READING PLAYS IN THE ANTHROPOCENE

Hamlet Was an Ecological Thinker

The king, the worm, the fish and the beggar are all one story

Before the play even starts, Hamlet’s world has been turned upside down. A student in Germany, he gets news that his father — the king of Denmark — has died and he returns home for the funeral.

Not long after that his mother marries his uncle and the newly-weds insist that Hamlet doesn’t go back to college, but stays at the court.

In a short period, the most basic aspects of Hamlet’s life — his dad is king, his mum is married to his dad, and he is a student — are no longer true. The sense of disorientation is almost total.

In his opening scene, Hamlet stands out by wearing black. He dissociates himself from the world of court politics which flatters, deceives and dissimulates.

He dresses differently, he play-acts, he frequently uses puns as diversions, and he describes how things that once seemed to be filled with value now seem to him to be no more than “the quintessence of dust”.

Hamlet points to a cloud and tells the King’s counsellor, the elderly Polonius, that the cloud looks like a camel. Polonius agrees that it does. Hamlet says that it looks like a weasel. Polonius agrees that it does. Hamlet says it looks like a whale. Polonius agrees, “Very like a whale”.

Where, then, can Hamlet find a new reality? One answer is: at the most basic level imaginable.

Halfway through the play, Hamlet is with his mother when he hears someone hiding behind the tapestry and — assuming it must be his murderous uncle — he stabs the man without looking to see who it is. His victim is Polonius.

Soon after, the new king demands to know from Hamlet where he can find Polonius’s dead body. Hamlet isn’t remotely helpful.

He replies, “At supper.”

The king is mystified. “At supper? Where?”

Hamlet replies, “Not where he eats, but where he’s eaten.”

He tells the king that worms are now feasting on the corpse. Warming to his theme, he explains that we rear cattle so that we can eat them and then, when we die…