Hamlet Essay

The way one speaks, dresses, and acts says a lot about their character. This is why it is so important to always act your best. In the play Hamlet, the performative utterances among the characters help the audience to characterize each character accordingly.

As Fredrik deBoer describes in his paper entitled “The Performative Utterance in William Shakespeare’s Hamlet”, Hamlet is a play about a man who couldn't make real what was found in his mind, not a play about a man who can’t make up his mind. Hamlet was so distraught over the murder of his father that he made it his mission to achieve revenge against his uncle, Claudius. Throughout the play, however, Hamlet talks more and does less. His whole life was turned upside down and he became surrounded with numerous emotions. This eventually forced him into a state of confusion. His friends and family started to think he was insane because of the way he began presenting himself through his speech. Hamlet’s emotions bombarded him and even made him question his own point of existence. For this reason, I believe that Hamlet had many internal struggles and this made it hard for him to focus on actually physically killing Claudius.

His unpredictable emotions ultimately affected the people around him and caused the play to end the way it did. The person who was most affected by Hamlet’s ever-changing emotions was Ophelia as Hamlet started treating her poorly because he was confused with whether he loved her or not. Polonius’ fatherly instincts then awakened and he started spying on Hamlet which is what got him killed. Ophelia became distraught over both Hamlet’s attitude towards her and her father’s death. Though in the play it was uncertain whether Ophelia drowned or committed suicide, I believe she was pushed to the point of suicide and intentionally drowned herself in the lake. Laertes then embarked into his stage of revenge for his father’s death which got him killed.

          Hamlet’s self-overhearing in the play allowed him to release his emotions he had bottled up by giving off steam through his words. He never truly puts those words into actions. I can relate to this on a different sort of level. When I memorized the “To be, or not to be” soliloquy, I just memorized the words itself in the order in which they needed to be in. I never received any deeper meanings from saying those lines over and over again. Hence, as Hamlet didn't receive any benefits from his self-overhearing, I didn't receive any benefits from my self-overhearing. When you reflect on an experience from the past, whether it was a positive or negative experience, you should have received some type of lesson in which you could learn from for future references. I believe the lessons you learn from these experiences should make you a better person and you should be expected to not make the same mistakes again. If you continue to make negative decisions, the results will continue to be negative. This relates back to the fact that even after Claudius murdered King Hamlet, he still tried to murder Prince Hamlet. Since he didn't allow himself to stray from his sinning life, he ended up dying.  

In conclusion, the personas fed off of each other’s energies. This created a lot of quick judgmental actions resulting in more unnecessary deaths. Hamlet’s performative utterance and energy he constantly gave off was the main cause of these deaths. Thus, if Hamlet presented himself in a different way the outcome of the play would have been greatly different, proving just how important the presentation of oneself is.