The first device that Hamlet uses to carry out his revenge is to pretend to be mad. By this pretence he hopes to draw the attention away of the court away from him so that he can watch and follow Claudius to see if he is showing any signs of guilt. He tells Guildenstern of his madness. “I am mad but north-north-west. When the wind is / southerly, I know a hawk from a handsaw.” His stated intention is to gain irrefutable evidence of Claudius’s villainy. He initiates this by visiting Ophelia in a state of undress and handing her a love letter, making Polonius believe that his madness is due to Ophelia’s rejection of him. Hamlet uses his feigned madness to show his true emotions and insult people he doesn’t like: “You are a fishmonger.” A fishmonger in Elizabethan times could have meant pimp, showing that Hamlet thinks that Polonius is using his daughter to gain favour within the court. Hamlet’s feigned madness does affect Claudius: in the first act he delivers long speeches, but by Act 2 he is reduced to short sentences like “We will try it.” This is an action, but it is one that allows him to procrastinate.
When Hamlet is left alone he laments his weakness and inactivity. An actor could weep at the imagined grief of Hecuba, whereas Hamlet fails to respond to the murder of his father: “Tears in his eyes, distraction in his aspect, / A broken voice, and his whole function suiting / forms to his conceit? And all for nothing! / For Hecuba!”
Hamlet’s principles cause him a great deal of self-criticism: “Why what an ass am I! This is most brave, / That I the son of a dear father murder’d, / Prompted to my revenge by heaven and hell, / Must like a whore unpack my heart with words/ And fall a-cursing like a very drab,” He curses his inactivity, showing that, although he is a thinker, he would prefer to be a man of action. At the end of the soliloquy he seems resolved to revenge Claudius, the “Mouse-Trap” play is a form of revenge against Claudius, but again it is not direct revenge, as he is still procrastinating. The fact that he has not confronted Claudius four months after confirmation from the ghost that Claudius is the guilty party shows that he is definitely a thinker.
Hamlet’s soliloquy at the start of Act 3 still shows his overwhelming desire to think, particularly about suicide “To be or not to be”. The fact that he is still has time for soliloquies, and that he is not trying to hunt Claudius down and kill him, shows that he is definitely a thinker.
Hamlet shows a lack of self knowledge as he cannot, as he intended in Act 1 sc 5 “with wings as swift / As meditation or the thoughts of love / May sweep to my revenge.” Instead he broods on his father’s death and even when he gets proof from Claudius’s reaction to the Mouse Trap play, “I’ll take the ghost’s word for a thousand pound.” He hesitates and needs further spurring by the ghost in Act 3 “to whet thy almost blunted purpose.”
Hamlet has the perfect opportunity to kill Claudius in Act 3 sc 3, but again he procrastinates, letting himself think about what will happen to Claudius’ soul “A villain kills my father, and for that I, his sole son, do this same villain send to heaven.” He doesn’t act, because he thinks that Claudius is praying, cleansing his soul. This would send him to heaven, not hell where he belongs. The irony is that Claudius himself has too much on his conscience and cannot pray, ”My words fly up, my thoughts remain below. / Words without thoughts never to heaven go”. Hamlet curses himself in a later soliloquy for his lack of action.
Hamlet’s first action of physical revenge is to stab Polonius behind the arras. This action shows that he can only do something on the spur of the moment. If he’d had time to think about it, he would have found a way around stabbing the person behind the arras, electing instead to procrastinate.
Hamlet meets Fortinbras’ army in Act 4 sc 4, which makes him feel depressed when he compares himself to Fortinbras: the Norwegian Prince is prepared to fight over something of very little value, while he hasn’t yet taken revenge for the murder of his father and the seduction of his mother: “How all occasions do inform against me, / And spur my dull revenge.” Hamlet does what he always does when confronted with a problem; he has a soliloquy. However, this is his last soliloquy, which could suggest that he is done with thinking now, and will finally carry out his revenge. Hamlet shows another decisive action, in dealing with the betrayal of his one-time friends, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern and with Claudius’ attempt to have him killed on his way to England. He replaces his own name with that of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern in the letter, ensuring that they will be killed in his place. He also Boards a pirate ship so that he can return to Denmark, these are all very decisive actions focused to towards revenging his father’s death.
Hamlet’s entrance into Ophelia’s funeral certainly is more action-focussed than his previous actions: “This is I, / Hamlet the Dane.” His fight with Laertes, declaration of his love of Ophelia and his switch from prose to verse show that he is longer talking his self into lying and misleading others. Therefore he is not thinking as much as he is acting.
Hamlet’s next action is to duel with Laertes, not knowing that it has been fixed so that Hamlet will die, but as with most strategies in the play, it does go according to plan: Both Laertes and Hamlet are wounded by the poisoned sword, Gertrude drinks the poisoned wine, and one of Hamlet’s dying acts is to force Claudius to drink the poisoned wine, which he does with relish, enjoying the power he has, and the fact that he is killing the person who killed his father, seduced his mother, taken his thrown and plotted to kill him twice’ “Here thou incestuous, murd’rous, damned Dane, / Drink off this potion. Is thy union here? / Follow my mother.” His action here was done purely, without any thought.
As he dies Hamlet names Fortinbras as his successor to the throne of Denmark. He admires Fortinbras as a man of action, seeing that that is what his country needs to return stability to it, ”I do prophesy th’election lights / On Fortinbras. He has my dying voice.”
The time frame of the play helps to reinforce the impression of time passing. Individuals in the play travel from Denmark to Norway, Poland and England, from the court to the countryside. Contrasting the activity of Laertes and Fortinbras with the prolonged inactivity of Hamlet. As the hero in this tragedy Hamlet doesn’t have one, sole, character flaw that leads to his untimely death. He is a thinker involved in a dilemma that can only be solved successfully by a man of action. His inability to act swiftly and decisively without high motivation in connection with his father’s murder brings havoc to the Danish court, his own death and the death of many others in the court. If he had been a man of action Claudius would have been killed months before.
