The mimesis of time in Hamlet.

Hamlet opens on intense attention to time, as the sentries "watch the minutes of this night" (1.1.30). (1) The emphasis gains thematic depth when Hamlet formulates his predicament in terms of temporal dislocation: "The time is out of joint. O cursed spite, / That ever I was born to set it right" (1.5.196-97). The problem of time is raised to philosophical status in Polonius's rhetoric: "Why day is day, night night, and time is time" (2.2.88). The importance of time in Hamlet has provoked numerous studies, but none has approached the marter through recourse to the temporal analysis of John McTaggart, whose celebrated article on the unreality of time, published in 1908 and later republished in the second volume of his metaphysical work, The Nature of Existence, is often recognized as the seminal treatise in the philosophy of rime of the last one hundred years. (2) Though virtually no philosophers have defended McTaggart's claim that time is unreal, scores of them, in hundreds of articles and books on the subject, have addressed some aspect of his description of the two temporal series proper to time (or, more precisely, the notion of time). These two series, easily defined, can serve as powerful lenses though which to analyze and illumine the structure of rime in Hamlet. The result of our inquiry will be a new understanding of the representation of time--or, more precisely, what Gerhard Dohrn-van-Rossum terms "time-consciousness"--in the text. (3) For the elements which we shall draw from McTaggart are not theoretical (in the sense of imposing ideational constructs on reality or what actually is), but descriptive, in the sense of articulating the actual conceptual content of the notion of time--what E.J. Lowe calls the "indispensable ingredients in our understanding of what time is" and what L. Nathan Oaklander calls the "two ways in which we ordinarily conceive and talk about time." (4) Despite the fact that McTaggart's theory of the non-reality of time turned out historically to be a dead end, his succinct and penetrating analysis of what time is conceptually--what concepts are intrinsic to the very idea of time--has exercised profound and lasting influence on philosophers of time, ever since he published his formulations. Ironically, though ultimately concerned with demonstrating that time is not, McTaggart's analysis has become indispensable to many philosophers in defining what time is.

But before proceeding with this investigation, brief recapitulation of earlier approaches to the problem of time in Hamlet will contextualize discussion. A convenient introduction to such considerations concerns emphasis on the Renaissance as the period when temporal awareness broke through to a new level. Georges Poulet stresses the upsurge in the sense of transience: "It is indeed true that one felt then as always, and perhaps more keenly then ever before, the precarious and fugitive character of each lived moment." David Scott Kastan elaborates on this aspect of the temporal awareness of Renaissance man: "His world is one in which the unidirectional and irreversible flow of time brings an intensified sense of the fragility and precariousness of being." Ricardo Quinones underscores this temporal insecurity by pointing to the Renaissance concern with the Saturnine quality of time, construed in terms of its "menacing and destructive" activity, analogous to that of the mythological Saturn, the god who consumed his own offspring. Other scholars foreground more positive aspects of Renaissance temporality, by focusing on the achievement of historical perspective. Erwin Panofsky, for example, highlights the role of intense philological study of classical texts which enabled the understanding of ancient civilization "as a phenomenon complete in itself, yet belonging to the past and historically detached from the contemporary world." Dohrn-van-Rossum addresses the role of nascent technology in fostering awareness of the difference between past and present: "From the beginning of the fifteenth century, at the latest, the preoccupation with inventions developed a historical perspective." (5)

Scholars dealing directly with the treatment of time in Hamlet deploy a range of approaches. Wylie Sypher claims to detect in Hamlet a notion of "punctiform" time which, supposedly anticipating post-Renaissance temporal notions, is "discontinuous" and "mechanical," thereby privileging the instant, liberated from past and future. Paul Yachnin interprets the opening of Hamlet in terms of historical deja vu, wherein the military vigilance regarding possible invasion re-enacts false rumors of a return of the dreaded Spanish Armada, which England defeated in 1588. Maurice Hunt explores the prominence of "regression" and "reversion to the past." Numerous scholars construe the representation of rime in the play in terms of binary oppositions. Frank Kermode applies the terms chronos and kairos, defining chronos as "'passing time' or 'waiting time'" and kairos as "the season, a point in time filled with significance, charged with a meaning derived from its relation to the end." James s. Baumlin has revisited these contraries. In contrast, James Calderwood foregrounds synchronic and diachronic polarity. Elsewhere I have investigated the conflict in Hamlet between two temporal dispensarions: reiterative time versus teleological time. Indeed, the range of opinion on rime in Hamlet does appear to refute Bernard Grebanier's claim that "the rime element is of no consequence in the play." (6)

All of these investigations of time in Hamlet focus on ways in which rime is constructed, interpreted, or experienced in the world of the play. None bases its inquiry on the conceptual complexity of time itself--the nexus of concepts constituting the very notion of time. The present study undertakes such enterprise, with the aim of uncovering thematic implications never before noted or discussed.

With this background, let us turn now to McTaggart's signal contribution to the understanding of rime. According to McTaggart, two kinds of temporal fact are essential to the very notion of time. The first of these (termed the A-series) pertains to the transition of tenses from future to present to past. The second (termed the B-series) involves the unchanging relations of earlier than, simultaneous with, and later than: "I shall give the name of the A series to that series of positions which runs from the far past through the near past to the present, and then from the present through the near future to the far future or conversely. The series of positions which runs from earlier to later, or conversely, I shall call the B series." (7) In the A-series, rime is dynamic, moments and events continually change position (either nearer or father) in relation to the present, which, in turn, is continually shifting its own position in the temporal stream. In the B-series, time is static: the relarions among events, in terms of precedence or simultaneity, do not change. For example, the fact that the fall of Second Triumvirate precedes the fall of the Third Reich and succeeds the fall of the First Athenian Empire can never change, no matter how many other events occur. Robin Le Poidevin encapsulates the distinction between the B-series, which excludes change, and the Aseries, which presupposes change: "if it is true at one rime that event x is earlier than event y, then it is true at all times that x is earlier than y. Positions in the A-series, in contrast, do change; what is now present was once future and will be past." (8) L. Nathan Oaklander elaborates: "On the one hand, we think of time and events in time as moving, or passing, from the far future to the near future, from the near future to the present, and then from the present receding into the more and more distant past. Events in a series of terms which are either past, present, or future are said to be located in an A-series. On the other hand, we speak and think of moments or events as being earlier than, later than, and simultaneous with other events, and we believe that these relations are unchanging, permanent and fixed." (9)

These two temporal series, fundamental to the notion of time as McTaggart defines it, figure prominently in Hamlet, where their role can be introduced through reference to the dual mimetic project in the play: the representation of both nature and art. Hamlet, of course, cites the first of these: "the purpose of playing ... was and is to hold as 'twere the mirror up to nature" (3.2.20-22). He unwittingly intimates the second--the play's portrayal of itself as a play or work of literary art--when describing his entrapment in a drama written by his own adversaries: "Or I could make a prologue to my brains, / They had begun the play" (5.2.30-31). In its representation of "nature"--that is, the world of experience, subject to continuous flux and change--Hamlet foregrounds the A-series. In contrast, in its representation of "art"--that is, the notion of drama as a text already written, comprising a fixed sequence of events--Hamlet foregrounds the B-series.

Brief explication will clarify this basic distinction. As noted in the first sentence of this discussion, the sentries on the "platform" of Elsinore are acutely aware of the passage of time (1.2.214). More specifically, through fear of "the omen coming on," they are acutely concerned with the approach of future events toward the present, and, through concern with the Ghost, with the recession of past events from the present (1.1.126). This predicament epitomizes the A-series--the notion of time as the flux or passage of tenses. Yet, construed as a dramatic text whose parts are fixed in a continuum stretching "before and after" (4.4.37), Hamlet constitutes a B-series comprising events and moments ordered according to the two-place predicates, earlier than, simultaneous with, and later than. Considered in this context, all the moments and events in the play are disposed in an inviolable sequence, independent of considerations of future, present, or past. That is, to interpolate an apt formula of Quentin Smith, they co-exist tenselessly--always sustaining the same unchanging "relations to each other of simultaneity, earlier than, or later than." (10) In alternate formulation, as a dramatic text, the play comprises a series of successive moments and events simultaneously participating in the same totality. Thus construed, the moments and events comprising Hamlet are "spread out in actual juxtaposition," thereby constituting a "permanent order of succession" or "tenseless array," exactly like the moments and events comprising the B-series aspect of time (to quote phrases respectively from Philip Turetzky and Delmas Kiernan-Lewis regarding B-time). (11)