Hamlet (Vol. 35) | Kenneth Muir (essay date 1993)
Kenneth Muir (essay date 1993)
SOURCE: "Freud's Hamlet," in Shakespeare Survey: An Annual Survey of Shakespeare Studies and Production, Vol. 45, 1993, pp. 75-7.
[In this essay, Muir investigates Hamlet's character in terms of Freud's theory of the superego.]
Hamlet receives two commands from the Ghost: to kill Claudius, and not to harm Gertrude. As he cannot do the first without causing agony to his mother, he is given an apparently impossible task. It is therefore arguable—and it has been argued powerfully—that Hamlet did not really delay in carrying out his task. As soon as the guilt of Claudius is proclaimed publicly by Laertes, and Gertrude has declared that she has been poisoned by the cup intended for her son, Hamlet immediately executes justice on his uncle, while he himself is dying from the poisoned rapier. His mission has been accomplished, despite the fates of Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, Polonius and Ophelia, without deadly...
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