Hamlet's delay

 Much has been written about why Hamlet delays in taking his revenge on his uncle for the murder of his father but I want to suggest a different approach - in outline. He is not a typical revenge tragedy hero. 

On one level Hamlet has perfectly rational grounds for not acting immediately after his encounter with the ghost: it might be an emissary of the devil and untrustworthy. Once he has tested its veracity by the play, The Mouse-trap, the king has his Swiss guards around him. The only opportunity is when Claudius is praying and - although it might be rationalisation - Hamlet does not want to send his uncle's soul to heaven. Then he is shipped off to England. 

The problem occurs, not because he procrastinates, but because he constantly draws attention to that fact. In effect, Hamlet keeps saying: "I am delaying. Why?" Without the four soliloquies, the play would be much more straightforward. It would be the drama of an appointed avenger who waits until all is clear but is killed himself when he finally acts. What Shakespeare gives us is much more complicated: a sick psyche and - arguably - the first European tragedy of character. Greek tragedy has the concept of a crime in the body politic, such as a murder, needing to be purged. (Denmark resembles Argos after the killing of Agamemnon). In our play, repeated disease imagery links the ailing mind of the eponymous character to the illness in the state. As a result of his inner malady, Hamlet is extreme in his reactions to his mother, (unable to leave her sinful guilt to heaven, as instructed), and to Ophelia. His view of life, man and woman is poisoned. The outcome is good destroyed along with evil. 

Contemporary audiences would have recognised melancholia, a disordered product of too much black bile, but the presentation of Hamlet's mind, soul and heart is more complex, modern and mysterious than that medical diagnosis.