Why Did Hamlet Hesitate To Kill Claudius

The protagonist, Hamlet, has the possibility to be this in-between character. Throughout the play he contemplates both paths but always hesitates to actually complete either. Instead, he flips back in forth between killing his uncle, Claudius, to avenge his father and killing himself. Each time Hamlet goes to kill Claudius, he seems to hesitate and make excuses. It happens once while Hamlet is watching a traveler’s show, “O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I! Is it not monstrous that this player here, but in a fiction, in a dream of passion, could force his soul so to his own conceit” (2.2. 577-580). Hamlet admires these players because they can act, something which Hamlet cannot do. He fails to exact the revenge that is his supposed purpose until the end of the play. As he watches the players, he wonders why he does not have the same passion that fuels actions. Perhaps because Hamlet is not filled with the desire for revenge after the death of his father, perhaps because he does not think murder is the answer. Whatever the reason this questioning of purpose emphasizes Hamlet’s uncertainty to kill, an uncertainty and hesitation which characters such as Laertes lack. It happens again when Hamlet sees Claudius praying. ¬¬“Now might I do it pat, now he is a-praying, and now I’ll do ’t” (3.3. 77-78).