To Act or Not to Act

King Hamlet's unjust death during a conflict with opposing nations sets the stage for a tragic end in Shakespeare's Hamlet; One of the main and central points that reigns heavily in this tragic play's focal point has to do with the indecisiveness of characters that we see in the play itself, most particularly within the tragic hero Hamlet himself. Whether or not the same fate might have befallen Hamlet in the end of the play due to his uncertainty and his hesitance is certainly questionable, as is to the entire sympathy given to the Tragic Hero who seemingly recognized that his incapability to act as was not becoming of princely virtuous action. Nevertheless, Shakespeare causes his audience to take some form of a lesson from the actions, or the lack of action thereof, in the tragic traits of Hamlet.

The reasons that Hamlet is found hesitant to take direct action after his encounter with the apparition that claims to be his father's ghost are questionably sound. While Shakespeare plays with the notions of the Anglican faith paralleled with Catholic sentiments and the religious ideology of ghosts being able to appear before people, Hamlet wanted to judge the authenticity of the ghost's accusations, when he states "If a but blench, I know my course. The spirit that I have seen may be the devil, and the devil hat power T'assume a pleasing shape; yea, and perhaps out of my weakness and my melancholy" (II.v. 575-579) Hamlet feels it necessary to test what the Ghost claims to be truth - to make certain that he is not being used by the devil through his own melancholy and mourning state for losing his father, which he has been extremely expressing since no one else, in his eyes, seem to mourn his father's death. Even in his encounter after having witnessed Claudius' response to the events that occurred in the play that the players perform in the third act, Hamlet begins to hesitate when he has the opportunity to execute what the ghost had requested of him, uncertain whether Claudius is actually praying in repentance to clear his heart of the guilty sin that he committed or not; The motive of Hamelt's hesitance changes from a form of a systematic check and balance of truth to an attempt to seal the fate of Cladius's soul, when he states, "Up, sword, and know thou a more horrid hint. When he is drunk asleep, or in his rage, or in th'incestuous pleasure of his bed, at gaming, swearing,