Passion in Hamlet

The role of passion in the play, Hamlet.

Setting of the play occurs at Elsinore in Denmark. Prince Hamlet has returned to Denmark from his school in Wittenberg only to discover that his father, King Hamlet is dead, and that Queen Gertrude, his mother, has married his Uncle Claudius. Claudius has crowned himself as king. The ghost of King Hamlet father reveals to the Prince that his uncle was the actual killer and that he should take revenge upon him.

Hamlet never confides this fact to his mother. The young boy is in turmoil as to how to react to the situation. Though full of awe, hate and anger ; he is able to contain his immediate outburst. Shakespeare announces in the beginning that everybody is a ‘passion’s slave’.

“Give me that man
That is not passion's slave, and I will wear him
In my heart's core, ay, in my heart of heart,
As I do thee. (Hamlet, III. ii) ”

The play’s key characters are governed by passion over reason.. Claudius kills his own brother to become king himself. Gerrude, setting aside the grief of her husband’s death and her son’s condition marries Claudius in haste.
According to Brock,“Hamlet’s enemy was not so much irresolution, which arose from his melancholy and the nature of the problem that confronted him, as passion”.

There are instances throughout the play presenting mixture of passion, anger, revenge, agitation and control. The revelation of his father’s ghost sparks off these emotions.


Hamlet seems to reach a climax in Act III, scene iv when after revelation of truth to him, Hamlet enters her room he speaks to himself, at the same time containing his instinct to be violent -

“When the blood burns, how prodigal the soul
Lends the tongue vows.
Let me be cruel, not unnatural;
I will speak daggers to her, but use none.” (Hamlet, III. ii)

On his way to meet his mother in her chamber, Hamlet gets an opportunity to avenge Claudius when he suddenly finds the king on his knees in prayer situation, but he passes over to wait for a more appropriate time even if “more dangerous”.

“Gertrude believes that the madness is in response to his father’s death as well as the marriage between Gertrude and Claudius. Polonius attributes Hamlet’s madness to his rejection by Ophelia whom he passionately loves, since Polonius had forbidden her to see him (Tricia, 2004).”

At one point violent passion takes better of him. Hamlet kills Polonius by stabbing through the tapestry mistaking him for Claudius.,
“Here, thou incestuous, murderous, damned dame,
Drink off this potion” (Hamlet V.ii.151)

While watching the play ‘The Murder of Gonzago’ by a group of performers, Claudius’s feels guilty and turning around, confesses murder of Hamlet’s father.

In the end of the play Hamlet, Claudius, Gertrude and Laertes- all are succumb to death by poison, which symbolizes over riding passion of one type or the other among all the characters.