SHAKESPEARE is my Homeboy

Hamlet criticism

Fernie, Ewan "The Last Act: Presentism, Spirituality, and the Politics of Hamlet" from Spiritual Shakespeares

Fernie begins the chapter by discussing the implications of the nexus of spirituality and presentism in Steven Greenblatt's recent book, Hamlet in Purgatory and Derrida's Spectres of Marx. Fernie argues that for Greenblatt and Derrida, "spirituality breaches the present from beyond" (187). Throughout the chapter, Fernie returns to the themes of agency and action which he also articulated in his essay "Action: Henry V." Fernie argues that "our present is the place -- the only and, therefore, the absolute place - of agency and decision where all time may and perhaps must be consummated" (188).

Fernie introduces the significance of Purgatory in Greenblatt's book from a presentist perspective. Fernie describes the spiritual content of Greenblatt's work as the Derridian ""work of mourning": "Spirituality in Hamlet in Purgatory thus serves a remarkably presentist function. It takes the specific form of an ancestor cult: a common territory for mourners and historians that brings together Greenblatt's personal and professional concerns" (191). Thus, according to Fernie, the death of Greenblatt's own father becomes mediated through the implication of the death of Hamlet's father in Shakespeare's play.

Fernie continues his argument by introducing Derrida's work to clarify Greenblatt's argument, and then differentiates his own presentist argument through a reading of the last act of the play. Fernie writes that, "Derrida opens the ethical and political dimension of spirituality in Hamlet that remains obscure in Greenblatt. I will argue that both Greenblatt and Derrida neglect the last act of the play, with crucial critical and theoretical consequences" (192). Fernie argues that Shakespeare's play dramatizes the crucial present moment of "being-in-between" (193). Fernie cites the significance of differentiation for Hamlet. Fernie defines Derrida's present as a space "where we respond to difference" (194).

Fernie then turns his argument to the theme of action. His discusses the "crucial transition from "To be, or not to be" to "Let be" in Hamlet's character (Fernie 204). He first refutes Greenblatt's assessment that "nothing comes of nothing, even in Shakespeare" (Greenblatt cited in Fernie 199). Fernie argues that, rather, in the final act, "Hamlet's mystical experience turns him from a kind of conscientious objector into an activist who says "The readiness is all" (Fernie 202). Fernie then cites the significant role of Hamlet's agency in the play's final act (or possible lack of agency in terms of his sexuality) in order to dispute the critics who argue that Hamlet is "wholly culturally determined" (206).

In conclusion, Fernie refutes the traditional reading of Hamlet as a man who is stuck as "being- in- between" and rather argues that Shakespeare creates "new ontology of being" (208). Fernie cites Hamlet's actions to create a nuanced ontological argument from a presentist perspective. "Shakespeare's play improvises a new ontology of being- in- action, an ontology that doesn't so much drag the present into the artifice of eternity as it drags eternity into the mess and artifice of the present" (208).