Indecision, Hesitation and Delay in Shakespeares Hamlet Essay

Admonished by the ghost of his poisoned father, troubled by the stench of a kingdom in decline, outraged by his fay mothers incestuous liaison, why did settlement wait so long to act decisively? Theories abound. Hamlet had an Oedipus complex. Hamlet was mad rather than merely pretending to be. Hamlet was an intellectual pansy. Hamlet was an existentialist. Etc. T. S. Eliot went so far as to say that the play itself was flawed, Hamlets Problem actually the authors own, insoluble. I believe that the Problem is actually ours. perhaps the real issue is not Hamlets hesitation, but our unwillingness to understand it. In an ironic maneuver, Shakespeare has Hamlet tell us about the self-destructive power of a tragic flaw So, oft it chances in particular men,That for some vicious mole of nature in them, As, in their birth--wherein they are not guilty, Since nature cannot hire his origin--By the oergrowth of some complexion, Oft breaking down the pales and forts of reason, Or by some ha bit that too much oer-leavens The form of plausive manners, that these men, Carrying, I say, the stereotype of one defect, Being natures livery, or fortunes star,-- Their virtues else--be they as pure as grace, As infinite as man may undergo--Shall in the general censure wages corruption From that particular fault the dram of eale Doth all the noble substance of a doubt To his own scandal. Believers that virtuousness (or enlightenment) guarantees right conduct, take noteThe key out to Hamlets flaw, the stuckness that has puzzled so many readers, is lodged, not in the beginning, but in the end--the place of maximum emphasis--of the to be or not to be soliloquy, the most famed dramatic monologue... ...udies of Imagination. Oxford Oxford University Press. Brown, Keith. 1973. Form and Cause Conjoind Hamlet and Shakespeares Workshop. Shakespeare Survey 2611-20. Fineman, Joel. 1980. Fratricide and Cuckoldry Shakespeares Doubles. In Representing Shakespeare New Psychoanalytic Essay s, edited by Coppelia Kahn and Murray M. Schwarz. Baltimore and London The Johns Hopkins Press, 70-109. Fleissner, Robert. 1982. Sullied Or Solid Hamlets Flesh once More. Hamlet Studies 492-3. Fowler, Alastair. 1987. The Plays Within the Play of Hamlet. In Fanned and Winnowed Opinions Shakespearean Essays Presented to Harold Jenkins, edited by John W. Mahon and Thomas A. Pendleton. London and New York Methuen. Freud, Sigmund. 1953-74. The Standard Edition of the effected Psychological Works. 24 vols, trans. James Stachey. London Hogarth.