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.
Hamlet loved his father the way that any child does. A part of him and his life was taken from him when he heard of his father’s death. Instead of spending time with her son like she should have been, Gertrude was spending more time with her quickly married husband, Claudius. This quick marriage to Claudius made Hamlet wonder if his father had just died, or if he was murdered. If his father was murdered, his mother must have known about the murder, or she would not have married Claudius so quickly. Gertrude was absent in Hamlets life too often, which turned him to acting like he was crazy.
The second to last decision that Hamlet makes with regard to Claudius is to not kill him, but to allow fate and divine forces to take over his responsibility. He makes this decision mainly as a means of escaping the intense madness under which he finds himself and, instead, entering a much more psychologically peaceful state; denial. Although this reason may seem illogical, Shakespeare clearly emphasizes the importance of such a motivation to escape pain in Hamlet's decision-making. He does so in the Player's scene, which emphasizes that Hamlet is obsessed with disproving Claudius' guilt. The advantage of disproving such guilt is that it resolves Hamlet's pain, showing that the motivation to escape the pain of his obsession is prominent in Hamlet's decision-making. Escaping in denial also seems to be Hamlet's best option at this point since, having previously confronted Gertrude with the premises of Claudius' crime, she failed to respond with recognition of them and disapproval of Claudius.
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.
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
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.
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...
The question of why Hamlet delays in taking revenge on Claudius for so long has puzzled readers and audience members alike. Immediately following Hamlet's conversation with the Ghost, he seems determined to fulfill the Ghost's wishes and swears his companions to secrecy about what has occurred. The next appearance of Hamlet in the play reveals that he has not yet revenged his father's murder. In Scene two, act two, Hamlet gives a possible reason for his hesitation. "The spirit that I have seen / May be a devil, and the devil hath power / T' assume a pleasing shape" (2.2.627-629). With this doubt clouding his mind, Hamlet seems completely unable to act. This indecision is somewhat resolved in the form of the play. Hamlet comes up with the idea of the play that is similar to the events recounted by the ghost about his murder to prove Claudius guilty or innocent. Due to the king's reaction to the play, Hamlet attains the belief that the Ghost was telling the truth the night of the apparition.
Hamlet is almost always performed as a tragedy, and Hamlet's "indecision" is universally accepted as the flaw. "If he had only made up his mind", people argue, "eight deaths could have been avoided." This, of course, is a very easy position for one to take, because we already know that Claudius is guilty. It would be a much more interesting piece if one could be left uncertain of the true facts. Due to the popularity of Hamlet, the fact that Claudius is guilty is taken for granted, and so it seems unfortunate that Hamlet cannot act sooner, but without this knowledge acting too quickly would be a mistake.
Shakespeare, William. The. Hamlet. The. London: Dover Publications, Inc, 1992. Print.
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
Old Hamlet is killed by his brother Claudius. Only two months after her husband’s death a vulnerable Gertrude marries her husband’s brother Claudius. Gertrude’s weakness opens the door for Claudius to take the throne as the king of Denmark. Hamlet is outraged by this, he loses respect for his mother as he feels that she has rejected him and has taken no time to mourn her own husband’s death. One night old Hamlets ghost appears to prince Hamlet and tells him how he was poisoned by his own brother. Up until this point the kingdom of Denmark believed that old Hamlet had died of natural causes. As it was custom, prince Hamlet sought to avenge his father’s death. This leads Hamlet, the main character into a state of internal conflict as he agonises over what action and when to take it as to avenge his father’s death. Shakespeare’s play presents the reader with various forms of conflict which plague his characters. He explores these conflicts through the use of soliloquies, recurring motifs, structure and mirror plotting.
As illustrated through his speeches and soliloquies Hamlet has the mind of a true thinker. Reinacting the death of his father in front of Claudius was in itself a wonderful idea. Although he may have conceived shcemes such as this, his mind was holding him back at the same time. His need to analyze and prove everythin certain drew his time of action farther and farther away. Hamlet continuously doubted himself and whether or not the action that he wanted to take was justifiable. The visit that Hamlet recieves from his dead father makes the reader think that it is Hamlet's time to go and seek revenge. This is notthe case. Hamlet does seem eager to try and take the life of Claudius in the name of his father, but before he can do so he has a notion, what if that was not my father, but an evil apparition sending me on the wrong path? This shows that even with substantial evidence of Claudius' deeds, Hamlet's mind is not content.
Throughout the play, Hamlet's hesitation becomes a major character flaw for him due to the many problems which arise that should have been solved much easier. Hamlet first expresses hesitation in believing the existence of his father's ghost. Both he and the guards can plainly see the ghost, and the ghost even speaks to the prince informing Hamlet that he was “murther most foul, as in the best it is;/ But this most foul, strange, and unnatural” by his own brother Claudius (1.5.763-4). However, Hamlet is reluctant to believe what he witnessed and wants to completely the ghost's information is correct before killing Claudius. By the time Hamlet confirms that the ghost spoke the truth, he has lost the ability to surprise Claudius and avenge his father. The next consequence of Hamlet's hesitation is the death of Polonius when he attempts to spy on Hamlet and his mother Gertrude's conversation. Hamlet is reluctant to kill Claudius before meeting Gertrude because Claudius is praying and wishes to kill him “When h...
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.