Hamlet (Vol. 35) | Anna K. Nardo (essay date 1983)
Anna K. Nardo (essay date 1983)
SOURCE: "Hamlet, 'A Man to Double Business Bound'," in Shakespeare Quarterly, Vol. 34, No. 2, Summer, 1983, pp. 181-99.
[In the following essay, Nardo notes the pervasiveness in Hamlet of the double-bind, a paradoxical situation that forces its victim to choose between impossible alternatives, and identifies it as the organizing principle of the play.
Alone in his private chapel, Claudius feels impelled by his guilt to pray. But, he laments,
Pray can I not,
Though inclination be as sharp as will:
My stronger guilt defeats my strong intent;
And, like a man to double business bound,
I stand in pause where I shall first begin,
And both neglect.1
Like so many passages in Shakespeare's most ambiguous play, Claudius' words apply less to himself than to Hamlet. In self-pity Claudius feels...
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