Why Hamlet Delays His Revenge

The reason for Hamlet’s delay in his revenge has haunted critics for four centuries. Different authors have presented differing reasons for the delay, which, in itself, raises another question concerning this puzzling aspect of the play: Why does Shakespeare give so much prominence to the delay without clearly presenting the reason for it? The answer helps point us toward Shakespeare’s own reason for Hamlet’s delay.

We must keep two things in mind. First, Shakespeare makes it clear that Hamlet is acutely aware of a delay. Second, Shakespeare also makes it clear that Hamlet himself is not sure why he delays. There is no need for Shakespeare to emphasize these two things unless he is making a point. What is that point?

Let us first look at some of the more prominent reasons on offer for Hamlet’s delay. One solution claims that there is actually no delay on Hamlet’s part, or that any delay is due to external difficulties. The truth is that we might not have noticed the delay if Hamlet himself had not brought it to our attention. Shakespeare stresses the point that Hamlet is delaying. Thus, it is meaningless to argue that Hamlet is not responsible for the delay when Shakespeare clearly wants us to see that he is.

In the eighteenth century, critics suggested that the delay is a necessary plot device to extend the action. However, this suggestion does not fit the facts, since there would then be no reason for Shakespeare to make the delay so conspicuous by having Hamlet bemoan it over two long soliloquies. 

At the end of the eighteenth century, Goethe proposed that Shakespeare means, in Hamlet, to “represent the effects of a great action laid upon a soul unfit for the performance of it.” In his words, “A lovely, pure, noble and most moral nature, without the strength of nerve which forms a hero, sinks beneath a burden which it cannot bear and must not cast away.” However, even if Hamlet had this sweet nature before receiving the terrible mandate from the ghost, it hardly describes the transformed Hamlet we see in the play. We find instead a Hamlet who can be terrible and ruthless in his actions. As A. C. Bradley puts it: “If the sentimental Hamlet had crossed him, he would have hurled him from his path with one sweep of the arm.” 

In the nineteenth century, the romantics A. W. Schlegel and S. T. Coleridge offered the solution that Hamlet is rendered incapable of action because of his tendency to philosophize too much. Coleridge concluded that “Shakespeare wished to impress upon us the truth that action is the chief end of existence.” The problem with this argument is that Laertes behaves in exactly the opposite way to Hamlet, and compared to Hamlet, Laertes fares even worse. Laertes virtually acts without forethought and becomes a naïve and willing tool of Claudius, the villain himself. Thus, to behave in this manner can hardly be the message that Shakespeare wishes to impart. 

At the beginning of the twentieth century, A. C. Bradley proposed another reason for the delay in his Shakespearean Tragedy. Bradley argued that Hamlet’s delay is the result of a melancholic state of mind, brought on by the death of his father and the hasty remarriage of his mother. While we may accept that a depressive state of mind causes Hamlet’s inaction, this idea becomes highly suspect when Bradley stated that Hamlet’s melancholia accounts for his energy as well. Hamlet certainly gives much evidence of energy in his sharp and witty sallies, in his clever arrangement of the play scene to trap Claudius, and in the way he engineered the demise of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. These actions are hardly characteristic of depression. 

Some have suggested that Hamlet wanted objective proof of Claudius’s guilt in order to justify his revenge to the world. However, this would not fit the facts because Hamlet himself is not sure why he delays. If the problem was the lack of material proof, Hamlet would have been clearly aware of this reason for his delay.

Another reason offered for Hamlet’s delay was the psychoanalytical one, first suggested by Freud, the originator of psychoanalysis. According to this theory, Hamlet is rendered incapable of acting against Claudius because of a repressed Oedipus complex; he restrains his actions because he has a subconscious desire to replace his father and lie with his mother. However, a strong argument can be made against this proposal, for such an intent on Shakespeare’s part would have been totally lost on the Elizabethan audience.

In fact, it was because T. S. Eliot agreed with such a psychoanalytical reason for Hamlet’s delay that he called the play an “artistic failure,” and Shakespeare would certainly seem to have failed miserably in this sense if this was his reason for Hamlet’s delay. Given Shakespeare’s artistic ability, it instead suggests that Eliot’s famous remark actually argues against such a psychoanalytical reason for the delay.

So what was Shakespeare’s reason for having Hamlet so conspicuously chide himself for the delay and yet not understand why he was delaying? We have to come back to the one reason that would, at least, have occurred to the Elizabethan audience: that there was a question of immorality in seeking revenge. Herman Ulrici raised this issue in the nineteenth century, but critics neglected it largely because A. C. Bradley had argued so effectively against conscience being the reason for the delay.

Since Hamlet himself is not aware of the reason for the delay, it is not conscience taken in its usual form that we are considering. It is, instead, a more deep seated inner voice that causes him to hesitate, a voice that Hamlet fails to bring explicitly to the surface of his consciousness. Bradley, however, also objected to this deeper conscience as the reason for the delay. Why, he asked, if this answers to Shakespeare’s meaning, did he then conceal that meaning until the last Act? However, this objection becomes invalid once we fully understand Shakespeare’s reason for the delay and why he highlighted it.

Shakespeare gives prominence to the delay because he wants to emphasize that Hamlet’s course of action is morally dubious. Also, Shakespeare does not try to conceal this meaning until the end; he actually took great pains to suggest it, right from the beginning of the play. What he could not do, however, was to allow Hamlet to state it explicitly. There is a very good reason for not allowing this. If Hamlet had recognized the cause of his delay, it would have altered the course of the action and defeated Shakespeare’s main purpose in the play.

Shakespeare’s aim is not to have Hamlet intellectually argue out the question of whether or not it is immoral to wreak vengeance. His intention is to have the audience find the answer to this question in the experience of the entire play, in its totality. This is Shakespeare’s method of conveying his message, and it is the most effective way to do so. Shakespeare makes us live through it so that we learn through our emotional involvement and our experience of it.

If Hamlet had recognized intellectually that a moral issue was causing his delay, he would certainly have argued it out with himself. It would have been completely out of character for him not to do so. But to have him conduct an intellectual debate on the issue would have totally defeated Shakespeare’s purpose, which was to show and not merely tell, why seeking revenge is a moral disaster.

To do that, Shakespeare needs Hamlet to follow the course of action in the play. If Hamlet had debated the moral issue with himself, he would either conclude that it is morally acceptable, which would contradict what Shakespeare wanted to convey, or he would conclude that it is morally wrong and abandon his course of vengeance. Since neither alternative is conducive to Shakespeare’s plan, he allows Hamlet to delay without explicitly debating the moral issue.

And so, Shakespeare has Hamlet make the same mistake that Brutus makes in Julius Caesar; this is the reason Julius Caesar is mentioned on three separate occasions in Hamlet. Like Brutus, Hamlet ignores his inner voice, his deep conscience telling him that his course of action is wrong, that seeking vengeance amounts to taking the dark path to moral destruction. His inner promptings do cause him to delay, but he does not recognize why, so he tragically follows the route to spiritual desecration.

Now Shakespeare is able to achieve his purpose. By the dramatic portrayal of Hamlet’s transformation along this terrible path of vengeance, Shakespeare forces his audience to experience why revenge is wrong. Due consideration of the all-encompassing cohesive unity in the entire play would point to this being Shakespeare’s intended reason for Hamlet’s delay, since the play depicts how the terrible mandate of revenge transforms Hamlet into a callous and brutal angel of death.

A full exploration of how Shakespeare demonstrates the dire consequences of seeking revenge, through our emotional involvement in the play, is found in my book “Quintessence of Dust: The Mystical Meaning of Hamlet”.