“Hamlet”, is an examination of the pain a son suffers when his father is murdered by his uncle. Shakespeare looks in detail, at the nature of procrastination and the torments that Hamlet suffers after his father’s ghost begs of him to revenge. Hamlet is portrayed as a tragic hero; a character more sinned against than sinning. Despite his best efforts to act honourably, he is confused by his mother’s marriage to his uncle, lost as to what action should be taken on the ghosts commands and tormented by his own lack of action.
From Hamlet’s first encounter with the ghost he is confused. Compelled by the idea of injustice he asks of his father’s ghost to impart the murder and murderer so that Hamlet may avenge it.
I v 29 “Haste me to know’t, that I with wings as swift
As meditation or the thoughts of love
May sweep to my revenge”
Interestingly this is before it is revealed to him that the murder was of his father and by his uncle. It is then, out of an almost childhood obedience of his father, a momentary certainty in the divinity of the ghost or a naive belief in some kind of natural justice that he consents thusly. The instant he learns that this revenge would involve killing his uncle, someone Hamlet knows, even if he can’t approve of, he seems surprised. “My Uncle!” It is from this point on that Hamlet displays the procrastination that is to epitomise him.
I v 93 “Hold, hold, hold, my heart
And you, my sinews, grow not instant old,
But bear me stiffly up. Remember thee?”
It is but moments since the ghost’s exit and already Hamlet has to coax himself into feeling any desire to slay his uncle. It is of course, not that he has forgotten the ghost only that the heat of the moment has left him. The magnitude of his shame is characterised by the extent of his oaths.
I v 98 “Yea, from the table of my memory
I’ll wipe away all trivial fond records,
All saws of books, all forms, all pressures past
That youth and observation copied there,
And thy commandment all alone shall live
Within the book and volume of my brain. Yes by heaven!”
This is made instantaneously redundant by his next line of speech. Here Hamlet fixates not on the ghosts command alone but in fact on what had been troubling his own mind before, the withering of his father’s memory.
105 “O most pernicious woman!
O villain, villain smiling damned villain!
At least I am sure it may be so in Denmark”
It is also of note that the speech ends not with another flourish of sparkling declarations of fury and revenge but simply “I have sworn it”. Hamlet is already changing from feeling empowered by rage to feeling bound to kill. The reason for this is elusive. Certainly Hamlet’s focus seems always to be on the injustice, inhumanity and loss in killing; never the desire to kill or the consequences of not doing so. It is this value that Hamlet places on humanity that causes his father’s death to infuriate him but it also feeds his tendency to avoid killing. We see this emphasis on the brilliance of his father and the injustice of his death through out the play and very little evil being related to Claudius himself.
Iv 96 “thou poor ghost”
143 “Much offence too”
171 “A worthy prisoner”
II ii 579 “the son of a dear father murdered”
565 “Upon whose property and most dear life
A damn’d defeat was made.”
When Hamlet says
“Time is out of joint, o cursed spite,
That ever I was born to set it right”
it is almost as recognition of just how difficult the task he has accepted will be and how bound to the value of life he is. Hamlet’s speech to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern reports of a Hamlet that is in awe of the world and men around him. He tells something of the value that he places on a man, and humanity. That all above are christened a “quintessence of dust” reflects on the distress and disenchantment Hamlet is currently suffering. The contrast between “the paragon of animals” and “quintessence of dust” displays the extent to which Hamlet has fallen and the effect that recent occurrences have had on him. Truly he tells of his own distress and not the low value he places on mankind. It is his inability to take joy in these things that is so like the dust. This contrast is also symbolic of his humanism and how that causes him to fall.
In light of this is it is more understandable why such a lengthy soliloquy is dedicated to the players. Hamlet is tormented both by his lack of desire to kill Claudius and by the permanency of his actions. His reasons for inaction are tied to his love of life, his hatred for abuse of it. All of his problems would be solved if he could exist within the bounds of a play, where actions could be preformed without consequence and feelings mustered as required. Hamlet is no coward; it is not the struggle or the action of the killing to which he objects but the permanency of it. Childishly, he wishes to exist within this magical land where one can feel and act with out consequence. Only here can he avenge his father, sooth his guilt and without committing any of the horrors that he is so set against.
II ii 578 “What is Hecuba to him, or he to her,
That he should weep for her? What should he do
Had he the motive and the cue for passion
That I have”
Yet, this seems even less like his initial demand that he “May sweep to my revenge” than his forcing of sinews or reminding himself that he has sworn revenge. Here the change is obvious not implicit, Hamlet admires the player for their ability to force emotions this is quite different from having any desire to kill Claudius.
Hamlet is scrambling to be rid of guilt and is sickened at himself for his inaction. However, being presently unable to compromise on the idea of the sanctity of life or the permanency of death he cannot simply kill. And so it is resolved that he been seen to move things along though, laughably, it has taken him three months to do so. So Hamlet arranges to mimic the death of his father in the hope of stirring the conscience of the King, ironically it is also supposed to sooth his own.
However, in light of the fleeting conviction the players bring, Hamlet does seem to feel that there comes a point when to take life from Claudius would be just. That is not to say that he finds that the ability to brutalise himself easy. Hamlet kills Polonius while full of the certainty that rage provides; the certainty that Claudius killed his father; that he was repenting in church and the certainty that it was Claudius who cried out. But it is with a realisation that sometimes the right thing to do is not always good that Hamlet tells his mother
III iv 155 “For the fatness of these pursy times
Virtue itself of vice must pardon beg”.
This is the heralding of a new view of Hamlet’s, he is no longer guided by a childish misconception of the grace and humility of his great father but now understands that sometimes unpleasant things must be done for the sake of justice or safety or security
This explains 180 “I must be cruel only to be kind”. Moreover, this change is best seen in Hamlet’s soliloquy in IV iv when he comments on Frontinbras’s army. This echoes his earlier speech to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern in terms of considering man’s place in the world. However, where he was “the paragon of animals” this is no longer sufficient for Hamlet.
IV iv 33 “What is a man
If his chief good and market of his time
Be but sleep and feed? A beast, no more.”
Hamlet goes on to admire the army and their ability to fight at will. This smacks of his speech on the actors but is no longer a discussion of the freedom of a fantasy world where actions of everyday life can be emotively acted out without consequence. These are men called upon to fight when it is required of them not after great argument, or emotion as one might be in a play. Hamlet is beginning to accept the requirement for force in law or war and perhaps therefore also revenge.
IV iv 54 “Rightly to be great,
Is not to stir with great argument,
But greatly to find quarrel in a straw
When honour’s at the stake”
With the marrying of these two seemingly opposing speeches by Hamlet the audience perceives that he is reaching a higher understanding and some conclusion is coming. Why it is that he waits until his own death is certified to finally take action is not entirely clear. But perhaps something can be taken from some of his last lines particularly
V ii “I do prophesy th’election lights
On Frontinbras. He is my dying voice”.
It seems that while Hamlet was slowly moving towards an idea that force or death, while not desirable, may be necessary it took his own death before he became fully convinced. Only once he had experienced the injustice himself could he have enough understanding to realise that there were times when life must be taken from someone. Claudius was a tyrant and, had he been stopped before, the death of Hamlet’s mother could have been prevented; perhaps the necessity to act gripped him particularly because of that.
Whatever the case, it is safe to claim that Hamlet’s view on being the avenger was changeable. He began by being empowered by the ghost and the injustice of his father’s murder. However, on realising what it was that he would have to do Hamlet shied away from murderous revenge. He became fascinated with death and its permanencies, he valued life and humans particularly and this is both commendable and condemnable. It gave life to his procrastination and his outrage at his father’s death. This causes the conflict within Hamlet and he suffers greatly from guilt because of it. Having very strong evidence that Claudius killed his father after the play caused Hamlet to fly into a rage. This in turn, led him to conclusions that he could not see his humanism explain or at least it could no longer offer solutions. He then turned to the philosophy of Frontinbras with the final concession that he had to be cruel only to be kind. This leads to the traditional tragic outcome of death. Many of the deaths could have been prevented had Hamlet reached his conclusions quicker. So in many ways, it is the hesitation over how Hamlet feels about revenge that is of greatest importance to the play but both ending and procrastination require of the reader that they examine their own views on the matters of revenge and violent actions.