Cynics might say that this would be an extremely short play if Shakespeare had followed the usual plot of the “revenge tragedies” that were so popular in Elizabethan England. Earlier versions of Hamlet had Claudius surrounding himself with guards so that Hamlet had to find a way to get at him. Without this plot device, Shakespeare had to find a more interesting reason to delay the death scene.
One clue is at the start of the play. The ghost of Hamlet’s father is a far more complex character than previous versions with his talk of purgatory, hell and crowing cocks. Remember that the question of heresy was on everybody’s mind in Elizabeth’s day, and this is a very Catholic ghost. The Anglicans had banished purgatory from the religious lexicon, and references to pagan symbols like cocks could get you burned at the stake. The discussion between Hamlet and Horatio about whether this was truly a ghost from Heaven or a demon from Hell would have resonated with the audience.
Beyond that, Shakespeare seems to be teasing us by setting up a variety of reasons for Hamlet’s delay, rather as he does with Iago in Othello. It is unlikely that Shakespeare had a terrible memory and could not recall what he had previously written. More likely is that he enjoys layering meaning over meaning, so that we get the famous duck-rabbit paradox, where we can only grasp one reason at a time.
The standard set of reasons (that you probably already know) include:
1. Hamlet could not make up his mind.
2. Hamlet had a Freudian Oedipal complex.
3. Hamlet was too intellectual.
4. Hamlet was too immature until the fateful sea voyage.
5. Hamlet was under the influence of the University of Wittenberg.
Take your pick or avoid simplistic answers and take them all, plus any more you can think of.
http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Rabbit-DuckIllusion.html
http://www.scribd.com/doc/21981/Hamlet
http://absoluteshakespeare.com/guides/essays/hamlet_characters_essay.htm
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