Thy Kingdom Come!

LEGION OF CHRIST COLLEGE OF HUMANITIES

Is Hamlet a Tragic Hero according to The Poetics of

Aristotle?

Professor: Dr Josef Froula

Student: Br Francisco J Posada
Course: SS 418 Capstone Seminar
Capstone Thesis
Cheshire, May 25, 2018
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I. INTRODUCTION

1. A Word about this paper

I acknowledge what I am doing in the paper, first in a general way sharing my ideas

about Shakespeare’s work and the literary theory of Aristotle. I think the use that Shakespeare

did of Aristotle is a proof of the greatness of the thought of the Greek philosopher. Understand

the concept of the Aristotelian tragic hero. Study the Poetics then analyzed the play of Hamlet

and finally give a judgement of the similarity.

Reading the Poetics I came upon a question that must be asked, why do we study the

Poetics? I give an answer in the second section of this paper. Aristotle tells us that there are four

characteristics of a tragic hero; goodness of character, the character should be appropriate,

human character, and it should be consistent. The tragic hero must be somebody we can identify

ourselves with, not the most virtuous man nor a debased one, but one that is common to all.

The concept of ἁμαρτία is one of the things I had more trouble understanding. However,

through my research I find some interesting similarities between the concept of Aristotle and the

Catholic concept of original sin.

The two emotions that Aristotle says tragedy purges are fear and pity, the author of

tragedy makes the audience experience the catharsis by the events happening in the play. An

interesting aspect of Shakespeare is that in his play about Hamlet he puts the tragic situation

inside the circle of his family.

The διάνοια of the tragic hero which broadly speaking is his way of thinking should be

treated because it is part of the character of the person, and because speech comes from it which
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can be the cause of events in the play. Another aspect is that it refers to the appropriateness of the

character as how a person should speak according to his own role.

One of Laertes’s speeches reaffirms the fact that Hamlet is a noble in Denmark, giving us

a hint into the character of the prince.

Shakespeare makes Hamlet be in a difficult choice situation by putting him against the

wall to decide whether to inflict vengeance on the king of Denmark or follow the Christian ideal

of life of forgiveness. The ἁμαρτία (tragic mistake) of Hamlet is his delaying.

2. Premise

The study of Shakespeare’s works is an interesting field of work. It is even more

interesting for me having to rappel around the wit and blank verse of the author whose name is

synonymous with English Literature. I will like to take the opportunity to collaborate in the

ongoing scholarly conversation on Shakespearean criticism with this paper, only a grain of sand

in the whole study of Shakespeare. The way I would like to do it is by addressing the question,

whether Hamlet is a tragic hero according to Aristotle’s work on drama, The Poetics.

I would also like to touch the theme of the value of ancient works. I will use as an

example the influence Aristotle had on Shakespeare. The influence of Aristotle is partly due to

his time and place, at the beginning of western thought, but also his work is great by itself.

The paper will help me to delve into the meaning of the concept of the Aristotelian tragic

hero and everything that it entails.

The method I chose is the study of both works; first The Poetics to know what is a tragic

hero according to Aristotle, and second the play of Shakespeare, Hamlet to analyze the same
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concept but applied to a concrete literary character by the English dramatist. As a third step, I

will compare both and give an assessment to the similitude or disparity between the two concepts

of tragic hero.

II. THE POETICS

1. The Importance of Aristotle’s Literary Criticism

As a starting point, we need to address the question of Aristotle’s authority in the western

world. He stands somewhat close to the beginning of western tradition and his work has not just

influence writers but also philosophers, scientists, and religious leaders among others. In one

word, the oeuvre of Aristotle being the systematization of Greek philosophy to his time endures

throughout the centuries and in different ways became the manual for many things. One of them

is literature with his work The Poetics, on drama.

One of the aims of The Poetics is to answer Plato’s criticism of representative art.

According to Plato’s theory of Forms, material objects are imperfect copies of the original, real

Forms; artistic representations of material objects are therefore only copies of copies, at two

removes from reality.1

Aristotle says that the representation in drama is not about things that have happened but

about the things that could happen, therefore drama is a kind of philosophical exercise telling the

audience how humans behave and the outcome of their behavior in real or hypothetical

situations. He is an advocate of representative art as a means of purification of emotions as

recorded in his definition of tragedy, “ἔστιν οὖν τραγῳδία μίμησις πράξεως σπουδαίας καὶ

1
Encyclopedia Britannica Vol. 14, article “Aristotelianism, Aristotle,” p. 63.
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τελείας μέγεθος ἐχούσης, ἡδυσμένῳ λόγῳ χωρὶς ἑκάστῳ τῶν εἰδῶν ἐν τοῖς μορίοις, δρώντων καὶ

οὐ δι᾽ ἀπαγγελίας, δι᾽ ἐλέου καὶ φόβου περαίνουσα τὴν τῶν τοιούτων παθημάτων κάθαρσιν.”2

It is worth noting that Hamlet himself uses this purpose of tragedy according to Aristotle

in his play within the play of Shakespeare. He is able to make King Claudius show his guilty

conscience and feel the remorse of his actions. 

2. The Nature of an Aristotelian Tragic Hero

Aristotle says that the art of literature deals with living persons therefore; they have

different characters good and bad. For tragedy, the tragic hero should be better than we should.3

Qualities and thought determine the characteristics of an action.4 In order to judge whether

someone is better than we are we have his or her actions and intentions as evidence for the

judgement.

In the fifteenth chapter of the work,5 Aristotle starts speaking about the certain qualities

of the ἦθος of the person. He outlines four points:

First, the ἦθος should be good, the play should reveal the character of the persons by

showing choices, and if the choices were good, then the ἦθος would be good. The “goodness”

that Aristotle talks about is relative to the social class of the ἦθος. The behavior of a king is very

2
ARISTOTLE, ed. KASSEL, R., Aristotle’s Ars Poetica, Greek text, Oxford Clarendon Press, 1966,
electronic edition in
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0055%3Asection%3D1447a
(accessed 03-22-2018), 1449 b VI, 2-3.
TN: “Tragedy is, then, a representation of an action that is heroic and complete and of certain
magnitude –by means of language enriched with all kinds of ornament, each used separately in the
different parts of the play: it represents men in action and does not use narrative, and through pity and fear
it effects relief to these and similar emotions.” (By F. W. HAMILTON)
3
ARISTOTLE, The Poetics, Greek text with an English translation by F. W. HAMILTON, The Loeb
Classical Library, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts 1946, p. 11.
4
Id., p. 25.
5
Id., p. 55.
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different from that of a clown or the action of killing a king and killing a stranger hiding behind

curtains makes different evidence for the character. The actions of the character show the

intentions he or she has and by default, whether they are good or bad.

Character is what choice reveals, it shows what sort of thing a man chooses or avoids in

circumstances where the choice is not obvious because as we said above Aristotle considers

literature as a type of philosophical exercise,6 here we can think of moral philosophy as an

example. The choice comes from the will of the person; this aspect also leads to an unexpected

result.

The tragedian should make the characters like “the good portrait-painters who, while

rendering the distinctive form and making a likeness, yet paint people better than they are.”7

The second characteristic is that a character should be appropriate. They should be fitting

to the kind of people they are. Again, we speak about prince Hamlet, a student at Wittenberg,

young man, and his conduct should be such. Hamlet by his behavior reveals his own character

and individual characteristics. The dramatist represents people with their personal traits “yet men

of worth.”8

Third, the author should make the ἦθος of the person “like [that of] the traditional

person.”9 Whether king or clown everyone is, a human person and we know we act similarly and

do the same things by nature.

The persons represented in a tragedy should be in the mean of character. The author

should represent people not pre-eminently virtuous and just, and yet it is through no badness or

6
ARISTOTLE, The Poetics, p. 29.
7
Id., p. 57, 59.
8
Id., p. 59.
9
Id., Notes c, p.54
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villainy of their own that they fall into the misfortune, but rather through some ἁμαρτία in them.

The persons represented should be in a high standard and good fortune.10

The tragic hero, in Aristotle’s view of drama, is not an eminently good man; nor is he

necessarily a paragon of virtue that is felled by adversity. Instead, the hero has some frailty or

flaw (ἁμαρτία) that is evident from the outset of a play and eventually ensures his doom. The

audience, moreover, must be able to identify with the tragic flaw.11

Fourth, it should be consistent. According to the description of the ἦθος, the hero should

follow the way he or she is and not act otherwise.

The poet should make the characters in such a way that they do the inevitable and the

probable. Clearly, for Aristotle’s theory to work, the tragic hero must be a complex and well-

structured character. As a tragic hero, the protagonist should have nobility and virtue. The

audience must respect the hero as a larger and better version than themselves.

The dynamic nature of nobility should win this respect of the public. The fact of being a

noble in the simplest sense is one-step for the formation of a tragic hero, for example, Hamlet

who is the son of Queen Gertrude and King Hamlet of Denmark, “[H]e himself is subject to his

birth.” (Act I, sc. 3, 18)12

10
Cf. ARISTOTLE, The Poetics, p. 47.
11
Ibidem
12
All the references and quotes of the play are taken from SHAKESPEARE, W., The Tragedy of Hamlet
Prince of Denmark, edited by T. BROOKE and J.R. CRAWFORD, Yale University Press, New Haven 1954.
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3. The ἁμαρτία

A tragic hero undergoes a tragic event in order to pass from the state of well-being to

misfortune. Aristotle calls ἁμαρτία the weakness of the character or choice that the personage

takes to have the tragic consequence.

This ἁμαρτία may, but not necessarily cover both an intellectual and moral sense. The

hero must not deserve his misfortune, but he must cause it by making a “fatal mistake”

(ἁμαρτία), an error of judgement, which may well involve some imperfection of character but not

such as to make us regard him as “morally responsible” for the disasters that happen to him or

her, although they are nevertheless the consequences of the flaw in him or her and his or her

wrong decision at a crisis moment, they are the inevitable outcome of his character.13

It seems logical to have the ἁμαρτία be something that the audience did not see coming

for the sake of suspension in the story. The ἁμαρτία gives the public the feeling of error in the

character but Aristotle tells us that it is not the fault of the person. It is something beyond himself

almost like an outside ἁμαρτία that has a domain in the person but somehow it is not part of his

character.

In the twenty-fifth chapter of the Poetics, the author introduces different types of

ἁμαρτία, one type is called “essential”, which is “if a man meant to represent something and fails

to do it through incapacity.”14 The other is called “accidental” which is if the ἁμαρτία is due to

his original conception being wrong and his portraying of it, for example, a horse advancing both

its right legs or a ἁμαρτία (mistake) in any other branch of knowledge or else some sort of

13
Cf. ARISTOTLE, The Poetics, Additional notes, p 117
14
ARISTOTLE, The Poetics, p. 101.
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impossibility has been portrayed.15 In the latter case, the error of the poet is the mean by which

there is a ἁμαρτία in the ἦθος of the work.

The complex nature of the ἁμαρτίαwhich all tragic heroes must have is a challenge for

the author but a delight for the audience. It must occur as something that is central part of their

virtue, which goes astray usually due to the lack of knowledge. The tragic hero should not bear

responsibility for his ἁμαρτία. This last statement is considered that the protagonist is not

seeking his own doom but because of the story and the nature of tragedy, the befalling of

disgrace comes after the mistaken action (ἁμαρτία) of the character.

A dynamic and multifaceted ἦθος of the person that emotionally bonds the audience is

necessary, his ἁμαρτία that forces the audience to fear the fate the hero is undergoing without

losing any respect, and his horrific punishment elicits a great sense of pity from the audience.

4. Fear and Pity

As already quoted above from the treatise of Aristotle the two emotions that a tragedy

should “correct” are pity and fear. The audience experiences a catharsis of pity when the hero

gets an undeserved misfortune, and the catharsis of fear comes from seeing a man like ourselves

that cannot do anything that would change his tragic outcome and we are afraid of being in the

same situation.

The audience starts feeling pity for the hero because his condition changes. For example

in Hamlet, our hero starts faking to be crazy which is similar to death insofar that is due to

depression, bothering him throughout the play.

15
Cf. ARISTOTLE, The Poetics.
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In the ninth chapter of the Poetics, Aristotle talks about the kinds of incidents that

aroused pity and fear and have the greatest effect in the mind. They have two characteristics; the

first is that they are unexpected. The unexpectedness puts the audience at the mercy of the poet.

The second characteristic is logical meaning that the events should have a cause within the play

and not happen ex machina.16

The authors set tragic deeds within the family because this is the most tragic since they

are the most dreadful and pitiable.17 An alternative for the tragic events of the drama that

Aristotle proposes in the Poetics is to intend to do some irremediable action in ignorance and to

discover the truth before acting upon it.18 This can be seen in the scene of Hamlet killing

Polonius thinking it was his uncle, King Claudius overhearing his conversation with his mother

Queen Gertrude. The protagonist must do the action with or without knowledge. The worse of

these two is to intend the action with full knowledge and not to perform it. That outrages the

feelings and is not tragic, for there is no calamity,19 for the simple fact that the ἁμαρτία is not

performed and the tragic effect not accomplished.

5. The διάνοια of the Character

The concept’s translation of the Greek word διάνοια is best represented in the English

language by the word “thought.” Hamlet’s words according, to Aristotle, should be means of

among other things proof and reputation, the arousing of feelings like pity, fear, and anger and so

16
ARISTOTLE, The Poetics, p. 39.
17
Id., p. 51.
18
Id., p. 53.
19
Id., p. 53.
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on, and exaggeration and depreciation.20 In addition, the importance of the words is that they

cause some of the events that would not happen otherwise.

Διάνοια is the ability to say what is possible and appropriate. It comes in the dialogue and

is the function of the personae dramatis whether they are kings, clowns, soldiers, etc.21 Διάνοια

is found in speeches which contain an argument that something is or not, or a general expression

of opinion.

III. HAMLET, PRINCE OF DENMARK

1. In Search of the Aristotelian Tragic Hero

Now we will go through the play seeing if the four characteristics of a tragic hero

according to Aristotle are part of Hamlet’s ἦθος or not.

In the exhortation of Laertes to his sister Ophelia (Act I, iii, 11-44) he explains to her part

of the personality of Hamlet and tells her that his love of youth might change and that she must

“be wary” of the prince. Laertes thinks that Hamlet is already the king of Denmark giving her

sister no chance of relationship.

In the first act of the play, we encounter a young prince mourning his father’s death and

at the same time stunned because of the way in which his mother and uncle “mourn” him, by the

feast of their marriage. Then Hamlet finds out the eerie happening of a ghost appearing in the

castle at night that looks just like his father, King Hamlet. He consents to the invitation of taking

the watch with the sentinels so that he may become a witness of the event and if possible to

speak to the ghost. And when the spirit comes he is able to have a conversation with it and he

20
Cf. ARISTOTLE, The Poetics., p. 73.
21
Cf. Id, p. 28-29
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discovers the truth about the king’s death, after this he is resolute to inflict revenge on the

murderer king. Lastly, he makes his friends swear not to reveal what they have seen (Act I, v,

156-160).

However, Hamlet is not convinced only by the message of the ghost, he resolves to keep

inquiring in the matter. He puts up a play before King Claudius about the very act of the murder

of the king by his own brother, the king reveals his guilty conscience and Hamlet feels the almost

moral duty of revenge.

2. Aristotle’s Tragic Hero, Hamlet

The first characteristic of a tragic hero that Aristotle lists is a good ἦθος. Hamlet seems to

be a good son respecting his mother (Act I, ii, 120) and mourning his father’s death almost to the

extreme.22 His plan to uncover the truth about his father’s death makes him be not a good person

but his intention to avenge his father’s murder pressures him to choose this path. The love he has

for his deceased father encourages him to find out what happen and act upon the evidence he

gathers.

One may object to the goodness of the character of Hamlet by faking he is insane and

even worse, by this behavior he makes Ophelia lose her mind. Hamlet starts acting as if he is

crazy to find out whether the words of the ghost are true or not, by listening to unguarded

remarks. This situation makes Hamlet’s behavior good for his purpose of inquiry.

The second characteristic is an appropriate ἦθος. Hamlet is a normal man, the prince of

his kingdom. The latter statement makes him a man of worth fact that helps us to look up to him.

The princely status of our protagonist gives the standard for his behavior in the play. In this

22
Cf. Act I, ii, 78-87.
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section, we can answer the question who is Hamlet. He is not able to understand his

circumstances fully but tries his best; he is in a state of confusion. Overall, his actions are

appropriate to his person.

The third characteristic is a human ἦθος. This is understood as the natural goodness of a

person. His hate brings him to desire to send his uncle to Hell and stops him to act upon his

resolution of killing King Claudius. For this, I take the passage from an article written by Miriam

Joseph, which says that, the ἁμαρτία of Hamlet becomes his hate:

On his way, he sees the king kneeling. He raises his sword to execute justice upon the regicide.
Blinded by surging hate, he suddenly conceives that it would hardly be revenge “To take him in
the purging of his soul” (Act III, iii, 85) and so send him to heaven. Therefore he sheathes his
sword and decides to wait for a time when his uncle is “. . . about some act That has no relish of
salvation in’t — . . . that his soul may be as damn’d and black As hell, whereto it goes.” (Act III,
iii, 91)23

The fourth characteristic is that the ἦθος should be consistent. This means that the

character should be recognizable throughout the play as the person he or she is.

3. The ἁμαρτία of Hamlet

We could see in the speech of Hamlet about human nature the innate defect, what

possibly could be called “original ἁμαρτία” and could be part of the ἁμαρτία that Aristotle speaks

of in his work. This ἁμαρτία is not by definition something of moral quality but it could be

included in its meaning. As Hamlet establishes that by nature all men have this “complexion”

and “stamp of one defect” they are victims of their “own scandal.” (Act I, iv, 23-37)

Hamlet is bound to revenge his father’s assassination (Act I, v, 7), something that adds

onto this is the love Hamlet has for his father, which is shown in the first Act during his long

23
M. JOSEPH, A ‘Trivial’ Reading of Hamlet, Laval théologique et philosophique, Montreal Université
Laval, 1959, Vol.15, N. 2, p. 182–214, doi:10.7202/1019978ar, p. 202.
 14

mourning. Now the ghost tells him “if thou didst ever thy father love” (Act I, v, 23) you should

“revenge his foul and most unnatural murther.” (Act I, v, 25) The ghost knows that hamlet had

and still has a great love for his father.

Since Shakespeare uses the voice of Hamlet to tell some of his thoughts as the passage

Act II, ii, 437-452 makes explicit, Hamlet himself becomes a model for a tragic hero. In the final

soliloquy of the second Act in which he is speaking to the actors, Hamlet says that had the player

“the motive and the cue for passion that I have” he will do a better job than just acting out the

role of people he does not even know or care of. He realizes that to “act” in the real world is

harder than in a play, for he needs to avenge a murder but he delays until certainty is so clear that

will almost push him to do it. He decides to put on a play similar to the death of his father so that

King Claudius might reveal his guilty conscience and Hamlet will know the truth.

The major choice that Shakespeare puts on the play to reveal Hamlet’s goodness is the

decision to avenge his father’s murder or not. In other words, whether he would stain his hands

with the blood of his uncle the king or live on his life as an heir to the throne submissive to the

new king. However, he should not act hastily since the source of this information is the ghost

that says in life was king Hamlet (Act I, v, 31-91).

IV. CONCLUSION

This paper is dealing with an interesting question of Literature, that is, whether

Shakespeare used Aristotle’s literary theory. The way in which I have done the inquiry is by

looking at a specific point of the Aristotelian tragic theory, the tragic hero. For this reason, the

paper does not deal with the other aspects of tragedy enumerated in the treatise of Aristotle, The

Poetics.
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After my research of the work of the English Renaissance dramatist, I discovered that the

theory of Aristotle about the tragic hero is present in the tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark.

The evidence is found in the play and it becomes an interesting aspect in the life of Shakespeare,

because he used the work of Aristotle as a manual for his art.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

ARISTOTLE, ed. KASSEL, R., Aristotle’s Ars Poetica, Oxford Clarendon Press, 1966, electronic
edition in:
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0055%3Ase
ction%3D1447a (accessed 03-22-2018).
ARISTOTLE, The Poetics, Greek text with an English translation by F. W. HAMILTON, The Loeb
Classical Library, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts 1946.
JOSEPH, M., A ‘Trivial’ Reading of Hamlet, in Laval théologique et philosophique, Montreal
Université Laval, 1959, Vol. 15, N. 2, 182–214, doi:10.7202/1019978ar.
SHAKESPEARE, W., The Tragedy of Hamlet Prince of Denmark, edited by T. BROOKE and J.R.
CRAWFORD, Yale University Press, New Haven 1954.
The Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Aristotelianism and Aristotle” in Vol. 14 Macropaedia, 15th ed.,
Encyclopaedia Britannica Inc., U.S.A. 2010.