Many scholars and critics regard William Shakespeare's Hamlet as his finest play. It is based on the story of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, which first appeared in the Historia Danica, a Latin text by the twelfth-century historian Saxo Grammaticus. The main protagonist, being Hamlet, the so-called "Dark Prince" of Shakespearean tragedy, is an extremely complex man with a great depth of personality who "suffers from insecurity and a sense of the absurd... and as a man and a revenger, shifts from an external struggle for vengeance to an internal one" (McConnell).
             As a person, Hamlet experiences a wide range of emotions linked with specific events, such as being betrayed by his friends and family, which causes him much grief and despair that eventually leads to a state of utter melancholy. As an emotional young man, Hamlet becomes greatly disillusioned by the incestuous marriage of his mother Gertrude to Claudius, the present king of Denmark, and grieves over his father's untimely death. He views his own life with much disgust and disappointment and likens it to an "unweeded garden," full of pitfalls and weariness. Upon the realization that Claudius murdered his father, Hamlet's distress multiplies and becomes quite unnerving, especially after the ghost of Claudius demands that Hamlet seek revenge against those who murdered him. However, at the time of this revelation, Hamlet's grief is so overwhelming that he finds it difficult to obey the command of his dead father, and wishes that he had never been born to bear the consequences.
             Critics have often attempted to explain or interpret the actions of Hamlet in this play; the great Dr. Samuel Johnson viewed the character of Hamlet as being full of evil, cruelty, violence and cynicism. Conversely, the famous British essayist William Hazlitt sees Hamlet quite differently, for he states that the Prince of Denmark "is not marked by strength of will or even passion, but by refi...