Performative Utterance: Hamlet Essay

Hamlet is often thought as an indecisive man spoke a lot rather than acting on what he said. There is even a moment in the play where Hamlet reflects his inability to carry out his revenge and in doing so, he is unable to continue on with his revenge. When he is reflecting on this, he is speaking out loud to himself- self-overhearing.The fact that he is outwardly expressing his thought process allows him to make certain choices. His performative utterance comes to have a strong impact on the plot and the rest of the characters in the play. Unlike Hamlet, my own experiences with self-overhearing never directly effects the people that surround me, only myself.

To begin with, in the play the audience is given the impression that Hamlet only talks about what he is going to do but never does anything about it and that he can be indecisive. According to deBoer, Hamlet's speech is performative utterance. This means that Hamlet is not just describing what is happening within and around him, he is changing it. It's in this way that he able to impact the plot and the characters in the play. The most prominent example is that he is able to convince everyone that he has gone crazy or mad. In reality, he is only pretending to be mad. Polonious then because a bit more involved in the plot because he believes he knows the source for Hamlet's madness. Everyone becomes preoccupied with trying to figure out why Hamlet has gone mad, including Rosencratz and Guildstern. The king himself states, “Madness in great ones must not unwatched go.” His madness later serves as a sort of justification for him killing Polonious and not earning immediate punishment.

When I talk to myself, it is usually when I have to make difficult decisions. I wont usually talk to myself about the weather or what I'm going to wear the next day. I ask myself questions and try to predict how others will react to my choices. I then imagine how it will effect me immediately and in the future. I do this to ensure that I am doing the right/correct thing., much like Hamlet in his “to be or not to be” soliloquy. I am always to talk myself into doing something or not doing something, For a more recent example, I was debating whether I should attend a university or go to Hancock College. This was the question that I kept asking myself. I then though about how my family wold react. I talked to myself and knew they would be filled with bitter disappointment and that it would effect me negatively in the future. Another experience with self-overhearing is the memorization of the “to be or not to be” soliloquy. The more I said the soliloquy out loud the better that I was able to memorize and understand the soliloquy. Ding this brings a bit of awkwardness but with practice I am able to ignore this.

In this case, I resolve to attending a university. This gives me real results because it is something that effects my entire future as well as my parents' future. Self-overhearing helps me to develop better memorization and understanding of something. This was the case with Hamlet's soliloquy but also the case with anything else that I have to memorize.

In conclusion, Hamlet's perfomative utterance has a big impact on the characters and thus the entire plot. As with my own self-overhearing, it doesn't have an effect right away or directly effect those that surround me. In many ways my self-overhearing creates a sense of memory, expectation, and real-world.