if you can find the answer for that questio

-- kushi ak (kushi_ak@hotmail.com), October 28, 2001

Answers

Hamlet delays in the action of killing Claudius to avenge his father because he feels guilty and coward-like. He feels as if he is risking damnation. To convince himself that the ghost that he saw is not just some demon trying to damn him, he instigates a play when some actors visit Denmark. The play "The Murder of Gonzago" is a close re-enactment of what Claudius actually did. Hamlet plans to watch Claudius's every facial expression during the play to catch him in his guilt. This is just the beginning of the revenge. Hamlet will kill Claudius after he knows forsure of his guilt. The actual slaying of Claudius happens in the last scene, quite suddenly. Hamlet makes him drink poison and also stabs him with a poisened sword.

-- Cyndera Quackenbush (cyndera@hotmail.com), October 30, 2001.

Not entirely True, Hamlet plans his revenge in a meticulous and phylisophical fasion. Being more of a thinker than a doer he draws upon Fortinbras' disposition and gains strength enough to murder him in the final scene. The murdr of Gonzagos was a major point when looking at the theme of revenge, it was used as a tool to break down claudius walls, to force his guilt to bubble and swell, and in doing so reveal him. Hamlet penultimately knew he would die extracting his revenge, but did so on the spirit of his father's word, there is some debate as to wether the apparition he sees is that of the mind, that of his father's spirit or that of a demon sent to taint him. we see in a moment of rage Hamlet's attack on polonius under the belief that the man he was killing was claudius, perhaps we see little remourse because he either intended to kill him in the first place, or because he felt no guilt for slaying a man he held disdain for.

any more questions email me @ insomniology@hotmail.com i will be willing to discuss the theme of revenge in full with you

-- Hamlet Boy (insomniology@hotmail.com), February 07, 2002.

Hamlet does feel remorse for killing Polonius. He says, III.iv.174-179, "For this same lord/ I do repent; but heaven hath pleas'd it so,/ To punish me with this and this with me./ That I must be their scourge and minister./ I will bestow him, and will answer well/ The death I gave him".

Repent is a powerfully loaded word within the thinking od Renaissance Christianity. Hamlet is sorry for the murder and wants forgiveness for it.

He accepts a heavenly design in it, as he does in his own mortality in V.ii, the 'fall of a sparrow' bit. And he indicates that Polonius deserved some chastisement for his being "too busy", ie meddling and scheming and spying and eavesdropping, and that he himself deserved chastisement for his rash temper; and heaven has played them off against each other: Polonius is dead and Hamlet must bear the guilt of it. Both punishments are perhaps excessive, but that is heaven's prerogative of justice.

He acknowledges his responsibility and guilt and is willing to "answer" for it.

Hamlet didn't really like Polonius, but didn't want to kill him. But he has done so. He has killed; and he has killed Ophelia's (and Laertes') father. It's got to be a particularly crappy moment in a very crappy day for him. I think I'd be a cot case if I'd done all that.

But Hamlet doesn't dwell on it morbidly, which would serve no purpose, as he did with his own father's death. He gets on top of it and goes on with what he feels he must do, even while acknowledging the guilt, responsibility and burden of the murder. If he speaks rather callously about it, it is a bravado of necessity, but should we entirely discount Gertrude's "he weeps for what is done" (IV.i.27)? And IV.ii and iii merely show that while Hamlet will answer to heaven for what he's done, he understandably isn't so willing to answer to Claudius and his lackeys.

Hamlet's response to his killing of Polonius is really remarkably mature, and another step in his facing and acceptance of mortality and death and fate. It actually is another step in his drawing "toward an end", his own.

-- catherine england (catherine_england@hotmail.com), February 08, 2002.

Hamlet is anything but a coward. First of all a question for you....If you saw a ghost would you believe everything it told you? I wouldn't. So first Hamlet must prove to himself that Claudius did in fact murder his father. Second Hamlet wants the new king's death to suffer the same afterlife as his fathers spirit...unprepared, unexpected, and myserable. Third and final, Hamlet I believe wants Claudius to be scared. He wants to battle with wits before he feels that he is prepared to kill the king and perhaps even prove to others that the king is at fault for his father's death. Bottom line Hamlet is a very complex character, in an even more complex time but I do not believe that it is in any way bravery that he lacks of.

-- Ashley (Shirleypop69@yahoo.com), October 08, 2002.

hamlet is a very nice character, that is why he delays the killing. Suicide is an emotion that cannot be connected with even in shakespeare's day. Hamlet took his revenge and he just wanted the perfect time to do it.

-- tove (whosemistakeamianyway@hotmail.com), May 02, 2004.