SHUAIB ASGHAR
DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH
GOVT. RAZVIA ISLAMIA COLLEGE
GOVT. RAZVIA ISLAMIA COLLEGE
HAROONABAD, PAKISTAN
Hamlet has been a source of endless
speculation to critics and readers and the main interest has been almost
exactly fixed on the problem of delay. Why does Hamlet delay carrying out the
task entrusted to him by the Ghost? Stoll is of the opinion that if at all
there is any delay, it is Shakespeare’s, not Hamlet’s, for he believes if
Hamlet had killed Claudius at once there would have been no play at all.
Bradley strongly objects to this opinion and says, ‘certainly there is delay. Two months elapse and Claudius still lives’.
Even the critics, who agree that there is 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 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. 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 action are within his own character. Most of the time he is torn
between Christian scruples and the 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.
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.
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