Hamlet is one of the most performed and studied plays in the English language. The story could have been simply a melodramatic play about murder and revenge, but William Shakespeare imbued his drama with a sensitivity and thoughtfulness that still fascinates audiences four hundred years after its first performance. Hamlet is not an ordinary young man, furious at the death of his father and the hasty marriage of his mother and uncle. Hamlet is cursed with an introspective nature; he cannot decide whether to turn his anger outward or toward himself. The audience sees a young man who would be happiest in his university, contemplating distant philosophical questions about life and death. Instead, Hamlet is forced to confront death on a visceral level, as an unwelcome and unfathomable character in his life. He cannot ignore thoughts of death, nor grieve and move on with his life, as most people do. He is a melancholy man and he only sees darkness in his future – if he wants to have a future. Throughout the play, and particularly in its two most famous soliloquies, Hamlet struggles with the competing impulses to avenge his father's death or to accept his own. Hamlet is a man caught in a moral dilemma, and his inability to reach a solution dooms him and almost everyone close to him. Shakespeare does not present his protagonist as a strong character. Hamlet's melancholic temperament makes him vulnerable to suicidal thoughts when emotional pain overwhelms him, and he is more likely to ruminate on his problems than to take action against them. The demand of his father's ghost to take revenge on Claudius would have been taken as a clear set of instructions by a man of action, such as Laertes. This is not the case with Hamle...... middle of paper......Hamlet. Only with his last breath can he achieve the resolution that has eluded him for so long. Hamlet is a prince haunted by more than just the ghost of his father. His own nature is perhaps his worst enemy. Works Cited Breuer, Horst. “Shakespeare's Hamlet, III.i.56-88. » Explainer 40.3 (1982): 14-15. EBSCO host. Internet. November 25, 2011. Corum, Richard. Understanding Hamlet: A Student Casebook of Historical Issues, Sources, and Documents. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1998. Print. Fendt, Gene. Is Hamlet a religious drama? An essay on a question to Kierkegaard. Milwaukee: Marquette UP, 1998. Print. MacCary, W. Thomas. Hamlet: A Guide to the Play. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1998. Print. Pollin, Burton R. “Hamlet, a successful suicide. » Shakespeare Studies 1 (1965): 240-60. Internet. November 25, 2011. Shakespeare, William. Hamlet. Ed. GR Hibbard. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1998. Print.