When reading Homer’s Iliad, one of the most important parts of the plot has to do with waiting for Achilles to decide whether or not he will enter the fray on the side of the Achaians. Agamemnon had angered Achilles before the war had even begun, by taking Achilles’ mistress Briseis from him. Agamemnon had had to surrender his own mistress (Khriseis) in order to undo a curse from Apollo, and he had demanded Achilles’ in return. When the Achaians arrive near Troy, while the rest of the warriors headed for the city, Achilles waited in his tent; all the while, the Trojans appeared to be headed to victory. It was not until Achilles’ young friend Patroclus puts on Achilles’ armor and is slain in battle that Achilles rouses himself and heads into battle. The suspense in this story, though, is perhaps the dominant conflict during the first half of the epic. During Shakespeare’s Hamlet, the driving force behind the plot has to do with the audience wondering when Hamlet will take revenge on his uncle for having murdered his father – and then married his mother. He receives his errand quite early in the story, when his father’s ghost visits him, and he tries, throughout the play, to carry out the revenge. Each time he tries to undertake the revenge, some new objection comes up in his mind, and so it takes him a great deal of time to actually commit to doing it. He would come up with any excuse he could think of for not doing it and cling to that excuse with tenacity. It seems that he would rather the opportunity come to him accidentally than have to plan it out himself, and so he spends a great deal of time waiting for karma or fate to push Claudius in his direction so that the deed can happen. At the same time, he is angry at himself for failing to have taken care of this deed.
Ironically, Claudius is pushed in Hamlet’s direction, leaving Hamlet with the easiest opportunity imaginable to slay the murderer. Hamlet finds Claudius in his closet, praying, but he will not kill him, because Claudius would likely have found absolution from his prayers – and so would go to heaven right after having been slain. Hamlet decides to wait until Claudius has committed an act of lust or other sin, because then his soul will not be clean and will be more likely to end up in eternal hell. This is just a sign, of course, that Hamlet has not finished thinking about the deed, as one can tell from all of the hemming and hawing that Hamlet does during this scene. Would it be actual justice, Hamlet wonders, if Claudius does not know that death is coming? Is it just to strike one’s victim from the rear?
There are those who have written that this is excessively hateful on Hamlet’s part. However, this is not necessarily the case, and it may be giving Hamlet too much credit. There is nothing in Hamlet’s speech at this point to suggest that he is earnest in his desire to send Claudius to the nether regions for eternity. Rather, it sounds like the dissembling of someone who wants to wait, much more like J. Alfred Prufrock rather than the devil himself, awaiting Claudius much like the dark figure who claimed Young Goodman Brown’s soul. Compare his trepidation with killing Claudius, for example, with the swiftness with which he ran through Laertes with his sword. Not having time to think made Hamlet a skillful man of action. He realizes that Laertes wants to kill him; the response is instinctive rather than introspective, and it does not take long before Laertes and Claudius are dead. The same is true when Hamlet kills Polonius; thinking that Claudius was behind the curtain, listening to Hamlet’s conversation with Gertrude, Hamlet jumps to the curtain and runs his sword through it. The fact that Hamlet ends up killing the wrong man leads to further hesitation on his part; however, at the time when action is called for, he is able to do it, and does it quickly.
Of course, it is worth noting all of the other factors that would have come into play had Hamlet been precipitous in his killing of Claudius. The Danish nobles had already chosen Claudius to take the reigns of the country, instead of choosing the young Hamlet to take his father’s throne, as one might expect to happen in a monarchy. This can be taken as a sign that there was already some doubt as to the young Hamlet’s suitability to rule the country. The cruel way with which Hamlet handles Ophelia shows that he is not the innocent victim in this situation; he appears to be handling matters of sex and the heart as callously as his uncle before him.
For people who want their stories to bring poetic justice, Hamlet is highly unsatisfactory. Hamlet had his father taken from him and watched his mother give herself to his uncle; by all rights, Claudius should have been killed while the others in the play survived. Instead, Polonius, Ophelia, and Laertes all die – and none of them were involved in the murder of the elder Hamlet in any way. Young Hamlet also dies, but he is not quite so innocent as the first three. It is true that he was carrying out revenge for his father’s death, but had he not been so hesitant to take action, he might not have been so ruthless toward Ophelia (had he approached the task of revenge with the efficiency that he used to take Ophelia’s virginity and damage her emotionally, the story would have been completely different), and he would already have known that Claudius was dead, instead of having to run a mysterious man through behind a curtain. Laertes would not have been lured into doing Claudius’ dirty work, and the whole family would have remained alive. Hamlet’s amorality combines with his hesitancy to make a gigantic mess out of the whole situation – and to kill a family. Claudius does die, as he should, but far too many others go with him. Even Hamlet’s mother, Gertrude, dies, because Claudius would rather the poison go undetected than save his wife from death. The authentic part of the story of Hamlet, though, comes from the fact that poetic justice almost never manifests itself in real life either; the final judgments that we make are often far too messy for anyone to consider them fair or just at all.
Annotated Bibliography
Crawford, Alexander W. “Hamlet’s Relationship with the Ghost.” In Hamlet, an ideal prince, and other essays in Shakespearean interpretation: Hamlet; Merchant of Venice; Othello; King Lear. Boston R.G. Badger, 1916. Shakespeare Online. 20 Aug. 2009. http://www.shakespeare-online.com/plays/hamlet/hamletandghost.html
This article focuses on the relationship between Hamlet and the ghost of his father, who starts the whole story in motion by ordering his son to kill his uncle. However, at first, Hamlet is a little bit skeptical about the mission at hand. After all, ghosts were extremely unlikely manifestations in the first place, and it is not likely at all that Hamlet really saw the ghost – at least from the viewpoint of rationalism. Also, no one wanted to believe evil about King Claudius, especially soon after his coronation. This is part of the impulse to think good about one’s rulers (an impulse that is not, obviously, as strong in our own time as it was then). Also, it is difficult to prove a ghost’s existence, particularly on a cloudy and foggy night. Hamlet has significant doubts about whether or not Horatio and the others have actually seen it. However, as time goes by, Hamlet finally receives a personal visitation from the ghost and, just as St. Thomas finally believed when the risen Christ appeared to him and allowed him to touch him, Hamlet ultimately believes in the ghost’s reality, and in what the ghost has told him.
Dawson, George. Shakespeare and other lectures. George St. Clair, ed. London: K. Paul, 1888. Shakespeare Online. 2 Aug. 2011. http://www.shakespeare- online.com/plays/hamlet/hamletdelay.html
This article focuses on the excuses that Hamlet keeps making for procrastinating, and not killing Claudius sooner. There are some who view Hamlet as being somewhat noble for his hesitation, because he did not want to sully his hands in the same way that Claudius had by killing his father. However, Dawson has none of this, putting the cause for the delay right at Hamlet’s door. By claiming that he kept having to think more, or ponder more, in order to find just the right combination of convenience and guiltlessness in which to slay Claudius, Hamlet ends up making life worse for many of the other characters in the play. There is nothing idealistic or pure about Hamlet’s delay; rather, it is just Hamlet’s unwillingness to act, his self-concealment behind his own fear, that keeps him from acting sooner; it is much easier for Hamlet to construct a series of excuses for his own inaction than to actually put together a plan for revenge. By the time “The Mouse-Trap” begins, the only thing that will be caught in it is the stability of Denmark.
Mabillard, Amanda. The Hamlet and Ophelia Subplot. Shakespeare Online. 20 Aug. 2000. < http://www.shakespeare-online.com/playanalysis/opheliaplot.html" >
This article provides a helpful overview of the subplot involving Hamlet and Ophelia’s relationship in the play. Beginning with Laertes’ warning to Ophelia that Hamlet’s love may be fickle (I.ii.), it is clear that there is a lot of doubt about Hamlet’s seriousness. Not only had the Danish nobility overlooked him as a candidate to fill the monarchy after the death of the elder Hamlet, but he appears to be an unfit boyfriend – or candidate for marriage – as well. While it is easy to get caught up in the events between Hamlet and Claudius, this is an important subplot to the play that shows a different side of Hamlet’s personality. Those who view Hamlet as one of the victims of Claudius must also view Ophelia as a victim, because instead of taking his anger out appropriately – and solely – on Claudius and Gertrude, Hamlet is emotionally paralyzed and instead takes his anger out on Ophelia, to the point where she ends up surrendering her virginity to him to satisfy him, only to be rejected and hurt to the point of insanity and suicide.
Works Cited
Crawford, Alexander W. “Hamlet’s Melancholy: The Transformation of the Prince.” Hamlet, an ideal prince, and other essays in Shakesperean interpretation: Hamlet; Merchant of Venice; Othello; King Lear. Boston R.G. Badger, 1916.Shakespeare Online. 20 Aug. 2009. < http://www.shakespeare-online.com/plays/hamlet/hamletmelancholy.html >
Crawford, Alexander W. “Hamlet’s Relationship with the Ghost.” In Hamlet, an ideal prince, and other essays in Shakesperean interpretation: Hamlet; Merchant of Venice; Othello; King Lear. Boston R.G. Badger, 1916. Shakespeare Online. 20 Aug. 2009. http://www.shakespeare-online.com/plays/hamlet/hamletandghost.html
Crawford, Alexander W. “The Significance of the Ghost in Armor.” In Hamlet, an ideal prince, and other essays in Shakesperean interpretation: Hamlet; Merchant of Venice; Othello; King Lear. Boston R.G. Badger, 1916.Shakespeare Online. 20 Aug. 2009. < http://www.shakespeare-online.com/plays/hamlet/ghostarmed.html >.
Dawson, George. “An Excuse for Doing Nothing.” In Shakespeare and other lectures. George St. Clair, ed. London: K. Paul, 1888. Shakespeare Online. 2 Aug. 2011. http://www.shakespeare-online.com/plays/hamlet/hamletdelay.html
Mabillard, Amanda. “Revenge in Hamlet.” In Introduction to Elizabethan Revenge Tragedy. Shakespeare Online. 20 Aug. 2000. http://www.shakespeare- online.com/playanalysis/revengetragedy.html" >.
Mabillard, Amanda. The Hamlet and Ophelia Subplot. Shakespeare Online. 20 Aug. 2000. < http://www.shakespeare-online.com/playanalysis/opheliaplot.html" >
