"The rest is silence": An analysis of revenge in Hamlet

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"The rest is silence": An analysis of revenge in Hamlet

Towards the close of act one, Hamlet has just concluded his conversation with his father's spirit. As he embarks on a quest to exact retribution, surfacing complications of the task trigger his doubts about revenge, which leads him to wonder whether or not the appeasement of familial honor is truly worth the tribulations that he will experience during life and perhaps after it. In Hamlet, emphasis on the symbolic contemplations of the protagonist serves to accentuate the fundamental theme of revenge, as Shakespeare explores a "victim's desire to get back at his victimizer" (Eisenstat 1).

In spite of his vow to carry out a swift punishment, Hamlet has revealed little if any initiative to execute the task set before him. On the contrary, he questions the very act of revenge itself. By differentiating himself from the actors and the fervor they express in their performance(s), Hamlet cannot answer for his own inability to instigate revenge. He is, in short, hesitant in performing the task set by his father's ghost. and reprimands himself for being too indecisive and superfluously thoughtful on the subject:

Why, what