The tardiness with which Shakespeare’s moody Dane enacts revenge upon his fratricidal uncle generates numerous critical examinations. What motivates Hamlet’s delay? In this paper, four separate theories will be discussed: one critic employs a biblical explanation for Hamlet’s hesitation; two others equate Hamlet’s delay to psychiatric issues of depression, low self-esteem, and crippling self-doubt, and one critic describes Hamlet’s postponement as moral paralysis.
All offer valid clarification, yet none strike at the underlying meaning of Hamlet’s stubborn refusal to act. For the purposes of this paper, let us look instead at something far simpler than psychiatric ailments, religious rituals, and concerns of morality. Let us focus squarely on Hamlet’s resistance to a fate he never chose.
The moment the ghost invades Elsinore’s battlements, Hamlet knows, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that his fate has been sealed. The act of vengeance the ghost demands will necessitate the ultimate sacrifice from him. How can it not? Regicide is suicide for anyone, even a prince. His hesitation in taking revenge on Claudius then is best understood as elaborate avoidance. Hamlet remains grimly aware that this is the last act of his life, yet he resents it and resists it for as long as he can, understandably.
What vision did Hamlet have for his own future, now torn asunder by the expectations of a father whom even death cannot keep from extorting his own son? What did Hamlet want to do with his life, other than exact revenge on his dead father’s behalf, and lose his own existence in the process?
In his essay Through Hamlet to Narrative Medicine and Neuroscience: Literature as a Basic Science of Psychiatry, Dr. Dinko Podrug equates Hamlet’s delay to a fact-finding mission driven by self-doubt. In Podrug’s words, “…this play’s action is, like that of no other, propelled by the main character’s systematic efforts to find out – to extract from one another – the hidden truth” (Podrug 23).
Hamlet investigates the ghost for two reasons, according to Podrug: “Since the ghost commanding revenge has questionable credentials, Hamlet must first find out what really happened…” and because events compel him to begin to doubt himself” (Podrug 23). Hamlet, therefore, launches an inquiry into the ghost’s accusations, via the play within a play, to acquire proof and resolve his doubts (Podrug 23). Podrug uses this passage from Act Two, Scene Two as textual justification: “The spirit I have seen, May be a devil, and the devil hath power, T’assume a pleasing shape, yea, and perhaps, Out of my weakness and my melancholy,
As he is very potent with such spirits, Abuses me to damn me. I’ll have grounds, More relative than this…” (Shakespeare 1759-1760). However, Hamlet’s investigation and its device, the play within a play, cannot be taken literally. It is not a means to “…catch the conscience of the king…,” nor is it a method by which to prove his uncle’s guilt (Shakespeare 1760). Rather, it is a means to stay alive a little longer. The play within a play is one of many tactics Hamlet employs over the course of the play to delay the revenge and therefore avoid his own death.
In his essay Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Chikako Kumamoto defends Hamlet’s waffling as the impasse that results when a moral man becomes charged with an immoral act, in this case, murder. Kumamoto points to Hamlet’s “…moral lapse accruing from being an avenger…,” and refers to the vengeance his father’s ghost assigns him as a “…sacred mission” (Kumamoto 201). Hamlet’s delay in accepting the mission, Kumamoto proffers, lies in the “…epistemological anxiety that undercuts Hamlet’s revenge efforts” (Kumamoto 202).
The problem with this interpretation, however, remains the voluminous and damning evidence of Hamlet’s immorality. As Shaw notes, Hamlet is “…perfectly capable of killing. He is repeatedly violent, callous, and crude. He kills twice with his sword and sends two former friends to their deaths…He offers the girl he loves crude sexual taunts and treats the body of her father with contempt” (Shaw 94). Similarly, as Shaw aptly points out, once “…the reaction of Claudius in the play scene settles any momentary doubt, [Hamlet] still fails to kill him and embarks for England” (Shaw 94). Morality is not at issue in Hamlet, nor is Hamlet’s apparent need for proof. Both are ploys to delay his own demise for as long as he possibly can.
Peter Moore’s essay Hamlet and the Two Witness Rule interprets Hamlet’s delay as the biblical protocol surrounding familial vengeance that existed during Shakespeare’s time, which required two witnesses against a killer. In Moore’s words, “Numbers 35 and Deuteronomy 19 permit or command a man whose next of kin has been slain to kill the slayer, [and] Numbers 35, Deuteronomy 19, and Joshua 20 begin to replace the old tribal code of familial vengeance with a national legal system” during the Elizabethan age (Moore 498). Moore suggests that Horatio functions as this necessary second witness to the crime committed by Claudius in the play, in that his “…role as a witness is to demonstrate Hamlet’s biblical rectitude in determining the truth of the Ghost’s accusations”, and that Hamlet delays the revenge act until he can find a witness, one who will testify (Moore 501). Moore’s interpretation has only one real flaw. If Elizabethan audiences were indeed viewing Hamlet through this biblical lens, why then does the prince himself rebuke his delay? Why does the ghost of this father – who surely must have been as versed in a biblical reading as the audience – also rebuke his delay? Moore’s contention would make more sense if Hamlet spent no timing chiding himself for his belated vengeance.
The final explanation for Hamlet’s delayed revenge comes from A.B. Shaw’s essay Depressive Illness Delayed Hamlet’s Revenge. In Shaw’s words, the “…interpretation which best fits the evidence is that Hamlet was suffering from an acute depressive illness, with some obsessional features. He could not make a firm resolve to act. In Shakespeare’s time, there was no concept of acute depressive illness, although melancholy was well known” (Shaw 92). Shaw contends that in Shakespeare’s time, there was no understanding of psychology or psychological illness, and since the playwright wrote Hamlet as a tragedy, Shakespeare and his contemporaries would have regarded melancholy as the character defect necessary to classify Hamlet as a revenge tragedy. In Shaw’s words, a Shakespearean tragedy dictates that “…a great man brings himself and others to ruin, because of a defect in his character. With Lear, it was a lack of wisdom, with Othello suspicion, and with Macbeth, it was excessive ambition. Hamlet had melancholic irresolution…”(Shaw 95).
Shaw categorises Hamlet as “…a study of a young man, with a moderately severe acute depressive illness, placed under a severe stress, rather than a tragedy in the strict sense” (Shaw 95). Shaw’s reading of Hamlet’s delay as psychological in nature does not detract from its poetry, and as Shaw points out, the “…tragic hero has qualities we can admire and a defect we can understand, so his fate engages our emotions” (Shaw 95). However, in Hamlet’s case, the so-called defect is not a defect at all. How is fear of death a defect? Hamlet, like any of us, twists against the confines of a fate he had no say in and employs convoluted measures – feigned madness, the play within the play – in order to stay one step ahead of his fate. Hamlet is no more depressed than any other human being who recognizes his own demise and fights to circumvent it with every weapon available to him.
In conclusion, much criticism concentrates on the question, what makes Hamlet delay his revenge on his uncle for an entire play? Various theories abound: it was due to the biblical stipulations governing Shakespeare’s time; Hamlet suffered from psychological disorders such as depression and anxiety; Hamlet struggled with the moral dilemma surrounding the murder. While all of these theories offer new and innovative explanations for Hamlet’s reluctance to commit murder and avenge his father’s death, blood for blood, none point to the true cause – Hamlet’s largely unconscious desire to avoid his own death in any way possible. In Act Three, Scene Two, the Player King laments that “Our wills and fates do so contrary run, That our devices still are overthrown; Our thoughts are ours, their ends none of our own” (Shakespeare 1767).
Herein lies the nugget of Hamlet’s battle. His will, like any human, yearns for freedom, the freedom to live, the freedom to decide his own fate, yet the situation he finds himself thrust into at the start of the play shows him to be a pawn, essentially, to a greater will, that of his father. This births the conflict within him. He understands his duty full well. His father demands revenge, therefore he must provide it. However, his desire for life, freedom, and self-direction, though unconscious, precipitates a protracted period of avoidance techniques, punctuated by self-abasing soliloquies, wherein he delays his duty for as long as can, to keep himself alive. Hamlet, in Shaw’s words, was “…not really a great man…he was a potential” (Shaw 95) His tragic flaw seems to be that he loved life and tried to find a way to stay with it.
Works Cited
Kumamoto, Chikako. “Shakespeare’s Hamlet.” The Explicator 64.4 (2006): 201-204.
Moore, Peter R. “Hamlet and the Two Witness Rule.” Notes and Queries 44.4 (1997): 498-502.
Podrug, Dinko. “Through Hamlet to Narrative Medicine and Neuroscience: Literature as a Basic Science of Psychiatry.” Psychiatric Times 22.7 (2005): 23-26.
Shakespeare, William. “Hamlet, Prince of Denmark.” The Annotated Shakespeare. Ed. A.L. Rowse. New York: Greenwich House, 1988. 1731-1803. Print.
Shaw, A.B. “Depressive Illness Delayed Hamlet’s Revenge.” Medical Humanities 28.2 (2002): 92-96.