What is responsible for the tragedy of Hamlet— character or fate? Give reasons while you answer. 'Character is destiny". How far is this applicable to Hamlet?

What is responsible for the tragedy of Hamlet— character or fate? Give reasons while you answer.

'Character is destiny". How far is this applicable to Hamlet?

Ans. Shakespearean tragedy, as a rule, is always a tragedy both of character and fate. Similarly Hamlet is a tragedy both of character and fate. In Hamlet we find the most pathetic example of a great man ruined through the existence of a trifling inherent weakness and surrounded by hostile circumstances which are beyond his control. Yet he himself is responsible for his formidable fall.

Hamlet as a play produces in us the feeling that there is some mysterious power in the universe which upsets human hopes, plans,

I and calculations. The very appearance of the Ghost in Hamlet is a   situation for which fate is responsible. The Ghost is not a figment of Hamlet’s fancy, because others besides him have seen the Ghost. With   the passage of time Hamlet would have recovered from the feeling of melancholy which afflicts him after his father's death, and his mother's hasty remarriage. But fate intervenes in the form of the Ghost who not   only makes a shocking revelation to Hamlet but also imposes a task or   duty on Hamlet to avenge his father's murder. Hamlet feels bewildered by the situation which has been created by fate.

 Further fate intervenes in the form of accident for it is mere an   accident that the ship in which Hamlet travels to England is attacked by the pirates vessel and subsequently he returns to Denmark to meet his tragic death. It is fate that he has to end his life in Denmark and fulfil the Ghost's injunction to avenge his father's murder or else   Hamlet would arrived in England, never to return. 

However, in Hamlet the tragedy is mainly due to character. True that fate has placed the hero in a difficult situation, but another man in his place would have executed the revenge promptly after a confirmation of the Ghost's allegation at any rate, and have done with it. But Hamlet hesitates and wavers. This vacillation is the tragic   flaw in his character. The course that a man of action would adopt in such a situation is clear—instant pursuit of revenge. But Hamlet is   not a man of action. He is primarily a philosopher, a thinking man and one who thinks too much and this excessive reflectiveness in his   character renders him incapable of action.

At the end of the play we have a sense of fate. manner in which several characters including Hamlet are killed in the last scene, strengthen a sense of fate operating in the play. The Queen's unknowingly drinking the poisoned wine and the exchange of rapiers between Hamlet and Laertes, we feel, are the works of fate. But all these happen because Hamlet, lacking the capacity for the prompt and needful action, fails to act at the proper time.