Hamlet: A Story about Procrastination

There has never been a more invigorating piece of literature in history that has captured the essence of procrastination better than William Shakespeare’s Hamlet.

Now what might bother you a little (especially to someone who has read this play) could be that - out of all the fascinating themes and life altering soliloquies that the play presents, why was my biggest takeaway the (rather) underlying theme of procrastination.

More on that later.

Apart from focusing on the obvious political conflict that Denmark was going through due to the inopportune death of King Hamlet, the play decided to lend most of its attention to Prince Hamlet’s inner, moral conflict. After being exposed to the unforgiving crime that his Uncle Claudius had committed by killing his own brother and then, without a pint of guilt, married Queen Gertrude, made Hamlet question his very existence and purpose in life.

An unflinching quest for revenge meanders over him as he cruises through the meaning of life and death; right and wrong.

“To be or not to be, that is the question.”

“What is living but a form of procrastination to delay the doomed reality that death is?”

- an interpretation

On a deeper study, one might notice a lucid parallel between how we procrastinate death and how Prince Hamlet procrastinated taking revenge.

One of my favourite soliloquies was the one in which he questions why is suicide considered such a huge crime.

He contemplates on reasons why it is so difficult to kill oneself even though it is so easy to just pick up a knife. He reaches the conclusion that one fears the evils they might have to face after death, thus settles for dealing with the (known/predictable) torments of this life itself.

There has been no piece of literature in history that has sensualised death better than Hamlet.

P.S. Carefully listen to the eerie yet sensual “So Jao” - The song of Death from Haider, the official Hindi adaptation of Hamlet to understand this theme more effectively.

(Gulzar, you beauty!)

Some fascinating trivia

• Hamlet is Shakespeare’s longest play and can go upto 5 hours when performed entirely

• Hamlet is the second most filmed story in the world, coming second only to Cinderella.

• Hamlet has (allegedly) inspired the story of Disney’s The Lion King.

• What makes Hamlet’s narrative rather unconventional is that unlike other revenge dramas where the murderer is revealed only by the end of the second act or the beginning of the third act, Shakespeare has revealed the murderer in the first act itself. And the rest of the story is a psychological battle between morality and duty. This form of story writing belongs to the genre of ‘Revenge Tragedy’, and Shakespeare was one of the first ones to explore it.

Read Hamlet for its conversations around the complexity in the simplistic things in life, and of course, to proudly quote lines from it in interesting discussions in order to impress your ‘woke’ peers!

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Sankalp Sharma is a second-year student of Bachelor's in Management Studies, specializing in Marketing at Narsee Monjee College of Commerce and Economics, Mumbai.

Lately, he has developed a keen interest in analyzing movies and several pieces of literature. This propelled him to initiate an India-wide community by the name of ‘THE ABSTRACT ROOM’, wherein they hold weekly discussions on books, movies and everything else that matters, with the aim to spread the importance of literature and consistent learning. With over 100 independent participants (apart from the regular ones) within a span of merely 3 months, Sankalp has realised the need for the existence and functioning of an open community like his.