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 captivates audiences four hundred years after its first performance. Hamlet is no ordinary young man, enraged by the death of his father and the hasty marriage of his mother and uncle. Hamlet is cursed with an introspective nature; he can't decide whether to turn his anger outward or inside himself. The audience sees a young man who would be happier at his university, contemplating remote philosophical questions of life and death. Instead, Hamlet is forced to confront death on a visceral level, as an unwelcome and unfathomable figure in his life. He cannot ignore thoughts of death, nor can he grieve and move on with his life, as most people do. He is a melancholy man and sees only darkness in his future, if he wants to have a future at all. Throughout the play, and particularly in his two most famous soliloquies, Hamlet struggles with conflicting compulsions to avenge his father's death or embrace his own. Hamlet is a man trapped in a moral dilemma, and his inability to reach a resolution dooms himself 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 inclined to ruminate on his problems than to act against them. The request of his father's ghost to seek revenge on Claudius would have been interpreted as a clear set of instructions from a man of action, such as Laertes. Not so with Hamlet... in the center of the card... Hamlet. Only with his dying breath is he able to achieve the resolution that has eluded him for so long. Hamlet is a prince haunted not only by the ghost of his father. His own nature is, perhaps, his worst enemy. Works Cited Breuer, Horst. "Shakespeare's Hamlet, III.i.56-88." Explicator 40.3 (1982): 14-15. EBSCOhost. Network. November 25, 2011. Corum, Richard. Understanding Hamlet: A casebook for students on historical issues, sources, and documents. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1998. Print.Fendt, Gene. Is Hamlet a religious drama? Essay on a question in Kierkegaard. Milwaukee: Marquette UP, 1998. Print.MacCary, W. Thomas. Hamlet: A Guide to the Opera. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1998. Print.Pollin, Burton R. “Hamlet, a Successful Suicide.” Shakespeare Studies 1 (1965): 240-60. Network. November 25, 2011.Shakespeare, William. Hamlet. Ed. GR Hibbard. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1998. Print.