Hamlet is commanded to take revenge, but his conscience prevents him from acting simply or quickly. Shakespeare explores whether revenge is ever truly just.
'Seems' is one of Hamlet's key words. Almost nothing in the play is what it appears — Claudius pretends virtue, Hamlet pretends madness, Polonius pretends wisdom.
The play is saturated with meditations on death — from the Ghost to Ophelia's drowning to the gravedigger scene. 'To be or not to be' is the most famous reflection on mortality in English literature.
Hamlet's inability to act when he should has fascinated audiences and critics for four centuries. Shakespeare presents inaction as its own form of moral failure — and as profoundly human.