Explore Shakespeare's presentation of the character and role of Hamlet, with special reference to the different ways in which audiences may interpret and understand Hamlet's procrastination. Illustrate your points with relevant details from the text.

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Sasha Campbell

‘It is as if Hamlet were pausing not before the deed […] but before action in general (Adolphus William Ward)

Using the above quote as your starting point, explore Shakespeare’s presentation of the character and role of Hamlet, with special reference to the different ways in which audiences may interpret and understand Hamlet’s procrastination. Illustrate your points with relevant details from the text.

The above quotation outlines Hamlet’s hesitation, implying that not only did he hesitate before the actual act of murder but before any act at all. This could be explained by an array of different factors, hindering Hamlet and causing conflict within him. In this essay I am going to discuss what these factors are.

Initially Hamlet is introduced to the audience as a troubled young man, mourning his father and being confronted with his mother hastily marrying his uncle. He is being forced to deal with all this and is in a state of depression, Hamlet says when speaking of his grief over his mother’s hasty marriage to his uncle ‘But break my heart, for I must hold my tongue.’ Meaning that although his heart is breaking, he can’t say or do anything about it. However, his father’s ghost then appears to him and tells him that he was murdered by the very man now married to Hamlet’s mother, his uncle and his father’s brother. He promises the ghost that he will seek revenge as he feels it is his duty as a son to seek justice for his father’s ‘foul and most unnatural murder’. At this point an Elizabethan audience would be shocked by the murder as it is a sin and even more shocked by his agreement to avenge his father’s death, especially the king, who in Elizabethan times would have held divine significance.. On the other hand, a modern audience would be more sympathetic towards Hamlet and his predicament, accepting the murder and thirst for revenge as human nature.

However, it is not in Hamlet’s nature to commit murder and throughout the whole play he has a battle going on inside him causing him to falter before making a decision to act. It is not in Hamlet's heart to act as ``scourge and minister'' and he feels completely overwhelmed, ‘O cursed spite, that ever I was born, to set it right’, showing that he wishes he wasn’t born so he would not have been dealt such a miserable fate, destined to kill or be killed. He has come to the point that he wishes he was never even born, so he wouldn’t have to deal with his dilemma. An Elizabethan audience would have understood his struggle as they were devoutly Christian and murder was considered a sin, they would be suspicious of the ghost and his motives for making Hamlet agreed to further bloodshed. They may have suspected it was en evil being trying to tempt Hamlet to do evil. Hamlet even makes sure that the ghost is telling the truth by staging the whole play to expose his uncle’s guilt ‘The play’s the thing wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king’.

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One of Hamlet’s greatest flaws, which would cause him to hesitate, is that he thinks about things too much, this is shown when he says that ‘thinking too precisely on th' event,- A thought which, quarter'd, hath but one part wisdom
And ever three parts coward,‘ he analyzes and examines every nuance of his situation until he has exhausted every angle. This causes him to be indecisive, and he dallies in his own wit, words are his prison and they control him. He remains painfully aware of all his flaws, and his powerlessness to right the great wrong performed ...

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