A Call for Substantiation

The second half of act 2 scene 2 sees Hamlet hear a speech by the First Player about the murder of Priam, King of Troy, at the hand of Pyrrhus, the son of Achilles. In killing Priam, Pyrrhus acts out of revenge for the death of his father, a course that Prince Hamlet surely desires to take as demonstrated by his interest in the player's speech, and the delivery of his own monologue that follows. Hamlet's monologue chiefly concerns itself with the will to take action, and is therefore necessarily an existential speech. Hamlet berates himself for his inability to act upon the injustice done unto his father by Claudius, labeling himself as "pigeon-livered." He insists that if he wasn't he would already have "fatted all the region kites with this slave's (Claudius) offal." He is filled with the same hesitation that, I believe, takes hold of Pyrrhus as he is about to strike Priam to death. That hesitation is born out of an existential need for substantiation of motive. The individual can never really know anything definitive about the world, and therefore action becomes difficult in light of the fact that it is difficult to justify any motivation. If nothing can surely be known, and the causes of events remain forever abstract, then there can never be complete reassurance that a course of action is justified. This is the cause of Pyrrhus's hesistation, but, feeling that substantial motive has been created by the indisputable death of his father at the hands of Priam, he is able to proceed. Hamlet, on the other hand, lacks this reassurance, and so his will to act is weaker. Although he has been told by the ghost about King Hamlet's death, the Prince wishes for more concrete proof of his, namely the reaction of Claudius to a tragic play resembling the murder of the King. The existential individual resides in a purely mechanical world, and so it is necessary that his actions are fed by motives grounded in reality. Hamlet cannot immediately act because he still fears the delusion of his own mind. He does not wish to lead an existence separate from the physical world, and so he requires substantiation.