Anagnorisis (& some peripeteia) in Hamlet

Shobha Pawar is a translator and former English professor and department chair from Pune, Maharashtra, India, who has long been a collegial acquaintance on LinkedIn, and for this, I am most grateful. Last week I posted about Aristotelian poetics, ethics, and politics in Hamlet, and Shobha asked some helpful questions and made good observations. Her comments inspired this week's blog post.

Shobha wrote,

"Paul, taking the cue from Aristotle I think anagnorisis is the decisive factor in defining tragedy. How would you view Hamlet's journey in the light of this?"

Great question. There used to be a series of books called Where's Waldo, in which there were detailed pictures of crowds, and the task on each set of pages of the open book was to find Waldo, who always wore the same clothing. The task Shobha's question suggests is to approach Hamlet and to ask, "Where's anagnorisis?"

Edit: I should note early that Shobha does not believe Hamlet is a traditional/classical play, or that it fits the Aristotelian theories perfectly. She knows it does not. But many of Aristotle's ideas are still helpful. If a tragedy involved only the suffering of a character without any character flaws or enlightenment, we might not experience the pity and catharsis Aristotle says are evoked by the best tragedies.

Besides posting on this blog, I have long shared these posts on LinkedIn as well, where the analytics show that a large percent of my readers are teachers and college professors. With that in mind, a word about terminology and pronunciation:

When we meet a new friend, it's polite and helpful to learn how to correctly pronounce names. A lack of care regarding pronunciation can communicate a lack of interest and concern for the relationship. We might consider fostering the same attitude in ourselves and our students when it comes to unfamiliar terminology and corresponding pronunciation.

I was a first generation college student, meaning my parents did not finish college, so when I arrived at college, I found that there were many words I didn't know how to pronounce. But there are many resources online to help students learn how to say words (and even some fun parodies of pronunciation videos as well). I encourage college students to be sure to look up how to pronounce such Greek words that are not usually used in breakfast-table discussion (a-hem):

A few such videos seem to be electronically generated, but some of the better ones agree that the proper pronunciation would be "A - nag - NOR - ih - sis" or /ˌaˌnaɡˈnôrəsəs / (via Oxford English Dictionary).

One can also find simple and helpful resources on Wikipedia for basics on anagnorisis, hamartia, and peripeteia. But I would like to observe early on that this sort of analysis often focuses exclusively on one main character; because other characters in Hamlet are rich and complex, I would like to expand the analysis to other characters as well. 

Anagnorisis is defined as a moment of enlightenment. LiteraryDevices.net gives the example of how Oedipus receives word from a messenger that the people he assumed to be his biological parents were in fact his adoptive parents, and Oedipus realizes that the man he killed on the road was actually his biological father, and he has married his mother, fulfilling an old prophecy he wrongly assumed he could avoid by fleeing the city where he was raised, the only home he remembered, not knowing of his adoption. This is a profound moment of enlightenment or anagnorisis for Oedipus regarding his adoptive parents, his birth parents, and his wife and mother.

For Aristotle, this moment of revelation and enlightenment is related to some fatal flaw or "hamartia" (heh-MAR-dee-ah, or /həˈmärdēə/) ...

...(Oedipus is perhaps too proud to think he can escape his fate by running from those who turn out to have been his adoptive parents), and hamartia is best when it accompanies a turning point or reversal of fortunes, (or "peripeteia" - pair-ih-pet-EE-ah, or /ˌperəpəˈtē(y)ə,ˌperəpəˈtīə/).


Example: In Oedipus Rex (not its back-story), the new reversal of fortune is that Oedipus, who had become king, is ashamed to learn he has married his mother; she commits suicide (also in shame), and Oedipus blinds himself, becoming like the blind seer, Tiresias (a sort of prophet figure, who could not see the outward appearances of things, but who supposedly had great insight and wisdom, a rich "interiority" or inward life). Oedipus may have been clever enough to solve the riddle of the Sphinx and thereby win the right to marry the queen (who he did not yet realize was his biological mother), but he lacked wisdom and humility, in that he assumed he could escape his fate.

Note: Laius, father of Oedipus, had attempted to kill his son because he, too, had received the prophecy that his son would kill him and marry his wife; Laius, too, tried to avoid his fate. But perhaps to claim he could technically avoid personal guilt for the murder, he ordered to have the son abandoned in the wild, tied to a stake by a rope through his ankles, behind his Achilles tendons, which had been pierced. Note also that Laius assumes he can change the prophecy by abandoning his son to death (which today in the many nations would be considered criminal neglect), and avoid personal guilt for the murder by outsourcing the task to a servant. One could say Laius is an abusive father and lacking anagnorisis. He resists a prophesied peripeteia (change of fortune) by trying to have his son killed. (Tamara Hammond, drawing upon the work of Julia Kristeva, has noted that the Oedipus Rex story from Sophocles takes a murderously abusive father, Laius - who also once raped the son of a neighboring king who gave him sanctuary - and displaces the guilt onto a sexually shamed son, Oedipus. This is an important insight, but perhaps more than Sophocles' play expected of its original audiences.)

(MAJOR TANGENT ALERT: Note also that archaeologists have found evidence of infant corpses that expands their understanding of rituals related to the acceptance or rejection of infants by heads of households; one Newsweek article from 2015 notes:

This latest work adds to those disturbing discoveries, building a case that, at the time, if a baby died, its body was discarded, not properly interred. This is because Greek babies, like those in Rome, weren't considered full individuals until a special ceremony about a week to 10 days after birth, Rotroff explains. During this event, at which time the child was given his or her name, the head of the household (almost always the father) decided whether or not to rear the child. He could determine to not raise the baby for several reasons—for example, in the case of some type of deformity, or if the family was too big, or if the mother was unmarried. Sometimes, an unwanted baby would be left out in a public place in the hopes that it would be adopted. It wasn't unusual for such children to be raised as slaves.

But if these noncitizen babies died before that ceremony, they'd perhaps end up at the bottom of a well. The team thinks that Athenian midwives took the infants to the well shortly after they had passed. It would have been an ideal location for such a deed. At the time of this burial, the well would've been located down a blind alley near the agora, easily accessible but out of sight. Liston muses that being dropped in a disused well may also have been considered more respectful than being thrown into the city dump.

Not all the babies died naturally. One 18-month-old infant shows signs of frequent abuse—multiple fractures throughout the body, including in the skull, at different degrees of healing. It's likely the oldest example of a battered child ever found, Liston says. A final jaw fracture happened at the time of his or her death. These grim signs of abuse are so obvious even more than two millennia later that Liston says she'd "go to court…and testify that this was a battered child," if it were a modern forensic case.

This may shed some light on the choice of Laius to abandon his son Oedipus.)

Oedipus Rex begins with the reversal of fortunes for Laius, where Laius has already been killed by Oedipus, and the son who was rejected by Laius becomes his murderer and the next king. What goes around comes around. In that way, peripeteia is a crucial backstory of Oedipus Rex.

Some Ways We Might Mess Up When Analyzing a Text for Anagnorisis
Perhaps too many people after Aristotle have sometimes applied his ideas with one or more of the following three flawed assumptions (not an exclusive list; there can always be other flawed assumptions as well). I don't attribute these assumptions to Shobha, or to anyone in particular; but if it applies to you, you may find the list of assumptions helpful. These include the following possible flawed assumptions:
1. that there is only one main moment of anagnorisis worth identifying as such (sometimes there may be more than one);
2. that anagnorisis occurs only or mainly for a single main character, the protagonist (sometimes it occurs for others as well);
3. and that the reversal of fortunes (peripeteia) and enlightenment (anagnorisis) only occurs at the climax, relatively late in the play.

Also, if a poetic theory is limited, it never takes long for a creative writer to find a way to break the rules but still tell a compelling story.

For some, there may be a fourth flawed assumption as well:
4. The Aristotelian theory claims that the protagonist has a flaw ("hamartia") that seals his fate, but in the Christian story of the crucifixion (which might be viewed as the tragic execution of a good man, Jesus), and in tales of other prophets who were rejected or killed, these stories often claim that the flaw is more in those who reject and kill the prophet of God than in the prophet figure.

[Edit, 6 July, 2021:
In that sense, let's propose a fifth flawed assumption:
5. Some assume "tragedy" is more about a bad thing happening to a main character (Jesus crucified, or your grandmother hit by a truck as she's crossing the street on a green light, slowly, with her walker).
- But Aristotle would not have said this.

Instead, what might Aristotle have said?
Aristotle might have said that the fatal flaw (hamartia) in a great character leads to consequences that include a reversal of fortunes (peripeteia), and the consequences of the reversal of fortunes leads finally (but too late) to enlightenment (anagnorisis).] But this gets complicated: Whereas in the Oedipus story, Laius and Oedipus both have a share of hubris, to assume they can avoid the fate described in the prophecy, there is greater debate about Hamlet's fatal flaw (hamartia). 

Hamartia and Hamlet:
Some say Hamlet thinks too much (or has too strong or discriminating a conscience) and should just kill his uncle, implying that the only problem with Hamlet is that by hesitating to kill his uncle, he himself is later killed.

But would this really be ideal, to have a dishonorable Prince Hamlet kill his uncle while he is at prayer? Or would that make Hamlet a bit too much like Macbeth, killing a king who is his guest, while he is vulnerable and asleep?

Also, killing Claudius at prayer would only make Hamlet a garden-variety avenger, and that itself might be tragic, for Hamlet to fail to aspire to be anything better.

Another possibility is that perhaps the tragic flaw is that Hamlet idolizes his father too much, which is clear in the early scenes, and even after he has spoken to the ghost in 1.5, and the ghost has admitted he is in purgatory for "foul crimes": One might think the prince would begin to think a bit differently after this revelation, but in fact he seems stuck in idolizing - and fearing - the ghost that he assumes is his father, at least until after he is saved by pirates and finds Yorick's skull. The ghost no longer appears, and perhaps Hamlet's sense of his fatherhood is shifted from the ghost, to Providence and/or Yorick. More on that later.

Anagnorisis for Hamlet; Dismissing Early Possibilities
In light of Shobha's question, I thought about moments of enlightenment or anagnorisis in Hamlet, and about peripeteia, or turning points or reversals of fortune. Hamlet is more complex than Sophocles' Oedipus Rex in some ways. So first, let's consider a few possibilities that might fall short of the mark as the pinnacle of enlightenment, but for various reasons, are worth considering:

Hopes Dashed
- There is an early reversal of fortunes implied, as in Oedipus, inasmuch as prince Hamlet expected he would be the next king, but after the death of his father, his hopes were disappointed. To have a play in which a prince expects to become king upon his father's death, and whose hopes are denied when his uncle gets in the way, is definitely a reversal of fortune, or peripeteia, but it's not the most important moment of peripeteia in the play. But perhaps this reversal is not accompanied by any profound enlightenment (anagnorisis) about any significant flaw (hamartia) in Hamlet's inner nature that brought this about. He was gone at school, and his uncle married his widowed mother.

So Who Did You Say Killed You? Mine Uncle?
- Next, with the appearance of the ghost to the sentries and to Hamlet, the prince learns that his uncle Claudius murdered his father, or so the ghost claims. Horatio wants him to be more suspicious of the ghost and its designs, and Hamlet initially dismisses his concerns, but later embraces them, though he desires more proof that the ghost is an honest ghost. This revelation from the ghost seems clearly to be a type of enlightenment: Claudius killed his father. But it's not an enlightenment about Hamlet's nature, fault, or failing: It's about others (Claudius, his mother).

"Were You Sent For?"- When Rosencrantz and Guildenstern appear at Elsinore, Hamlet suspects that they were sent for by Claudius and Gertrude, and he gets them to admit that they were. This is another revelation about the true nature of things outside himself (Claudius wants to spy on him, his former friends are willing to betray his trust in order to receive royal favors), but it's not a moment of profound insight about Hamlet's own true nature.

Build a Better Mousetrap?
- Hamlet believes that the play-within-the-play, The Mousetrap, reveals the guilt of Claudius when Claudius stops the performance and asks for light. But does it reveal that? As they watch The Mousetrap, instead of saying that the murderer in the play is brother to the player-king, Hamlet says the murderer is "nephew to the king." As others have noted, this seems more a threat from a nephew to an uncle than a trap to catch the conscience of a king regarding a brother murdered by his brother. So is this a moment of real anagnorisis, or a false one? And if it's a true insight, perhaps it is more a confirmation of a suspicion about Claudius, and not about Hamlet.

Note To Self: Don't Stab People Behind an Arras Without Confirming Who You're Stabbing.
When Hamlet stabs the unseen Polonius behind the arras, thinking it is Claudius, it seems an important moment of anagnorisis: Hamlet realizes he is a murderer who misjudged his target, and he has killed an innocent man by mistake instead of obtaining revenge. He is not as bad as Claudius, who fully intended to kill his own brother and king to usurp the throne (no accident there), but this still reveals something important to Hamlet about himself. Hamlet says, strangely, importantly, and suddenly,

"For this same lord,
I do repent; but heaven hath pleas'd it so,
To punish me with this, and this with me,
That I must be their scourge and minister.
I will bestow him, and will answer well
The death I gave him. "
- 3.4

So perhaps it reveals to Hamlet that he is a murderer and will have to answer for it; but it also reveals to the audience that Hamlet assumes heaven (God) is using him to punish others, and using Hamlet's own mistakes to punish him, Hamlet. This assumption about a punishing God may in fact be a false one, but Hamlet does not yet realize that. (More on that below.)

Also, accidentally killing Polonius might have had potential to reveal to Hamlet that revenge is better left to heaven ("Vengeance is mine," says the Lord: Deuteronomy 32:35; Romans 12:19). But Hamlet does not explicitly conclude this, even after his terrible mistake of killing Polonius. He is still committed to the idea of avenging his father's death; and perhaps Hamlet does serve justice and the greater good by acting as scourge and minister, removing Claudius from Denmark's throne at the cost of his own life. So while this moment does contain many qualities of anagnorisis, I would suggest at this point that while it's important, it's not the most important of such moments for Hamlet.

Nope, Nope, Nope, Nope, and Mostly Nope
So to review: We've considered five possible anagnorisis moments so far:
1. Hamlet's dashed hopes upon the ascension of his uncle to the throne via scandalous marriage.
2. News from the ghost that Claudius killed Hamlet's father.
3. The clumsy spying of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern as a betrayal by former friends.
4. "The Mousetrap" as possible confirmation (or not) of Claudius' guilt.
5. Killing Polonius.
The first four fit the requirements of anagnorisis the least, and the fifth somewhat, but imperfectly or incompletely. To me, the two key moments of anagnorisis for Hamlet come later, after he departs for England. The first of these relates to events on the pirate ship in Hamlet's account to Horatio, and the second unfolds in the graveyard. There are other minor moments that also unfold, which I'll discuss below.

A Sea-Voyage, like Jonah's, and the Death Letter (Yes, and Nope)
- Hamlet at first tells Horatio of his sea-voyage in a letter, and later, relays more information in 5.2 in person. We learn that Hamlet found the death letter (orders from Claudius to have Hamlet killed in England), but felt heaven had "ordained it" (it was God's will, supposedly) that Hamlet was wearing his father's ring, and that this could be used to impress a new wax seal on a new letter. So Hamlet writes a new letter ordering the deaths of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern instead of his own death.
- This feels a bit like revenge for their betrayal of his friendship, and for their greater allegiance toward Claudius, but perhaps Hamlet realizes he must be practical: R&G may know that the letter commands Hamlet's death, and if he tries to discern whether they know, he may give himself away. So to fix what is wrong with Denmark, he may feel R&G must become necessary casualties, regardless of what they know or do not know. Hamlet may feel he has a much greater destiny, a more important job that he must complete, and these two former friends must not get in his way.
- The letter from Claudius ordering his death is a small revelation of the extent to which Claudius will go to deal with Hamlet, but even in his mother's closet, Hamlet had expected such plotting against him and planned to delve deeper than their plots and blow them "at the moon."
- So reading the letter is not really the moment of anagnorisis. In fact, inasmuch as Hamlet neglects the possibility that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are unaware of the contents of the letter, it may be the opposite of anagnorisis. As a vengeful act against former friends, it lacks the sort of mercy that the pirates will soon show toward him, and that Hamlet will later show toward Laertes before the duel (in his apology) and after it (exchanging forgiveness before dying). And if it's not vengeance, as a merely practical act of caution and self-protection, it doesn't fit the pattern of character flaw (hamartia) leading to reversal of fortune (peripeteia) and enlightenment (anagnorisis).

A Revised Understanding and Relationship to God
- So if the death letter from Claudius doesn't quite meet the necessary criteria for anagnorisis, then what aspect of the sea-voyage does? Like Jonah saved from drowning by a fish, Hamlet goes from feeling God is out to punish him (for the death of Polonius), to feeling God is merciful toward him, and on his side, and that the pirates are the instruments of God's mercy (substituting for the fish in the Jonah tale). This manifests a change in Hamlet's spiritual sense of his relationship to the universe.

There Be Pirates, Thieves o' Mercy, Me Mateys 
- This sense of a reversal of fortune as a restoration of the favor of God, and therefore Hamlet's trust in God, is strengthened by the mercy of the pirates: Instead of killing him, they listen to his sad tale and agree to bring him back to Denmark where he still has work to do. So although the sea-voyage and pirate-ship return take place off-stage, they do represent a reversal of fortune or peripeteia. It is like a change in the tide, but instead of water, in Hamlet's view, it's a change in the tide of God's grace or help. (Edit, 6 July, 2021: And instead of a change for the worse, as peripeteia often implies, Hamlet's fortunes change for the better for a time on the sea voyage.)

Like the good thief on the cross next to Jesus in one of the gospel accounts of the crucifixion (Luke 23:39-43), or like the fabled Robin Hood, the pirates are described by Hamlet as "thieves of mercy." Hamlet, who is described by others and himself as "poor" more than any other character, feels he has been given a gift of mercy (perhaps a second important gift so far in the play in addition to the arrival of the players as an earlier gift-incident).

Dueling Wits & Yorick's Spiritual Family
- Then Hamlet in the graveyard meets a gravedigger who offers him a duel of wits (a humorous foreshadowing of the sword-duel that comes later). The gravedigger explains to Hamlet (who the gravedigger does not realize is the prince) that the skull Hamlet is holding is the skull of Yorick. The gravedigger-clown seems a kindred spirit with Yorick, and as other critics have noted, so does Hamlet. This is a moment of anagnorisis, with a gift to Hamlet of the memory of Yorick, a man of "infinite jest" who had shown Hamlet great affection in Hamlet's youth. The anagnorisis here involves an insight about who Hamlet is as a kind of emotional surrogate son of the court fool (as others have noted), and as a person who was loved and fortunate to be loved.

[Edit, 6 July, 2021: And if this moment in the graveyard with Yorick's skull and the grace of his memory is a reversal of fortune (peripeteia) for Hamlet, it is, like the sea voyage, a change for the better, not for the worse, and therefore not the traditional Aristotelian peripeteia one might expect.]
As I have written in other posts on this blog, this moment in the graveyard echoes the story of the appearance of Jesus to the disciples on the road to Emmaus. In this case, instead of Jesus appearing to the disciples as a stranger who later reveals himself, it's Yorick who appears to Hamlet and Horatio, embodied in the stranger/gravedigger and the skull of an apparent stranger. The gravedigger turns out to have been a drinking buddy of Yorick, revealed when the gravedigger reveals who the skull belonged to.
[Edit, 6 July, 2021: This is a friendly enlightenment about Hamlet's inner self and history, reminding Hamlet that he was loved by a friendly father-figure, the fool Yorick, and not merely living in the shadow of a fearsome father-king.]

"It is I, Hamlet the Dane!"
Many have noted that after the discussion about mortality and Yorick, Hamlet greets Ophelia's funeral procession by stepping out and declaring, "This is I, Hamlet the Dane!" (5.1). Is this perhaps another moment of anagnorisis? As Hamlet among the merciful pirates has come to believe he has experienced firsthand the mercy and favor of heaven, does he perhaps simultaneously come to recognize that the "election" of God is upon him - that he is one of God's elect - but also that this includes a royal aspect?

I blogged very briefly before (here, part 1, and here, part 2) about Hamlet and many Christians having been baptized in a liturgy that included being anointed with oil (as kings are), and whose language alluded to the "threefold office" of priest, prophet, and king. Even the poor are baptized with such words in the ritual in Catholic and certain other denominations, as well as Hebrew scripture language alluding to "a royal priesthood" and "in the line of (or after the order of) Melchizedek (see Genesis 14:18-20; Psalm 110:4; Hebrews 2:17; 1 Peter 2:9).

Perhaps Hamlet begins to embrace the idea that the one who is truly king is the one who acts as a king should act?

So he starts acting that way after he realizes this is Ophelia's funeral, but he is terrible at acting like a king at first: He acts instead more like a jealous lover in a contest about who loved Ophelia best, acting like his father did in the duel with Old Fortinbras. This is not Hamlet at his kingly best, certainly not acting like the priest, prophet and king he was baptized to be.

Perhaps the audience longs for Hamlet to wake up to his rich potential and stand in his new-found spiritual power (as priest, prophet, king), but instead he seems to be acting a bit too much like his father, pricked on by emulate pride, not by Old Fortinbras, but now by Laertes and claims about who loved Ophelia best. He still needs to repent of some of this baggage of his proud and vengeful father.

"I Loved Ophelia!"
There may be another moment of anagnorisis or enlightenment for Hamlet later in the graveyard scene involving his feelings for Ophelia:
_ In the graveyard, it seems Horatio may not have shared with Hamlet the news of Ophelia's death (others have commented on this as a kind of awkward omission or weakness in the play). Is Horatio so nervous about telling the prince that he has delayed it until the funeral procession arrives? News of the death of Ophelia seems to come to Hamlet as an unexpected revelation.
- He blurts at the graveside that he loved Ophelia - more than a thousands of brothers. Is this a revelation even to himself, after his harshness to her in the nunnery scene? Having experienced the mercy of Providence through the intermediaries of the pirates, is he able to feel more mercy toward the memory of Ophelia, to whom he had expressed great love in his letters, but later to whom he had been so merciless previously? (Perhaps!).
- Or was his harshness toward her planned, in part to distance her from the danger of his company? A part of his feigned madness, but with a method, a purpose? (I tend to think he was not scheming that much in advance during the nunnery scene, though others may argue that it is all very intentionally feigned madness, for a purpose).
- So if Hamlet realizes for the first time in the graveyard that Ophelia is dead, and if he repents of his cruelty toward her in the nunnery scene and rediscovers his great love for her, one might argue that this is a moment of anagnorisis or enlightenment. (But not very traditionally Aristotelian.)
- Note that Hamlet doesn't seem to ponder whether his previous cruelty played any role in Ophelia's death (which the queen may want listeners to think was not a suicide, as Ophelia fell accidentally into the water from a breaking branch. See previous blog post on Gertrude's gifts of insight from Hamlet and Ophelia and Gertrude's account of Ophelia's death). 
Edit 2024: Also see my 2023 Ophelia series and its posts about the possibility of Gertrude weaving a merciful fiction about Ophelia dying an accidental death while expressing faith in God:
https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2023/10/part-18-mote-in-ophelias-eye-met-with.html
Index of posts in that series:
https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2023/10/index-of-ophelia-posts-2023-series-and.html

If Hamlet had pondered how his harshness may have played any role in her death, we might be more convinced that he is repenting of his previous unkindness toward her. Maybe he is? Maybe not.

Man in the Mirror
In 5.1 (3579-84), Hamlet tells Horatio,

But I am very sorry, good Horatio,
That to Laertes I forgot myself,
For by the image of my cause I see
The portraiture of his. I'll court his favors.
But sure the bravery of his grief did put me
Into a tow'ring passion.

This represents a moment of enlightenment or anagnorisis. (But again, it's not very traditionally Aristotelian: He can still do something about it, he can still plan to apologize and "court his favors," though he doesn't know of the poison. Is a fatal flaw here for Hamlet that he is too trusting of Laertes?)

So Hamlet reflects on how he acted toward Laertes in the graveyard: he regrets his actions, and he also sees himself in Laertes. How?
- Like Laertes, Hamlet grieves the death of Ophelia.
- Like Laertes, Hamlet grieves the death of his father.
- Like Laertes, Hamlet knows what it's like to be tempted to anger and revenge toward the person one assumes is guilty of killing one's father.
- Like Laertes, who seemed to be making too much of his grief at Ophelia's grave, but was made fun of by Hamlet for it, Hamlet may recall how (in 1.2) he seemed to Claudius and Gertrude to be making too much of his grief, and was scolded for it by Claudius.

Where is Hamlet headed?
So on the sea voyage, having his life spared by pirates, Hamlet experienced what he thought was the mercy and favor of Providence. In the graveyard, Hamlet was reminded of how he was loved by a kind and playful fool, Yorick, a man of "infinite jest" and a sort of Emmaus figure, appearing as if from beyond the grave, in his memory and in the kindred spirit of the gravedigger. Hamlet never speaks of his father as being a figure of mercy and love, but he found those things in the sea voyage and the graveyard. Then at Ophelia's grave, after Laertes' grief puts Hamlet into a "towering passion," he sees himself in the mirror of Laertes.

A central idea (one of the "greatest commandments") of Christianity is to love neighbor as self, or treat others as one would like to be treated; this may ideally include an ability to see one's own virtues and vices in others, and to treat others with the mercy that the pirates showed Hamlet. The prince doesn't arrive at this enlightenment and change of heart all at once, but rather, it is a slow building up of a variety of smaller moments of enlightenment.

What About Anagnorisis for Other Characters?
Perhaps too many critics and teachers of English promote discussion of anagnorisis only inasmuch as it relates to the protagonist, or in this case, to Hamlet. But let's consider whether other characters have any such moments.

Ophelia
- One could say that Ophelia's father attempts to force a moment of anagnorisis on her: Polonius claims that she has been naive in welcoming Hamlet's "tenders of affection," and she seems to believe him at least half-heartedly, avoiding Hamlet's company and returning his letters with a claim that he has been "unkind" - perhaps because her father suggested he was using her. But this may be false anagnorisis, because if dad and her brother are forcing it on her, it may not be a true enlightenment.

More on Ophelia later.
Edit 2024: Also see my 2023 Ophelia series:
Index of posts in that series:
https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2023/10/index-of-ophelia-posts-2023-series-and.html

Polonius
- And yet Polonius has a moment of anagnorisis when he learns from Ophelia that Hamlet visited her in her "closet" when she was sewing. Polonius apologizes to Ophelia more than once for having misjudged Hamlet, believing him to have gone mad for love. He seems sincere in his apologies for misjudging Hamlet, at least perhaps out of fear of losing his job.
- But after previously being stuck on the idea that Hamlet was using her, now he seems stuck on the idea that Hamlet is mad from losing her love. If we can call this anagnorisis for Polonius, it's a small adjustment of one opinion, but not a change in his larger tendency to be an intrusive meddler and stubbornly presumptive.

Polonius II: Close Call with Anagnorisis, Near Miss?
- Polonius may have a close call with anagnorisis when Hamlet notices how he is inclined to be judgmental and ungenerous with the players when assigning them accommodations; Polonius suggests that he will give them the kind of accommodations they deserve. Hamlet replies,

"God's bodykins, man, much better! Use every man after his
desert, and who should scape whipping? Use them after your own
honour and dignity. The less they deserve, the more merit is in
your bounty. Take them in." - 2.2

Unfortunately, we get no sign from Polonius that this exchange has enlightened him or offered a turning point that leads to changed fortunes, so it probably doesn't count.

Ophelia II and III
In her madness (4.5), Ophelia says, "They say the Owl was a baker's daughter." This may be a moment of anagnorisis for her. She is referring to a tale like that of the Parable of the Beggar Lazarus and the Rich Man, where a baker is rich in bread, but the baker's daughter is ungenerous with a beggar, who happens to be Jesus in disguise. After repeated chances to be more generous, the daughter is changed into an owl (who says, "WHO? WHO?" as if to ask who really is the beggar at the door). Ophelia was ungenerous with Hamlet, so perhaps she feels the death of her father, and her madness, were punishment for being ungenerous with Hamlet.

Ophelia also says (also in 4.5), "It is the false steward that stole his master's daughter." As I've said in other posts, scholars have said that this seems to point toward a subplot in a Ben Jonson play (and perhaps older plays as well, and also similar to the daughter-betrothal sub-plot in The Winter's Tale), in which a young maid is falsely told she is unable to marry someone because he is apparently above her station. But in fact, the person she thinks is her father is actually her father's steward who kidnapped her when she was an infant. In fact, by her true parentage, she is worthy of marriage to the man she loves.

This reference may represent a moment of anagnorisis for Ophelia: She had been told by both her brother and her father to avoid Hamlet, but we learn later that Gertrude had hoped they would marry. This awareness of her worthiness by a truer (and "higher" social parentage) may also be similar to Hamlet arriving at a new understanding of his relationship to Providence: Because we are all children of God, we are worthy of any match we choose, and worthy to inherit heaven. Perhaps Ophelia becomes more ready to face her own death in this way, even as Hamlet in the graveyard faced ideas of his own mortality.

Gertrude:
- Gertrude gives signs in the closet scene with Hamlet that she realizes her mistakes in light of his preaching to her. This is consistent with assumptions at the time that it was acceptable for ministers of the church to preach harshly to their assemblies to move sinners to repentance, as others have noted:

"O Hamlet, speak no more!
Thou turn'st mine eyes into my very soul,
And there I see such black and grained spots
As will not leave their tinct." - 3.4

She gives similar signs of new self-awareness and guilt before her meeting with Ophelia:

"To my sick soul (as sin's true nature is)
Each toy seems Prologue to some great amiss.
So full of artless jealousy is guilt
It spills itself in fearing to be spilt." - 4.5

I have argued this also in a past blog post on Gertrude as recipient and giver of gifts. It could be argued that Gertrude has her moment of anagnorisis from her talk with a Hamlet who wishes to help her save her soul from her first husband's fate in purgatory, and that she makes some progress toward thinking more of others than of herself: She is reluctant and fearful of Ophelia at first, but kind, and perhaps tries hard to absolve Ophelia of any fault that might suggest she died by suicide. She counsels Hamlet to offer Laertes some "gentle entertainment" before the duel, or in other words, to apologize for their arguments over Ophelia's grave. She wishes to wipe Hamlet's sweating brow during the duel, like Veronica wiping the face of Christ on the way to the crucifixion (which I've also blogged about before, and other scholars have noted).

Claudius: "Gertrude, do not drink."
Even for Claudius, perhaps the key moment of peripeteia (reversal of fortunes) is when he realizes that Gertrude is about to drink from the poisoned cup he had intended for Hamlet.
[Edit, 6 July, 2021: This may be a more traditional moment of Aristotelian anagnorisis (enlightenment that comes tragically too late) for Claudius, as he is enlightened to see how his plans have all failed, and he is killing the new bride whose first husband he killed to possess.]
Claudius does not want to confess to the assembly that he has poisoned the wine with the intention of killing the prince, so the price he pays is the unintended poisoning of his wife Gertrude. This clearly marks a reversal of fortunes for Claudius. But it doesn't really enlighten him much; he already accepted in the prayer scene that he was unwilling to repent of his sins, unwilling to give up all he had gained by murdering his brother, marrying Gertrude, and usurping the throne, so he knows he is beyond forgiveness. The only new enlightenment in this moment of Gertrude drinking the poison is the revelation that he will now lose the wife he was unwilling to give up in an unsuccessful quest for forgiveness in the earlier prayer scene.

Anagnorisis and the Repentant Sinner-Prince
Inasmuch as anagnorisis involves a moment of insight or enlightenment, it's at least somewhat compatible with Christian and biblical thought about repentant sinners: When the prophet Nathan visits King David to tell him the story about the sheep, it's really a story to catch the conscience of a king who had a woman's husband killed so he could marry her. This is anagnorisis delivered by the prophet Nathan, and accepted by David. (See #5 at the blog link.) Shakespeare's Hamlet echoes the story of David, Bathsheba, Uriah, and the prophet Nathan in this way.

[Edit 6 July 2021: But in another sense, Aristotelian anagnorisis, as I've said above, is usually enlightenment that comes a bit too late, whereas Christian enlightenment seems to assume that there is still time to repent of sin, if only to have a chance at being "saved" as such.]

Hamlet is a play about a prince who may not be a bad person, but insight about the cause of his father's death tempts him to vengeful thoughts, madness and sin. Later on the sea voyage to England, Hamlet begins to change. He might claim that it wasn't that he found Providence (God), but that Providence found him on his Jonah-like sea-voyage.

Easy Answers?
One might note that my reading of the sea voyage and graveyard scene as keys doesn't quite square with the opinion of other critics and instructors, which is fine. It's easy to say Hamlet's fortunes have changed after the death of his father and the ascension to the throne of Claudius. Also easy to say the news from the ghost that Claudius killed Hamlet's father is a moment of anagnorisis and peripeteia, because it enlightens Hamlet about a truth, and it marks a turning point or reversal of his fortunes inasmuch as he descends into madness, both real and feigned.

Some might argue that the prayer scene with Claudius is a moment of anagnorisis, at least for Claudius, who seems by the end of that scene to realize he is damned. But for Hamlet? He is not enlightened much, only to realize he doesn't merely want to kill Claudius and thereby remove him from the throne, but that he wants to play God and be certain that Claudius goes to hell, since his father was denied heaven in the way he was killed by Claudius.

Others might claim that the duel and the revelation of the two poisons offers anagnorisis. But for whom? Hamlet already has a bad feeling about what might happen, but is ready to die if that's to come: "The readiness is all," he says (5.2).

Laertes:
Perhaps my favorite moment of anagnorisis for Laertes comes after the apology of Hamlet, when he says he will receive Hamlet's love like love, and will not wrong it. Laertes has already plotted with Claudius to kill Hamlet, but Hamlet has apologized and called him a brother. How can he still kill this man? If Hamlet is his brother, is he not a kind of Cain, killing his brother Abel? Laertes says (after Gertrude is poisoned) that he's having second thoughts, but he's doing poorly in the duel and feels Hamlet makes fun of him, so he poisons Hamlet anyway.

Paul A. Cantor, in his Youtube video lecture series on Hamlet, claims that Laertes seems not to be trying very hard in the fencing match, and Hamlet suggests as much. Cantor thinks there is a slow movement toward conscience (and I'd add, anagnorisis) in Laertes, who later (quite importantly to the plot) blames Claudius publicly: "The king's to blame!" This public confession and accusation against the king clears the way for Hamlet to kill (or execute) Claudius.

Laertes' confession is crucial to resolving the plot in this way, so one might say that the repentant Laertes joins the repentant Hamlet in a communion of repentant sinner-saints in the end (to use traditional Christian labels in a non-traditional way).

For those interested in these lectures by Paul A. Cantor on YouTube (for which I've provided links in the past), try the following links:
- Hamlet (1 of 3)
- Hamlet (2 of 3)
- Hamlet (3 of 3)

Shakespeare and Aristotle: Square Peg in a Round Hole?
Shoba Pawar also prompted me to wonder: Perhaps trying to get Shakespeare's plays (and Hamlet specifically) to fit neatly into Aristotle's theories about poetics is like fitting a square peg in a round hole? Isn't it basically true that stories can have all sorts of possibilities, and theoretical knowledge can reflect on that, but will always be a step behind? And what if drama evolved after Aristotle and Socrates? Then wouldn't we have to say Aristotle's poetics are out of date (as many have already observed regarding the classical unities of a main action, single day, and a single place)?

Let's face it: Maybe plays & character development evolved since Aristotle. 

Others have debated such things, so this is nothing new. But it's fun to think about and wrestle with, especially since many teachers still teach concepts from Aristotle when considering Shakespeare, and many of these ideas still offer insights.
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Disclaimer: If and when I quote or paraphrase bible passages or mention religion in many of my blog posts, I do not intend to promote any religion over another, nor am I attempting to promote religious belief in general; only to explore how the Bible and religion influenced Shakespeare, his plays, and his age.
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