A research on Hamlet:"Hamlet's inability to act
tnguyen2711 11.09.2009 11:54:08 (permalink)
Hamlet’s  inability to act

The Tragedy of Hamlet Prince of Denmark is a revenge play, but it is more complicated than many other revenge stories in which the heroes actively seeking and planning for revenge, following is the bloody battle between the heroes and their enemies which end up in the heroes’ triumph. The degree of complication in Hamlet play lays on its hero’s characteristics, its puzzles about Hamlet’s madness, Ophelia’s chastity, and the Ghost, its extended themes beyond revenge to justice, moral values, corruptions, abusing of powers, spy, death, supernatural power and divinity fate. What makes Hamlet distinctive from other revenge plays is Hamlet’s inability to act: his delay on revenge. This revenge play is more about the battle within Hamlet himself rather than the battle between Hamlet and Claudius. Hamlet’s inability to act costs six lives: Polonius, Ophelia, Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, Gertrude, and Laertes before he completes his revenge by killing Claudius. His delay on action, therefore, is one of the biggest puzzles of the play and is an important key in understanding Hamlet and his tragedy. To solve this puzzle, first we need to look at the ethical dilemma of revenge in Elizabeth time to understand the principles behind revenge in the play, then we will consider factors that possibly affect Hamlet’s ability to take decisive action such as his ability of thinking and reasoning, his conscience, and his fear of losing his soul and going to hell.
Understanding the ethical dilemma of revenge in Elizabeth time could help us understand the revenge of Hamlet and his struggle to act could be a result of his ethical dilemma of revenge. According to Eleanor Prosser in the book Hamlet and Revenge, in the process of revenge, “the wise man will first delay. Then he will process slowly, without anger, to take whatever steps justice demand” (Prosser 10). We don’t know how much Shakespeare take this attitude in to the play and in constructing Hamlet and his revenge, but this fall nicely in the case of Hamlet. He does take the process slowly, not without anger but with struggles and conflicts within his own intellectual mind. The true justice demand that they suggest is not to punish the sin but to save the sin and help the sinner to repent and amend his life (Prosser 11). The reason for that kind of justice is because people of that time have much hostile attitude against revenge. For them, “no matter how righteous a man might think his motives, the act of revenge would inevitably make him as evil as his injurer in God”, and “a revenge may honestly think he seeks justice, but the nature of revenge make justice impossible” (Prosser 7). Therefore, once Hamlet decides to revenge he goes against conscience, justices, the law of God and nature and therefore, accepts to have his soul injured and be punished for his actions.
These principles together with Hamlet’s personality and characteristics explain well Hamlet’s delay of action and his own tragedy, but before applying these principles into the text let look at Hamlet as a person first. The play doesn’t tell us much about Hamlet’s appearances and his personality. All what we know about him are through other characters, through his words, his behaviors, and through his soliloquy which tell us about his minds and struggle. Ophelia is one of the few that tell us a little about Hamlet: “O, what a noble mind is here overthrown! The courtier’s, soldier’s, scholar’s, eye, tongue, sword, th’expectancy and rose of the fair state, the glass of fashion and the mold of form, th’observed of all observer, quite, quite down!” (3.1.163-168). His noble mind is listed first above all other criteria which suggest the most admirable and distinctive character of Hamlet is his mind. Through his conversation to other and his soliloquy, we absolutely agree that he has a great intellectual and philosophic mind. Second, he is a shape and tough guy who has the courtier’s eye, the soldier’s sword, and the scholar’s tongue. The way he see people around him is sophisticated and complicated, he talks scholarly and has the skills to mock people or to reveal the truth out of them, and he is also strong and skillful with the sword. With all of these skills, he is a master observer; he observed even the ones that are supposed to observe him; it is not them who are observe him but it is him who observe them and take the information out of them. Through the lines we also know that he is an attractive man, “the mold of form”, who has proper behavior, “glass of fashion”, and are generally liked by others, by the people of the country “the rose of the fare state”.
In those characteristics, his mind and intellectual thinking are the most important factors to consider in the task of explaining his inability to act, but his other characteristics are also worth to mention because through this we can see how revenge destroys him. From a noble, proper, and well controlled man to become a mad man whose “doublet all unbraced”, who has “no hat upon his head”, and whose “stocking fouled” (2.1.88-89); his behaviors are weird and improper to an noble. We could argue that his madness is pretended, but we cannot deny that his behaviors are gradually out of control, from his unnecessary scornful and hateful speeches to insult and torture to Ophelia to his murder of Polonius. We would fear that his soul will be punished and destroyed by his revenge and that since “he violates the law of God and nature”, he “will suffer the same physical, metal, and spiritual penalties as the private revenger” (Process 10). Now, we should return to his mind to continue our further analyzes about his delay of action.
Louis B. Wright and Virginia A. Lamar in the book Reading on Hamlet are ones among many who agree that the main reason for Hamlet’s inability to take decisive is because he is “a man who think before he acts”( Wright and Lamar 61). Robert B. Bennett in the article “Hamlet and the Burden of knowledge” also states that “his scholarly training and aptitude comprises the burden of knowledge which inflicts upon Hamlet the torment of uncertainty and delay” (Bennett 78). Hamlet is a highly educated man who is trained in the University of Wittenberg. Being trained in a university, Hamlet could have developed his critical and philosophic thinking there. A man of thinking would not allow himself to act impulsively but rather look at the problem in various ways and analyzes it. Therefore, “though he may slow to make a decision, that decision will be based on reason” (Wright and LaMar 62).
Although these arguments based mostly on assumptions, evidences from the text prove that Hamlet’s slow of action indeed is a result of his reasoning and thinking. Hamlet himself is well aware that once he takes the revenge he has to give up his knowledge as well as his ability to think and reason: “Yea, from the table of my memories I’ll wipe away all trivial, fond records, all saws of books, all form all pressures past, that youth and observation copies there, and thy commandment all alone shall live within the book and volume of my brain, unmixed with baser matter” (1.5.105-111). However, we see several problems here. Although he promises to wipe all his knowledge, experiences, and observations of a scholar in order to keep his father revenge alone in his brain, he has to keep it “unmixed with baser matter”. We hear here a voice of reluctance and of struggle. Second, what is the baser matter; it could be his philosophic roots of life or “his problem” of deep thinking and reasoning which could prevent him to act decisive and impulsive. Third, how long will it take to wipe out his knowledge and scholar and give the whole place for his revenge? We don‘t really know, but we know that the process take quite long and not until when he dispatched to England that he could declare “O, from this time forth, my thoughts be bloody or be nothing” (4.5.69). This could be the point when he sets aside all of his reasons and let alone his call for action. It makes sense because from this time on we don’t here any speeches expresses his struggles to act or his feelings; the rest of the play goes on pretty fast with his killings of Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, Laertes, and Gertrude.
If indeed Hamlet’s inability to act is because of his ability to reason, then we need to know what in his thinking that could defer his will for action. Although the play doesn’t explicitly say so, conscience is the biggest factor that delays him to act. The most obvious evidence to support this is Hamlet’s claim “Thus conscience does make cowards of us all” (3.1.91). The text interprets conscience as knowledge or consciousness, which could make sense in several ways. It could be the knowledge about the death or his consciousness of the uncertainty after death that stops him to suicide, but it could also be the knowledge or consciousness that murder is wrong and immoral that defers him to act decisively. If the second case is true, then we could go one more step further and define conscience by its traditional meaning as the moral obligation to do the right thing. It is true that the meaning of “conscience” in this soliloquy is widely accepted as consciousness rather than and “knowledge of right and wrong”, and carelessly applying this meaning to it could possibly misinterprets the text. However, Catherine Belsey in the article “The Case of Hamlet’s Conscience” also rejects the meaning of conscience in the soliloquy as consciousness, self-consciousness, or reflected as they generally accepted but as the “knowledge of right and wrong”. She argues that “There appears nothing in the line themselves, however, to suggest this reading of the word. The appearance meaning of the text is fairly straight forward: the moral sense inhibits action by generating fear of the consequences. The word “conscience” occurs several times in the rest of the play where it seems to need no gloss, and it refers consistently to the faculty which disguises between good and evil” (Belsey 127). For the purpose of interpretation, I will apply the meaning of “conscience” as “the sense of right and wrong and moral obligation to thing the right thing” to this particular line in this to be or not to be soliloquy and to the rest of my easy.
More persuadable evidences about Hamlet’s moral struggles and conscience consciousness that delay him from action comes from his speech after he set up the Mouse Trap play that successfully discover the King’s guilt and is called by Polonius to meet his mother. Here, he claims that “Tis now the very witching time of night when churchyards yawn and hell itself breathe out contagion to this world. Now I could drink hot blood and do such bitter business as the day would quake to look on” (3.2.419-425). We cannot find any other reasonable reasons rather than conscience or possibly justice that could explain why he has to wait until night to “drink hot blood” and to “do bitter business”, or on the other word to take decisive and quick action to revenge. The night is the “witching time”, the time when “churchyard” which represents conscience or moral obligation yawns and goes to bed to give the place for hell to do its evil. It is the time for people to take their crimes because darkness releases devils inside people, blinding their consciences and encourage them to do their crimes. Hamlet might feel safer at night to take because of its devilish environment give him guard against his conscience. However, he still cannot finish the job because the conscience is still in him, and once it is still in him, he cannot take his revenge: the murder- the crime that goes against the moral standards of all time.
It is not conscience alone but the knowledge of conscience lead to the fear of the consequences if Hamlet goes against his conscience and takes the action to revenge. Referred back to Prosser’s principle on the Elizabeth attitudes toward revenge, if indeed Shakespeare applies these attitudes to the play and to the thinking process of Hamlet, Hamlet could have well aware that revenge is immoral, injustice, and could injured his soul. People are restrained to do the wrong thing because they fear of the consequences of it. If they commit the sin, their soul will be polluted, and it is very possible that they could go to hell. Hamlet’s question about death and what will happen to him after death in the “To be or not to be” soliloquy could be a result of this fear. We cannot find any evidences in the soliloquy for this hypothesis, but several places in the play mentions Hamlet’s concern about his place between heaven and hell. He claimed that “That I, the son of a dear father murdered, prompted to my revenge by heaven and hell” (2.2.612-613). Here, he clearly ties his intention to revenge with his struggle between heaven and hell. Heaven and hell in this case could be interpreted as good and evils. That is, he is experiencing a moral struggle between good and evil, between not to kill or to kill Claudius. Killing Claudius will complete his obligation to revenge for his father, but it will lead him to hell. On the other hand, he can go to heaven and save his soul but then he obligates his father’s revenge and betray his oath. He cannot betray his father and forget his duties and obligations and go to heaven, but to a noble prince, a scholar, and an intelligent, excellent, and prefect person as Hamlet who deserves the best of the world, going to hell is the biggest punishment. Another evidence is the line “What should such fellow as I do crawling between earth and heaven?” (3.1.138-139). This line is similar to the line on act two. Until this time, he still struggles between taking the action or not, and it is also the struggle of going to heaven or go to hell and saving his soul or losing it. The last evidence and also the strongest evidence supporting this argument is Hamlet’s delay to kill Claudius when he is praying because doing so will sent Claudius to heaven. If Hamlet don’t care or deeply concern about going to heaven or not, why has he delay the action just because he want to send Claudius to hell. Simply kill Claudius for most people is enough for revenge, but to a philosopher as Hamlet, it is not enough. It is not enough because sending someone to heaven is giving them privileges, not punishing them, and a devil as Claudius is belonging to the place of devil, the hell, where he will get his deserving punishments. More importantly, Hamlet himself also admits that one way to send some one to hell is to pollute their souls. By waiting for Claudius to commit his sins, “his sin may be as damned as black as hell, whereto it goes” (3.4.99). At the same time, Hamlet would well understand that once his soul is polluted by murdering Claudius, hell is where he goes.

Now it is time to take everything together. Hamlet’s inability to act is because he is a “man who thinks before he acts“. A person of reasoning always analyses the problem carefully before taking a decision. Hamlet is a highly reasoned person who can only take the revenge when his reason is lost. Secondly, in his reasoning, several factors defer him to take action which including his consciences and his fear of injuring his soul and go to hell. Then, there still be one puzzle last to solve: we know the point when Hamlet decide to take decisive action when he declares “My thought will be bloody or be nothing” (4.5.69) when he is dispatched to London; then, what makes this turn? What motivates him to take the risk to go to hell? Does he lose his reason, his conscience, and his soul? Remember that, this occurs after he kills Polonius. From the point that he kills Polonius, there is nothing that could hold him back from revenge. His conscience? He has lost his conscience; he has killed an innocent person, and God knows, once he steps to the crime there is no way to come back. The moment that he kills Polonius is the moment that he go to hell, the moment that his soul is injured and polluted, and the moment that heaven completely closes its gate to him. A lot of people citizen Hamlet as having no sympathy feelings over the death of innocents who die directly or indirectly because of him, but what a soulless man can feel for his victims? He is the one who need more sympathy than them. He has lost everything, his father, his mother, his kingdom, his conscience, and his soul. Such a man as Hamlet who gets all of the best things in the world: position of a prince-heritance to the king, a future head of the state; ability to think critically and reasonably; noble and intellectual mind; good appearance; ability to sophisticatedly observes the world and people around him; ability to control others: to persuade them, to threaten them, and to take information out of them now has been destroyed completely by revenge. Could he have not taken revenge but to forgive Claudius and help to cure his sinful soul, Hamlet could have lost nothing, he could gain back his kingdom and able to us his admirable intelligence and skills to cure the corrupted Demark, and then there would be no tragedy of Hamlet, the prince of Denmark.
 
 
 
 

Worked Cited

Belsey, Catherine. “The Case of Hamlet Conscience”. Studies in Philosophy 76.2 (1979): 127-149.

Bennett, Robert B. “Hamlet and the Burden of Knowledge” Shakespeare Studies 15 (1982): 77-98.

Prosser, Eleanor. Hamlet and Revenge. Stand Ford, California: Stanford University Press, 1967.
Shakespeare, William. “The Tragedy of Hamlet Prince of Denmark”. New York: Washington Square Press, 1995.

Readings on Hamlet.
California: Greenhaven Press, Inc, 1999.




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