Hamlet and the Kairos

Abstract

To fulfill the ghost's injunction that he seek out his father's killer, Hamlet must learn not to expect that the opportune moment for revenge will be determined by himself within the daily sequence of chronological time or chronos. Instead, he must learn to cooperate with a divine intention that will operate through him at a time which it determines to be most advantageous. This sense of time is termed kairos or “the right time.” The play becomes a spiritual Bildungsroman in which Hamlet learns through trial and error of an inexorable kairos for which he is indispensable but not ultimately responsible. After his return from England, Hamlet's outlook has changed from being “splenetive and rash” to an attitude of alert but patient expectancy. It is not for him to pinpoint the moment of kairos, far less for him to contrive its occurrence according to his own antic plan, but to await his role in it; thus, “the readiness is all.” The coincidences of the last act are both an effective dramatic catastrophe and evidence of a larger pattern of design. Hamlet's fifth-act anagnorisis—his awareness of the reality of his situation—is not only his knowledge of a divine purposiveness, but his immediate participation in a process of providence which works through human chronos to achieve its own kairos.