Hesitation in William Shakespeare's Hamlet
In Shakespeare?s Hamlet, a ghost tells Hamlet that his uncle, Claudius, is responsible for the death of his father. Hamlet is driven to reveal the truth of his father?s death and seeks to avenge his murder to achieve justice. In his quest to right the wrongdoing, Hamlet delays acting toward justice for many reasons. The main factor for Hamlet?s hesitation is attributed to his self-discipline. He lacks of ability to act on his emotions. Hamlet is an intelligent, moral, and reserved character. He restrains himself to act rationally and not on emotion. This hesitation is a tragic flaw for Hamlet, but in order to resolve the truth, it is necessary.
Hamlet has doubts about the validity of the ghost; he is too rational a character to seek revenge on Claudius based on a conversation with a supernatural spirit. He is unsure whether it was his father?s ghost, or some evil deity trying to trick him. Hamlet needs to prove that Claudius killed his father before he can act out revenge against him. He also needs to prove it to Gertrude, because he loves his mother and doesn?t want to hurt her by killing Claudius, without proving it warranted. Hamlet?s hesitation is justified because he feels morally obligated to prove that Claudius murdered his father before justice can be carried out. He doesn?t want to kill an innocent person. This would be an injustice on his part, and two wrongs don?t make a right.
Hamlet is also unsure of other people?s involvement in the conspiracy against his father. He doesn?t know if Claudius acted alone or had help in the murder. He is disturbed that his mother is now married to Claudius, just two months after his father?s death, and is unsure whether she had conspired with Claudius to kill his father. This complicates things further, giving more reason for Hamlet to hesitate, and rationally plan his next move.
This invokes Hamlet to act as if he is going mad. He does this to distract the focus of others from his true intention of finding out the truth. He hopes that in doing so, he can reveal the involvement, if any, of others, along with proving Claudius? guilt. He plans to accomplish this by devising a play that parallels the conspiracy against his father?s death. The play he develops portrays a reenactment of Claudius poisoning Hamlet?s father, and will expose the guilty and alleviate ...
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Hamlet?s hesitation is once again justified, because killing Claudius while he is praying would not achieve the justice he desires.
Hamlet proceeds to go into Gertrude?s room. He finds someone hiding behind the tapestry. Thinking that it?s the king, Hamlet hesitates no longer and plunges his sword through the tapestry, into the person concealed behind it. To his disappointment he finds the person to be Polonius, and not the king. This is a bit of irony, since Hamlet ceased to hesitate and killed an innocent person anyway.
After all of the procrastinating and delaying, Hamlet finally receives justice. He exposes the king as a conspirator and cuts his throat, but loses his own life in doing so. Hamlet?s hesitation prolonged his emotional agony, but it succeeded in amplifying his anger and desire for justice. Claudius killed his father, and he was aware of the consequences he would face in avenging his death. The reasons Hamlet had to hesitate were justified and only increased his emotional level in striving for justice.
Works Cited
Shakespeare, William. The Norton World Anthology of World Masterpieces. Vol. 1, W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., New York, N.Y.1992.
Despite the fact that Hamlet was uneasy with Claudius’ gain of power prior to encountering his father’s ghost, it didn’t cause him to act impetuously. Aware of the grave situation Hamlet decisively chose his methods to discover whether King Claudius was his father’s murder.
Hamlet wonders whether to live or die, to suffer or take arm. Given to the pain he feels at his father's murder, and his mother's hasty remarriage to his uncle, to the murderer. he wonders if it is nobler to bear his grief, or to take action. His dad’s ghost has told him what really happened at the night his father died and told him to revenge. Now Hamlet has another choice to make. To trust the ghost or not. When Hamlet made the choice to listen and believe the apparition of his dead father, he willingly buys into the spirit's claim that he has been murdered by Claudius. This decision has huge repercussions for the rest of the play.
Hamlet is a normal person which brillant ideas. He waited so long to kill Claudius because he wanted people to be able to know the story of really happened and did not want to seem like a bad guy. Hamlet’s soliloquy, “To be or not to be” (Act 3,Scene 1 Line 64) also means should he live to do as his father or or die to betray him. Hamlet knew everything that was going on in the kingdom but wanted to act as if he did not to get even further in and have more information. He did this because he wanted to think a more brilliant plan to kill Claudius and anyone else that was dealing with it, that is how he killed
Hamlet is Shakespeare’s most famous work of tragedy. Throughout the play the title character, Hamlet, tends to seek revenge for his father’s death. Shakespeare achieved his work in Hamlet through his brilliant depiction of the hero’s struggle with two opposing forces that hunt Hamlet throughout the play: moral integrity and the need to avenge his father’s murder. When Hamlet sets his mind to revenge his fathers’ death, he is faced with many challenges that delay him from committing murder to his uncle Claudius, who killed Hamlets’ father, the former king. During this delay, he harms others with his actions by acting irrationally, threatening Gertrude, his mother, and by killing Polonius which led into the madness and death of Ophelia. Hamlet ends up deceiving everyone around him, and also himself, by putting on a mask of insanity. In spite of the fact that Hamlet attempts to act morally in order to kill his uncle, he delays his revenge of his fathers’ death, harming others by his irritating actions. Despite Hamlets’ decisive character, he comes to a point where he realizes his tragic limits.
Critics have attempted to explain Hamlet’s delay in avenging his father for centuries and the most relevant scene to illustrate Hamlet’s hesitation is in Act Three when Hamlet has the opportunity to kill Claudius but doesn’t. Hamlet says at the time that he does
The situations where Hamlet unexpectedly acts were not relevant to his task, such as the murder of Polonius. During the play rehearsal, Hamlet is shocked by the emotion poured out by the actor over Hecuba, whom doesn’t even exist. Hamlet, whose father was murdered, does not have as near the passion that actor had. Hamlet criticizes himself, saying, “A dull and muddy-mettled rascal, peak/ Like John-a-dreams, unpregnant of my cause,/ And can say nothing” (Shakespeare 2.2 578-580). Hamlet calls himself a coward for not doing anything to avenge his father, but rather just staying depressed and weep all day. According to Bradley, “Hamlet was restrained by conscience or a mural scruple; he could not satisfy himself that it was right to avenge his father” (Bradley 4). Hamlet is aware of his constant delays, but still cannot ready himself to kill Claudius because of the excuses he continuously makes up. After criticizing himself, Hamlet sets up a plan that only prolongs his chance of killing Claudius. Hamlet says, “The play’s the thing/ Wherin I’ll catch the conscience of the King” (Shakespeare 2.2 616-617). Hamlet creates a play that reenacts a specific scene, which resembles Claudius murdering his father. Hamlet wants to see Claudius’s reaction to the scene, and confirm his guilty reaction. According to Eliot, “The delay in revenge is unexplained on grounds of necessity or expediency;
As well as Hamlet is giving clues to Claudius, that Hamlet knows who killed his father. Hamlet asks for a play that gives the same story line to scare his uncle. This is a tactic to send not only Hamlet into insanity but also Claudius. The tactic of the play works Claudius is fearful of what Hamlet knows about the murder of King Hamlet. Prince Hamlet is now fearful of everyone that is proximate to him. Hamlet cerebrates that everyone is out to get him. Hamlet even endeavors to verbalize to his mother to convince her that Claudius killed King Hamlet. Even when Hamlet tells Gertrude, it is as though she thinks Hamlet is making it up. Claudius is victualing into Hamlet 's suspicion by sending people to Hamlet and ascertain what he knows. This makes Hamlet not trust anyone that he knows.
Of course, by his delaying his revenge, the entire plot of the play goes in a different direction. Immediately after this scene Hamlet speaks with his mother, unknowing of the fact that Polonius is hiding behind a curtain in the room with them. When the Queen becomes frightened by Hamlet's irate demeanor she cries out for help, as does Polonius. Hamlet mistakes Polonius for Claudius and stabs him to death.
Taking revenge against his enemy can be a difficult task for young Hamlet, especially when the circumstances and conditions he is under require him to reevaluate his morals of life and soul. The delay in Hamlet’s revenge of his father’s death is caused by three main reasons: he is under strict and almost impossible guidelines laid out by the ghost of his father, King Hamlet, he is afraid of death either suffering it or inflicting it on someone else, and his lack of reasoning in committing a murder that he did not witness himself.
Hamlet is unlike the other two characters in the way that he uses reason and logic before he acts and decides to kill his uncle, Claudius, because he is aware of the consequences. For example, when Hamlet is trying to determine how he can prove Claudius the murderer, after conversing with the players about the play, following Hamlet’s reasoning that the ghost could be a devil trying to deceive him, in his soliloquy he states, “I’ll observe his looks… If he do blench, / I know my course… I’ll catch the conscience of the King.” (II, ii, 625-634). He reattaches himself to his revenge based on the logic of Claudius’ guilt. If Claudius does not feel guilty and has no reaction to the play, Hamlet will not act because logically Claudius was not to blame. Subsequently, Hamlet discovers that Claudius is guilty and commits himself to taking his life, but when Hamlet approaches Claudius and sees him praying he thinks to himself, he shouldn’t kill him there saying, “That would be scanned:/ A villain kills my father, and for that, / I, his sole son, do this same villain send/ to heaven… this is… not revenge.” (III, iii, 80-84). As Hamlet over thinks his actions he reasons himself out of killing Claudius because he compares how Claudius would die, to his father’s death. By over thinking this he stalls and has more time to think about w...
One of Hamlet’s flaws is that he over thinks things a lot and it is first shown the most at the prayer scene with Claudius. Once Hamlet sees how Claudius reacts to the play he knows that Claudius killed his father and that the ghost was right, he has a chance to kill him and doesn’t take it . His only proof was the ghost and even though others saw the ghost no one else heard it talk except Hamlet. Hamlet was also considering a lot of other things at this time, like how if he killed Claudius now Claudius would be free of sin and would go to heaven. He was also thinking if his father didn’t get to die free of sin it wouldn’t be fair for Claudius to die free of sin either, which shows how vengeful Hamlet’s character is. At the same time, Hamlet has morals and understands the consequences so that’s why it’s harder for him to perform the act . After a l...
William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, title character in the play of the same name, has been criticized for centuries due to his delay in killing his uncle Claudius and the consequences that occurred as a result. But as one critic once pointed out, “No delay, no play” (Jenkins 137). The entire plot of Hamlet is based on the events that occur due to Hamlet’s waffling as to whether or not he should, and when he should, avenge his father’s murder. Hamlet, who appears to be a Christian man, would be committing a murder regardless of the reasons. This is not something that most would take lightly or rush in to under any circumstances. This discussion will defend Hamlet’s continuous delays by analyzing certain situations in the play which affect his decision to wait to kill Claudius.
In the text, however, there is no clear evidence of wrongdoing until Claudius confesses his sins to God, his nephew, and the theater at large. Up until that point Hamlet is weighing the Ghost's story against the king's. The ghost accuses in Act I, but Hamlet is perceptive enough not to accept the being at its word. One thing that he realizes is that the Ghost is playing directly to his own emotions.
With his thinking mind Hamlet does not become a typical vengeful character. Unlike most erratic behavior of individuals seeking revenge out of rage, Hamlet considers the consequences of his actions. What would the people think of their prince if he were to murder the king? What kind of effect would it have on his beloved mother? Hamlet considers questions of this type which in effect hasten his descision. After all, once his mother is dead and her feelings out of the picture , Hamlet is quick and aggressive in forcing poison into Claudius' mouth. Once Hamlet is certain that Claudius is the killer it is only after he himself is and and his empire falling that he can finally act.
Hamlet’s tragic flaw was shown to him in a dream by the ghost of his father. His father tells him that he was murdered by his uncle, Claudius. In this scene, the tragic flaw was transferred and manifested itself in Hamlet’s actions. His obsession with revenge and death is all he can think about. He needs to act quickly and decisively but finds himself procrastinating about what to do. In Act III, Hamlet holds the knife over the head of his uncle, Claudius, but cannot strike the fatal blow. Instead, he writes a play about the same scenario to study the reaction of Claudius as to a clue of his guilt. After he decides Claudius is guilty of murdering his father, he still relents from taking his revenge. He says, “Haste me to know ‘t, that I, with wings as swift As meditation or the thought of love May sweep to my revenge.