Hamlet's procrastination led to his depression

Essay by wruz6College, UndergraduateA+, March 2006

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Hamlet is the Prince of Denmark, who is seeking revenge for his father's death. The ghost of the King, Hamlet's father, tells Hamlet to " . . . revenge his foul and most unnatural murder" . Since his father asked him, he finds it his duty to do as he says. In this essay, I am going to prove that Hamlet puts off what he has to do until a future time, which leads him to his depression. He builds things up inside of him until the point that he is not able to handle anything, or lacks courage, skill, and will to do something.

In his first soliloquy, "Oh that this too too solid flesh would melt . . ." , Hamlet talks about the first thing that has made him melancholy, or sad. He says that his mother barely mourned her husband's death and a month later she remarried.

To try and make himself feel better, Hamlet makes a joke about it when he tells Horatio, "The funeral baked meats did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables". Everyone else knows how much the remarriage of his mother has bothered him. The soliloquy in act one scene two shows how upset he is at his mother and himself. He believes he is better off dead because no one seems to understand what he is feeling. He shows that he is upset at his mother because she got married in such a hurry. It makes him think that maybe his uncle and his mother had an affair before King Hamlet died. He says that his father used to treat her like she was everything and she degraded herself by marrying someone whom treats her as if she was nothing. For example, King Claudius, Hamlet's stepfather always asks Gertrude, Hamlet's...