Hamlet, Hunting, and the Nature of Things

Abstract

This chapter examines William Shakespeare's repudiation of the Ciceronian-humanist model through Hamlet's pervasive (and hitherto all but ignored) discourse of hunting, fowling, falconry, and fishing. Within the world of the hunt, the notion of acting—of performing a particular role—is just as important as it is within a stage production. But here the roles one plays are not measured by reason, virtue, propriety, verisimilitude, or even the pleasure they might give to an audience. Instead, one acts to mislead one's predators or one's prey and, just as frequently, to mislead oneself about the appetitive nature of one's existence. The chapter concludes by reading the “cynegetic paradigm” of Hamlet against the natura and fortuna of Senecan revenge tragedy, and proposes that as the hunt governs the way in which the cast of Hamlet interact with one another, Shakespeare uses it to expose the dangerously illusory foundations on which humanist moral philosophy was constructed.