Abstract

Bertrand Russell, in one of his gentler jibes at the pragmatists, says that this school would obviously prefer Othello, the man of action to Hamlet, the man of thought. This figure is singularly inept since Hamlet brought about the death of six people through violent action. That more than equalled the score rolled up by the presumably more active Othello. What Hamlet lacked was not the power to act but an adequate theory of action. Having first attempted to avoid the issue presented by the murder of his father, he is swept up in a gale of violence because of that very attempt at avoidance.