Hamlet Is Not Acting Like Hamlet

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difficult and may think about how his thinking may be in error. He actually rationalizes to delay revenge: "Am I a coward?" (Act II, scene II), "Thus conscience does make cowards of us all" (Act III, scene I), "And ever three parts coward, I do not know why yet I live to say `This things to do" (Act IV, scene IV). He constantly asks himself if he is a coward, but an actual coward does not ask himself this question, a coward acts that way and has no regrets about it.

However, his character has an evolution; he starts being passive, like a Hollow Man in T.S. Elliot's poem. Inaction, obedience... he talks, and talks, and talks, but does not act at all: "... fail to denote him truly it is because in him a separation has already opened up between the inner reality of the subject, living itself, as `that within that passes show' " (Barker 1992: 162). The reader can see this with Hamlet's seven soliloquies, the constant riddles and quibbles, and what Horatio says him "These are but ...

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