Conscious Acting or Acting Conscious?

Northrop Frye, while analyzing Hamlet's characters, mentions that the actions you make can affect your potential abilities and interests. Frye says that even though most people, as they get older, tend to narrow their potential, they don't admit it to themselves. Yet, Claudius had to accept that fact, because he committed a crime and was smart enough to know it. Hamlet, instead, wasn't blocked from a wide potential by any of his actions, but his consciousness led him to believe that even the mere condition of being a human was keeping him imprisoned in his own life.

For Northrop Frye, the only way of releasing yourself from that prison of being conscious is to act. Hamlet thinks that consciousness is a "withdrawal from action that kills action itself," which in turn leads to his inaction. He realizes that there is nothing he can do to change anything, and he is but a ghost in deciding the future of his life.

In his analysis, Frye also comment on the famous "to be or not to be" soliloquy, which can be considered the essence of the play. While saying it, Hamlet is not clear on what he wants to do, or if he even wants to do something. No real action is made during the soliloquy, and it doesn't take Hamlet anywhere. Since the beginning of the play, Hamlet has said he wants to kill himself, but he is kept alive by the "fear that he might become just another ghost."

Consciousness and action are necessary for each other, but they also coincide and prevent each other from functioning in their maximum potential. Without action, consciousness has no point, and without consciousness, action is "mindless." Yet, consciousness could be seen as a "withdrawal from action." Hamlet is precisely significant in the Romanticism period because it dared to explore the conflict of consciousness and action, which no other literature piece had done before. As Northrop Frye so convincingly said, "perhaps, if we had not had Hamlet, we might not have had the Romantic movement at all."

The reason for Hamlet's inaction in Shakespeare's play has been deeply analyzed for a long time, and different theories have arisen that try to explain why he is driven to be who he is. I believe he doesn't feel inclined to act because of an excess of reflection about the actions he must take, in which he finds a consequence for every action. His cowardice then leads him to hide behind very scholarly words, hoping none will notice he is too afraid to act.