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AC Bradley\u2019s 1904 lectures on Shakespearean tragedy are deservedly regarded as classics of criticism. His analysis of Hamlet is deservedly famous, particularly his discussion of the famed problem of Hamlet\u2019s delay. <\/p>\n
He classifies theories of the delay into several large categories. First are those that suggest that Hamlet delays mainly or primarily because of external circumstances \u2013 the risks of moving ahead with only the ghost\u2019s word for it, the need to bring the King to public justice and therefore the need to expose the king\u2019s guilt before the entire court, and so on. Bradley says that the theory is plausible until one reads the play. Contrary to this theory, Hamlet never describes any external obstacles to the execution of the ghost\u2019s instructions, assumes he has the means and the right to carry out those instructions, he never speaks of intending to bring Claudius to public justice. <\/p>\n
A second sort of theory attributes Hamlet\u2019s delay to moral scruples. Bradley admits that Hamlet attributes the delay in part to conscience (5.2.63ff) but that this is neither nor the main reason cited for the delay. Further, Hamlet appears in the main to consider killing Claudius a moral duty. One might shift the ground a bit to suggest that Hamlet is unconsciously ambivalent about this duty: \u201cin the depths of his nature, and unknown to himself, there was a moral repulsion to the deed.\u201d Bradley considers this a stronger position, but cannot accept it for a variety of reasons, among them the assumption that the ghost\u2019s instructions are not to be obeyed. He thinks it \u201cclear that, whatever we in the twentieth century may think about Hamlet\u2019s duty, we are meant in the play to assume that he ought to have obeyed the Ghost.\u201d <\/p>\n
Bradley also considers what he calls the \u201csentimental\u201d view of Hamlet, made popular by a phrase from Goethe, according to which he is \u201ca graceful youth, sweet and sensitive, full of delicate sympathies and yearning aspirations, shrinking from the touch of everything gross and earthly; but frail and weak, a kind of Werther, with a face like Shelley\u2019s and a voice like Mr Tree\u2019s.\u201d (I have no idea who \u201cMr Tree\u201d is supposed to be, but that\u2019s still a very funny sentence.) As Bradley rightly points out, this view won\u2019t stand a moment\u2019s scrutiny: Hamlet freely insults Claudius and runs rings around Polonius, is vicious with Ophelia and his mother, cheerfully sends Rosencrantz and Guildenstern off to their deaths in England, and so on. This is no wilting flower; the action-hero-Hamlet of Last Action Hero <\/em> , meant as a parody, is closer to the play than this theory. <\/p>\n As something of a variation on this, Coleridge and Schlegel proposed the view that Hamlet delayed because he was an intellectual who \u201closes himself in labyrinths of thought.\u201d Again, this fails to account for the active young man we actually see in the text. <\/p>\n In place of all these, Bradley proposes that Hamlet delays because of melancholy. This was not his usual state of mind; it is not mainly a \u201chabitual excess of reflectiveness,\u201d but a temporary depression that paralyzes him in contempt for everything \u2013 the world, the flesh, and himself. Bradley comes near to saying that Hamlet was bi-polar: \u201cone would judge that by temperament he was inclined to nervous instability, too rapid and perhaps extreme changes of feeling and mood, and that he was disposed to be, for the time, absorbed in the feeling or mood that possessed him, whether it was joyous or depressed.\u201d This is what Elizabethans would have described as a melancholy disposition, and Hamlet\u2019s own bout of melancholia was sparked by the \u201cexceptional strain\u201d that faced him with the sudden death of his father and the quick remarriage of his mother. When the ghost gives him a charge to set right the disjointed times, he is already deep in melancholy, and therefore cannot respond with his normal vigor. <\/p>\n For Bradley, this \u201cdisgust at life and everything in it, himself included \u2013 a disguist which varies in intensity, rising at times into a longing for death, sinking often into weary apathy\u201d explains everything. He explains his bursts of energy and even delight (eg, when the players show up); it accounts for his \u201csavage irritability\u201d; it accounts for his outbursts of \u201ctransitory, almost hysterical, and quite fruitless emotion.\u201d It, finally, accounts for the fact that he does not understand his own inaction, and reproaches himself in dismay over his unwillingness to avenge an honored father. <\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" AC Bradley\u2019s 1904 lectures on Shakespearean tragedy are deservedly regarded as classics of criticism. His analysis of Hamlet is deservedly famous, particularly his discussion of the famed problem of Hamlet\u2019s delay. He classifies theories of the delay into several large categories. First are those that suggest that Hamlet delays mainly or primarily because of external […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3021,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1760","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-literature"],"yoast_head":"\n