Chapter 4 - Hamlet

Summary

Contrary to conventional opinion, Hamlet is a major race play in which a white prince dressed in black has a self-serving, improvisational relationship to blackness as a violent, criminal identity. Called upon to avenge his father’s murder, Hamlet designates the fratricidal Claudius a “Moore,” a racial slur for a type that had only recently gained popularity on the stage. Simultaneously, the imperative of the revenge genre requires retributive action, leading the revenger to replicate the original perpetrator’s murderous violence: Hamlet must become a “Moore” like Claudius. Cowardice, Hamlet explains, is the product of contemplation and manifests in bodily paleness, and his affiliation with a black Pyrrhus, drawn from the repertory of the traveling players, compensates for his self-ascribed white cowardice so that blackness in action becomes the revenger’s motivating passion. The theater-aficionado prince is knowledgeable about the traveling company’s repertory of black drama and uses a black Lucianus in the staging of The Murder of Gonzago to truly capture the conscience of the Moor-like king Claudius.