The Performative Utterance in Hamlet

-not a play about a man who can't make up his mind, but a play about a man who could not make real what was found in his mind

-Hamlet unable to move duty from mental to the real

-dividing line between what is said and done in the play (language doesn't describe action but acts in being spoken) 

-Austin divides Performative ability of language into three main forces: the locutionary force (the ability if language to deliver a message), the force of mutual intelligibility (what is being said like denying a request or giving an order), and the perlocutionary force (what is achieved from being said)

-central problem of the play is that people represent their feeling and their intentions in ways that are contrary to reality

-Polonius's narrow vision of what madness is and entails hurts him

-Polonius is vulnerable to Hamlet because of his mechanistic vision if human nature

-Polonius is the premodern man while Hamlet is the modern man   

-Claudius is incapable of controlling his own definition if self and is trapped 

-bloodshed over sons who seek revenge against their father's killers 

-Hamlet's evolution is an evolution towards fath, closure, and acceptance not action