Why Does Hamlet Delay?

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Why Does Hamlet Delay?

“Vengeance is mine. I will repay, says the Lord.”

I want to attribute the cause of Hamlet’s procrastination in carrying out the noble mission, top this fantastic theory, which exercised a major influence on the earlier Elizabethan revenge plays beginning from Gorboduc to The Spanish Tragedy. Of course, I do not over simplify the idea to say that Hamlet delays in taking revenge because Fate makes him do so; what I would state is that in Hamlet Shakespeare tried to give a new dimension to the traditional  revenge theme by subjecting it to human consideration, philosophic speculation and ignoring the authority of Providence. It is, I think, the Renaissance, which inspired the playwright to emphasize the human viewpoint by focusing on the greatness of man –

“What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god ……”

But to his disillusionment he found that human endeavor is not enough; man cannot execute revenge to establish justice willingly; it is the business of Providence –

“Ay, heaven will be reveng’d of every ill.”

                [Thomas Kyd: The Spanish Tragedy (III: xiii)]

Shakespeare shows this human failure by picturing Hamlet as a modern man – a man of complex psychology, reflective philosophy and existentialist  apathy. Hamlet is by no means a man of action or a man afraid of violent action; he is not a coward at all. He is a studious philosopher, a sensitive artist and an ardent lover enjoying all the joys of life. But the sudden death of his father devastates his sound mentality. A more violent blow is added to consummate his total mental breakdown when his beloved mother marries, with surprising haste, a man who is far inferior to his father in all respects. The result is the profound melancholia – his total indifference to life, morbid speculations and suicidal thoughts –

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“O that this too too solid flesh would melt,

Thaw and resolve itself into a dew,

Or that the Everlasting had not fix’d

His canon ’gainst self-slaughter. O God! God!

How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable

Seem to me all the uses of this world!”

[First Soliloquy: I: ii]

The melancholia takes possession of the greater part of his mind, which never responds to external stimuli. When, during his interview with the Ghost, he says –

“Haste me to know it, that I with wings as swift

As meditation or the thoughts of love

May sweep my revenge.”

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