We’ve all done things we regret.
One of the many salvific glories of Catholicism is the Sacrament of Penance, although, as we all know, the priest’s absolution does not make the penitent a tabula rasa – a clean slate.
For one thing, although our guilt before God is forgiven (not erased), the temporal consequences of sin will likely continue. Let’s say I commit murder and then, after experiencing remorse, sacramentally confess the crime, turn myself in to the police (likely at the priest’s insistence), and am tried, convicted, and sentenced to life in prison. My confessor’s absolution would not, because it cannot, erase the effect of my crime on the lives of the victim’s family and friends.
In Hamlet, a troupe of players come to Elsinore, and the officious and duplicitous Polonius, chief counselor to the murderous King Claudius, assures Prince Hamlet that the actors (a disreputable profession) will be used “according to their desert,” to which Prince Hamlet replies:
God’s bodykins, man, much better: use every man
after his desert, and who should ‘scape whipping?
It’s then that Hamlet realizes that their “play’s the thing/Wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the king.”
That word, conscience, has two meanings in the great play. The first is the one that Jiminy Cricket (a euphemism for Jesus Christ, if ever there was one) tells his puppet pal Pinocchio (in the 1940 Disney version): “Always let your conscience be your guide.” Although known simply as the Talking Cricket in the 1881 book by Carlo Collodi, ‘he’ is the selfsame voice of heeded moral reason.
So, Hamlet is betting that, no matter how depraved Claudius is (very), he still knows right from wrong viscerally.
The other meaning of conscience comes in the World’s Most Famous Soliloquy, “To be or not to be . . .” The prince has nearly reached the breaking point, and, though there’s been debate whether Hamlet is contemplating suicide (he’s not), he certainly is measuring existential matters in his mind: life versus death, with a lot of either-or going on. “Thus,” he says, “conscience doth make cowards of us all.”
Give the man credit; he’s in a helluva bind, what with fratricide and incest as prohibited by Leviticus. As Hamlet says:
O cursed spite,
That ever I was born to set it right!
And the richness of Shakespeare on the matter of guilt, conscience, and forgiveness doesn’t stop there. Hamlet, still blameless in his own behavior, comes upon the murdering, fornicating King Claudius at prayer. The king whispers: “O, my offence is rank it smells to heaven,” and the prince thinks, now’s the time. Hamlet’s next words are tricky for an actor:
Now might I do it pat, now he is praying;
And now I’ll do’t. And so he goes to heaven . . .
Is this false conscience on Hamlet’s part? If so, actor, recite it quickly! If, however, the prince is thinking out loud (as everybody in the play seems to be), then go slowly; let that last phrase rise almost as yet another existential question. After all, Hamlet knows he can’t open the Pearly Gates, nor can he judge the usurper king’s soul. Unresolved, Hamlet makes his exit; too soon to hear Claudius reject his own prayers, wallowing in his sins:
My words fly up, my thoughts remain below:
Words without thoughts never to heaven go.
So far, Hamlet has done nothing that would demand he present himself for Confession. Earlier in the play, the ghost of Hamlet’s father is clearly in Purgatory – by the ghost’s own account. Hamlet Sr. even says he is there because he died with unconfessed sins. This is straight from the Catholic Catechism. Of course, Hamlet Jr. later hedges: maybe the apparition he saw was really a demon! This is why “The Mousetrap,” the play the visiting actors will perform for Claudius, is essential: Claudius’ reaction will betray him. And does! Seeing his murder of his brother precisely depicted sends him running and calling out, “Give me some light: away!”
It’s easy to say Hamlet should have run through the kneeling Claudius with a rapier, although leaving vengeance to the Lord is the better way. And yet, it’s hard to argue with the consequences of Hamlet’s inaction: Polonius, Ophelia, Laertes, Gertrude, Claudius, and Hamlet himself will die because of the prince’s procrastination.
Catholic elements abound in Hamlet, likely because the Bard was a recusant Catholic but almost certainly because he was versed in the moral theology of Thomas Aquinas. And this we witness not so much in Hamlet’s scruples as in Claudius’ resignation. Not only does he realize he lacks contrition for murdering his brother, but he moves forward to kill his nephew, and, therefore, knowingly trades his kingship for damnation.
In the Summa Theologiae, St. Thomas is uncompromising about what is required for the forgiveness of sins involving theft or usurpation. He states that restitution is an act of commutative justice and is strictly necessary for salvation. In a famous echoing of St. Augustine, the Thomist tradition dictates that “without restitution, repentance is only a mockery.”
In that scene in which he offers his empty prayer, Claudius confronts this truth. “May one be pardon’d,” he asks, “and retain the offence?” He knows it’s impossible, but he is unwilling to repent, confess, and surrender. Aquinas emphasized the contrast between synderesis, our innate sense of right and wrong (“good is to be done and pursued, evil avoided”), and conscientia, the way we choose to act (“knowledge applied to” concrete situations). Claudius’ sin is a failure of conscientia to acknowledge synderesis.
As do we all, at times, which is why we pray for God to have mercy on us all.
