Tragic Teen

As Rhodri Lewis points out, the evidence that Hamlet is young is overwhelming: “Claudius counsels Hamlet that his enduring display of grief for his father is ‘unmanly,’ a term whose persuasive force depends on Hamlet aspiring to, rather than already having attained, the condition of manliness; Laertes thinks of Hamlet as ‘A violet in the youth of primy nature’; the Ghost tells Hamlet that if he were to describe the afterlife in detail, the effect would be to ‘freeze thy young blood,’ and addresses him as a ‘noble youth’; Claudius turns to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern because they are ‘of so young days brought up with him, / And with so neighbour’d to his youth and haviour’; the fencing match between Hamlet and “young Laertes” is framed with some care as a contest of ‘youth.’”

Besides, he’s headed back to school and Lewis cites evidence that aristocratic students of Shakespeare’s day went to university at fifteen or younger.

Why then does the Gravedigger suggest that Hamlet is thirty? Comparing different texts of the play solves some of the puzzle, but concludes that the Gravedigger’s time confusions are deliberate. Keith Thomas argued that numeracy was a specialized skill in the early modern period, one that the Gravedigger lacks, just as he lacks skill in Latin. His Latin illiteracy doesn’t prevent him from trying his hand at garbled Latin phrases, and his innumeracy doesn’t keep him from pretending to know what he’s talking about. Hamlet can’t compute any better than the Gravedigger, but he doesn’t want to let his ignorance show either.

Lewis concludes, “His historical measurements of sixteen, thirty, and twenty-three years are empty signifiers—no more than words. They contradict each other, but he doesn’t care. He gets to put one over on someone of a far higher social and educational status than himself, and who has presumed to question his work. . . . the numbers in the graveyard scene as recorded in Q2 and the Folio designedly do not compute. They represent the inability of Hamlet and of the Gravedigger to reckon with historical numbers in their heads, and the desire of both characters to look as if they can.”

As for Hamlet’s age, Lewis doesn’t think we can be precise. He’s an adolescent, somewhere between fourteen and twenty-one.