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Renato Perez

Dean Porter

March 3, 2011

Shakespeare Honors

Hamlet’s Delay in killing Claudius

In Shakespeare’s Hamlet, the main character continually delays acting out his duty of

avenging his father’s murder. His delay generated a great debate and has puzzled the readers and

audience for hundred years. In this tragedy, the ghost of Hamlet’s father uncovers Hamlet the

truth about his father’s death. The ghost tells Hamlet that Claudius poured poison into his ear

with the means of his uncle becoming the new king. This is a violation of Shakespeare’s insistent

theme concerning the great chain of being. Ghost: Revenge his foul and most unnatural murder.

HAMLET: Murder! Ghost: Murder most foul, as in the best it is; But this most foul, strange and

unnatural. HAMLET: Haste me to know't, that I, with wings as swift As meditation or the

thoughts of love, May sweep to my revenge. Ghost: I find thee apt; And duller shouldst thou be

than the fat weed That roots itself in ease on Lethe wharf, Wouldst thou not stir in this. Now,

Hamlet, hear: 'Tis given out that, sleeping in my orchard, A serpent stung me; so the whole ear

of Denmark Is by a forged process of my death Rankly abused: but know, thou noble youth, The

serpent that did sting thy father's life Now wears his crown. HAMLET O my prophetic soul! My

uncle!.

One theory of Hamlet’s delay in killing Claudius is that he was not sure the origin of the

ghost. This made him doubt if he was telling the truth about Claudius killing his father. The
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spirit that I have seen May be the devil: and the devil hath power To assume a pleasing shape;

yea, and perhaps Out of my weakness and my melancholy, As he is very potent with such spirits,

Abuses me to damn me: I'll have grounds More relative than this: the play 's the thing Wherein

I'll catch the conscience of the king. However, during the “play within a play” he discovers the

truth origin of the ghost and Claudius’s guilt in killing his father. Hamlet starts planning in

taking vengeance since Claudius not only murders his father but he remarried Hamlet’s mother

in order to make people think he is not a Machiavellian villain that violates the great chain of

being.

After Hamlet obtains his “proof” of Claudius killing his father, he does not take

advantage of the opportunity when he could have killed the king. HAMLET: Now might I do it

pat, now he is praying; And now I'll do't. And so he goes to heaven; And so am I revenged. That

would be scann'd: A villain kills my father; and for that, I, his sole son, do this same villain send

To heaven. O, this is hire and salary, not revenge. He took my father grossly, full of bread; With

all his crimes broad blown, as flush as May; And how his audit stands who knows save heaven?

But in our circumstance and course of thought, 'Tis heavy with him: and am I then revenged, To

take him in the purging of his soul, When he is fit and season'd for his passage? No! Up, sword;

and know thou a more horrid hent: When he is drunk asleep, or in his rage, Or in the incestuous

pleasure of his bed; At gaming, swearing, or about some act That has no relish of salvation in't;

Then trip him, that his heels may kick at heaven, And that his soul may be as damn'd and black

As hell, whereto it goes. My mother stays: This physic but prolongs thy sickly days. Hamlet is not

a man of quick action unlike Claudius and Laertes. He wants to plan a perfect murder and wait

for the right moment to take action, which delayed him in killing the king. He also wants
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Claudius to confess that he was the murderer that killed Hamlet’s father, remarried Hamlet’s

mother and violated the great chain of being making him a Machiavellian villain.

Hamlet constant battle in his subconscious also contributed delaying the king’s death. At

one side is his morality and values versus his strong feelings of hate and vengeance. HAMLET:

Does it not, think'st thee, stand me now upon-- He that hath kill'd my king and whored my

mother, Popp'd in between the election and my hopes, Thrown out his angle for my proper life,

And with such cozenage--is't not perfect conscience, To quit him with this arm? and is't not to be

damn'd, To let this canker of our nature come In further evil?. His morality believed that he

should not seek for revenge by killing the king since he would be also violating the great chain of

being putting himself at the same situation as Claudius. He also believed that he should leave it

up to god to punish him for the actions rather than him, the same way he did with his mother. No

reckoning made, but sent to my account With all my imperfections on my head: O, horrible! O,

horrible! most horrible! If thou hast nature in thee, bear it not; Let not the royal bed of Denmark

be A couch for luxury and damned incest. But, howsoever thou pursuest this act, Taint not thy

mind, nor let thy soul contrive Against thy mother aught: leave her to heaven And to those thorns

that in her bosom lodge, To prick and sting her. Fare thee well at once! The glow-worm shows

the matin to be near, And 'gins to pale his uneffectual fire: Adieu, adieu! Hamlet, remember me.

In the other hand, he also believed that he should kill the king since during this times people

believed in the concept of “eye for an eye”. This hindered him from performing the task.

In the end of the play, Hamlet finally kills the king but he also is killed which makes the

audience infer that revenge was probably not the best solution. In Shakespeare’s Richard III,

Richard considered one the most evil kings in history gets a payback from god for all the life’s
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he took in the violation of the great chain of being. Hamlet should have waited until god himself

condemned Claudius for his sins the same way he did with Richard III.