Horatio in Hamlet
Uploaded by frilly_frog on Mar 24, 2008
HAMLET’S BEST FRIEND: A DEFENCE OF HORATIO.
There is much negative criticism levelled at Horatio. Thomas M. Kettle calls him ‘a wandering ineptitude who never has a single suggestion’. Francis G. Schoff declares him ‘very nearly a nobody’. Arthur McGee labels him ‘a parasitic sucker-fish’. However, there does seem to be a general consensus, among lay theatregoers, that Horatio is quite simply a good bloke. But when one searches for evidence in the text, there is little to support this feeling other than Hamlet’s complimentary speech in 3.2.
Michael Pennington says, ‘The difficulties presented by Horatio really are a mark of failure’. Perhaps, like many other characters in the play, Shakespeare neglected to flesh Horatio out realistically because he was so focused on animating Hamlet fully. But it must be remembered that there are several inconsistencies in the Shakespearean canon. Shakespeare was interested in driving the narrative forward and developing his characters in a way that elucidated his themes. He was not preoccupied with observing continuity of biography or time.
Yet, while Shakespeare did not care to develop Horatio fully, he obviously felt the need to include him in his version of the Amleth myth. Horatio has no direct source character in either Saxo Grammaticus or François de Belleforest. This suggests that he is in Shakespeare’s play to fulfil a specific purpose. This essay seeks to locate that purpose by evaluating Horatio’s role in the play.
Jean E. Howard explores the way in which Shakespeare organises his plays to manipulate the reactions of his audience:
Knowing that audiences at his plays would see the stage events solely in the sequence which he determined…Shakespeare used all elements of his stagecraft to guide and control the audience’s perceptions and responses, in part by controlling the ways one dramatic segment operates as a ground for the next. How one responds to a particular stage event…depends largely upon the context in which that event occurs and upon the expectations and assumptions created by the preceding stage sequence.
I believe that Horatio is employed to fulfil the task of providing a ‘ground’ for Hamlet’s actions and character development. Just as Howard describes dramatic sequences preparing the audience for subsequent stage events, so Horatio is a character that primes the audience for the protagonist’s behaviour. Through him we can get a...