While Hamlet initially feels that he will revenge his father's death in Act I, he does not act impulsively. Realizing that regicide is a serious offense--"And shall I couple hell?" (I,v,92)--Hamlet begins to hesitate:
This time is out of joint. O cursed spite/That ever I was born to set it right! (I,v,187-188).
This hesitation continues through several soliloquies in the play as given to abstraction, "a dream itself is but a shadow" (II,ii,249),
Why then 'tis none to you; for there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so. To me it [Denmark] is a prison. (II,ii, 241-242)
and philosophical debates with himself "What a piece of work is man...." and "To be or not to be...."). From this long self-examination and debate upon existential questions, Hamlet finally emerges from his self-reproach in Act IV, Scene 4 when, after considering his own delay in contrast to the willingness of Fortinbras and the Polish armies to fight for little more than honor:
....Rightly to be great/Is not to stir without great argument,/But greatly to find quarrel in a straw/When honor's at the stake. How stand I then,/That have a father killed, a mother stained....O, from this time forth,? My thoughts be bloody, or be nothing worth!(IV,iv, 53-66)
The change in Hamlet's character occurs in Act V, Scene 1 when he asserts himself as "Hamlet the Dane" (V,i,227). Rather than in the final scene, it is in the graveyard scene in which a new Hamlet emerges, one ready for action: "the cat will mew, and dog will have his day"(V,i,264).
A deep and complex character given to much melancholic brooding and self-debate, Hamlet is all the more intriguing because he does not so quickly act upon his promise to his father's ghost because Denmark "is rotten" and the corruption in the court must be eradicated.
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