Why does Hamlet use the word “unprofitable” in his first soliloquy?
HAMLET
Oh, that this too, too solid flesh would melt,
Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew,
Or that the Everlasting had not fixed
His canon ‘gainst self-slaughter! O God, God!
How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable
Seem to me all the uses of this world!
Fie on ’t, ah fie! ‘Tis an unweeded garden
That grows to seed.
His soliloquies are long, sad, rageful, lamentations.
The Book of Lamentations in the Bible was written by the prophet Jeremiah.
Jeremiah's lamentations are known as jeremiads.
Hamlet’s speeches all bear a strong resemblance to Jeremiah’s jeremiads, especially the “To be, or not to be” speech.
By saying these words, and by speaking of such apocalyptic images, Hamlet is not merely venting his rage out loud.
When Hamlet speaks of “a dew”—he is alluding to the prophet Isaiah, who spoke of God’s holiness and power, who criticized wicked and unrighteous leaders, and who called for the defense of oppressed people.
All of Hamlet’s soliloquies also could be considered prophetic meditations, in the vein of Isaiah.
After Hamlet speaks of melting into a dew, he says: “O God, God! How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable Seem to me all the uses of this world!”
Why does he use the word “unprofitable?”
That seems like an odd word to choose.
He could have used a far simpler word—like useless, or worthless.
But he chose a word that seems intentionally more complex.
He is actually making a pun—“unprofitable” is actually “un-prophet-able.”
He is saying that the world lacks a divine prophet—an Isaiah or a Jeremiah—to guide and to teach and to warn people to stay godly.
Without a prophet, Denmark is adrift politically, morally and spiritually. Denmark has become an ungodly place.
Hamlet’s father has just died. His uncle has apparently stolen the throne from Hamlet. And Claudius has even married Gertrude, Hamlet’s mother. And Fortinbras is about to invade Denmark.
Denmark has become a spiritual vacuum. Hamlet has no one he can turn to, to help him. In this moment, he is crying out to God for help, and without a prophet to guide him, Hamlet wants to die.
Denmark is later described as “rotten.”
Prophets in the Bible often used variations of the word “rot” to describe the moral, spiritual, or societal decay in cities or nations—and among people—due to sin, godlessness, and corruption.
This is, of course, related to how Hamlet speaks of the whole world as an “unweeded garden.”
In Jeremiah, the Lord speaks of faithless people:
“‘And as for the bad figs, which are so rotten that they cannot be eaten,’ surely thus says the Lord, ‘so I will abandon Zedekiah king of Judah and his princes, and the remnant of Jerusalem who remain in this land and those who live in the land of Egypt.’”
Jeremiah 24:8 AMP
Isaiah condemned Israel, for rejecting God’s law:
“Therefore as the fire devoureth the stubble, and the flame consumeth the chaff, so their root shall be as rottenness, and their blossom shall go up as dust: because they have cast away the law of the Lord of hosts, and despised the word of the Holy One of Israel.”
Isaiah 5:24 KJV
In Hamlet Solved #8, I wrote about how the prophet Zechariah used the words “consume away” to describe melting flesh, in the apocalyptic plague that God inflicted on enemies of Jerusalem.
Hamlet has Zechariah’s “consume away” and Isaiah’s “flame consumeth the chaff” in mind when he later speaks of death as a “consummation Devoutly to be wished!”
In the space of only a few lines, Hamlet alludes to the words of several prophets, he condemns the world in much the same way that they did, and he lamentably complains about his own life in much the same way that the prophets often did.
Hamlet, in this opening scene, is already suicidal. Prophets often expressed a similar desire for death, and they cursed their own lives.
Jeremiah cursed his birth:
“Cursed be the day I was born!
May the day my mother bore me not be blessed!”
Jeremiah 20:14 NIV
The prophet Elijah told God that he wanted to die:
But he himself went a day’s journey into the wilderness, and came and sat down under a juniper tree: and he requested for himself that he might die; and said, “It is enough; now, O Lord, take away my life; for I am not better than my fathers.”
1 Kings 19:4 KJV
Therefore, for many reasons, in this moment of white hot rage, Hamlet chooses to express his anger at the world and at himself, in language that is entirely biblical, and based on several prophets of the Bible.
But there is another very important reason why Shakespeare chose the word “unprofitable.”
The word is from the Latin word profectus which means “growth, advance, increase, success, progress.”
Later, around the year 1325, the meaning of the Old French word profitable had nothing to do with money. It had to do with spiritual or moral benefit and gain.
By the time of Shakespeare, the English word profitable meant something beneficial or yielding some form of gain, whether material, moral, spiritual, or practical.
In the year 1600, the word would have a solely material and practical meaning, regarding what is profitable, in terms of money and business.
In the year 1596, Shakespeare wrote his bawdy screwball masterpiece, The Merchant of Venice.
In the play, Shylock is a successful moneylender. He knows how to make a profit, as best as he can, forced to live in a ghetto in Venice, that is ruled by Christians.
Antonio makes risky investments, especially in shipping. He asks to borrow money from Shylock.
He plans to give the money to the seemingly destitute Bassanio, who apparently has no job. He in turn plans to use the money to impersonate a prince, to marry the wealthy heiress, Portia, presumably to become wealthy. Bassanio therefore is essentially a con artist.
His plan to borrow money from Antonio, who borrows it from Shylock, will have the effect of destabilizing the entire creditworthiness of Venice.
Shylock gives them a very brief lesson in business—from the Bible story about how Jacob became prosperous. Shylock says that profit “is a blessing, if it is not obtained by stealing.”
This is consistent with the Bible, which teaches that money is not the root of all evil. It erring from the faith, because the love of money:
“For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.”
1 Timothy 6:10 KJV
Shylock senses that Antonio and Bassanio are up to no good.
Shylock agrees to the loan, and he is even willing to forego charging interest. But he clearly wants to teach Antonio a lesson. He wants to “pierce” his pride—and make Antonio sorry for crossing him, and spitting on him.
Shylock makes him an offer, that Antonio should know better than to agree to. He tells him that he will take a pound of his flesh if Antonio fails to repay the loan.
He does say that Antonio’s flesh is not “profitable” as collateral, for the loan.
Shylock sees Antonio clearly. He judges him as both an unprofitable man, who does not know how to do business—and as a unprofitable man, who is also erring from the faith.
It could be said that the entire Merchant of Venice play is a debate about the word profitable.
Should people do business solely to make money, without any spiritual or moral considerations? And, what happens to people and to the society as a whole if people only pursue gain, without a moral and/or spiritual benefit?
Shakespeare is asking what Jesus asked: “For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?”
Matthew 16:26 KJV
To Shakespeare, as a devout Christian, only the soul has any value. Anything that is done which puts the soul in jeopardy should be avoided.
By the end of the play, Antonio, Bassanio and Portia win the case against Shylock, but it is a hollow victory. They are unmerciful, and never stopped to consider the spiritual and moral consequences of their immoral behavior. Their souls are in jeopardy.
Shylock loses the case, and is financially ruined. But his soul is not in jeopardy. He may not be a perfect man of faith, but he did not err from the faith as much. He is a victim of their errancy.
And it is clear that without people like Shylock, who know how to make money, Venice is doomed. People like Antonio and Bassanio and Portia are going to bankrupt Venice, sooner rather than later.
By the time that Shakespeare wrote his Hamlet play, in 1601, it would seem that the debate about the meaning of the word profitable was still raging. It is very likely that Shakespeare was worried that people would value monetary profit over any spiritual gain or benefit.
He worried that younger people might become more like Bassanio, who was rash and immature, and who put the credit-worthiness of Venice in jeopardy.
So, in this opening soliloquy, Shakespeare uses the word unprofitable again.
Hamlet condemns the world that has become rotten, and might become even more rotten because of the abundant lack of prophets.
Hamlet is not a prophet. However, he talks about prophets, he talks like the prophets, and he shares many of the same ideas and desires that the prophets did—including a desire for his own death.
Shakespeare’s audience were familiar with the stories of the prophets. They would have seen a certain degree of foreshadowing in this, Hamlet’s very first scene, and very first soliloquy.
Many prophets were persecuted, even by monarchs. Many were killed.
Hamlet is talking about, and talking like, prophets. Therefore, it is even possible to think that he is aware of the fact that he is going to be persecuted, and perhaps even killed, by his enemies.
He immediately complains about Claudius in this first scene, and first soliloquy.
It is possible that he senses that his uncle is the kind of monster who might even kill him, his own nephew, and the son of the late king.
Hamlet is not a prophet. However, his story is meant to represent the universal human struggle against the sin in ourselves and the sin in our world, which is at the heart of the stories of the prophets of the Bible.
Cheers,
