Why Does Hamlet Not ‘Sweep To His Revenge’?

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WHY DOES HAMLET NOT ‘SWEEP TO HIS REVENGE’?

In Hamlet, Shakespeare skillfully and cleverly uses characters’, setting, environment, situation, and circumstances to enhance the readers’ reactions and make the plot in the play convincing. The gradual emergence of Hamlet’s characteristics, religious believes and personality traits through his dialogue and soliloquies give us greater insight into this character’s complex and complicated nature and this is essential to understanding why Hamlet did not sweep to his revenge. I will look at how and why the use of these different devices give Hamlet credible, reliable and acceptable reasons for his lack of action and therefore serve to make the play enjoyable and plausible.

Hamlets’ religious believes play a major contributory factor in him not sweeping to his revenge because they restrict any actions that go against his Christianity. In his first soliloquy we find him confused and upset by the death of his father and his mothers hasty marriage, ‘within a month’ to his Uncle Claudius and he wonders whether it would be better to end his life rather than to remain on this ‘weary, stale, flat and unprofitable…world’. He is unable to carry out the act because Gods’ ‘canon ‘gainst self-slaughter’, if he was to commit suicide he would be sinning and would condemn himself to hell. When the ghost first appears before him he instinctively prays to heaven for protection, ‘Angels and ministers of grace defend us!’. This plays an important part in his dilemma on whether to kill Claudius because the act of murder is also a sin and would have the same consequences.

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Hamlet is an intellectual character who reflects and contemplates any important  decisions in great depth before taking them. Every aspect and every eventuality is covered and this produces a delay in any actions.

In his ‘To be or not to be’ soliloquy Hamlet is greatly disturbed by the promise he has made to the ghost and the enormity of the consequences. He questions himself and whether it is better to endure the mental pain and let ‘the mind suffer’, ‘Or to take arms against a sea of troubles’ and so revenge his fathers ...

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