‘SER O NO SER’ es sin duda la duda metafísica más repetida en la cultura occidental. Y quizá una de las frases que se repiten con más frecuencia fuera de contexto, del contexto que Shakespeare le quiso dar. Sobre Hamlet, probablemente la única obra de teatro que se ha representado ininterrumpidamente desde 1602 hasta el día de hoy, han escrito Goethe, Coleridge, Mallarmé, Freud o Lampedusa, por mencionar a los más famosos. ‘Ser o no ser’ no es solo la duda planteada por un joven y culto príncipe entre la agonía de la vida y la liberación que supondría el suicidio, después del desengaño sufrido ante el vergonzoso comportamiento de sus progenitores (todos hemos pasado por eso en la adolescencia), sino la exposición de un asunto más espinoso. Si se está en este mundo, afirma Hamlet, no es porque lo que nos ofrezca sea agradable, sino porque tememos aquello que no conocemos, y es precisamente ese temor a lo que haya después de la muerte lo que nos roba el coraje suficiente para quitarnos la vida y dejar de aguantar las calamidades de este. Y es que, para Hamlet, que no es capaz de cerrar los ojos ante la evidencia desgarradora que el fantasma de su padre le describe –de cómo le dio muerte su propio hermano para heredar al tiempo corona y esposa– el deber moral le supone un conflicto que ha de resolver con las armas de las que dispone, la connivencia con una compañía de cómicos en la revelación del crimen. Porque estar en este mundo sin hacer caso a su propia conciencia y al ruego del espectro de su padre, eso, Hamlet ni siquiera lo contempla. Y por si esto fuera poco, la denuncia pública implicaría no solo acusar a su padrastro, aquél a quien su traidora madre ha elegido como compañero de tálamo, sino acusar al rey de regicidio, y esto, para el tiempo de Shakespeare, era una posibilidad lejana. De la salud del rey depende la salud del reino, y la de sus súbditos, se creía. John de Salisbury ya había hablado de la cabeza del ‘cuerpo político’, que era el rey, y el propio autor no deja lugar a dudas, cuando pone en boca de Laertes, hermano de la infortunada Ofelia, las siguientes palabras: “el príncipe no tiene voluntad propia, pues se halla sujeto a su nacimiento, y no le es permitido, como a las personas de humilde categoría, pretender para sí mismo, pues de su elección dependen la salud y la prosperidad de todo el reino”. Duda moral y duda política se funden, pues, en esta frase que nos ha dejado para la historia esta tragedia shakespeariana en la que, como en casi todas las tragedias, mueren casi todos (Hamlet, Claudio, el Rey, Gertrudis, la Reina, Laertes, Polonio, Ofelia, Rosencrantz y Guildenstern) y queda apenas el pobre Horacio para contarlo, que eso sí que es un papelón.
Shakespeare, que supo analizar como pocos las consecuencias del uso y el abuso del poder (aunque desgraciadamente sea más conocido ahora por su Romeo y Julieta, un romance que duró tres días y se cobró seis muertos, por cierto), escribió las desventuras del joven príncipe atenazado por la pena y el sentido del deber en el periodo cumbre de su carrera, cuando ya había afilado su pluma en varios Enriques y algún Ricardo, y habiendo ya acuñado frases memorables como la famosa ‘mi reino por un caballo’, de Ricardo III, a cuyo repertorio habría que añadir, además de este ‘ser o no ser’, aquel ‘algo huele a podrido en el Reino de Dinamarca’, que tan poca justicia ha hecho a pueblo tan generoso, tanto que el propio H.C. Andersen tituló una de sus novelas para adultos con el comienzo del monólogo hamletiano, que, por cierto, en labios de Hamlet, en danés, hubiera sonado algo parecido a At være eller ikke være. “TO BE OR NOT TO BE” is, indisputably, the metaphysical doubt most often repeated in Western Culture. And probably one of those phrases commonly used out of context, at least out of the context Shakespeare had written it for. About Hamlet, probably the only theatre play that has been uninterruptedly on stage since its first version was acclaimed in 1602, has been analyzed extensively by Goethe, Coleridge, Mallarmé, Freud or Lampedusa, just to mention a few. “To be or not to be” is not only the doubt expressed by a young and cultivated prince between the anguish of being, and the liberation that suicide would bring, after the cruel disappointment of witnessing the shameful behaviour of his parents (we have all been through that in adolescence), but is also the elucidation of a rather more thorny issue. If we remain in this world, Hamlet states, despite the many unsavoury moments we have to get through, is only because we fear the unknown, whatever might come after death, and such fear is greater than our repugnance for the present. And it is what paralyzes us, depriving us of the required courage to take our lives and put an end to present sufferings. Indeed, for Hamlet, who is incapable of closing his eyes to the heartbreaking evidence described by his father’s ghost –how the king’s brother poisoned him in order to obtain both crown and wife at one blow– his moral duty poses him a problem to be resolved only with the weapons at his disposal, which, in this case, is a theatre company with whom he plans the public revealing of the crime. Because for Hamlet being in this world without obeying one’s own conscience and, in this case, responding to his father’s request, is a possibility he does not even contemplate. And if all this was not enough, a public incrimination would imply not only accusing his own stepfather, whom his capricious mother has chosen as husband, but, more importantly, accusing the current king of regicide, and
this, for Shakespeare’s time, was going a little bit too far. It was believed that the health and well-being of all the subjects of a given kingdom depended on the health and fortune of their king. John of Salisbury had already discussed the relevance of the head in the “body politic”, and the author himself leaves no doubt when he puts in Laertes’ mouth the words “His greatness weigh’d, his will is not his own, for he himself is subject to his birth: he may not, as unvalued persons do, carve for himself, for on his choice depends the safety and health of this whole state”. Moral doubt and political doubt are, therefore, mingled in this everlasting phrase from this Shakespearean tragedy in which, as in many others, almost all characters die (Hamlet, Claudius, the King, Gertrude, the Queen, Laertes, Polonius, Ophelia, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern), leaving behind only poor Horatio to tell the story. What a role to play! Shakespeare, who analyzed as few others either before or after him the consequences of the use and abuse of power (unfortunately better known of late for his Romeo and Juliet, a romance which lasted three days and killed six people, let’s not forget that), wrote about the misfortunes of the young dutiful prince overcome with grief at the peak of his career, when his pen has already been sharpened in a few Henrys and some Richards, and having coined other memorable phrases such as the famous “A horse! A horse! My kingdom for a horse!” in Richard III. To that list, we could certainly add, beyond “To be or not to be”, the also oft-quoted “Something is rotten in the state of Denmark”, that so little justice has done to such a generous people, so much so that H.C. Andersen himself used the beginning of Hamlet’s monologue to entitle one of his serious novels, which, by the way, in the lips of Hamlet, in Danish, would have sounded something similar to At være eller ikke være.
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