Quack Or Scholar?

Hamlet, as the best tragedy of William Shakespeare’s plays, has been widely discussed in the world. Looking back to their detailed researches on Hamlet’s identity from the perspectives of culture and politics, the thesis finds that the majority of critics consider Hamlet as a revenger or a politician. However, the thesis mainly aims at exploring the question of Hamlet’s cultural identity and the relationship between his identity and the tradition of Faustus. The thesis is divided three chapters to be researched and analyzed deeply.Traced to their sources, Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus and Goethe’s Faust both are derived from the classical German legends of Faustus and lots of translations and interpretations of different versions. From the Biblical tradition and the Heroic tradition, the thesis would summarize how to be shaped the tradition of Faustus, and Marlowe and Goethe are also how to imitate and create their Faustus for literary practices. Faustus and Faust have similarities and differences, based on the tradition of Faustus to be creatively portrayed by their dramatists. It could be concluded that Faustus has two distinctive identities:a learned intellectual and a ghostly astrologist.By comparison between the tradition of Faustus and Hamlet, Hamlet and Faustus both have studied at the University of Wittenberg, where they have been cultivated with lots of traditional disciplines, including Logic, Philosophy, Ethics, Literature, and Rhetoric, etc. Consequently, Hamlet has sufficient and multiple knowledge to have the desire for knowledge and the pursuit of truth, so that he naturally becomes a learnedly erudite intellectual.Astrology and witchcraft plays an important role in the western literary tradition. There have more implied information about astrological knowledge and witchcraft in the play. However, Hamlet is the only one to have knowledge to know, interpret and employ them in the play, so he could learn more unknown things and know mysterious phenomenon. As the messenger between the visible world and the invisible world, he has ability to know the will of God and communicate with the ghosts. Thus, he has a distinctive or characteristic identity as a quack.In the conclusion, from the tradition of Faustus to the literary works of Renaissance, man’s abilities always fight against God’s power. The former gradually shows man’s omnipotence, which he could not understand changes and laws about the world and the universe but imitate God’s power to know ghosts and gods. The ability is fully highlighted that man could master of the mysterious or supernatural things. Therefore, in the Shakespeare’s time, a Renaissance intellectual who is a combination of scholar and quack has the humanistic spirit, whose definitions of abilities are different from those of the modern times. As an embodiment of thoughts and a messenger of the two worlds, Hamlet is exactly a Renaissance intellectual to in favour of knowing his complex and variable identities and of deeply understanding the play, Hamlet.