This class of theory, then, we must simply reject.  But it suggests two remarks.  It is of course quite probable that, when Hamlet was ’thinking too precisely on the event,’ he was considering, among other things, the question how he could avenge his father without sacrificing his own life or freedom.  And assuredly, also, he was anxious that his act of vengeance should not be misconstrued, and would never have been content to leave a ‘wounded name’ behind him.  His dying words prove that.

(2) Assuming, now, that Hamlet’s main difficulty—­almost the whole of his difficulty—­was internal, I pass to views which, acknowledging this, are still unsatisfactory because they isolate one element in his character and situation and treat it as the whole.

According to the first of these typical views, Hamlet was restrained by conscience or a moral scruple; he could not satisfy himself that it was right to avenge his father.

This idea, like the first, can easily be made to look very plausible if we vaguely imagine the circumstances without attending to the text.  But attention to the text is fatal to it.  For, on the one hand, scarcely anything can be produced in support of it, and, on the other hand, a great deal can be produced in its disproof.  To take the latter point first, Hamlet, it is impossible to deny, habitually assumes, without any questioning, that he ought to avenge his father.  Even when he doubts, or thinks that he doubts, the honesty of the Ghost, he expresses no doubt as to what his duty will be if the Ghost turns out honest:  ’If he but blench I know my course.’  In the two soliloquies where he reviews his position (II. ii., ‘O what a rogue and peasant slave am I,’ and IV. iv., ‘How all occasions do inform against me’) he reproaches himself bitterly for the neglect of his duty.  When he reflects on the possible causes of this neglect he never mentions among them a moral scruple.  When the Ghost appears in the Queen’s chamber he confesses, conscience-stricken, that, lapsed in time and passion, he has let go by the acting of its command; but he does not plead that his conscience stood in his way.  The Ghost itself says that it comes to whet his ‘almost blunted purpose’; and conscience may unsettle a purpose but does not blunt it.  What natural explanation of all this can be given on the conscience theory?

And now what can be set against this evidence?  One solitary passage.[35] Quite late, after Hamlet has narrated to Horatio the events of his voyage, he asks him (V. ii. 63): 

     Does it not, thinks’t thee, stand me now upon—­
     He that hath kill’d my king and whored my mother,
     Popp’d in between the election and my hopes,
     Thrown out his angle for my proper life,
     And with such cozenage—­is’t not perfect conscience
     To quit him with this arm? and is’t not to be damn’d
     To let this canker of our nature come
     In further evil?