Hamlet (Vol. 35) | Harold Skulsky (essay date 1970)
Harold Skulsky (essay date 1970)
SOURCE: "Revenge, Honor, and Conscience in Hamlet" in PMLA, Vol. 85, No. 1, January, 1970, pp. 78-87.
[In this essay, Skulsky examines the myriad motivations operating in Hamlet's character, including feelings of honor and nobility, thoughts of cowardice and suicide, and the desire for revenge.]
It has always struck me as rather curious that the ghost should begin its final instructions to the Prince of Denmark with the words: "But howsomever thou pursues this act" (I.v.84).1 This evasive "howsomever" serves to point up the fact that the ghost has been disobliging enough to leave the task of defining revenge squarely up to Hamlet. The play, however, taken as a whole, is rather more obliging; for it illustrates two popular alternatives—the law of the talon and the code of honor, we may call them—either of which Hamlet might well choose. It will repay us to consider the light in which...
[The entire page is 9197 words long]
Navigate
