The Case for Hamlet as the Best

I love this bit from Hamlet.  I think it is as underrated in its import, as was the sonnet that Romeo and Juliet speak to one another upon their first meeting.  It is philosophy rife with pathos and, I argue, resolution.  Some critics and aficionados may view Hamlet's indecisiveness and inaction as some character flaw.  Which it may be, of course.  But really the entirety of the play leading up to "Not a whit..." is a contretemps to the impulse of laying moral issues neatly in a box, closing it straightaway, and sliding it into the wardrobe.  Instead, Shakespeare suggests that such moral issues must stay on the table in their agonizing ambiguity, recalcitrance and loose-endedness.  He defies that impulse, in other words.  

Imagine being in Hamlet's shoes.  Your beloved father just died, murdered more specifically.  Your loving mother re-marries way too quickly, in the midst of your grief.  You see your father in unexpected places.  If this emotional trauma and horror weren't enough, you also have emerging desire to take revenge and kill his murderer.  Which of course is at the heart of Hamlet's moral dilemma.  He is paralyzed into indecisiveness and inaction, precisely because he must be so.  He must make the effort, he must take the time, and he must undergo a painstaking process to come to grips with this trauma, horror and dilemma.  Never mind the fact that he, of course, must do something about it.  It is a tour de force effort on the dramatist-cum-psychologist's part.

The Millions engaged experts to offer what they saw as the best among Shakespearean plays, in honor of the Bard's 450th birthday on April 23rd 1564.  In Shakespeare’s Greatest Play? 5 Experts Share Their Opinions, Ros Barber offers his bit on Hamlet.  

Now I have offered mine.