Hamlet is often regarded as one of Shakespeare's greatest tragedies
because it is timeless in its preoccupation with the dilemmas and the
uncertainties that are at the heart of life (Hibbard, p. 2). Indeed, it is
the playwright's preoccupation with the internal conflicts in a man's soul
that are inevitably created by life's dilemmas, which ultimately turn
Hamlet into one of the world's most revered tragic figures. Faced with
difficult, disillusioning circumstances, Hamlet is torn by the need to
avenge his murdered father and the personal desire to appease his own
conscience. In fact, nowhere is Hamlet's agony more evident than in the
now immortalized lines, "To be, or not to be - that is the question:
Whether tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of
outrageous fortune, Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, And by
opposing end them'" (3.1.57-61) Hamlet's struggle to resolve the conflict
between his conscience and his duty also leads to an apparent gap between
his thought versus action or word versus deed. Interestingly, Hamlet is not
the only character in the play where the audience sees a gap between word
and deed. The same gap manifests itself in several other main characters
such as Claudius and Polonius. Thus, it can be inferred that a major moral
issue, which the play grapples with is the role of the conscience in
moderating the gap between thought and action, word and deed.
One of the first indications that Hamlet is a play that makes a
strong comment about the hypocrisy in human society, which is the primary
cause of the gap between human kind s word and deed, is manifested in
Claudius's speech to his court: "Though yet of Hamlet our dear brother's
death The memory be green, and that it is befitted To bear our hearts
in grief†That we with wisest sorrow think on him Together with
remembrance of ourselves." (1.2. 1-7) Claudius, he...