Hamlet -- ThemeThere is a lively critical debate on the themes of the Shakespearean play Hamlet and on their correct classification in terms of importance. This article hopes to discuss some of the major themes and their significance in the show. Is procrastination the main theme of the show? DG James in his essay “The New Doubt” expresses his view: But few of us will deny that Hamlet's procrastination is the main fact of the play and that Shakespeare intended it to be so. But should we really treat his procrastination as a mystery and leave it that way? There is truly something mysterious in a man who has not reached a clear and practical sense of life and who, faced with a shocking situation which involves him in a completely peculiar way, drags himself along, deludes himself, procrastinates and in his Does exasperation cruelly persecute the person? love the most beautiful thing in the world? (46)Perhaps the most popular theme of the work is that of revenge. RA Foakes in “The Play's Courtly Setting” explains the burden of vengeance that the protagonist must carry throughout the play: And where there is no legal punishment for his father's death, he must stoop, driven by the universal wrong, and “to be so entangled with the wicked,” to take revenge. He must share the corruption of others despite his nobility, and recognize the common traits in himself: "we are all scoundrels". (53)In the essay “Hamlet: His Falstaff”, Harold Goddard makes a statement of the two main themes of the play, namely war and revenge, linking them to the final scene: The dead Hamlet is carried out “as a soldier” and the last rites on his body will be war rites. The final word of the... middle of the paper... and Production. No. 9. Ed. Allardyce Nicoll. Cambridge, England: Cambridge Univ. P., 1956. James, D.G. “The New Doubt.” Interpretations of Hamlet in the twentieth century. Ed. David Bevington. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1968. Levin, Harry. General introduction. The bank of the Shakespeare River. Ed. G. Blakemore Evans. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1974. Neill, Michael. "No one can escape death, the 'Undiscovered Country'." Readings on Hamlet. Ed. Don Nardò. San Diego, CA: Greenhaven Press, 1999. Rpt. of “Hamlet: A Modern Perspective.” The tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. Ed. Barbara A. Mowat and Paul Werstine. NP: Folger Shakespeare Lib., 1992.Shakespeare, William. The tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 1995. http://www.chemicool.com/Shakespeare/hamlet/full.html No line nn.