Hamlet and His Quest for Revenge

Shakespeare is certainly not suggesting that we can succeed much more quickly and smoothly by going with the flow, at least not in this play. He is suggesting that when we put off doing what we must do, especially when it is something we do not want to do, the outcome may be far more tragic than what would have happened had we acted when we first knew we had to act.

After all, it might be argued that Hamlet was merely going with the flow when he ran his sword through the curtain, believing that the situation had presented him with the opportunity to kill Claudius, who he thought was hiding there. Instead, going with the flow, he inadvertently slays the idiot Polonius.

In fact, nothing in the actions of Hamlet can be said to be representative of

. . .
s murder is in turn the murderer of his father does not diminish the impact of this set of circumstances on Hamlet's sensitive soul. There is no way to accurately call Hamlet's act of fatal revenge against Claudius a "success." How can we call an act a success which brings such agony and finally death not only to Hamlet but to his mother and Laertes and Polonius and others? Hamlet certainly recognizes the suffering he has endured as he has moved toward this alleged "success". In the immediate aftermath of his murder of Claudius, Hamlet faces death himself and asks Horatio to report the truth of the horrible events and their cause to the people: "O good Horatio, what a wounded name . . . shall live behind me. . . . Tell my story" (715). The fact that Horatio is alive to tell Hamlet's story is all that Hamlet can hope for at the moment of death, but, again, this hardly qualifies as a sign that he has succeeded in life or in death. He has simply done what he had to do. He put it off as long as he could, and longed for any escape from his duty to his murdered father. He is a thoughtful, lyrical, good-hearted philosopher and poet, not a murderer. It would also appear absurd to draw any "philosophical statement" on the part of the pl
. . .

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Approximate Word count = 1442
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)

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