The Power Of Words In John Paterson's Hamlet

The very act of engaging with fiction necessitates recognizing the possibilities and the limits of words. The audience of, for example, Hamlet obviously recognizes that the aim of words is not always to accurately describe reality. Yet, this recognition brings along with it a frightening realization: even when one tries, it is next to impossible to use words to accurately describe reality. In his 1951 article The Word In Hamlet, John Paterson argues that this crisis alarms Hamlet because of its relation to the greater chasm between appearance and substance; and that the crisis is ultimately solved by a reunion of word and deed in the play’s end. Yet, a closer reading of Hamlet’s death scene, while recognizing some superficial union of word

Paterson argues that the play’s dismissive stance on language results from the greater issue within Hamlet of the gaps between reality and appearance. Words, Paterson argues, “stand for artifice, insincerity, falsity. Their meaning is not as true as their music. They operate everywhere at some remove from real meaning” (48). The play’s end apparently mends this gap between word and deed (that is, between appearance and reality) by reestablishing the validity of the word, in part through Hamlet’s dying request that the truth be told

Austin defines as a performative utterance--“the uttering of the sentence [that] is, or is a part of, the doing of an action,” e.g. by saying “I thee wed,” one in fact does the wedding (5)--Hamlet in fact does restore “accuracy” to language. Consider that among Hamlet’s final utterances is the affirmation that Fortinbras “has my dying voice” (V.ii.353). Here, Hamlet says he is voting for Fortinbras--and by doing so he does vote for Fortinbras. Unlike a descriptive utterance, a performative utterance cannot be false. The statement “This wedding was lovely” might fail to accurately describe reality, but it is impossible for the bride’s statement “I do” not to accurately describe reality, because the statement itself changes that reality--by saying “I do,” she does. By making one of his final utterances a performative utterance, then, Hamlet reunites word (“he has my dying voice,”) and deed (the act of voting itself), appearance and