The obligatory bio: God’s Machine Gun has all the elements of a great rock band – or at least a great rock band name: provocation, controversy, cultural significance, ultimate power. GMG is composed of drummer Beau “AK48″ Eastlund, singer-songwriter Timothy “Patient” Shaw and hair band veteran, multi-instrumentalist Bobby “Kid” Stevens.

The track, mixed and mastered:

In our exchange, you repeatedly presented Hamlet’s flaw as wanting to ensure that he send Claudius to Hell, which in my view critically distorts the flow of the text. Hamlet’s hand in Act III Scene III is stayed by the thought that by killing Claudius he will send him inadvertently to Heaven. He goes on to espouse his wish for the opposite outcome, but the thought that gives him pause is not that his revenge will not be extreme enough, but that his act of vengeance will in the larger context provided by the spiritual, and ethical, reality amount to the greatest of blessings – and so not be revenge at all. Again, all reference to Hell comes after the point that his hand is stayed.

Note that the decision is already at this point emphatically made. Talk of Hell comes after. At the moment of choice, the decision is between ‘an eye for an eye’ (sending the villain to judgment in the same state as his father had been sent) and repaying profound harm with the greatest profit.

It is, in my view, only by conceiving of it this way that one actually inhabits the dilemma. I have objected to your presentations of this moment because they have always to my mind distorted the choice being made and so actually missed the extent of the virtue being asked of Hamlet in that moment. He is not faced with settling for ‘mere revenge’ or ’super-duper revenge’; and does not err out of an intemperate satisfaction that demands more than an eye for an eye. He is faced with a choice between eye-for-an-eye revenge (again, sending Claudius to judgment full of his sins) and revenge that on a greater level might prove the greatest beneficence.

As I’ve said before, it seems exceedingly strange to me to suppose that the moral compass – the same moral compass that speaks against revenge in The Tempest – would in Hamlet advocate for revenge. If he’d only listened to his heart he would have murdered his uncle in cold blood. It is a bizarre statement. Conceived in this way, however, i can reconcile the two instances of moral decision. Had Hamlet killed Claudius with the belief (even though mistaken) that he was dispatching the villain in the best possible state relative to judgment he would have embodied the virtue of loving the sinner but hating the sin.

In the original Star Trek episode The Galileo Seven, Bones and the other men care about gut feelings, like the need to bury the dead. Spock cares about more abstract ethical issues, like avoiding unnecessary bloodshed. Kirk is absent, so there’s no mediator.

Spock is confused as to why things are going badly even though his every choice is rational. The men model heart-over-reason behavior to Spock, by risking their lives to rescue him from the cyclops. Shortly thereafter, Spock gambles with their lives, burning the last of their fuel to create a flare. The men approve of his gamble, and Bones calls it “human.” The Enterprise spots the flare, reifying the advantages of Spock broadening his decision-making apparatus to include his heart.

It feels like there’s some resistance to the idea of placing the mind momentarily aside and weighing Hamlet through the eyes of the moral compass. Is it possible that you are in the habit of weighing Hamlet using only the Spock-mind?

What do you make of the way Shakespeare handles the revenge vs. justice theme in The Tempest?

1. Claudius is guilty of murdering Hamlet’s father. (Act III Scene III)
2. The Ghost calls Hamlet to “revenge” this murder. (Act I Scene V)

We’ve previously agreed that for Hamlet to murder Claudius would be perceived by the audience at the time as justice. As the Ghost from the start calls for “revenge,” by agreeing that it would have been just for Hamlet to carry out the duty the Ghost puts on him we have agreed that in the context of the times, such “revenge” would have been considered just.

So I don’t see how it matters that Hamlet uses the word “revenge” as he considers killing Claudius at the end of Act III Scene III. The same word has been used throughout the play to describe the duty in general. By saying that sending Claudius to Heaven would not amount to revenge, Hamlet isn’t distorting his aim beyond the limits of justice. At least his usage of the word “revenge” doesn’t in itself indicate such a distortion, as it has from the start been the word used to describe his aim. If we’re going to identify his fault as being that he seeks revenge, then we have to call it a fault from the start.

On an unrelated note, this came to me in a dream this morning: we all say Ophelia, she’s the only one; when someone’s got to hang, she’s the one who’s hung.

whose end, both at the
first and now, was and is, to hold, as ’twere, the
mirror up to nature; to show virtue her own feature,
scorn her own image, and the very age and body of
the time his form and pressure.

This passage presents to my mind a more convincing image of Shakespeare’s purpose in writing Hamlet, than does the notion that it is meant to illustrate a simple moral like ‘revenge is bad,’ or indecision will really fuck you over. The idea, more generally, that the aim of tragedy is to present a superhuman figure who is undone by a single flaw seems to me excessively reductive. Hamlet indeed touches on this theme, in the Act I conversation with Horatio that Olivier mines as precursor to his own summary sentence:

So, oft it chances in particular men,
That for some vicious mole of nature in them,
As, in their birth–wherein they are not guilty,
Since nature cannot choose his origin–
By the o’ergrowth of some complexion,
Oft breaking down the pales and forts of reason,
Or by some habit that too much o’er-leavens
The form of plausive manners, that these men,
Carrying, I say, the stamp of one defect,
Being nature’s livery, or fortune’s star,–
Their virtues else–be they as pure as grace,
As infinite as man may undergo–
Shall in the general censure take corruption
From that particular fault

Yet still i regard this general understanding of tragedy as excessively reductive as it too easily leads to moralizing over the supposed defect, however conceived. By imagining the story is essentially about *the* tragic flaw, one might dispense with coming to an appreciation of the nature of the predicament, and simply ’solve’ the dilemma from the outside. Hamlet’s inclusion in his description of the purpose of playing of showing “the very age and body of the time his form and pressure” suggests to me that Shakespeare view his art as doing something other than simple moralizing.

On this blog, the revenge is bad thesis hangs on one scene, in which Hamlet is supposed to overstep the line from justice – which we might define as retribution in service to the true or common good – and selfish revenge. Let’s consider the passages in question, where Hamlet has the opportunity to kill Claudius and in so doing avoid the bloodbath that follows. They conclude Act III Scene III, and begin with Claudius alone:

KING CLAUDIUS
O, my offence is rank it smells to heaven;
It hath the primal eldest curse upon’t,
A brother’s murder. Pray can I not,
Though inclination be as sharp as will:
My stronger guilt defeats my strong intent;
And, like a man to double business bound,
I stand in pause where I shall first begin,
And both neglect. What if this cursed hand
Were thicker than itself with brother’s blood,
Is there not rain enough in the sweet heavens
To wash it white as snow? Whereto serves mercy
But to confront the visage of offence?
And what’s in prayer but this two-fold force,
To be forestalled ere we come to fall,
Or pardon’d being down? Then I’ll look up;
My fault is past. But, O, what form of prayer
Can serve my turn? ‘Forgive me my foul murder’?
That cannot be; since I am still possess’d
Of those effects for which I did the murder,
My crown, mine own ambition and my queen.
May one be pardon’d and retain the offence?
In the corrupted currents of this world
Offence’s gilded hand may shove by justice,
And oft ’tis seen the wicked prize itself
Buys out the law: but ’tis not so above;
There is no shuffling, there the action lies
In his true nature; and we ourselves compell’d,
Even to the teeth and forehead of our faults,
To give in evidence. What then? what rests?
Try what repentance can: what can it not?
Yet what can it when one can not repent?
O wretched state! O bosom black as death!
O limed soul, that, struggling to be free,
Art more engaged! Help, angels! Make assay!
Bow, stubborn knees; and, heart with strings of steel,
Be soft as sinews of the newborn babe!
All may be well.

Retires and kneels

Enter HAMLET

The gist of this speech has been previously discussed. To repeat: Claudius admits to his crime and yearns for forgiveness; though being possessed still of the fruits of said crime he doubts he can be forgiven. Though the function of prayer is to reconcile sinner to innocence, the form of prayer alone is insufficient. Indeed, as Claidius keenly understands, a proper prayer cannot even be formulated so long as he has not repented of his crime. The efficacy of prayer is dependent upon this repentance. Still, in desperation, Claudius wills himself into the posture of prayer. It is in this forced posture that Hamlet comes upon him, seemingly vulnerable yet made inviolable by Hamlet’s interpretation of the scene.

HAMLET

Now might I do it pat, now he is praying;
And now I’ll do’t. And so he goes to heaven;
And so am I revenged. That would be scann’d:
A villain kills my father; and for that,
I, his sole son, do this same villain send
To heaven.
O, this is hire and salary, not revenge.
He took my father grossly, full of bread;
With all his crimes broad blown, as flush as May;
And how his audit stands who knows save heaven?
But in our circumstance and course of thought,
‘Tis heavy with him: and am I then revenged,
To take him in the purging of his soul,
When he is fit and season’d for his passage?
No!
Up, sword; and know thou a more horrid hent:
When he is drunk asleep, or in his rage,
Or in the incestuous pleasure of his bed;
At gaming, swearing, or about some act
That has no relish of salvation in’t;
Then trip him, that his heels may kick at heaven,
And that his soul may be as damn’d and black
As hell, whereto it goes. My mother stays:
This physic but prolongs thy sickly days.

exit

Previously I wrote that Hamlet was not concerned with sending Claudius to Hell, only with not sending him to Heaven. Clearly that’s not accurate. Note, though, that what he’s aiming at is the parity of sending Claudius to face judgment in the same state of unpreparedness as had his father. From within the perspective of the worldview at the time, disposition relative to divine judgment was, at least ideally, supremely important. As I’ve touched on before, solving this issue by ignoring the conundrum speeds down the path to premature moralizing. Though Hamlet speaks fiercely here of waiting till Claudius is in the very depth of his sin, he is not actually dominated by this will – which i would agree goes past the parity of justice – as is demonstrated in the following Act, when he kills Polonius behind a curtain in his mother’s room, mistaking him for the king. The principle that actually guides him is not, fierce words aside, sending Claudius to hell, but rather not inadvertently sending him to Heaven by dispatching him in the midst of some act that guarantees his salvation.

And yet I agree that Hamlet errs in not killing Claudius then; but it is an error, in my view, relating to one of the dominant themes of the play: the difference between appearance and reality. Claudius only seems to be in a state of repentance, as his final couplet tells:

KING CLAUDIUS

[Rising] My words fly up, my thoughts remain below:
Words without thoughts never to heaven go.

In other words, Claudius tries to pray, but fails due to the fact that he is not truly repentant. So here, Hamlet, who has heretofore been the master of appearance and reality, mistakes the one for the other.

The second largest shareholder of Fox News after Rupert Murdoch is Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal (pictured aboard his superyacht Kingdom 5KR, formerly “The Trump Princess,” formerly seen as James Bond villain Largo’s mobile lair in ‘Never Say Never Again’). He is the 19th richest man in the world and a member of the House of Saud. Al-Waleed owns 7% of Fox News.

The House of Saud also controls the King Fahd Complex for the Printing of the Holy Qur’an, which is the world’s largest printer of the Qur’an, selling them at a loss to make sure other printers are locked out of the market. Muhammad’s version of the Qur’an 2:62 reads “Verily! Those who believe and those who are Jews and Christians, and Sabians, whoever believes in God and the Last Day and do righteous good deeds shall have their reward with their Lord, on them shall be no fear, nor shall they grieve.” This has generally been taken as a message of religious tolerance. The House of Saud version adds new parenthetical remarks specifically denouncing Christians and Jews, and redefining “steeds of war” to mean tanks, planes, missiles and artillery.

So why would the House of Saud spend tens of millions of dollars encouraging Christians to hate Muslims, but also spend tens of millions of dollars encouraging Muslims to hate Christians and Jews?

Al-Waleed also owns 6% of Citigroup (one of the banks each American personally spent $2,000 in tax money to bail out). Several years ago, Citigroup’s now-infamous Plutonomy Report was leaked. In this report, distributed to only their wealthiest clients, they lay out a worldwide plan to phase out the middle class, creating a world of only two groups: the obscenely wealthy 1%, while the remaining 99% of us return to serf status or worse. Their greatest fear? In many countries, 1 person = 1 vote; What if the rest of us catch on? If only the majority of the world population could somehow be distracted from the fact that our real enemy is the plutocrats on both sides, say by a manufactured external opponent…

Citigroup Plutonomy Report, October 15, 2005, PDF
Citigroup Plutonomy Report, March 5, 2006, PDF

Wikipedia’s article on Christoph Luxenberg’s book The Syro-Aramaic Reading of the Koran is unusually excellent. The big revelation here is that the Qur’anic passages used to justify the oppression of women throughout the Muslim world seem to be mistranslations.

Luxenberg’s work builds on the discovery that the oldest written versions of the Qur’an (by tradition received 610-632 AD) are in the original consonants-only Arabic script, so individual words can have up to 30 different meanings, depending on which vowels are missing. The diacritic vowel-marks were added much later, on the assumption that all the words were Arabic, even when that made little sense. Reading the nonsense words as Aramaic loan-words, the Qur’an suddenly sheds ungainly grammatical structures, nonsense phrases, and obscure passages become clear. Here’s a bit on the missing vowels from the oldest known copy:

These clips are taken from the excellent 2008 BBC documentary Inside The Koran.