THAT WITHIN WHICH PASSES SHOW:

HAMLET AND THE UNKNOWABLE SELF(No of words = 7,210)

IntroductionThis paper started out being about the relationship betweenthe persona and the self, using Hamlet as an illustration. If anything I had to say threw light on the play itself, that would be a bonus. As I worked on it, though, the playweaved its spell on me; I became seized by its symbolic architecture and drawn into to its labyrinthine puzzles. Like countless others before me I found myself trying to interpret the play despite my basic presupposition that it defies interpretation. As a result the paper is still about the self but it is also about the play. It is about the self in Hamlet, or perhaps the Self of Hamlet.

The Self: Appearance and RealityThe self is a very difficult subject, not least because it refers to our own subjectivity. I see the self as something we experience but can never define. It is not accessible to the realm of knowledge - that which Bion calls 'K', but resides in the ultimate reality of being, the thing-in-itself which Bion calls 'O'(Bion, 1970 p.58). Bion's concept of 'O' has the advantage of being itself 'no-thing' and this helps to guard against our tendency to think that if we can name something, we know what it is. But 'the self' is merely a concept - it is not the reality to which the concept refers: that is something which is always out of reach of our knowledge. For this reason, I refer at the end of the paper to the concept of the 'empty centre': this, I think, respects the essentially unknowableaspect of the self. I do not mean that the self is empty in itself; I mean that when we think about it we must try to keep our thoughts conceptually empty, because anything thatwe can say about the self is not the self but merely an appearance of the self.

Like Bion, Jung follows Kant in distinguishing between archetypal images (cf Bion's concepts) which appear in consciousness and the archetype an sich (cf Bion's 'O')

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which can never be an object of conscious awareness. The archetype in itself can only be represented symbolically and much of Jung's work, especially his later work, consists of elaborate symbolic representations through which he hoped to indicate the archetypal reality towards which those symbols referred. I hope in this paper to givesome indication of the way I think that Shakespeare dealt with this same paradox: any indication of the ultimate reality that lies behind appearances is itself an appearance and therefore not the ultimate reality.

Shakespeare was fascinated by the distinction between appearance and reality; he plays upon the relationship between them in almost all his plays and nowhere to more spectacular effect than in Hamlet in which he also makes extended use of the dramatic metaphor of acting and action,plays and players. I shall suggest that the relationship between appearance and reality roughly corresponds to the distinction between persona and self. As Jung puts it, following Schopenhauer: 'the persona is how one appears to oneself and the world but not one what is. What one is ['inreality'] is one's individual self' (Jung, 1921, para 370).Thus the persona is an appearance (that is, an image or concept) of the Self.

The contrast between appearance and reality in Hamlet doesn't only take place within the play: the play itself isan appearance whose reality is unknown. Hamlet too has its empty centre, the mysterious enigmatic puzzle at the heart of the play which tantalises us with possibilities of solution which are forever foreclosed. The play has generated millions upon millions of words, words, words, yet retains its mystery fresh and intact. I suggest that Shakespeare has constructed a play which points towards thecentral mystery of being while carefully avoiding ever saying what that might be. It asks all the questions (of which 'To be or not to be?' is only the most obvious) yet denies us all the answers. The play itself then is a symbolic appearance in dramatic form of what Jung called the self, Bion calls O and others call God. We may call itwhat we will but we can never say what, in truth, it is.

The Unknowable Self and its Persona

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Hamlet as a character is constructed around an unknowable core in just the same way as the play that bears his name. Hamlet's reality is concealed from us throughout the play. His madness is a disguise behind which he hides. He is pursued, spied upon and questioned but he is not so easily found out. Having forced Guildenstern to admit his inability to play the recorder, he rounds on him with scornand fury:

Why, look you now, how unworthy a thing you

make of me! You would play upon me. You would

seem to know my stops. You would pluck out the heart of

my mystery. You would sound me from my lowest

note to the top of my compass. And there is

much music, excellent voice, in this little

organ. Yet cannot you make it speak. 'Sblood,

do you think I am easier to be played on than a

pipe? Call me what instrument you will, though

you can fret me, you cannot play upon me.

(III.2.371-379)

Hamlet is insisting on the infinite mystery of the self and its radical privacy. Each of us is only visible to others through our persona, that which we appear to be. The reality of the self is hidden from view. This leads to a significant expansion of Jung's concept of the personaas merely an obstacle to individuation. It suggests that the persona is also an indispensable aspect of individuation since it is the vehicle through which the self expresses itself in the world. However, appearances can be deceptive: the persona may also disguise, distort orhide the reality within. How are we to know the false fromthe true? Hamlet raises this issue in his first speech of the play, making such a radical division between outward behaviour and inward experience that all behaviour is cast as appearance. Truth and reality reside in the unseen.

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Gertrude, obviously irritated by Hamlet's 'unseemly' mourning asks 'Why seems it so particular with thee?' And Hamlet springs his first trap:

'Seems', madam? Nay it is. I know not

'seems'.

'Tis not alone my inky cloak, good mother,

Nor customary suits of solemn black,

Nor windy suspiration of forced breath,

No, nor the fruitful river in the eye,

Nor the dejected 'haviour of the visage,

Together with all forms, moods, shapes of

grief

That can denote me truly. These indeed

'seem';

For they are actions that a man might play.

But I have that within which passes show -

These but the trappings and the suits of

woe

(I.2.76-86)

Here Hamlet suggests that all outward behaviours belong to the persona; they are actions that a man might play. This is the first occurrence of an ambiguity which runs throughout the play concerning the nature of acting. As the Gravedigger says in Act 5, 'an act hath three branches - it is to act, to do and to perform' (V.1.10-11). To actis to take action in the world - to do - but it is also to play-act, to pretend, to perform. The distinction Hamlet is making is not merely between real grief and pretend grief. The point is that it is not possible to know with certainty whether or not the outward appearance correspondswith the inward reality because 'that within passes show'. Not even 'all forms, moods, shapes of grief' can truly denote him - no matter what he says or does, these are necessarily actions which show and therefore may be merely

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show, that which seems rather than that which is. The inner truth, that which truly is is that which passes show. Hamlet asserts that he possesses true feeling, 'I know not seems', yet at the same time he makes himself unavailable to either the criticism or the corroboration of Gertrude and Claudius. His inability to express himself is not personal and conditional ('why seems it so particular with thee') but endemic to the distinction between an outward act and its inner meaning. Gertrude, he implies, is unableto recognise this distinction and therefore the distinctionbetween true action which proceeds from the heart and the outward form of sorrow which may be no more than a false performance has no meaning for her.

Clothing the InvisibleIf, by definition, the inner truth is beyond appearance, this necessarily means that the self cannot be known by others. It is, as Winnicott puts it, incommunicado, for ever silent and unknown (Winnicott, 1963). But it also follows that the self requires the persona as a means of communication, albeit that communication is always limited.The self without the persona is like the invisible man - itneeds to be clothed in the persona in order to become visible. Appearance is not necessarily false or in opposition to that which is, it is also the means by which the truth is made visible. The persona is therefore an image of the Self. The question is whether it is an accuraterepresentation of the self - or not. The dilemma is that appearance may be false. If truth resides in the realm of the unseen how is it possible to tell the false from the true?

I would like to draw the reader's attention here to the way we naturally use clothing metaphors when speaking of the persona. I have already used two of them: the invisible man and the well-fitting suit of clothes. Hamletrefers several times to clothing in the speech I quoted about mourning, both literally and metaphorically: the inkycloak, the customary suits of solemn black, the trappings and the suits of woe. Jung too refers to 'the actor's wardrobe' using acting and clothing metaphors together to convey the (minimal) signs of individuality betrayed by the

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persona's choice of personal accessories (Jung, 1928, para 505).

Clothing is one of the defining metaphors for the persona, the other being the actor's performance. I hesitate to even call them metaphors since the persona is, of course, originally the mask worn by actors in Greek drama. So the concept itself is a metaphor, drawn from a common usage so typical that we are justified in considering it archetypal. In fact, clothes are themselvesa significant aspect of the persona and perhaps its very basis. Here again, Jung missed the archetypal significanceof clothing, seeing it as merely the surface outer garment to be discarded on the path of individuation. In The Psychology of the Transference (Jung, 1946) it is only when the alchemical couple discard their clothes and get into the bath that the action starts to happen. Jung sees the social clothing of the persona as contrasting with the archetypal world - I am suggesting that it is actually partof it.

Clothing is an inherent part of human culture - we are simply not human without it. Humans are social beings and clothing is a social phenomenon which expresses our membership of society, our belonging to the human fraternity in general as well as our particular social place within it. Inasmuch as clothing is a system of signsthat can be read from their meaning, it is a form of language and vice versa: language is a means of clothing our inner thoughts with socially recognised signs.

But as well as being the means of expressing something about ourselves, clothing can be used as a disguise. Thereis the same ambiguity as with acting. We put on our clothesbut we also use 'put on' for something that is not real, that is only 'put on', a pretence. Or we might say that someone is 'putting us on'. In fact, this is just what Hamlet says about his antic disposition: 'as I perchance hereafter shall think meet/To put an antic disposition on' (I.5.171-2). As the play progresses, we shall have good cause to wonder in what sense Hamlet's antic disposition isput on. Is Hamlet counterfeit mad or is he mad in truth? The invisibility of the self behind the persona mask servesonly to deepen our dilemma.

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The Antic Disposition: Self-Concealment and Self-PresentationThere is a good deal of dissembling in Hamlet, frequently associated with spying. Hamlet is trying to find out the truth about Claudius and on this hangs the truth of the Ghost. His dissembling is, at least in part, an attempt toprevent Claudius discovering that this is what he is doing.Meanwhile, Claudius is trying to find out the truth about Hamlet, using Polonius and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern as his spies. The role of the spy is by necessity one of dissembling, since the spy must take care to avoid the discovery of his true intentions. Thus everyone is engagedin putting on an act in order to see through the actions ofothers and, in the case of both Claudius and Hamlet, to prevent others seeing through their own act.

However, their motivations are entirely different. Claudius is a practised hypocrite who is attempting to prevent his foul deeds from rising to men's eyes (I.2.257-8). His persona is a deliberate attempt to conceal his inner corruption. In the crucial aside that reveals his guilt to us, the audience, he uses the image of covering up:

The harlot's cheek beautied with plastering

art

Is not more ugly to the thing that helps it

Than is my deed to my most painted word.

(III.1.51-53)

Hamlet is also trying to cover up what he knows - or thinks he knows - about Claudius murdering his father. But whereas Claudius uses the artifice of the persona to hide his guilt, Hamlet dissembles in order to protect his innocence. Hamlet becomes false in order to remain true tohis inner self. Here we may draw upon a different aspect of the clothing metaphor: Hamlet puts on an antic disposition as a form of protective clothing against 'the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to' (III.1.62-3). He needs to protect his inner self from exposure and violation, to prevent the likes of Polonius, Rosencrantz

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and Guildenstern from plucking out the heart of his mystery.

Claudius begs the question when he laments:

Of Hamlet's transformation - so call it,

Sith nor th'esterior nor the inward man

Resembles that it was.

(II.2.5-7)

Since we, the audience, know that Hamlet has consciously decided to adopt a mad persona, we know (or think we know) that what Claudius sees is only the exterior man so he is not in a position to know whether there has been a transformation in the inner man or not. The trouble is, though, that our apparently privileged position does not suffice us much: we too become caught up in the same question - perhaps something has happened so that Hamlet isno longer feigning mad but really is mad? Maybe he was really mad all along - for example, he was already suicidalbefore he encountered the Ghost. Maybe, the putting on of anantic disposition is crazy in itself - only a mad person could think up such a scheme or only a mad person could carry it off. Or, maybe the revelations of the Ghost have driven him over the edge? The questions multiply but thereis no way that we can know the answers since the text does not supply them. Of course, if this is so it is paradoxical for me to assert that the purpose of the antic disposition is to protect Hamlet from psychic exposure since that would claim exactly the kind of privileged knowledge we do not possess. If I am right it follows thatI cannot know I am right!

Curiously, what makes it so difficult to detect truth from illusion in the antic disposition is that the part that Hamlet is playing is himself. In acting the part of themelancholic, Hamlet acts what he actually feels but in acting it he makes it pretence. It is as if he is unable to contain himself and fears that his seething passions will spill out, so that he will prematurely - and dangerously - reveal the secret that the Ghost has impartedto him. Hamlet dissembles because he is unable to

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dissemble. He has learnt from the Ghost that 'a man my smile and smile and be a villain' (I.5.108). But Hamlet isnot like that. He 'knows not seems'. Far from his behaviour being merely actions that a man might play, they are a mere shadow of the intensity of his inner suffering. Now he has heard from the Ghost revelations that are even more shattering - how can he possibly keep that to himself?Hamlet does not have a persona-cloak that is remotely adequate to the task and he is therefore in serious danger of having the inner core of himself exposed. To prevent himself being exposed without a persona, Hamlet has to deliberately play a role to cover up his inability to play a role. That is he has to become an actor until he has recovered his ability to act. What more suitable role could there be than to dissemble madness - for who can thenpossibly tell if he is genuine or not? Not even us, the privileged audience, can pluck out the heart of his mystery, since that within passes show.

If the incommunicado self should seep through into the world of that which seems, then Hamlet would cease to be a real person with an inner self and become a mere player in somebody else's play - the kind of person epitomised by those interchangeable ciphers, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Then he would be 'a pipe for Fortune's finger/ to sound what stop she please' (III.2.80-81) - and the role of Fortune would be played by Claudius, the king of false seeming, he who smiles and smiles and is a villain. To be fully known by others, to have no inner mystery is to cease to be a person. The heart of Hamlet's mystery concerns the radical privacy of the self. To penetrate the core is to destroy it, to reduce its mystery to a thing that can be known and defined - the pipe withoutthe music. In order to convey the immensity of the catastrophe that occurs when the incommunicado self is penetrated by others, Winnicott strives for the strongest possible imagery: compared to such intrusion, he writes, rape and being eaten by cannibals are mere bagatelles (Winnicott, 1963).

In the world of King Claudius there is no place for Hamlet's truth. It is not only that the time is out of joint: Hamlet is out of joint with the time. He is unable

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to find an adequate means of representing the inner truth imparted to him by the Ghost, either in words or action. His problem is that he cannot find the persona that would enable him to express himself, that would 'denote me truly'. Hamlet's dilemma vividly illustrates the necessityof some form of external, social representation in order torealise the self. The personal aspect of this representation is the persona but the cloth from which it is made is necessarily drawn from the collective culture - the world of collective consciousness, as Jung calls it. This is especially true of our most elaborate form of representation - language: words, words, words. Words cometo us from outside as do all forms of communication betweenpeople involving shared systems of meaning. We have to make our meaning, find and express our subjective truth with the material that the culture makes available to us. This is the process that Winnicott describes as creative living within the intermediate area of cultural experience.By contrast, 'should an adult make claims on us for our acceptance of his subjective phenomena we discern or diagnose madness' (Winnicott, 1953/1971 p.16).

Hamlet's inner, subjective experience can find no outlet in the false world of the Persona King. Only he has heard the Ghost's testimony and he has no way of externally validating it. If he were to publicly insist on its objective truth he would run the risk of being deemed mad so he assumes madness in order to avoid the risk of being labelled mad by others. He needs to buy time in which to find a language, a cultural form that is sufficient to encompass his experience. Yet what possible appearance canshow forth the terrible truth which the Ghost has imparted to him? Here, the significance of words and the validity of appearance take on a crucial significance for Hamlet. For if he is to commit a murder it will not only be his life but the life of another which depends upon it.

Seeing with the Inner Eye: The Ghost as Image of the Invisible Even the Ghost himself cannot be taken for granted; it too may be a false appearance for 'the devil hath power to assume a pleasing shape' (II.2.597-8) (cf. a man may smile and smile and be a villain). But here we do have

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privileged access, not to Hamlet, but to Claudius. Once wehave heard Claudius' aside, we know he is guilty and therefore that the Ghost's testimony can be trusted: he represents the inward, unseen truth. The Ghost symbolises the unseen, unknowable Self beyond appearances. He is the father of Hamlet in a symbolic as well as a literal sense.

We should remember here that Ghost originally meant Spirit as indeed the German 'Geist' still does. That is tosay, the Ghost represents spiritual reality as opposed to material reality, the world of sense perception. The Ghostis that which is Unseen. He is the Spirit King in contrastto Claudius, the Persona King. Our knowledge that the partof the Ghost was played by Shakespeare in some performanceslends this issue an eerie frisson, adding to the sense of the Ghost as the deus ex machina, the invisible spirit who sets in motion the whole action of the play.

The contrast between outward appearance and inner truth is brought out most sharply when the Ghost appears to Hamlet a second time during his confrontation with his mother in the closet scene. Unable to see the Ghost, Gertrude takes Hamlet's reaction as confirmation of his madness:

Queen: To whom do you speak this?

Hamlet: Do you see nothing there?

Queen: Nothing at all. Yet all that is I

see.

(III.4.132-3)

Gertrude thinks that Hamlet 'sees things' that are 'not there'. And in a way, this is exactly the point - Hamlet sees beyond appearances to the inner world of the soul. Forthose who cannot see within, such visions are merely madness, 'the very coinage of your brain' as Gertrude says.

This is not the first time that Hamlet and Gertrude have clashed over the question of what seems and what is. Here Gertrude tries to assert that she is the one who knows what

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is - Hamlet must only seem to see someone. But once again she fails to see beyond appearances. She is, after all, the 'seeming-virtuous Queen' (I.5.46) who is unable to tellthe difference between the Spirit King and the King of false seeming who murders him. Like Claudius' assumption that an interior transformation can be read from an exterior one, Gertrude's pronouncement that 'All that is I see' begs the question. Both of them seem to place an unquestioning faith in the evidence of appearances. They assume that what seems to be the case to them must indeed be the case. They attempt to live only at the level of thepersona and are blind to interiority. Hence the inner corruption that 'infects unseen'.

The corruption of Denmark is (amongst other things) the corruption of inner truth. And whether he likes it or not,it is Hamlet's cursed spite to set it right. While words can be used to cover up the truth as in Claudius' 'most painted word', Hamlet now sets about using words to reveal the truth. He tells his mother that he will set up a glass'where you may see the inmost part of you' (III.4.21). Theglass he uses, like the play as a whole, is made out of words. Gertrude pleads with him:

O, speak to me no more

These words like daggers enter in mine

ears.

(III.4.95-6)

But these verbal daggers are the truth; the poison that Claudius poured into the ears of the King symbolises falsehood. Hamlet uses the same image of falsehood as verbal poison when he refutes Horatio's false report against himself: "nor shall you do my ear that violence" (I.2.171).

Because Gertrude has lost contact with the self, having turned from the Spirit King to the Persona King, she is unable to see with the inner eye and can only judge by appearances. Hamlet can hardly believe that she is unable to see the glaring differences he can see so clearly between the two portraits of his father and Claudius. In

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frustration and fury he thrusts them in front of her, demanding 'Have you eyes?' (III.4.66 & 68). Yet through his words he succeeds, at least temporarily, in restoring his mother's inner eye:

O Hamlet, speak no more

Thou turnest mine eyes into my very soul

(III.4.89-90)

In this scene Hamlet plays the role of animus to Gertrude, forcing her to turn from her identification with the persona (the seeming virtuous queen) and contemplate her inner self. There is much here which is reminiscent ofthe dialogue between analyst and patient, especially the way the analyst uses words as the means to reveal the soul.For the patient, like Gertrude, this may well feel like daggers, and she may be unable to see the unconscious spirit that seems so palpable to the analyst.

The Play as MirrorIn seeking, with Gertrude, to 'set up a glass where you maysee the inmost part of you', Hamlet reflects his advice to the players 'the purpose of playing ... is to hold ... the mirror up to Nature' (III.2.20-2). If all that we see is, by definition, appearance, the inner truth can only be shown forth by dramatic means. In itself it is insubstantial and invisible - it only becomes visible when reflected in the mirror of language and clothed in the language of action. This too is reflected in the 'as if' world of analysis in which aspects of the patient's inner world can only be envisaged in the drama of the transference. Patients and critics of analysis frequently complain that the analytic relationship is 'only pretend', yet it provides an opportunity for the revelation of truthswhich cannot otherwise be seen - except, perhaps, in art.

In life, the persona mask may be used to hide, distort ormimic the truth in an empty pretence of real feeling. Yet in art, the same pretence may serve to reveal the truth of inner feeling. Hamlet contemplates this problem in the case of the player's tears for Hecuba. Here, the player

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acts a part to such perfection that in acting what he does not feel, he makes it real.

Is it not monstrous that this player here,

But in a fiction, in a dream of passion,

Could force his soul so to his own conceit

That from her working all his visage wanned

Tears in his eyes, distraction in his

aspect,

A broken voice, and his whole function

suiting

With forms to his conceit ....

(II.2.548-554)

This is exactly the part of the grieving mourner that Hamlet warned Gertrude about: here are the actions that a man might play, the trappings and the suits of woe. He stands in direct contrast to Hamlet: in playing the role ofthe melancholic, Hamlet acts what he really feels but in acting it, makes it a pretence. The player, on the other hand, acts what he does not feel in such a way as to make itreal. Hamlet now feels caught in his own trap - he cannot find a way to express his inner truth even when he desperately needs to.

He berates himself for his inaction but in so doing succeeds in conveying to the audience the inexpressible magnitude of his suffering, a suffering no words can describe, no action can match - not even those created by Shakespeare himself, the greatest dramatist in the English language. As he says of his own love-lyric to Ophelia: 'I have not art to reckon my groans' (II.2.119-120).

One of the lessons of the play is that it is simply not possible to know what takes place in the mind of others: that within passes show. The deceptiveness of appearances is vividly portrayed when Hamlet comes upon Claudius

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apparently at prayer. Forgetting the lesson that a man might smile and smile and be a villain, Hamlet assumes thatClaudius is in a state of grace. Yet after Hamlet has left, we learn that Claudius has been unable to force his soul to his own conceit:

My words fly up, my thoughts remain below

Words without thoughts, never to heaven go.

(III.3.97-8)

There are several levels to this: within the play, the characters cannot know what is going on in each other's minds - they cannot solve the question posed by the sentries in the first line of the play: 'Who's there?' Andthis applies equally to our attempt to discover what is going on in the mind of Hamlet at one level and, at another, what was going on in the mind of Shakespeare in writing the play. What did he intend us to think? Can we ever know? Can we even know that he intended us not to know? When Hamlet scorns Guildenstern's attempts to pluck out the heart of his mystery it is also as if he is speaking to us, the audience, on behalf of the play. It isas if his scorn is directed not only at Guildenstern but atall those interpreters who would claim to know what the play Hamlet means.

It is my view that the opaqueness and indeterminacy of the play is deliberate but, after all, who am I to say? Certainly, though, the effect is to draw us into the quest for answers to questions that cannot be found. In this way, we become like Hamlet, seeking answers to the play in a mirror-image of the way in which Hamlet seeks answers within the play. In the end, we see only the performance, since that is actually all there is. The signified shuffles off the mortal coil of the signifier and is alwayselsewhere.

Yet, paradoxically, this gives dramatic art more significance as the mirror of Nature: since truth cannot beread from action, perhaps acting can reveal the truth. Hamlet is faced with the mirror-image dilemma of Claudius: each seeks to penetrate into the mind of the other. But where Claudius uses spies, Hamlet now resolves to use art:

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the play's the thing

Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the

king.

(II.2.602-603)

There is an important pun here that has now been lost from the language. In Shakespeare's time, 'conscience' referred not only to a sense of guilt but also to somethingakin to the modern word 'consciousness', which did not comeinto use until the mid-seventeenth century. It referred especially to private knowledge: 'one's inmost thought, one's mind or heart' (O.E.D). The play within the play is designed to reveal the mystery of the private self, that within which passes show. Surely this must be a commentaryon the play for which we are the audience? Shakespeare seeks to catch our consciousness just as Hamlet seeks to catch Claudius'. The play is a mirror wherein we see ourselves, just like the glass in which Hamlet seeks to show Gertrude the inmost part of her. As Hazlitt said, 'Itis we who are Hamlet'. This is why there are an infinite series of possible interpretations of Hamlet and also why weare unlikely ever to see a performance of the play that is completely satisfying unless, perhaps, we have created it ourselves. The play achieves this effect by consistently reflecting back upon itself in such a way that the interpretative possibilities are endlessly multiplied but the possibility of resolving them is forestalled - it is asif there are simply too many clues. At the same time, the gaps and silences within the text invite us to fill them inwith our own suppositions, drawing us into the labyrinthine world of speculation within the play in which everyone is speculating about Hamlet while Hamlet is speculating about himself.

There is, by definition, no definitive Hamlet. Our attempts to interpret the play mirrors the play's interpretation of Nature. Even Shakespeare can only hint at the divine mystery: the mirror of Nature achieves its end by pointing beyond itself to that which it represents. Hence the emphasis in the play on images, portraits and

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counterfeit presentations. We are to be deliberately reminded that we are involved in a play, not merely so thatShakespeare can make comments about his own dramatic art but in order to indicate that the play is but an appearance. The reality is not this show that we see, but that which passes show. As Wittgenstein wrote in the finalproposition of the Tractatus: 'Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent' (Wittgenstein, 1922). This, too, is Hamlet's last word: the rest is silence.

The reality that Hamlet is concerned with is not merely external, physical reality but the reality of consciousness(the conscience of the King). The truth that art reveals is the truth of the internal world. It is in this sense that all action is a performance. The question is, a performance of what? Those who see only the persona suggest that the self is nothing more than a socially constructed performance, to use the modern, or should I saypost-modern, terminology. Jung's view is radically different. He was far ahead of his time in recognising themultiple, shifting, contingent nature of personality but for him this was only the outer covering, the clothing of the persona. The reality of the individual is elsewhere, unseen and it is from this inward soul which he called the Self and only from this inward soul that true action can issue. I suggest that Shakespeare indicates the same conclusion. We try to catch hold of reality in the multiple reflections of the play but anything we can catch hold of is only another performance, another image. We areforced to recognise that we are in a hall of mirrors. Onlythrough the defeat of our efforts to grasp the reality beyond do we sense that reality is beyond our grasp.

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The Hidden SelfHamlet returns from the voyage to England a changed man, having at last been able to take the clear, decisive and resolute action that sent Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to their deaths. He has, we might playfully suggest, bumped off the false persona. But the moment of his crucial transformation takes place away from the action, hidden from our view. We only have Hamlet's report of it and evenhe is unable to account for it. All he can say is

There's a divinity that shapes our ends

Rough-hew them how we will

(V.2.10-11)

Hamlet is now acting from the Self, from a centre of action within him that even he is unable to fathom:

Or I could make a prologue to my brains

They had begun the play

(V.2.30-31)

From the perspective of the conscious ego he is, as it were, the audience to his own act. As for where that act comes from, we can only gesture at it, and our gestures areimages, portraits and shadows.

The fatalism of "the divinity that shapes our ends" and "the readiness is all" (V.2.216) recognises the necessity of contingency - that we are all actors in a play which noneof us can design. Hamlet now knows how to act his part andthis enables him to become part of the action. He must seehis drama through to the necessary and inevitable conclusion of the tragic form in which his fate is cast. He cannot escape his fate, as none of us can, but he can embrace it willingly. He defies augury since the purpose of augury is to attempt to outwit fate. Hamlet's tragic ancestor, Oedipus, tried to outwit fate but his fate outwitted him. Hamlet's defiance of augury takes him beyond the reach of tragedy. He transcends his allotted role as tragic hero by accepting its inevitability.

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In the final scene, Hamlet shows that he has also mastered the art of the persona. Now that he knows his ultimate reality is beyond his comprehension, he is, paradoxically, able to dissemble with sincerity. He does not need to hide behind the antic disposition because he knows that his inner truth can never be revealed anyway.

Was't Hamlet wronged Laertes? Never Hamlet.

If Hamlet from himself be ta'en away,

And when he's not himself does wrong

Laertes,

Then Hamlet does it not. Hamlet denies it.

Who does it then? His madness. ....

(V.2.227-231)

Hamlet is not exactly telling the truth here but he is not exactly lying either. The suggestion that he has not been himself begs all the questions about his madness and his true identity while answering none of them. Instead, he gives a self-conscious and deliberate presentation of who he wants Laertes to think he is. As to whether he really believes what he is saying, we are left guessing (asalways). He uses the notion that he has not been himself as simply one more disguise to hide himself behind. We still don't know how to judge his madness and therefore we don't know how to judge his sincerity. It is between Hamlet and his conscience. The important thing is that he acknowledges his fault and seeks Laertes pardon in what is a consummate social performance. In a sense it is here in this speech that he is taking himself away from himself. In his madness, he could not prevent his passions from breaking through - the madness served to disguise the feared exposure of his inner self. Now he is able to pass it all off as 'madness' and the real inner mainsprings of his motivation disappear from view. This new socially adept Hamlet, this persona, is indeed not the murderer of Polonius. This is a man who knows how to function in the world and how to keep himself to himself. He is like the King in Alan Bennett's The Madness of George III who, as he

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recovers, is told that he seems more himself. The King replies

I have always been myself even when I was ill.

Only now I seem myself. That's the important

thing. I have remembered how to seem. What

what? (Bennett, 1995, p.65).

Like George III, Hamlet has remembered how to seem. The rest is silence.

The Empty Centre and the Creative MindAs he lies dying, Hamlet gives his last tantalising hint towards the unknown truth:

You that look pale and tremble at this

chance

That are but mutes or audience to this act,

Had I but time - as this fell sergeant,

Death

Is strict in his arrest - O, I could tell

you -

But let it be.

(V.2.328-332)

We who are the audience to this act are left, finally, indoubt. We can never know what Hamlet would have told us - he takes his secret to the grave. I suggested earlier thatHamlet could not find a cultural form to express his internal truth within the social world available to him. The conundrum we are left with at the end of the play is that it both is and is not a sufficient cultural form. It is sufficient to show that beyond which it cannot go. Through the medium of the intermediate area it suggests theexistence of a subjective area which cannot be captured: there is no art to reckon it.

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The play that Shakespeare has written is the clothing forthe invisible - just as the typical revenge tragedy is merely the skeleton for Hamlet, so is Hamlet merely the skeleton for the mystery around which it circulates. The unanswerable question at the heart of Hamlet's mystery and our own is the unknown and unknowable, that towards which we can only gesture but whose true definition necessarily eludes us. Hamlet is a persona of the Self. Shakespeare's genius has been to leave the central mystery empty: we are directed towards it without ever being allowed to rest in the false knowledge of thinking we know what it is. Hamlet is an image of this elusive, indefinable, infinite something which is essentially not a thing at all - hence, the felicity of Bion's 'O' as an image of that which is no-thing.

The more we point towards a definition, the more our pointing finger obtrudes into the space - the observer defines the observed. Shakespeare's genius has been to remove his own pointing finger from a text which therefore points only negatively. He indicates the inward mystery ofthe self by consistent negation. It is not this, it is notthat, it is not here, it is not there. It is always that which is not. Here is negative capability par excellence.

Yet we can only know all this because we have the most intimate knowledge of the play's subject matter: its subject is our own subjectivity. Hamlet is what we think about him. He seems real because we are real. Through ourrecognition of Hamlet as being like ourselves we come to apprehend what we ourselves are: we are what we know ourselves to be and yet we cannot say what we are. This isthe distinction Bion makes between knowledge, 'K', and being in 'O'. The ultimate reality, O, the Self, God or whatever is the divinity which shapes our ends but our knowledge of it can only ever be a rough-hewed approximation.

The play is a breathtaking image of the human mind. Human consciousness is built upon, indeed is defined by self-reflection. It is by its very nature a hall of mirrors which extends into infinite regress the further we look into it. It is because it so accurately reflects the reflective nature of mind that the play appears to shimmer

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with life, to be generating more of itself out of itself inan endless spinning web of interconnections and self-references. Hamlet above all of Shakespeare's work, inspires humility in the face of awesome complexity and grandeur. It is an image not only of the mind who created it but of the minds of all those who apprehend it. In itself, it is nothing: 'words, words, words' (II.2.193), 'aquintessence of dust'(II.2.308). Its subject only comes into being in the creative possibilities generated by our relationship with it, as we reflect upon it and see our reflection within it. We breathe life into it with our thoughts, filling the empty centre with the mystery of our own pulsating heart. Hamlet's mystery is not a problem that can be solved, not an object of knowledge, but an image wherein we might see the subject of Knowledge, the Self that is the condition for all knowledge.

Revised 31st October 1997

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REFERENCES

Bennett, A. (1995) The Madness of George III. London: Faber &

Faber.

Bion, W.R. (1970) Attention and Interpretation. London:

Tavistock.

Jung, C.G. (1921) Psychological Types. CW6. London: Routledge

& Kegan Paul, 1971.

Jung, C.G. (1928) 'The relations between the ego and the

unconscious'. CW7: 123-241. London: Routledge & Kegan

Paul, 1966.

Jung, C.G. (1946) 'The psychology of the transference'.

CW16: 163-323. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1954.

Winnicott, D.W. (1963) 'Communicating and not

communicating leading to a study of certain opposites'.

In The Maturational Processes and the Facilitating Environment.

London: Hogarth Press.

Wittgenstein, L. (1922) Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. trans.

C.K.Ogden and F.P.Ramsey, London: Routledge.

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