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Hamlet, a William Shakespeare’s play written approximately between 1599 and 1601, has survived through centuries and illustrated its charisma in the modern medium of film (“Hamlet”). There have been over 50 movie adaptations of Hamlet, 14 of which are produced in the 21st century. More importantly, the play transcends its language barriers to be adapted into Chinese stories, both in books and in films (Li).

Hughes Glenn and Sebastian Moore have analyzed the play’s elongated appeal due to its modernity illustrated through Hamlet’s imagination beyond social norms. They state that the fluid, indeterminate actions Hamlet commits appeal to a modern audience in a current society where uncertainty abounds (180). Yet, their analysis is based on a general, global context without explaining the charisma of Hamlet in the specific Chinese society. Ruru Li, on the other hand, has reviewed Chinese literary criticism on Hamlet, claiming that the play is significant in its discussion on class divides during the formative period of Chinese Communist Party (CCP) during the 1950s and 1960s. However, neither of these arguments seems to sufficiently connect the current Chinese society with the enduring charm of Hamlet in it. What has made the play so relevant in the 21st century, especially in the Chinese society which draws a stark contrast with European traditions?

I argue that the transition from modern to postmodern conditions of characters in Hamlet resonate with the contemporary Chinese audience in their mentality of the ongoing “lying flat” movement. In China, young people have started the “lying flat” movement torefuse to work, as they have gotten tired of the hardworking social rhetoric (Bandurski), which signals a transition from modernity to postmodernity in the Chinese society.

It is important to examine the essence of our current society first, locating prevalent sentiments in it. Shakespeare lives in a time before Enlightenment, and thus before modern technology like electric transportation, home appliances, and media that have made up most of our lives now. But the flourishing of technology isn’t solely the foundational element of the current society. The paradox of being confused about technology and desiring for more advancements is the essence of modernism. For example, the anxiety about new technologies like ChatGPT lies not in its emergence, but in its potential to cause unemployment, which leads people to want to work harder to secure a job more unique to human capacities (“AI for Content Creators”). Such angst can be traced to other aspects in society than technology. In the context in China, the CCP brings communist ideology as a hope to build a collaborative economy after the civil war, but the desire for success of this political system brings tragedies like “the Great Leap Forward,” which refers to people’s falsification of economic reports to creative an illusion of progress (“Communism in China”). Such a paradoxical theme of the political system persists in China, where the hope of communism clashes with the doomed reality of hierarchical capitalism resulting from a competitive, patriarchal human history, prompting people to work harder in fighting each other off, to differentiate themselves from the majority for the fruit of technological developments. One of the most characteristic writers in Chinese literature who has a keen observation on Chinese society, Lu Xun, writes, “The nature of class can never be avoided.” (qtd. in Li) despite the prevalent hope in China of building a communist society.

Such phenomena of skepticism against technological development and contests among different categories of human beings are conceptualized as “modernism.” But the human suspicion of social development doesn’t stop at modernism. Modernism progressed further to postmodernism in the late 20th century, coined by philosopher Jean-Francois Lyotard’s The Postmodern Condition (1979). Due to the increasing commercialization of human knowledge, Lyotard writes, artificial discourse distorts truth in infinitely different ways (xxiii – xxiv), which means that there is an increasing tendency in society to view humans’ hard-earned achievements as mere commercial products exchangeable with money. In other words, it is the stark drop of hopefulness after the culmination of capitalism with people losing ideas about who they are in the system. When humans have acquired god-like technology and the accompanying natural and humanitarian disasters, we tend to wonder what else we can do, or if technological development is really helping us. Modernity shifts people’s focus from pure scientific development to explicit rebellion against existing problems in social progress, and postmodernity inspires people to rethink the narrative of development entirely, inspiring reflections on personal feelings and the enigmatic trajectory of development.

The transition into postmodern condition can be seen in China’s “lying flat movement.” China’s economy has achieved astounding progress within the short 40 years since “Reform and Open-Door” policy, which encourages international trade, communication, and technological development (Kobayashi et al.). While the power of the policy has worn off a bit since times goes on, CCP enacted another set of policies called the “Three Reforms” in the 21st century, which strives to bring together the revolution in three pillars of China’s economy: state-owned enterprises, the financial system, and the administrative organizations (Kobayashi et al.) To stick through rounds of economic difficulties, people devoted to these movements, struggling to grasp the benefits of technological developments. However, due to the strict lockdown and censorship with the outbreak of COVID-19, China’s economy has steadily degraded and looks increasingly ominous (He). The COVID-19 lockdown in China adds on to people’s receding hope for the economy. While the Chinese government brands the lockdown as the most effective to combat infections and reboot the economy quickly, Chinese people suffered from lack of food and lack of hospital resources. The number of COVID-19 infections also continued to grow. The overall sentiment in the population thus progressed from modernity to postmodernity. After the lockdown, with CCP’s determination to push for technological innovation and rejoin the world’s economic competition, workloads in China have become increasingly heavy and propaganda surrounding work have flourished. Under such pressures, the “lying flat” movement started as an informal meme on the internet complaining about the amount of work, but it has soon become a sense of justice, a sign of rebellion.

Just as the progression from modernism to postmodernism, the movement began as a suspicion toward governmental promises and developed into a complete rejection of progress. It signals the postmodern condition in Chinese people in realizing the distortive force of governmental and socioeconomic narratives. From the emergence of CCP, “The Great Leap Forward,” to the COVID-19 lockdown, Chinese people are now starting to escape the cycle of false hope from reforms through the intentional aloofness about development, through the “lying flat” movement. They’ve chosen to give up as they feel sick of the cyclical but hopeless reforms.

The progression of Chinese society from a positive collective faith in development to suspicion in modernism and eventually to giving up in postmodernism may explain the popularity of Hamlet in the country even with language and temporal barriers with 16th century England. In Hamlet, there is a similar sense of the postmodern condition“lying flat” illustrated through the cyclical nature of revenge, the obscuration of identity, the contemplation of death, and the hesitation of action. The ultimate reason why this play still resonates with audiences today is that it doesn’t fight for the only truth, but presents moments when people have to confront their own fears and internalized social norms, when people doubt that nothing will change even if they make the seemingly wisest choice.

In Hamlet, there is an impotency of successful revenge illustrated through the cyclical nature of the revenge which reflects the multiple propaganda CCP imposed on Chinese people to cover failures in the economic system. The play starts with Barnardo’s line “Who’s there?” (1.1. 1) Instead of getting a response, the question is received with an echo, “Nay, answer me.” (1.1. 2) This highlights the cyclical theme in Hamlet that there is no answer, but repetitiveness resulting from people’s caution, hesitation, and fear. It has become a norm in Hamlet that when a family member dies, the rest of the family take revenge, but a successful revenge will only lead to the death of another family member, thus starting a new round of revenge. Yet, such an obvious pattern doesn’t stop the characters from revenging. It seems that people don’t care about the success of the revenge but linger in the complications of performing revenge. When Hamlet mistakenly kills Polonius, for instance, the revenge plot inevitably involves Laertes into it as well. Claudius complicates the cycle of this revenge even more by irritating Laertes with “Was your father dear to you?” (4.7. 107), prompting Laertes to kill Hamlet for Claudius himself. Although doing this does not facilitate Claudius to achieve his goal in trapping Hamlet, he decides to do it seemingly just to satisfy his spite against his own complicating life and to drown himself into the further cycle of revenge.

Moreover, throughout, the young Fortinbras revenge plot has been looming behind, trying to fight Denmark for the death of his father. In 1.2., Claudius claims that he has already dismissed Fortinbras’ quest for Denmark’s land. Yet, toward the end of the play, Fortinbras reappears in the Hamlet plot. Even more complicatedly, contradictory to his family members, Hamlet learns from this enemy of his country by figuring out the meaning of his life in Fortinbras: “This is th’ impostume of much wealth and peace, that inward breaks and shows no cause without why the man dies.” (4.4. 28-30) and voicing his support for electing Fortinbras. (5.2.)

Similar to CCP’s repetitive propaganda encouraging people to work under the pressure of a degrading economy, the revenges in Hamlet have already lost their meaning, but only provide an excuse for people to stalk others and become restive and oversensitive. In the restricted space of a castle, when Claudius and Polonius stalk Hamlet to figure out his madness and thus control him, Hamlet is also listening to their conversations, somehow knowing their plots against him. Hamlet once even explicitly speaks out his master knowledge of Claudius’ scheme to Gertrude, “let the bloat king tempt you again to bed, and let him, for a pair of reechy kisses or paddling in your neck with his damned fingers, make you to ravel all this matter out” (3.4. 204-08). This proves that the cyclical revenge continues due to reasons other than bringing actual success. Their revenge can be seen similar to the protesting function of the “lying flat” movement. Through performing the revenges, they get a better sense of who their enemies are and who they are themselves while venting out their despair, anger.

Apart from the endless, cyclical nature of revenge, the transition into postmodern condition in Hamlet can also be illustrated through the obscuration of identity throughout the play. Instead of developing distinctive identities for his different characters, the characters have assimilated characteristics. In the arguably most famous soliloquy throughout the play, which is Hamlet’s “to be or not to be speech,” the prince of Denmark talks about difficulties in life that he as a royal member would never go through:

“Th’ oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely, The pangs of despised love, the law’s delay, The insolence of office, and the spurns That patient merit of th’unworthy takes, When he himself might his quietus make With a bare bodkin? Who would fardels bear, To grunt and sweat under a weary life, But that the dread of something after death, The undiscovered country from whose bourn No traveler returns, puzzles the will And makes us rather bear those ills we have Than fly to others that we know not of?” (3.1. 79-90)

Hamlet is less likely than most of the people to have undergone oppressions and poverty, nor has he experienced death. However, in this speech, it seems that he has ceased to be Hamlet, but a common person who is archetypical of universal human struggles. Hamlet’s identity becomes interchangeable with that of any other’s. I draw a parallel between Hamlet’s speech and the tacit agreement among Chinese people in the “lying flat” movement, where people struggle with their own identity, feeling the mute of individual voices cast upon the entire humanity.

Similarly, the secondary characters in Hamlet are also paired up as if their experiences, emotions, and identities can be switched without implications. For example, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern always appear together to report businesses of the royal family. Almost nothing can be used to distinguish them. Hamlet’s revenge storyline is also similar to that of Young Fortinbras’: both are vengeful for their dead father. The two female characters, Gertrude and Ophelia, are similarly feeble, especially when it comes to Hamlet’s “madness.” After Hamlet insults Ophelia, instead of insulting him back or becoming angry, she laments Hamlet’s change in solitude and even belittles herself to show Hamlet’s previous glory: “O, what a noble mind is here o’erthrown! … And I, of ladies most deject and wretched, That sucked the honey of his musicked vows, Now see that noble and most sovereign reason, Like sweet bells jangled, out of time and harsh… O woe is me…” (3.1. 163-74) When Hamlet castigates Claudius’ trickery against him to Gertrude, she seems to be scared and even asks what she has done wrong to herself instead of rebutting Hamlet, much like Ophelia’s self-blaming. Finally, Polonius and Claudius also seem to be interchangeable. Claudius adopts Polonius’ opinions without a second guess. After Hamlet mistakes Polonius for Claudius and kills him, however, Claudius continues his suppression of Hamlet despite the loss of Polonius’ witty mind. No one, except the protagonist Hamlet, is so special in the play that is distinctive in personality and cannot be replaced.

Similarly, working in the contemporary society of China is an assimilation of identity. Under CCP’s propaganda for collectivism, people are obliged to work like humans without any individuality so that they can all contribute to a common goal without caring about their personal needs. After the pandemic lockdown, Chinese propaganda to reboot economies have heavily increased, leading to people creating terms like 996 (work from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. for six days a week) and neijuan (involution) to describe everyone’s same suffering under the oppressive government, sacrificing their own time and assimilating themselves to a machine-like schedule. Apart from relieving themselves from pressure, people in China’s “lying flat” movement are also seeking a form of uniqueness to distinguish themselves from the generalized working schedule and life value. The transition from modernism to postmodernism, ultimately, is a loss of one’s identity.

Struggling to find their identity, characters in Hamlet often stop to ask themselves of who they are, causing delays in action that may be seen as irrational, disturbing the course of progress in their revenge. Hamlet has the chance to kill Claudius in 3.3., but he starts to think about the happy afterlife of Claudius if he kills him at the moment and gives up doing so. In this hesitation, Hamlet’s consideration doesn’t entirely center around how he can torture Claudius, but on how he hasn’t been a responsible son for revenge. “I, his sole son, do this same villain send To heaven, Why, this is hire and salary, not revenge” (82-84). He feels that he’s losing his uniqueness as an actor of revenge, but is assimilated into the norms of the noble family: everything is based on an exchange of conditions, a “hire and salary”, without considering one’s genuine emotions. When Hamlet again has the opportunity to kill Claudius in 3.4., he mistakes Polonius for Claudius due to the distracting conversation between himself and Gertrude. When Gertrude tries to win Hamlet back by saying “Come, come, you answer with an idle tongue,” (14) begging for the truth of Hamlet’s emotions for her, Hamlet responds by “Go, go, you question with a wicked tongue.” (15) Hamlet may not know how he feels about his mother anymore as he struggles with his own identity. His revenge for his father seems to have evolved into solving the puzzle of people’s ignorance of him, figuring out how he can win back his position in the noble family.

The elusiveness of identity can also be shown in suicidal attempts throughout the play. As Albert Camus claims in his philosophical essay The Myth of Sisyphus (2000), the single most important philosophical problem is suicide, judging whether one’s life is worth living. To live, according to Camus, takes more courage than to die, and thus the hesitation of suicide in fact shows a struggle with the meaning of life, a struggle with finding one’s identity in the course of life. In 5.1., the gravediggers’ conversation talking about Ophelia’s seeming suicide also attests to Camus’ argument: “For here lies the point: if I drown myself wittingly, it argues an act, and an act hath three branches – it is to act, to do, to perform.” (10-13) Yet, Hamlet doesn’t feel at ease listening to their comfortable conversation: “That skull had a tongue in it and could sing once.” (77-78) Hamlet ponders suicide multiple times. For instance, in 1.2., he sighs, “O, that this too, too sullied flesh would melt, Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew.” (133-34) But he doesn’t kill himself eventually, constantly immersed in his struggles without finding the definite reason to die. Such hesitation may seem less meaningful as a symbol of struggles in life and identity than a suicide, but it is exactly such pauses in one’s course of action that signals one’s loss of hope in life.

China’s “lying flat” movement isn’t an explicitly rebellious movement, just as how Hamlet doesn’t commit the most effective way of revenge or suicide to illustrate his anger to others. The effects of giving up competition in the job market, “lying flat,” makes a much smaller ripple than taking people’s anger to the stage. It is obvious that people involved in the movement desire something more than not to work. Living under long-term propaganda by the CCP, people’s identities have been forced into assimilation, into patriotic, subservient, working machines for the collective good of CCP. The “lying flat” movement provides a chance for people to pause, to reevaluate the necessity to continue living with an assimilated identity. Many people in the movement focus on responding to China’s biggest company leader, Ali Baba’s Jack Ma’s statement about working hard: “In this world, all of us want to be successful, all of us want a good life, and all of us want to be respected. I ask you, ‘How can you achieve the success you want if you don’t put in more effort and time than others?’” (qtd. in Bandurski) But the transition from modernity to postmodernity in China, people are rethinking the definition of success, of how their identities and lives should unfold regardless of the collective hope for CCP’s success. Yet, the answer is still not here. That’s why the movement has taken its course in a way of quietness and hesitation instead of the loud protests we usually see in the history of revolution. In fact, such a silent protest may require more struggles than explicitly giving up their lives or showing their anger because it takes more patience and reflection upon one’s identity and the postmodern condition of society.

In conclusion, Hamlet retains its appeal in the modern audience, even for those with language barriers like the Chinese audience, because of its similarity with the progression from modern to postmodern condition in the current society. Similar to the “lying flat” movement in China, characters in Hamlet choose to “lie flat” many times in their revenge, pondering what their identity is. Amidst the cyclic revenges in Hamlet, just as the repetitive reforms in China, people have become suspicious toward and even ditch their hope for progress entirely, changing from a modern condition to a postmodern one. Yet, the seemingly silent postmodern protests in fact contribute to people’s reflection on the modern pressure; it signifies humans’ resilience in face of their postmodern suspicion against the collapse of modern society.

Hamlet provokes not only the Chinese audience, but also global readers, to think about who we are in a time where economic progress takes the central stage of social development, where propaganda is repetitive and endless, where workers’ identities are assimilated, and where people try to give up but can’t entirely due to realistic considerations. My research raises questions in political and labor theory about how our current society is failing the people with its sole focus on economic development, and it also concerns mental health studies into how to tackle the political pressures on our lives right now. Admittedly, conforming to the capitalist standards of economic progress and job hunting is still a predominant part of our lives, but reading the enduring appeal of Hamlet in current Chinese society helps people to value the hesitation and the “lying flat” moments in life for us to contemplate where we are.

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Shakespeare Research Essay

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