Scribd Logo
Upload

Welcome to Scribd!

  • 60 views

    Delay Hamlet

    Uploaded by

    Muhammad Zain Zafar
    The document discusses various perspectives on the delay of Hamlet carrying out revenge against Claudius from the ghost's instructions. It examines potential external causes like Claudius' protection, and internal causes stemming from Hamlet's character, including his moral dilemma between Christian ethics and fulfilling his father's wishes. However, it argues that the key cause of Hamlet's delay is linked to the larger theme of the play - that in killing Claudius, Hamlet feels he must correct the moral decay in Denmark and the human condition. The delay is therefore an essential part of the complexity Shakespeare endowed the play and character with, and inevitably leads to tragic consequences.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd

    Delay Hamlet

    Uploaded by

    Muhammad Zain Zafar
    60 views2 pages
    The document discusses various perspectives on the delay of Hamlet carrying out revenge against Claudius from the ghost's instructions. It examines potential external causes like Claudius' protection, and internal causes stemming from Hamlet's character, including his moral dilemma between Christian ethics and fulfilling his father's wishes. However, it argues that the key cause of Hamlet's delay is linked to the larger theme of the play - that in killing Claudius, Hamlet feels he must correct the moral decay in Denmark and the human condition. The delay is therefore an essential part of the complexity Shakespeare endowed the play and character with, and inevitably leads to tragic consequences.

    Copyright

    © © All Rights Reserved

    Available Formats

    DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd

    Did you find this document useful?

    Is this content inappropriate?

    The document discusses various perspectives on the delay of Hamlet carrying out revenge against Claudius from the ghost's instructions. It examines potential external causes like Claudius' protection, and internal causes stemming from Hamlet's character, including his moral dilemma between Christian ethics and fulfilling his father's wishes. However, it argues that the key cause of Hamlet's delay is linked to the larger theme of the play - that in killing Claudius, Hamlet feels he must correct the moral decay in Denmark and the human condition. The delay is therefore an essential part of the complexity Shakespeare endowed the play and character with, and inevitably leads to tragic consequences.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    60 views2 pages

    Delay Hamlet

    Uploaded by

    Muhammad Zain Zafar
    The document discusses various perspectives on the delay of Hamlet carrying out revenge against Claudius from the ghost's instructions. It examines potential external causes like Claudius' protection, and internal causes stemming from Hamlet's character, including his moral dilemma between Christian ethics and fulfilling his father's wishes. However, it argues that the key cause of Hamlet's delay is linked to the larger theme of the play - that in killing Claudius, Hamlet feels he must correct the moral decay in Denmark and the human condition. The delay is therefore an essential part of the complexity Shakespeare endowed the play and character with, and inevitably leads to tragic consequences.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    of 2

    Hamlet has been a source of endless speculation to critics and readers and the main

    interest has been almost exactly fixed on the problem of delay. Why does Hamlet delay
    carrying out the task entrusted to him by the Ghost? Stoll is of the opinion that if at all
    there is any delay, it is Shakespeare’s, not Hamlet’s, for he believes if Hamlet had killed
    Claudius at once there would have been no play at all. Bradley strongly objects to this
    opinion and says, ‘certainly there is delay. Two months elapse and Claudius still lives’. Even
    the critics, who agree that there is delay, disagree about the causes of delay. Both external
    and internal causes account for Hamlet’s delay.

    External Causes

    The external causes of Hamlet’s delay are physical difficulties in situation. Claudius is
    not a weak king. He is a shrewd man who does everything to protect his life from
    unforeseen attacks. He is not only surrounded by courtiers but also strongly protected by
    Swiss body-guards. Hence Hamlet would find it difficult to meet his enemy alone. Also he
    does not in the beginning have any strong proof of Claudius’ guilt except the Ghost’s story.
    With this he cannot hope to win the people’s help in deposing the king.

    However, these external difficulties are not major hindrances. Hamlet himself does
    not speak as if there were external difficulties in the way of killing Claudius. In act III, scene
    III, when he sees Claudius at prayer, he postpones the idea of killing saying that he will kill
    him, ‘when he is drunk asleep, or in his rage’.

    Shakespeare shows Laertes easily raising the people against Claudius. If Laertes
    could do that, Hamlet, as a popular prince, could more easily have raised the people against
    Claudius. Hence the external difficulties do not account much for this delay.

    Internal Causes

    Internal causes which make Hamlet delay his action are within his own character.
    Most of the time he is torn between Christian scruples and the obedience to fulfill his
    father’s desire. In his soliloquies he wishes to commit suicide, ‘To be or not to be, that is the
    question’.

    But he puts aside this thought on the ground of Christian ethics that committing
    suicide is a sin. We notice, however, that Hamlet hesitates to kill Claudius not on the ground
    of Christian spirit but because of a most revengeful thought that his soul should go to hell
    straight and not to heaven. In addition he feels no remorse at the deaths of Polonius,
    Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. So this theory also does not account for his delay.

    Some feel that the cause of his delay is irresolution, which is due to an excess of
    thinking and reflection. The energy that should have gone out as an action is spent in the
    process of cogitation.                     

    Delay Related To Theme And Subject

    Hamlet is a procrastinator. Faced with the imperative act of bloody revenge, his
    intellect, his philosophical bent, his morality and his own emotional instability, it is
    impossible for him to act swiftly and decisively. He has to be sure of Claudius’ guilt. When
    everyone at court is pretending to be what they are not, it is difficult to distinguish between
    appearance and reality, and this inhibits action.
    If however we analyze the action of Hamlet, we find the cause of delay linked to the
    theme of the play. Hamlet is not merely concerned with Killing of his father’s murderer. In
    doing so he feels he must set right the decay in the world around him and in the heart of
    man.              

    The time is out of joint, O cursed spite,


    That ever I was born to set it right.

    Shakespeare has endowed Hamlet and the action of the play with a complexity in the
    context of which the delay is understandable and inevitably has tragic consequences.

    You might also like