The personality traits of insanity and intellectuality also contribute greatly to the death of Hamlet. Hamlet’s tragic flaw is his procrastination. Without a doubt, Hamlet portrays procrastination and indecisiveness multiple times in the play. The ghost of Hamlet’s father visits him in the beginning of the play informing Hamlet that he was murdered by his own brother, Claudius: “The serpent that did sting thy father’s life/ Now wears the crown”(I.v.44,45). Furthermore, Shakespeare exhibits how Hamlet chose to devise a plan of acting mad, rather than avenging his father’s death immediately, progressing to his demise.
On one level it helps develop the reader’s understanding of some of the play’s key themes. The first of these is revenge. At this point in the play, after Hamlet has earlier been told by his father’s ghost that he was murdered by his brother, Hamlet’s uncle Claudius, Hamlet has taken no significant action to claim that revenge the ghost has demanded. He believes he has established grounds for taking the appropriate revenge, yet
Act 3 Scene 4 is the main turning point for Hamlet’s madness. The scene begins with a confrontation between Gertrude and Hamlet. Gertrude: “Hamlet, thou hast thy father much offended” Hamlet: “Mother, you have my father much offended” The use of stichomythia in this conversation creates a sense of violence between the characters. It also confirms to the audience that Hamlet’s madness is still a performance, because he can respond quickly and with wit. When this is juxtaposed with Ophelia’s legitimate insanity, it becomes clear that Hamlet is still performing.
While they argue that Hamlet's problems cannot be simply reduced to the Oedipus complex, Barber and Wheeler state that an understanding of Hamlet "must be consistent with the presence of that complex, for the Freudian explanation clearly works." Emphasizing Hamlet's guilt, which is focused on his father, not his mother, the critics argue that this guilt refers to Hamlet's wish to kill his father, which he cannot do since Hamlet's father is already dead. The wish, Barber and Wheeler explain, is diverted from Hamlet's father to his uncle. Taking another approach to Hamlet's oedipal issues, Janet Adelman (1992) centers on the role of the mother. Adelman illustrates that
Hamlet makes sure his uncle is guilty of murder before enacting his revenge. Hamlet is not insane because; He tells people that he will pretend to be, He makes a lot of sense even when he is supposedly crazy, and He acts insane at highly convenient times. Hamlet tells his friends that he will pretend to be crazy. He says to Horatio and Marcellus: Here as before, never, so help you mercy, How strange or odd soe’er I bear myself, As I perchance shall think meet To put an antic disposition on, (I, V, 171-173). In this quote Hamlet tells them that no matter how strange he is acting, they should not be alarmed because he is going to feign insanity.
And yet, Hamlet is similar to Claudius in some situations. The first similar situation is that they both question about why someone grieves so much upon one’s death. Claudius is asking Hamlet why he cares so much about his father`s death at the beginning of the play, ”How is it that the coulds still hand you up`` (I, ii, 67). Almost at the end of the play, hamlet has a similar situation as Claudius’. He asks Laertes a similar question, ``Make up my sum.
However, this is not the only type of type of play or drama in which the main character acts crazy or mad in order to enact revenge upon someone to avenge someone or just to purely gain revenge for some personal purpose. Yet, scholars interpret Hamlet’s madness in different ways, such as saying that he truly did go mad. In addition, when Hamlet is alone with Horatio and Gertrude away from the public and the king his speech and actions are different, and they do not include all the riddles and ‘madness’ or gestures that he talks with or uses throughout the rest of the play with everyone else. Hamlet’s flaw in all of this is that he likes everything to be perfect and due to that he procrastinates everything. Therefore, to perform his grand scheme, he must change the way he acts in order to prefect the chance to avenge his father’s death, and he must act in such a way to discover and learn everything he needs to do so.
spirit sent to lure his soul to damnation. He declares his intention to stage a play exactly based on the murder of his father. While it is played he will observe Claudius. If the king is guilty, Hamlet figures, surely he will show this guilt when faced with the scene of the crime. Analysis This Act begins by establishing the atmosphere of political intrigue at Elsinore.
he puts on a mask of madness to mislead the world. In the Third Soliloquy Hamlet appears more determined. According to certain critics this soliloquy has a great importance because it reveals Hamlet’s rational mind, as he puts Claudius to test by enacting a play. The Fourth soliloquy is the most famous and essential, And is considered as a pioneer in English literature. Here Hamlet enters with a dilemma: “To be or not to be”.
He questioned the worth of his own life, and became suicidal. Hamlet proves this when he says, “Or that the Everlasting had not fixed his canon 'gainst self-slaughter!” (1.2.131). Soon after his grief ridden soliloquy, Horatio and the guards brought news of a ghost sighting. Supposedly, the ghost was Hamlet's father. Later in the last scene of Act 1, Hamlet accompanies the guards to the platform on which the ghost was spotted.