Indecision, Hesitation and Delay in Shakespeares Hamlet Essay

     Ã‚  Ã‚   The very intelligent prince in William Shakespeare’s Hamlet is a dallying type, especially at the crucial prayer scene where the king appears very vulnerable. But some esteemed literary critics do not consider the hero to be a procrastinator at all. Let us in this essay examine various points of view on the prince'’ various episodes indicting dallying or the opposite. Harry Levin comments on Hamlet’s uncharacteristic hesitation in dispatching the king, in the General Introduction to The Riverside Shakespeare: Comparably, Hamlet has been taken to task – or, perhaps more often, sentimentalized – for an alleged inability to make up his mind. Actually, both the testimony about him and his ultimate heroism show that his hesitations are uncharacteristic. It is a measure of the baffling predicament in which he finds himself that the native hue of resolution Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought (III.i.84) If Hamlet’s personality seems peculiarly elusive, if his different interpreters can endow him with such widely differing characteristics, it is because his part is presented subjectively, much of it confided to us through soliloquies. (24) David Bevington, in the Introduction to Twentieth Century Interpretations of Hamlet, eliminates some possible reasons for Hamlet’s hesitation in killing Claudius during the prayer scene:    Several limits can be placed upon the search for an explanation of Hamlet’s apparent hesitation to avenge. He is not ineffectual under ordinary circumstances. Elizabethan theories of melancholy did not suppose the sufferer to be made necessarily inactive. Hamlet has a deserved reputation in Denmark for manliness and princely demeanor. He keeps up his fencing practice ... ...n and Audio Performance. Rutherford, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1988.    Levin, Harry. General Introduction. The Riverside Shakespeare. Ed. G. Blakemore Evans. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1974.    Nevo, Ruth. â€Å"Acts III and IV: Problems of Text and Staging.† Modern Critical Interpretations: Hamlet. Ed. Harold Bloom. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1986. Rpt. from Tragic Form in Shakespeare. N.p.: Princeton University Press, 1972.    Shakespeare, William. The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 1995. http://www.chemicool.com/Shakespeare/hamlet/full.html    West, Rebecca. â€Å"A Court and World Infected by the Disease of Corruption.† Readings on Hamlet. Ed. Don Nardo. San Diego: Greenhaven Press, 1999. Rpt. from The Court and the Castle. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1957.