Hamlet has its roots in the Elizabethan “revenge play.” yet the play seems not to be much about revenge – that takes place only in the last seconds of a very long production. Perhaps it’s more a play about delay. Many critics have written about the reasons for hamlet’s delay in obeying the ghost’s instructions to revenge his murder. Prominent theories center on hamlet’s melancholy, his doubts, his over-intellectualizing, and his psychological profile

How might these account for his failure to revenge his father promptly? Might other factors be more or equally important?