In Shakespeare's Hamlet, the play's titular hero and tragic figure finds himself consistently unable to follow the Ghost's instructions to take revenge on King Claudius despite the compelling reasons he understands for do it. The reason for this delay is Hamlet's tragic flaw: his tendency towards thought and introspection rather than impulse and action. Due to this defect, Hamlet is unable to ignore the moral aspects of his actions and "thereby becomes a creature of mere meditation, and [he] loses his natural power of action" (Coleridge, 343). Hamlet is not a man of action. ; rather, he is a man of thought. Passion and extreme anger are simply not natural emotions for Hamlet, and as a result, he finds himself unable to maintain either of these emotions for a long period of time. Coleridge mentions this, stating: “In Hamlet [Shakespeare] seems to have wanted to exemplify the moral necessity of a right balance between our attention to the objects of our senses and our meditation on the workings of our mind, a balance between the real and imaginary world ” (344). It is this balance that Hamlet is unable to achieve as he passionately turns away from the real world only to fall back into the realm of the mind, usually due to moral or philosophical speculation. In his first soliloquy, Hamlet is extremely depressed and speaks with great passion about his desire to commit suicide. However, he realizes that God's law has prohibited "self-killing" (1.2.136) and consequently he cannot bring himself to violate his own moral code by acting out and killing himself. Later in Act I, after hearing the Ghost's revelation that he has been murdered, Hamlet promises to take revenge as quickly as possible. He asks the Ghost to... in the middle of the paper... never, Hamlet fails to understand that it is really his "vile scruple / Of thinking too precisely upon the event" (4.4.42-3 ) that has prevented from acting. Hamlet naturally tends to reconsider everything he does and becomes too aware of the broader moral implications of any act to carry it out. As a result, he hesitates and delays until circumstances force his hand after procrastinating a lot. Thus, as Coleridge writes, "we see great, almost enormous, intellectual activity, and a commensurate aversion to real action which attends upon it" (344). Works Cited Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. Lectures and notes on Shakspere and other English poets. London: George Bell and Sons, 1904. pp.342-368. Print.Shakespeare, William. Hamlet. The new Folger library. and. Barbara Mowat and Paul Werstine. New York: Washington Square Press, 1992. Print.