The problem of Delay in Hamlet

The problem of Delay in Hamlet

Introduction

Hamlet is William Shakespeare’s longest piece of work. It was written more than 400 years ago, but nevertheless, it seems to stay up to date, when we consider that it is still read by many people. It may be a strongly critiqued play by William Shakespeare, but many people even consider it Shakespeare’s best work.

Bradley strongly objects to this opinion and says, ‘certainly there is a delay. Two months elapse and Claudius still lives’.

Hamlet, a tragic story of murder, betrayal and (delayed?) revenge: Young Prince Hamlet comes home from his studies abroad and finds his father dead, his mother remarried to his uncle and his uncle on the throne of Denmark. Hereupon the ghost of his deceased father appears and tells Hamlet about the circumstances of his death. He tells Hamlet that his uncle killed him in cold blood to get the throne and commands Hamlet to take revenge on the evildoer.

Even the critics, who agree that there is a delay, disagree about the causes of delay. Both external and internal causes account for Hamlet’s delay.

External Causes

The external causes of Hamlet’s delay are physical difficulties in the situation. Claudius is not a weak king. He is a shrewd man who does everything to protect his life from unforeseen attacks. He is not only surrounded by courtiers but also strongly protected by Swiss body-guards. Hence Hamlet would find it difficult to meet his enemy alone. Also, he does not, in the beginning, have any strong proof of Claudius’ guilt except the Ghost’s story.

 'Unhand me, gentlemen!By heaven, I'll make a ghost of him that lets me!'

With this he cannot hope to win the people’s help in deposing the king.

However, these external difficulties are not major hindrances. Hamlet himself does not speak as if there were external difficulties in the way of killing Claudius. In act III, scene III, when he sees Claudius at prayer, he postpones the idea of killing saying that he will kill him, ‘when he is drunk asleep, or in his rage’.

Shakespeare shows Laertes easily raising the people against Claudius. If Laertes could do that, Hamlet, as a popular prince, could more easily have raised the people against Claudius. Hence the external difficulties do not account much for this delay.

Internal Causes

Internal causes which make Hamlet delay his actions are within his own character. Most of the time he is torn between Christian scruples and obedience to fulfill his father’s desire. In his soliloquies he wishes to commit suicide, ‘To be or not to be, that is the question’.

But he puts aside this thought on the ground of Christian ethics that committing suicide is a sin. We notice, however, that Hamlet hesitates to kill Claudius not on the ground of Christian spirit but because of a most revengeful thought that his soul should go to hell straight and not to heaven. In addition, he feels no remorse at the deaths of Polonius, Rosencrantz, and Guildenstern. So, this theory also does not account for his delay.

      How all occasions do inform against me
      And spur my dull revenge

Some feel that the cause of his delay is irresolution, which is due to an excess of thinking and reflection. The energy that should have gone out as an action is spent in the process of cogitation.

Delay Related to Theme and Subject

Hamlet is a procrastinator. Faced with the imperative act of bloody revenge, his intellect, his philosophical bent, his morality, and his own emotional instability, it is impossible for him to act swiftly and decisively. He has to be sure of Claudius’ guilt. When everyone at court is pretending to be what they are not, it is difficult to distinguish between appearance and reality, and this inhibits action.

If, however we analyze the action of Hamlet, we find the cause of delay linked to the theme of the play. Hamlet is not merely concerned with Killing of his father’s murderer. In doing so he feels he must set right the decay in the world around him and in the heart of man.

The time is out of joint, O cursed spite,That ever I was born to set it right.

Shakespeare has endowed Hamlet and the action of the play with a complexity in the context of which the delay is understandable and inevitably has tragic consequences.

CHARACTERISTICS OF HAMLET DELAY

1.     The first issue for Hamlet, when it comes to the matter of his delay, is the antic disposition which he showcases throughout the play.

2.     Over the course of the play, it becomes very obvious that Hamlet is a character who acts on impulse.

3.     If Hamlet’s distracted mind begins to wander, he is unable to think. He demonstrates this through the famous soliloquy used in Scene 1 of Act 3. Hamlet says, “Thus conscience does make cowards of us all, and thus the native hue of resolution is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought”.

4.     Hamlet shows a refusal to listen to any real form of authority throughout the course of the play.

5.     The fact that Hamlet does not listen to the ghost says a great deal about his procrastination.

6.     Throughout the play, Hamlet shows delays and an inability to complete tasks.

7.     Hamlet’s antic disposition and erratic behavior proves he is a naturally distracted person who would not be able to carry out a task very easily.

8.     The final characteristic that leads to Hamlet’s delay is his self-centered attitude.

CRITICS VIEWS

John Holloway says:“Hamlet’s soliloquies are foremost in bringing the idea of his delay to our notice.”Goethe suggests that “Hamlet is called upon to do what is impossible, not impossible in itself but impossible to him.”German critic Hannar and American critic Stoil“Explains this matter in a very simple way by saying that if Hamlet had killed the king, the story would have ended somewhere in Act-2.”German critic Werder remarks that
“Hamlet is intelligent and passive.”

Conclusion

The safest answer then to the question of Hamlet’s delay is that there is no single answer!  There are, as Alfred Harbage has argued, ‘many answers, or combinations of answers, with each member and each combination susceptible to innumerable degrees of emphasis.  The possible range of variation of response is therefore unlimited.  It is useless to debate the extent to which all this was a matter of conscious calculation with Shakespeare’ (Alfred Harbage, As They Liked It).  Many plausible explanations for Hamlet’s actions and lack of action are suggested or implied in the text, but there is no final commitment to any of them.  Single explanations of the delay are based on carefully chosen parts of the available evidence.