is "beauty" an artistic creation which must sometimes wait to be "found out" by mentalities with the correct kind of reception to see it, or perhaps is artistic "beauty" dependant entirely on its audience for creation? That is to say, is "artistic beauty" inherent or merely a product of perception in a piece of art? The first theory is a notion of "absolute beauty," and is akin to Plato's "Theory of Forms" (as referenced in TheologicalStudies.org) that there is an original, perfect example or standard of everything, presumably existing on a higher plane (such as a "perfect chair," "perfect horse" etc). However, the latter theory would be an example of "beauty in the eye of the beholder," and would be something along the lines of Foucault's thinking, that (at least in part) all roles and concepts are an evolving thing which are based more upon prior history and thought than on any natural inherent truth (as referenced in Culler 5-6). As a side note, this idea in particular makes me wonder if in another time and in another era of popular mentality, with different ideas of censorship, I would like some things I don't like now or if I'd not like some things that I do like now. This is most likely, and also once again this is the question presented-whether artistic beauty is inherent or created by its interpreters. My theory is that ultimately the nature of artistic beauty is composed of both. The inherent beauty of art exists in the original vision and purpose of the artist, and the "neutral" or perception-born beauty exists in the audience's personal view/insight of that artistic vision.

This is a decidedly vague assertion, however, and has no basis unless we can apply it to some real life example-so we need to find one. To commence that search, and also just so we are on the same page, what exactly do we refer to when we talk about so-called "artistic beauty"? According to Jonathon Culler's Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction:

Aesthetics is historically the name for the theory of art and has involved debates about whether beauty is an objective property of works of art, or a subjective response of viewers...Aesthetic objects, such as paintings or works of literature, with their combination of sensuous form (colours, sounds) and spiritual content (ideas), illustrate the possibility of bringing together the material and the spiritual. (32)

This I think is an excellent, excellent definition of art, and (in pursuit of our purpose in finding an example upon which to test the proposed theory) literature is certainly one of the chief fields of art. To further recant Kant's philosophy "a literary work is an aesthetic object because...it engages readers to consider the interrelation between form and content," (Culler 33). So choosing someone out of the lineup of beloved English literature authors, William Shakespeare in particular is certainly held to be a master of literature with his contributions of his many plays and sonnets. Further narrowing it down to something we can focus on, his play about revenge, betrayal, and inescapable duty, Hamlet, is regarded (today) as an artistic masterpiece and therefore "beautiful." The critic Terence Hawkes in Meaning by Shakespeare verifies the marvels of Hamlet:

[I]t has been transformed into the utterance of an oracle, the lucubration of a sage, the masterpiece of a poet-philosopher replete with transcendent wisdom about the way things are, always have been, and presumably always will be. (4)

Surely, we can accept that this play is held "beautiful. So, let us examine this piece with regards to the previously proposed theory. Is Hamlet just in essence a "beautiful piece," or is its worth imbued by its interpreters and audience?

The first idea of the theory was that inherent beauty does exist somewhere, but this might be confusing (and it is) because, at the same time, the second idea I asserted was that artistic beauty is mostly created in the minds of the individual and collective audiences. It is therefore tempting to declare that there just is no "absolute" or "essential" beauty in any piece of art. However, I think this would be a mistake, and I do believe inherent beauty exists because I believe in an absolute truth of this world. In life, there are certainly rights and wrongs, and thus...absolute truths. And besides, it stands to reason (and tradition) that an art piece is formulated on a foundation of beauty by the artist in the first place. Though perception of the art's beauty differs from person to person, artists are usually required to imbue their creation with a strong sense of artistic value and "inherent beauty" to begin with in order for an audience to recognize in it a possibility of beauty at all. Therefore, I conclude (or conjecture, if you prefer) that the inherent "part" of art's beauty exists in the artist's vision of that work, the artist's vision being the original idea and intent.

Now of course, with Hamlet, it is pretty much impossible to really get an idea of what was in Shakespeare's mind when he wrote this play and what sort of deeper artistic vision he possessed. However, I think we can agree that it was at least there, and if results are any testament to means of creation I'd say William Shakespeare had a relatively detailed and coherent vision of his artistic creation of Hamlet. According to Sean McEvoy's "Introduction" to William Shakespeare's Hamlet: A Sourcebook:

Shakespeare wrote nothing quite like it before, nor perhaps after, and it has the feeling of an experimental text. It is a tragedy which is packed with comedy. It is a tense and pacy thriller which can run four hours in performance. It is a play which constantly re-examines itself, and which questions the very nature of theatre and performance. (1)

Shakespeare's artistic endeavor with this confirmed finely made and finely tuned play reveals the place where the essential and "inherent beauty" of the work exists-somewhere between the spiritual and material in the scope and vision of the artist. And why? It is the "place" where inherent beauty exists simply and logically enough because the artist's vision was the first and original concept out of which the art/creation was created.

But how does this prove our theory of the differentiation of beauty as existing in two states? I think we can agree on the idea of inherent beauty being present in the original artist's vision (Shakespeare's in this case), but what proof have we that the beauty of an artistic piece for "everyone else" (that is, the audience) is not inherent but exists in personally and publicly imbued perceptions produced by the viewers? The real proof lies in the investigation of this idea of an audience's holding the power to find the (public) beauty within art at all. Studying this in relation to Hamlet means that we look at the literary criticism history of the play.

It might surprise some people to discover that the critical view Hamlet has changed very much over the centuries since its being written. Each era of artistic and theatrical style seems to have a different opinion on it, based on the story's content and certain features of the main characters. In the pre-Romantic era just after Shakespeare's time, plays were expected to meet a certain code and/or be written for a very specific moral purpose. Thus in an era where the theatrical diet was largely composed of refined, neo-classical, moral and rational drama, Hamlet was considered clumsy and vulgar, particularly in the convoluted character of Hamlet himself, who in their minds should behave perfectly "like a prince" at all times. As described in Hamlet: A Sourcebook, "moral education was an important function of neo-classical drama, and required that a protagonist be uncontroversially virtuous," (McEvoy 30). In fact, as I gather it, it was really only later, during the Romantic period following the late 1700s when Hamlet's emotionally and morally complex characters began to intrigue people and to endear themselves to the public because of their identifiable humanity and truths therein. The shift in thought during this period had effect on the perception of the play in that, "the emergent Romantic movement sought to turn away from scientific rationalism and detailed observation of the external world to give 'natural' human emotion more priority," (31). Thus it was particularly during this time, marked with the politically paralyzing crisis of the French revolution, that people really began identifyingwith Hamlet's psyche of indecision and his confusion as to "the right course."

Later on, so-called modern criticism continued to stem mainly from this Romantic view as well, as detailed in McEvoy's book:

The romantic emphasis on the individual consciousness was perpetuated in later nineteenth-century Shakespeare criticism, which focused on the individual characters of the plays. In the twentieth century this developed into detailed psychological studies of both of the characters and of the playwright himself. (33)

Clearly, the critical perception and reception of this play has altered drastically over time, and Hamlet has actually gathered prestige over the decades, for the most part through changing modes of popular thought.

So what may we gather from this? First of all, this historically and sociologically based situation of an artistic offering being denounced in one era and celebrated in another occurs (according to my theory, you understand) because the public beauty of art is dependant on the public audience. We might even break this down a little further saying that the "public audience" appears to operate on two levels, each dependant on each other within a certain point of time. There is the individual self who sees each piece of art with his or her own individual taste and gathers beauty from that creation according to what it specifically means for himself or herself. And, there is also the collective self who sees the world through "eyes of the time" in context with current history and society and will interpret accordingly in keeping with this accepted collective mentality. The collective self is composed of the individual self, and both as I've stated thus influence each other. This in short is the nature of artistic beauty through the ages (as seen in the example of Hamlet), and a good argument is thus made for the idea that artistic beauty (as it is held by the rest of the world, not the creator/artist) is formed out of the perceptions and contextual appreciations of the audience.

Summing it up (finally) in a personal way, essential artistic beauty to me is again both inherent and neutral in relation to the individual-me naturally being an individual too. It is inherent because it is certainly there-it is neutral because it can take so many forms in the individual's mind and heart, for better or for worse. Something can be beautiful in my mind but ugly in another's mind, and will it influence each accordingly. However, even if it is viewed as ugly by someone, does this make the art-thing any less beautiful if its original conception as a creation was something beautiful? Of course not. I personally do not separate the art from the artist, and this is how something can be inherently beautiful in its essence-the original beauty of something is dependant on its creator. The point is merely that the other (public) level of a piece's artistic beauty lies in the interpretation of the public audience on both a personal level and a wider general population level. Now, let it be noted that this definition is not to say that the public audience cannot share in the original beauty within its own perception as well, but, by my theory, this is ultimately the basic nature of artistic beauty-as being composed of both the original beauty (the artist's vision) and perceived beauty (the audience's perception of that vision).

And now I think I will go read a novel or listen to a song-and not think one bit about why's it's beautiful or not, or if it's intrinsically beautiful, or if it is my culturally programmed perception which makes me like it, or what is art and beauty anyway, or...

Works Cited

Culler, Jonathan. Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press. 1997.

Hawkes, Terence. Meaning by Shakespeare. London: Rutledge, 1992.

McEvoy, Sean. (editor) William Shakespeare's Hamlet, A Sourcebook. Oxon and New York: Routledge: Taylor & Francis Group. 2006.

"Plato's Theory of Forms." TheologicalStudies.org. 20 Nov 2004. 5 May 2008.