“I like him not, nor stands it safe with us
To let his madness range”
This shows the culmination of Claudius’ hatred for Hamlet, as he intends that this trip will result in Hamlet’s death in England.
The turning point really happens in this scene when Claudius prays, asking for forgiveness for his fratricide:
“O my offence is rank, it smells to heaven;
It hath the primal eldest curse upon’t –
A brother’s murder”
Saying this, he kneels to pray, and, when Hamlet comes across him on his way to Gertrude’s chambers, he is entirely defenceless, absorbed in prayer.
This is the best opportunity that Hamlet will ever have to kill Claudius. He has ascertained his guilt; Claudius is unprotected; and, essentially, Claudius knows that Hamlet knows, so Hamlet must kill Claudius as soon as he can to avoid being killed himself. At first, it seems that Hamlet will do it: he says
“Now might I do it pat, now he is a-praying;
And now I’ll do’t; and so he goes to heaven,
And so I am revenged”
Then, however, his tragic flaw strikes, in the turning point of the whole play. Having said that he will kill Claudius now, Hamlet then says:
“That would be scanned”
By thinking about what he is going to do, he loses his impetus and cannot follow through with the act of killing Claudius. He reasons that it would not be fair to his father, who was killed without confessing his sins, to kill Claudius in the holy act of prayer, and decides to leave his revenge until Claudius is:
“about some act
Which has no prospect of salvation in’t”
After he says this, he continues on his way to see his mother.
When he leaves, Claudius finishes his prayer and says, ironically:
“My words fly up, my thoughts remain below
Words without thoughts never to heaven go”
In other words, Claudius’ prayer was not heartfelt and sincere. If Hamlet had killed him, he would not have gone straight to heaven, cleansed of all sins, because his sins had not been absolved.
But why did Hamlet have to exact revenge in the first place, if his father died while he was in Wittenberg? Well, when he arrived in Denmark after his father died, his father’s ghost appeared to him, and commanded Hamlet to take revenge on Claudius for him. Even in his initially passionate response, the imbalance of passion and reason which prevent him from killing Claudius in the prayer scene are evident:
“Haste me to know’t, that I, with wings as swift
As meditation or the thoughts of love,
May sweep to my revenge.”
These sentiments, while passionate, present a contradiction: meditation and thoughts of love are normally slow, and subconsciously show Hamlet’s tragic flaw.
After this scene, with the balance of fate now tipped against Hamlet, he is indeed sent to England by Claudius, ostensibly to collect tribute from the English king. He manages, however, to find out about the plot to kill him, and escapes on a pirate ship back to Denmark. Over the course of the play, he has discovered more about his own tragic flaw, and says to his friend Horatio: ←emphasise BEFORE “Mousetrap”
“And blest are those
Whose blood and judgement are so well co-mingled
That they are not a pipe for Fortune’s finger,
To sound what stop she please.”
Even though he has realised that he needs to balance his personality more, he still takes no further action to kill Claudius, but eventually merely reacts passively to Claudius’ second plot to kill him. ← emphasise AFTER return from “deathtrip”
Claudius, after the failure of his initial plan, enlists the help of Laertes, who challenges Hamlet to a fencing match. Hamlet’s death is assured: either the poisoned tip of Laertes’ sword will kill him, or the poisoned pearl that Claudius intends to put in Hamlet’s drink. Both Hamlet and Horatio, when they hear of the proposed bout, feel uneasy, but Hamlet seems fatalistic, saying:
“If it be now, ‘tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come: the readiness is all”
The duel ends in disaster, with everyone dying except Horatio.
If Hamlet had simply killed Claudius during the “Prayer Scene”, none of this violence would have occurred, and he would have successfully exacted revenge for his father. Instead, his tragic flaw let him down, and leaves the lingering question: is an act of revenge that killed everyone that Old Hamlet loved an act of revenge that he really wanted his son to take? And, after everything, was Hamlet’s revenge really successful?
Word Count: 901 words
Time Taken: 50 minutes for plan, essay, and checking that the quotations were correct
Help: Checked that quotations are correct
19/25 (Category II; A)
Good amount of analysis; accurate & good quotations; fluently written; good discursive essay on the text
More explicit reference to Hamlet’s tragic conflict needed in order to fully show understanding of why Hamlet fails to act in the prayer scene
