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This paper interrogates how different Benjamin’s concept of sovereignty in The Origin of German Tragic Drama is from Schmitt’s one in Political Theology, under the assumption that their formation of sovereignty has developed from the interrelation with each other. Besides, it investigates Benjamin’s interpretation of Hamlet which he regards as belonging to the category of trauerspiel like German baroque drama, and Schmitt’s Hamlet or Hecuba in which Schmitt argues that Hamlet is the tragedy, not the trauerspiel. Thus, this paper makes an inquiry into how Benjamin and Schmitt’s evaluations of Hamlet as the trauerspiel and the tragedy are influenced by their different construction about the sovereignty. Benjamin, accentuating the sovereign’s undecidability, his creaturely status, and the melancholy, elucidates Hamlet’s characteristic as Trauerspiel as traced in the factors such as the ghost’ existence and Hamlet’s death. He also compliments Hamlet’s capacity to manifest the Christian sparks that German baroque drama cannot accomplish. On the other hand, Schmitt, elaborating the source of the tragic in Hamlet as found in ‘the Taboo of the Queen’ and ‘the Hamletization of the Avenger’, argues that these genuine intrusions, exceptional to the representation of historical facts in the art, elevates the play of Hamlet to the tragedy. Schmitt’s reasoning of Hamlet’s elevation to the tragedy has in common with his logic of the sovereignty when he states that the sovereign is the one that decides on the state of exception.
