Despite Hamlet being the namesake of the play, as well as the perspective through which the audience views the story, he remains a remarkably cryptic character. At times, it may seem that he is indecisive, but at others, he is evidently ready to kill at a moment’s notice. This has sometimes been attributed to madness, or even inconsistency on Shakespeare’s part. In truth, it is simply a matter of performative utterance, a theory developed by J. L. Austin, and applied directly to Hamlet by Fredrik deBoer in his paper “The Performative Utterance in William Shakespeare’s Hamlet”. On a very basic level, performative utterance is the antithesis of the classic playground chant, “sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.” It holds that words have a physical effect on people, circumstances, and intention. This theory has a profound impact not only on Hamlet, but also on virtually anybody’s life.
Hamlet’s failure to kill King Claudius earlier in the play is not caused by indecision, but rather the fact that he does not follow his words with the corresponding action. It is important to note that this does not mean Hamlet’s words have no effect on Hamlet; the issue is that Hamlet’s actions do not match his words. In terms of performative utterance, the illocutionary force refers to the words themselves, and the perlocutionary force refers to the impact or consequence of those words. For Hamlet, the perlocutionary force that results from his spoken intent to kill Claudius is not simply that he kills Claudius. Rather, it bolsters his will to do so. Hamlet’s utterances are, to him, the spoken finalizations of a plan. Because Hamlet is a play, Hamlet’s own thoughts can be seen as performative utterance during his multiple soliloquies. This process of “self-overhearing”, as Harold Bloom refers to it, is a bit like Hamlet talking himself into action. As he thinks to himself (out loud, at least from the audience’s perspective), Hamlet is sorting through and resolving his thoughts before presenting them to another character, thus committing himself to them. What is most important about this process is that Hamlet is not weighing his options; he is clarifying his identity to himself. A good example of this can be found at the end of Act IV, Scene IV. Hamlet at first laments his unfortunate circumstances, then slowly solidifies his stance. By the end of the scene, Hamlet has full confidence in where he stands on the issue, going as far as to say, “My thoughts be bloody, or be nothing worth!”
While Hamlet may be the most intriguing character in the play, he is certainly not the only one impacted by performative utterances. King Claudius actually provides one of the clearest examples of the physical effects of performative utterance, as well as self-overhearing. When Claudius kneels to pray, he intends to confess his sins and seek redemption. However, the entire process serves as an identification process for him. Despite thinking he wanted divine help, he soon realizes that was never his true intent. In a powerful showing of performative utterance, he ends the scene saying, “My words fly up, my thoughts remain below: Words without thoughts never to heaven go.” In this way, performative utterance and self-overhearing peels back the layers of characters to reveal their core characteristics, even if previously unknown to the character. Of course, the effects of performative utterance are certainly not limited to individual characters’ self-reflection. Ironically, it can be argued that the words of Laertes, not Hamlet, are what drive Hamlet to finally enact his revenge. Hamlet does not move to kill Claudius until after Laertes exclaims, “The king, the king’s to blame.” The words alone (the illocutionary force) should not have changed the circumstance for Hamlet. After all, he has already known for the entire play that Claudius is to blame, and he has had plenty of opportunities to kill him. However, after all this time, something clicks in Hamlet that makes him realize he is at his last possible chance for revenge (“It is here, Hamlet: Hamlet, thou art slain”). While it is impossible to know whether Hamlet would have still stabbed Claudius without the verbal prompting from Laertes, the fact remains that the audience required some kind of vocalized transition into Hamlet’s revenge. This is arguably still performative utterance, even if those hearing the words are completely outside of the speaker’s reality.
In fact, performative utterance works the same way for us as for the characters in Hamlet. I was recently asked why I take AP classes and strive for academic excellence. I was prepared to reply with the standardized college credit and applications answer, but for whatever reason, I blurted out something along the lines of, “I like to succeed.” I did not realize it at the time, but that was the most defining moment of performative utterance in recent times for me. It serves as a stellar example of self-overhearing. No doubt, I had always been at least vaguely aware of my motivation for being in “advanced” classes, but I never gave it much thought until it was definitively put into words. The effects of this were surprising. For the following school year, I was able to recognize that my main reason for doing the work was to derive some measure of self-satisfaction, not to contribute to some abstract educational system.
Performative utterance is not even restrained to vocalized words. Written words can have as much impact on thoughts, memories, and actions as spoken ones. Within this writing, for example, the act of putting my memories into words has skewed them in favor of a performative utterance context. At the time, performative utterance was the furthest thing from my mind, and I certainly was not actively seeking self-identification. The fact that I had made a significant step towards self-identification was not clear. However, the way I have written it, as well as the subject matter it references, affects the memory so that it comes out as a cleaner example. In this way, performative utterance has altered my sense of memory. It is ultimately inescapable. Whether Hamlet is crying for vengeance or Claudius is praying for forgiveness, the act of putting thoughts (conscious or otherwise) into words inherently produces undeniable changes, whether in the physical world or the mind.
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