That Undiscovered Country

A brief reflection on Montaigne's "Of Age" and Hamlet

Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash

In Act II of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Polonius encounters the manic prince, who has a book in his hand. He asks him what he is reading about, and Hamlet replies, after some evasive statements,

Slanders, sir; for the satirical rogue says here that old men 
have grey beards; that their faces are wrinkled; their eyes
purging thick amber and plum-tree gum; and that they have a
plentiful lack of wit, together with most weak hams. All which,
sir, though I most powerfully and potently believe, yet I hold it
not honesty to have it thus set down; for you yourself, sir, 
should be old as I am if, like a crab, you could go backward.
(Hamlet, Act II, scene 2, 1300)

This scene occurs shortly before the most famous of all soliloquies, Hamlet’s reflections on suicide, which begins, “to be, or not to be—.” Hamlet has been reading a book about old age, if we take him at his word, and is thinking about suicide by the beginning of the next act. It is generally accepted that Shakespeare had encountered Montaigne’s Essais in the Florio translation by the time he wrote Hamlet circa 1600, and that they made a significant impression on him, fueling the philosophical underpinnings of the later plays. It is undisputed that he openly lifted portions from Of Cannibals in the Tempest. It seems quite probable then, that Shakespeare intended to suggest that Hamlet is reading “Of Age,” the last piece in Volume One of Montaigne’s writings. Let us look at a pertinent selection from this short essay:

As for me, I hold it as certain that since that age my mind and my body have rather shrunk than grown, and gone backward rather than forward. It is possible that in those who employ their time well, knowledge and experience grow with living; but vivacity, quickness, firmness, and other qualities much more our own, more important and essential, wither and languish.

When age has crushed the body with its might / The limbs collapse with weakness and decay. / The judgment limps, / and mind and speech give way. - Lucretius.

Sometimes it is the body that first surrenders to age, sometimes, too, it is the mind; and I have seen enough whose brains were enfeebled before their stomach and legs; and inasmuch as this is a malady hardly perceptible to the sufferer and obscure in its symptoms, it is all the more dangerous.¹

These lines certainly illuminate what Hamlet means, when he says, near the end of the repartee with Polonius, “if, like a crab, you could go backward.” Much of Montaigne’s essay actually defends the idea that most of our finest accomplishments occur before 30, a thought that must have troubled the preternaturally youthful, as-yet unaccomplished, thirty-year-old Hamlet. For this reason, a man like Polonius, who may indeed be beginning to exhibit the first signs of senility, is, to Hamlet, a cause for mockery. Shakespeare, however does give Polonius some of the best lines in the play (“this above all else, to thine own self be true”) before allowing Hamlet to accidentally murder him.

Montaigne’s essay opens by quoting the final lines of the most famous suicide of the ancient world, Cato the Younger, who was forty-eight when he died by his own hand. When Hamlet’s private reveries resume in Act III, he asks himself (and the hidden eavesdroppers?)

Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer 
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them. ( III.1. 1750)

The ancient Stoics, such as Cato, thought that it was perfectly valid to end one’s life when “outrageous fortune” becomes too much to bear. And indeed, the only counterbalance to this course of action in Hamlet’s mind derives from Hebraic and Christian sources: “had not the Almighty set his canon ‘gainst self-slaughter…” This thought only arises later— now Hamlet’s only concern is what dreams may haunt him after passing into “The undiscover’d country, from whose bourn / No traveller returns.” These lines echo a phrase from Montaigne’s short essay almost precisely, but inverted:

Death of old age is a rare, singular, and extraordinary death, and hence less natural than the others; it is the last and ultimate sort of death; the further it is from us, the less it is to be hoped for. It is indeed the bourn beyond which we shall not go, and which the law of nature has prescribed as not to be passed; but it is a very rare privilege of hers to make us last that long.

Notably, Montaigne is focused on life, here, Hamlet on the afterlife. This is suggestive, especially given Hamlet’s decisive turn back towards life in the graveyard scene. It is as if the full weight of Montaigne’s scepticism does not register with Hamlet until at least the death of Ophelia, notably a suicide. It is sometimes said that Hamlet seems to mentally age ten years between Act IV and Act V: could it be that Hamlet’s willingness to act is provoked in large part by his interpretation of Montaigne’s thoughts on age?

Hamlet, it appears, is too young in the eyes of his society to assume full power as king. Yet Montaigne suggests just the opposite, saying that it is a defect of the laws to assume a man cannot properly rule before middle age. Aristotle notes that there is a conventional association of age with wisdom, since the young by definition lack experience, which is what is a part of what is needed for political knowledge. Montaigne, by contrast, thinks this association is merely an impediment to good governance. His final assertion is that “It seems to me that considering the frailty of our life and how many ordinary natural reefs it is exposed to, we should not allot so great a part of it to birth, idleness, and apprenticeship.” Note carefully the language here that Shakespeare echoes yet again, in the “to be, or not to be” soliloquoy: “The heartache, and the thousand natural shocks / That flesh is heir to.” ² Montaigne’s claims, that old age is generally unpleasant and embarrassing, that the best accomplishments of human beings are typically before thirty, and that the human mind is fully developed by the age of twenty, may be questioned at length, but it seems clear that Hamlet has taken them quite seriously, and sought to act accordingly. The reader is left to ponder whether in Hamlet Shakespeare is, among many other things, offering a critique of Montaigne’s skepticism and dismissal of old age when applied to the realities of political life.

1. Donald Frame translation, Everyman Library, New York, 2004.

2. The parallels are even more striking in the Florio translation, which Shakespeare read: “Me thinkes that considering the weaknesse of our life, and seeing the infinite number of ordinarie rockes, and naturall dangers it is subject unto, we should not so soone as we come into the world, alotte so great a share thereof unto unprofitable wantonnesse in youth, il-breeding idlenesse, and slow-learning prentissage.”