Warned by the ghost of his poisoned father, troubled by the stench of a declining kingdom, outraged by the incestuous relationship of the queen mother, why Hamlet waited so long to act decisively ? Theories abound. Hamlet had an Oedipus complex. Hamlet was mad rather than simply pretending to be. Hamlet was an intellectual of thought. Hamlet was an existentialist. Etc. TS Eliot went so far as to say that the play itself was flawed, that Hamlet's problem was actually the author's own, insoluble. I think the problem is actually ours. Perhaps the real problem is not Hamlet's hesitation, but our reluctance to understand him. In an ironic maneuver, Shakespeare asks Hamlet to tell us about the self-destructive power of a tragic flaw: Thus, it often happens in particular men, that for some vicious mole of nature in them, as in their birth - of which they are not guilty, since the nature cannot choose its origin - by the excessive growth of some complexion, often knocking down the posts and fortresses of reason, or by some habit which too leaven is the form of plausible customs, which these men, who bear, I say, the mark of a defect, being the livery of nature, or the star of fortune, - their virtues - be they pure as grace, However infinite man may suffer - in general censure will take corruption from that particular fault: the drama of eale all the noble substance of doubt to its own scandal. Believers that virtuousness (or enlightenment) guarantees right conduct, take note! The key to Hamlet's flaw, the stumbling block that has baffled so many readers, is found not at the beginning, but at the end - the place of greatest emphasis - of the "to be or not to be" soliloquy, the most famous dramatic monologue. .... middle of paper......udies of Imagination. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Brown, Keith. 1973. 'Form and Cause Joined': Hamlet and Shakespeare's Workshop.' Shakespeare Survey 26:11-20.Fineman, Joel. 1980. "Fratricide and Betrayal: Shakespeare's Doubles." In Representing Shakespeare: New Psychoanalytic Essays, edited by Coppelia Kahn and Murray M. Schwarz. Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins Press, 70-109.Fleissner, Robert. 1982. ''Spotted' or 'Solid': Hamlet's Flesh Again.' Studies in Hamlet 4:92-3.Fowler, Alastair. "The Plays in the Plays of Hamlet." . Pendleton. London and New York: Methuen. Freud, 1953-74. The standard edition of the complete psychological works, trans. James Stachey.