The degree of separation between revenge and justice has often been a matter of contention between scholars.  Is “an eye for an eye” lawful?  Is it moral?  In many modern societies enacting retribution is tantamount to committing the initial crime.  The structured legal system of laws and lawsuits allows for no personal vendetta to be physically born out legally, but rather uses supposedly impartial court systems to try the accused.  In Shakespeare’s day the concept of “an eye for an eye” was not as frowned upon as it is in today’s society.  Certain crimes that impugned on the honor or wellbeing of a person would often demand moral revenge.  In Hamlet, Claudius’s murder of Hamlet’s father was a crime that justified such revenge.  Hamlet’s moral character demanded Claudius’s head for such a deed.  However, his failure to immediately enact revenge is due in part to those very morals that drove him and also to his tendency to procrastinate; a procrastination that eventually created serious consequences.

        Hamlet is depicted in Act I as being a moral person whose values are strongly rooted in custom.  He first appears grief-stricken, lamenting the fact that God had “fixed / His canon ‘gainst self-slaughter”(I,ii,131-32).  Even though he was driven by sorrow to the point of suicide, a mere love of his own life did not stay his blade, but rather his belief in God’s law stayed his hand.  Presented with a choice between death and custom, Hamlet chose custom and morality, albeit reluctantly.  Suicide, to Catholic-based beliefs, is the most immoral of actions due to the fact that the doer could not later repent of his/her deed.  This sense of custom and morals, strongly rooted in Hamlet’s nature, is not merely concerned with matters of his own life.  His bitterness towards his mother, Gertrude, is not born out of the fact that she remarried.  Instead, he is appalled that, as soon than her tears had dried, she hastened with “great dexterity to incestuous sheets”(I,ii,157) with Claudius, her dead husband’s brother.  The speed at which she remarried and the fact that she married her brother-in-law both were actions that offended tradition of that time.  Hamlet’s nature could not but abhor the notion of his mother violating all custom and tradition in such a manner.  Later, when learning of the nature of his father’s death, Hamlet flies into a murderous rage, wishing to fly to avenge his father with “wings as swift/ as meditation”(I,v,30-31).  He spared no thought as to whether or not exacting retribution was morally sound.  In Hamlet’s society the concept of “an eye for an eye” was not immoral.  On the contrary, custom demanded retribution for Hamlet’s slain kin.  Hamlet now also had a two-fold reason for killing Claudius; both custom and now his father’s ghost, saying that it cannot rest in peace until Claudius is dead, demand a blood price.  After swearing Horatio and the others to secrecy, Hamlet rues that he would be the one chosen to clean the “unweeded garden”(I,ii,135) and right matters.

        Hamlet, in Act II, has the motive and means to kill Claudius, yet he does not.  The fiery emotion that had gripped him was now scarce about his person.  The mournful state of mind that he was in before the appearance of the ghost returns for a different reason.  Hamlet displays a penchant for baring his innermost feelings to others in a manner that is invariably misunderstood by others.  He welcomes Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to Denmark, which he labels as “one/ o’th’ worst”(II,ii,247-48) prisons in the world.  Hamlet clearly shows that he feels the full weight of the obligation that he is under.  He is now confined to this prison, this “unweeded garden”(I,ii,135) by his obligations to both custom and his father’s ghost.  Rather than being motivated to action by this duty to kill the king, he, like a gardener, is depressed not because he has to weed this garden, but rather because he has come to the garden to find its once radiant splendor destroyed by overgrown weeds.  He finds no joy, no mirth in his situation; the very air itself seems a “pestilent congregation of vapors”(II,ii,304).  He has motivation to act on his duty, but does not act on it.  Ironically, after seeing what emotion and tears an actor puts into a role that has no personal meaning to that actor, Hamlet recognizes his own procrastination of duty and derides himself as a coward, as “pigeon-livered and lack[ing] of gall”(II,ii,557).  However, his hesitation to act on his obligations cannot be simply attributed to cowardice or laziness.  The truth of the matter, which Hamlet arrives at upon further reflection, lies behind this façade.  He realizes that the ghost of his father may have been the devil, whom Hamlet knows often “t’assume[s] a pleasing shape”(II,ii,601) to trick people.  If he acted on the word of the ghost alone, and if that word proved to be a fabrication of the devil, Hamlet would have slain an innocent man.  He, being the moral person, cannot even chance the possibility of killing an innocent man and thus does not follow through on the ghost’s instruction.

        While still gripped in uncertainties about the validity of the ghost’s story, Hamlet once again struggles with the terms of his morality and death versus life.  He comes to realize that “conscience does make cowards of us all”(III,i,84) when considering the possibility of death by suicide.  His thought process here, though very dark, is still morally centered.  His basis for once again “choosing” living over dying is based in the fact that he does not know where he would go because of his present sins.  His morals would not allow him to make any other choice but to live.  Thus does this struggle between life and death conclude based on his moral character.

        After the play reveals confirms the ghost’s story, Hamlet’s purpose and fury is renewed to the point that he “[drank] hot blood”(III,ii,389).  Hamlet’s morals and customs once again prevent him from killing Claudius.  He creeps up to kill the king when the king is praying, yet cannot take his life.  To kill Claudius while the king is seemingly praying for forgiveness would be “hire and salary, not revenge”(III,iii,79) to Hamlet.  To Hamlet, sending the killer of his father to heaven whilst his father is at the very least in purgatory would be a violation of all intents and purposes of killing Claudius as punishment in the first place.  He needs to catch Claudius in the midst of some sin before killing him in order to satisfy to entirety his father’s command.  He gets this chance when he hears what he presumes to be Claudius while he is closeted with his mother.

        The killing of Polonius, Rosencrantz, and Guildenstern, while seemingly devoid of any moral backing, actually reinforce Hamlet’s moral character.  Each of these killings was quite different in nature and origin:  Polonius was killed in the passion of the moment; Rosencrantz and Guildenstern were doomed in a moment of clever clarity.  Polonius died by the sword; Rosencrantz and Guildenstern died by the pen.  However, each killing was, to Hamlet, morally sound.  All three who were killed were helping the king through various means.  Hamlet, thinking it was the king behind the arras, “fulfilled” his duty to the ghost by slaying Polonius.  Upon finding out the corpse was really Polonius, Hamlet expresses no regret because Polonius was, while spying on them, an agent of Claudius, whom, in Hamlet’s mind, is evil.  Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, in carrying the letter that ordered Hamlet’s death, were also agents of “evil”(Claudius).  Hamlet has no qualms about killing evil men because such an act is, to him, morally justified.

Later in the play Hamlet runs out of moral reasons for the delaying of revenge, yet still takes no action that is motivated by his own doing.  He ironically recognizes his own lack of action when he sees Fortinbras’ army preparing to fight and die over a small plot of poor land.  His reasons for killing Claudius, spurred on as they are by “examples gross as earth”(IV,iv,47), exceed those of Fortinbras’ reasons for fighting for control of a useless piece of land.  Yet he, Hamlet, who has the greater motivation, does not act while Fortinbras, who has a negligent amount of motivation, does act.  This irony, not lost on Hamlet, once again serves as motivation for Hamlet’s “thoughts be bloody”(IV,iv,67).  Yet, once again when he arrives in Denmark in Act V, he has lost his fiery motivation and does not immediately set out to kill the king.  In all the duration of Act V, Hamlet tenders no plans for the king’s death; he puts forth no effort to cultivate the overgrown garden.  Hamlet is only spurred to kill Claudius when he, during the fight with Laertes, realizes that the king has betrayed him.  This duty to Claudius, morally justified in Hamlet’s mind in Act I, finally is consummated in the end of Act V.  This delay, however, brought about the death of all those who Hamlet loved as well as Hamlet himself.

Hamlet’s procrastination of his duty led to the weeds in the garden growing too high and thick.  When weeds grow high and thick enough, the only option is then to burn everything.  Had Hamlet cultivated Denmark from the beginning, he would not have had his entire life destroyed by the consequences of inaction.  Hamlet’s cyclic pattern of motivation and almost apathy, as well as his own morals, resulted in the delaying of the death of a king; this procrastination brought about a tragic end to the nobility of Denmark.