RALPH:  Nothing in this play has gotten more critical attention than the question of why Hamlet has delayed taking revenge. As one critic put it, "With this soliloquy, the play changes from being a 'tragedy of revenge' into a 'tragedy of delay'."

SARAH:  And yet perhaps all this attention is not deserved.  After all, when Hamlet asks himself why he has not taken any action against Claudius, though prompted by heaven and hell, he has an answer.  To his self-posed question, “Am I a coward?” he responds unequivocally, YES.

RALPH:  But has Hamlet really provided an explanation of his delay, or does the root cause of his behavior still need clarification? Are we sure that he is delaying without a good reason?

SARAH:  This is worth thinking about some more - we’ll come back to it in our next segment, the famous “to be or not to be” speech in Act III, scene 1.  In the meantime, let’s look at the remarks of some critics who tried to answer the question of Hamlet’s delay

RALPH:  Sure, Sarah.  In the early 19th century the Romantic Movement put new value and emphasis on natural human emotions, spontaneity of feelings, and the artistic power of the imagination. Hamlet’s character then became a sensitive intellectual, incapable of, or unwilling to take practical action.

SARAH:  Samuel Taylor Coleridge, a major Romantic poet, recognized that part of what attracts us to Hamlet is Shakespeare’s insight into the psychology of the human condition.

RALPH:  As Coleridge puts it:  “The character of Hamlet may be traced to Shakespeare’s deep and accurate science in mental philosophy. This character must have some connection with the fundamental laws of our nature…”

SARAH:  Coleridge suggests that there must always be a balance between the real world and the world of imagination – but in Hamlet this balance is disturbed.  Coleridge adds, “his thoughts, and the images of his fancy, are far more vivid than his actual perceptions. Hence we see an enormous intellectual ability, and a proportionate aversion to real action.”

RALPH:  Coleridge foreshadows the intense psychological analysis that the Hamlet character undergoes in the 20th century. Both A. C. Bradley and John Dover Wilson thought that Hamlet was incapable of action because he was suffering from severe melancholy, or depression. Bradley’s discussion of this sounds almost like he is giving Hamlet a clinical medical diagnosis.

SARAH:  But by far the most interesting analysis of Hamlet in the early 20th century is given by the father of psychoanalysis himself, Sigmund Freud. Freud had proposed that, in order to develop into psychologically healthy adults,a male child has to overcome and repress two powerful infant desires:  to have sex with his mother, and to kill his father.

RALPH:  In his famous book, The Interpretation of Dreams, he cites two examples where this Oedipus Complex, as he calls it, can be seen in classic theatre.  The first example is from Greek tragedy.  In Sophocles’s Oedipus the King, the male child’s fantasies are brought into the open, as Oedipus actually kills his father and sleeps with his mother, although he doesn’t know who they are at the time.

SARAH:  And, of course, the second example of the Oedipus Complex is taken from Hamlet, where Freud says that the complex is repressed and shown indirectly, instead of fully realized and out in the open.

RALPH:  As Freud puts it, “Hamlet is able to do anything—except take vengeance on the man who did away with his father and took that father’s place with his mother, the man who shows him the repressed wishes of childhood realized.”   That guy, Freud – he’s got an explanation for everything!

  SARAH:  Although Freud’s concept of the Oedipus complex is far from universally accepted, especially in the field of psychology, it’s no surprise that the erotic element of Hamlet’s relationship with his mother is often featured prominently in film versions of Hamlet. Two popular Hamlet movies – Laurence Olivier’s 1948 Academy award winner for best picture, and Franco Zeffirelli’s 1990 film starring Mel Gibson and Glenn Close, emphasize this Oedipal aspect to Shakespeare’s tragedy.

RALPH:  But not everyone thinks that Hamlet has an inability to take action; Isaac Asimov, for example, did not.

SARAH:  Asimov was an amazing intellectual – a professor in biochemistry and a wildly prolific writer, he is most famous for being one of the top science fiction writers of the century.

RALPH:  He was also a big Shakespeare buff and wrote a 1500 page guide to Shakespeare’s plays.

SARAH:  If you are going to see a Shakespeare play and don’t have time to read three or four different annotated editions…

RALPH:  … then reading Asimov’s chapter about the play is an entertaining and informative way to get ready for the performance.

SARAH:  Asimov thought that Hamlet’s problem was not an inability to act, but rather that he had too many competing goals for his actions.  On the one hand, he wants to get revenge on Claudius.  On the other, he wants to assume the throne.  And it’s trickier than we might think to achieve both of those goals.

RALPH:  For those of you interested in this problem, you might also check out Macbeth – it’s all about this stuff.

SARAH:  But Ralph, beyond the issue of Hamlet’s delay, there is another inconsistency in this monologue which has drawn some attention.

RALPH:  What are you thinking about, Sarah.

SARAH:  Well, it initially seems that there's no doubt in Hamlet's mind avenging his father’s murder is the right thing to do, if he could just muster the courage. Then, suddenly, in the same monologue, he questions the ghost’s truthfulness and decides he must first test it. In other words, at first he behaves as if he completely trusts the ghost, and then he seems to change his mind.

RALPH:  Ah yes.  Some critics interpret this as Hamlet procrastinating, just creating another excuse for not taking action.

SARAH:  Others see it as Hamlet finally adopting a healthy skepticism about the nature of the ghost, a skepticism that would have likely been shared by Shakespeare’s audience.

RALPH:  I think it’s more likely that this abrupt change in Hamlet’s reasoning results from Shakespeare’s need to set up the next major plot development, the play within the play, or as it’s sometimes called, the Mousetrap.

SARAH:  Although the play within a play is not present as a plot element in the original Hamlet legend, it was a conventional theatrical device in Elizabethan theater - Thomas Kyd had used it in his Spanish Tragedy, which had been the most popular revenge tragedy in London up until this time.

RALPH:  But even if the ghost turns out to be telling the truth, that would still not justify the moral righteousness of killing Claudius, at least according to the more religious-minded critics through the centuries, including Eleanor Prosser, a Professor of Literature at Stanford in the 1960s.

SARAH:  As she points out, the ghost could be giving an accurate account of the murder and still be a devil tempting Hamlet into sin. From a religious point of view, a command for revenge coming from a father or even a king does not justify a vengeful killing – and perhaps Hamlet knows it.