In a sense, Hamlet seems to be at least two people: a good guy and a bad guy (not unlike most human beings).

• the idealist, the sensitive intellectual; the sweet prince who speaks poetry and is so dedicated to truth
• the guy who treats Ophelia so cruelly, who kills Polonious and talks callously about lugging the guts elsewhere

And, like all main characters in drama and in fiction, he has a mission: to kill the false King and to do so quickly. So, why does he procrastinate?

Things to consider about his character:

1. External difficulties – not problems from himself

• Claudius is powerful and only once places himself in a vulnerable position
• Had he carried out the Ghost's injunction immediately, he would have put himself in a tough position
• How could he explain it as an act of justice?

2. The sentimental dreamer

"the native hue of resolution/Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought" (III.i. 85-85)

3. The victim of melancholy

• Hamlet's grief is pathological. It's a destructive thing that causes him to procrastinate and leads to his death. Melancholy exacerbated by growing self-contempt for his inaction.

4. The victim of the Oedipus complex

• "an undue and unhealthy attachment of a son for his mother which is apt to be morbidly suppressed and cause great mental distress." This motivates Hamlet's delay by identifying him with Claudius, through whom he has vicariously accomplished the oedipal feat of murdering his father and marrying his mother. Why kill your hero?

5. Motivated by ambition

• his desire to kill his uncle is not to avenge his father's "foul and most unnatural murder," but rather to make possible his own advancement to the thrown. The delays are a result of his being aware of the conflict between personal ambition and pride and sacred duty...

6. Misled by Ghost

• The Ghost is a "spirit damned." A bad guy, sent to tempt Hamlet into meting out a private vengeance, not a public justice. Contrary to all Christian teaching, Hamlet is asked to get an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, when he should be leaving such punishment to God. His conscience, which reasons that he shouldn't kill Claudius, restrains him from acting impulsively in accord with his instincts.

7. Hamlet cannot tell what is and what seems.