nd the devil hath power / to assume a pleasing shape; yea, and perhaps / out of my weakness and my melancholy, / As he is very potent with such spirits, / abuses me to damn me" (line 632-637 p.188). Hamlet’s Christian belief is that the devil can fix its disposition to take advantage of a person’s weakness to abuse them. This causes a delay in that he must make a plan and carry out the plan in order to verify the ghost’s accusations of Claudius and his death. Hamlet meets with players and decides he will have them act out something like the murder of his father and observe his uncle’s reaction. "I’ll tent him to the quick: if he but blench, I know my course, … I’ll have grounds more relative than this: the play’s the thing wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the king." Hamlet now has tools for his revenge: a plan, but still contemplates suicide. This is evident in his third soliloquy, saying, "To be or not to be: that is the question:…to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or… by opposing end them: To die: to sleep:… by a sleep to say we end the heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks…shuffled off this mortal coil." (line 56-67). This is Hamlet’s greatest inner conflict. He does not want anything to do with this world. He wants to leave his afflictions and fall to the eternal peaceful sleep but in his Christian belief God damns those who commit "self-slaughter". In this soliloquy Hamlet shows a lack of self-motivation. He is overcome by so much turmoil that he doesn’t want to do anything, not even avenge his father’s murder but to just die and leave his problems behind. Hamlet’s mood swings into revenge mode as he sees Claudius’ revealing countenance as he watches the play titled, Mouse-trap, that Hamlet requested especially for him. By Claudius’ reaction to the play the ghost’s story is verified to...
