Why Did Hamlet Delay His Revenge? Finding answers to such questions by computer simulations.

Abstract

In his introduction to the Hamlet play, D. Bevington made the following observation: "Ever since the nineteenth century it has been fashionable to discover reasons for Hamlet's delaying his revenge" (Bantam Books edition of The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, published in 1988, volume 3). Can the reasons for Hamlet's delay really be discovered? But to say "discovered" implies some certainty, whereas it seems that we can only speculate without end about such questions for which, like all the "what if' questions in college literature classes, no real answer is possible. After all, are not the answers to all such questions just in the minds of authors, who like the author of Hamlet may be long since departed? Nevertheless, educated persons have persisted in asking such questions as they try to plumb the mind of a writer and imagine alternative paths a story could have taken. I will argue that such questions are not only meaningful, but also potentially answerable with a mathematical precision, given specific assumptions about human nature and the wayan individual makes choices, Le., a person's "action selection".