A Commentary on Hamlet: Part 1

To Procrastinate or Not to Procrastinate?

The critical commentary on Hamlet is vast and varied, full of centuries-old arguments and disputes, theories and counter-theories. The work has spawned an immense body of criticism, a testimony to its enduring legacy. Frank Kermode comments on this legacy in his introduction to the Riverside edition of the play: “the endless commentary—inspired, or dull; shrewd, or absurd—testifies to the fact that this is a play which history, as well as its own extraordinary merit, has given a special place apart, with such works as the Commedia and Faust” (1183). Perhaps the most central of the debates surrounding Hamlet is the question of why Hamlet delays so long in taking revenge on his uncle for his father’s murder. This point has been commented on extensively by critics such as Thomas Hanmer, Samuel Johnson, Gustav Rümelin, T.S. Eliot, Samuel Coleridge, William Hazlitt, Joseph Ritson, and Sigmund Freud. More modern critics, such as Dover Wilson and Max Patrick, have examined other characters besides Hamlet as well as the historical context surrounding the play. By combining these critical analyses and my own reader response, I hope to demonstrate how the primary themes of the play and the ones most interesting to critics are Hamlet’s own character and psychology, madness and reason, the reality of death, and the encounter with the supernatural.

As mentioned above, Hamlet’s procrastination is a central enigma of the text that has long fascinated scholars and led to some in-depth analysis of the protagonist’s character. Some critics have considered this “unrealistic” procrastination to be a fatal flaw in the work. In Some Remarks on the Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, Written by Mr. William Shakespeare from 1736, Thomas Hanmer, for example, writes, “Had Hamlet gone naturally to work, as we could suppose such a Prince to do in parallel Circumstances, there would have been an End of our Play. The Poet therefore was obliged to delay his Hero's Revenge; but then he should have contrived some good Reason for it.” His position is echoed famously by T.S. Eliot, who considered the play to be an artistic failure because it lacked correlation between Hamlet’s actions (or lack thereof) and the dramatic events of the play. In “Hamlet and his Problems” (1921), Eliot states “Hamlet (the man) is dominated by an emotion which is inexpressible, because it is in excess of the facts as they appear…Hamlet’s bafflement at the absence of objective equivalent to his feelings is a prolongation of the bafflement of his creator in the face of his artistic problem” (92). I am most strongly opposed to Mr. Eliot’s position. I never really questioned Hamlet’s delay, because for me it is simply a part of the fabric of the play, and it really is not so unexpected. Procrastination is very much a part of human nature. In my reader response to the play I wrote of procrastination, “In fact, it may even be [Hamlet’s] tragic flaw” (Larson 9), but I never suggested the flaw might be on the part of Shakespeare. Indeed, Hamlet himself seems aware of his flaw. Hamlet’s final soliloquy displays his inner state of turmoil surrounding the task he must complete. “Am I a Coward?” he asks in 2.2.571. He argues that were he not “pigeon-liver’d” (2.2.577) he would have already killed his uncle.

In this position, I follow the lead of such critics as Coleridge and Hazlitt both of whom found sufficient reason for Hamlet’s delay in the prince’s own psychology and character. In the 1971 book, Coleridge on Shakespeare: The Text of the Lectures 1811-12, editor R.A. Foakes states that “Coleridge’s belief was that…[Shakespeare] meant to portray a person in whose view the external world, and all its incidents and objects, were comparatively dim and of no interest in themselves, and which began to interest only when they were reflected in the mirror of his mind” (201). This appears to me to be a strong argument. Hamlet is such a deep thinker, so inwardly turned, that he lives mostly in his head, external action being almost an afterthought. Hazlitt commented in his 1817 work Character of Shakespeare’s Plays that “[Hamlet’s] is not a character marked by strength of will or even of passion, but by refinement of thought and sentiment” and that “He seems incapable of deliberate action.” It’s too far to say Hamlet is incapable of action, but I do agree with Hazlitt’s overall assessment. In my analysis, I suggested that one reason for Hamlet’s delay might be his own uncertainty regarding the justification for his mission: “This theme of heaven [a word that appears throughout the play] is interesting because it is unclear whether Hamlet’s act is a heavenly one or a hellish one. Is he really justified in killing his uncle? Can Hamlet justify the action to himself? He seems to struggle to do so, and perhaps that is why he delays in exacting vengeance” (Larson 8). The struggle is a long one, for even after Hamlet’s encounter with Fortinbras’ army in Act 4, and his declaration, “O from this time forth, / My thoughts be bloody, or be nothing worth!” (4.4.65-66), he still does not lay down a clear plan of action, and the final execution of the deed is more the product of chance than planning.

Sigmund Freud’s explanation for the long delay is much more complex and psychoanalytical than mine. In The Interpretation of Dreams (1899), Freud argues that Hamlet has an Oedipal complex, and thus he unconsciously associates himself with his father’s murderer, since they share the same desire. To condemn and punish his uncle is to condemn and punish himself. While the assessment fits well within Freud’s framework, I fail to see textual evidence for it. Throughout the play Hamlet seems to deeply love his father and grieve for his loss. As just one example, when Hamlet confronts his mother, he speaks of his father in most loving terms and in this same scene he condemns his mother’s actions. He says to her,

See what a grace was seated on this brow:

Hyperion’s curls, the front of Jove himself,

An eye like Mars, to threaten and command,

A station like the herald Mercury

New lighted on a [heaven]-kissing hill,

a combination and a form indeed,

Where ever god did seem to set his seal

To give the world assurance of a man.

This was your husband.” (3.4.53-63)

If Hamlet were really desirous of his father’s death, he would not be so angry with his mother and he would not speak in such reverent terms of his father.

Eighteenth-century critic Joseph Ritson in “The God of His Idolatry,” argues that Hamlet does not really procrastinate, but gets to work on his task as soon as he reasonably can. The ghost’s message “would scarcely, in the eye of the people, have justified his killing their king” (Ritson 425). I do not agree with this position, because, as mentioned above, Hamlet himself admits his own procrastination. He cries, “I, / A dull and muddy-mettled rascal, peak / Like John-a-dreams, unpregnant of my cause, / And can say nothing; no, not for a king, / Upon whose property and most dear life / A damn’d defeat was made. Am I a coward?” (2.2.566-70). Additionally, we see that Hamlet struggles even to make plans or to approach other characters in conversation regarding this mission. In my own commentary, I said of Act III, Scene 4, “This scene is significant because it is the first time that Hamlet directly confronts either his mother or his uncle regarding what they have done. Think of that! Not until Act III, Scene 4 does Hamlet make a direct effort to right the wrong that has been done, a reality which highlights just how much Hamlet suffers from procrastination” (9). Even if Ritson was correct that Hamlet could not take immediate action, there was nothing preventing Hamlet from confronting his mother verbally long before Act III. For these reasons, I differ from Ritson’s view.

In the end, I tend to agree with C.S. Lewis, who suggests in “Hamlet: The Prince or the Poem?” (1942) that it is a mistake to focus too narrowly on Hamlet’s psychology; rather, we should look at the work as an organic whole. He writes, “The first thing is to surrender oneself to the poetry and the situation. It is only through them that you can reach the characters, and it is for their sake that the characters exist” (10). Both schools of critical thought err when they “put the mystery in the wrong place—in Hamlet’s motives rather than in that darkness which enwraps Hamlet and the whole tragedy and all who read or watch it. It is a mysterious play in the sense of being a play about mystery” (Lewis 17). Lewis’s approach is to accept the actions of the protagonist without question, because Hamlet is the image of “man struggling to get something done as man has struggled from the beginning, yet incapable of achievement because of his inability to understand either himself or his fellows or the real quality of the universe which has produced him” (Lewis 16). For Lewis and for me, Hamlet’s behavior is no great surprise. Delay and uncertainty are part of the human condition. Part of the resolution we see at the end of the play is the end of that hopeless procrastination. It will no longer trouble Hamlet. Commenting on Hamlet’s final words, “The rest is silence” (5.2.357), I wrote, “Hamlet’s rest means the end of all the conflict, doubt, contradiction, guilt, grief, and procrastination that has flooded his mind for so long. The voices of dilemma are at last quieted. There is rest in silence and silence in rest for Hamlet” (16). Thus all these trials of human life—including procrastination—find a certain resolution in death.

Works Cited

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Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, Written by Mr. William Shakespeare. 1736. eBook ed., The Augustan Reprint Society, 1947. Project Gutenberg. http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/14899.

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Eliot, T.S. “Hamlet and His Problems.” The Sacred Wood: Essays on Poetry and Criticism. Methuen, 1920. Archive.org. https://archive.org/details/sacredwoodessays00eliorich, pp. 87-94. Accessed 18 Mar. 2017.

Foakes, R.A. “From Coleridge on Shakespeare.” Hamlet: Critical Essays, edited by Joseph G. Price, Garland, 1986, pp. 201-206.

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