is often
called the first modern hero because of his interiority: he typically thinks about what he is
doing before he acts and asks fundamental questions about the meaning of life. He conveys
humanistic ideals because he questions, rather than accepts, valued traditions, particularly the
tradition in his culture that demands a son avenge his father's murder.
We
are left in no doubt thatadmired his father and is deeply grieved by his death. He compares him
to "Hyperion," a sun god, and he makes it clear he believesis a much lesser figure
than his father.
Thus, we know that when Hamlet hesitates to kill Claudius
whentells him to do so, it is not out of lack of love for his father.
Rather
it arises out of a humanistic impulse, perhaps learned during his studies at the Wittenberg,
that causes Hamlet to question the authority of a ghost. Like the good humanist he is, Hamlet
want to test for himself whether what the ghost is saying is true.
Therefore,
he devises an experiment through the "Mousetrap" play, which reeancts the murder so
that Hamlet can watch Claudius's reaction to it.
But even after getting
confirmation of Claudius's guilt, Hamlet still hesitates, suggesting that revenge violates
deeper ethical concerns he holds. He values human life (although he has some lapses), as a
humanist would: humanists exalted human being as the crowning glory of God's creation, made in
God's image and, therefore, of exceptional worth. For example, while trying to pump himself up
to revenge his father with visions ofmarching an army to Denmark to avenge his own father's
death at the Hamlet's father's hands, Hamlet, instead, ends up questioning whether it is worth
it to sacrifice so many lives for so slim a cause as reclaiming a few feet of lost
territory.
Hamlet reflects humanistic values in his questioning of the
revenge imperative, his use of the empirical methods to test what he has been told, and his
tendency overall to reflect on life.
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