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Moral Questions in Hamlet Conscience and Responsibility Hamlet the play and Hamlet the character have always attracted the attention of critics with a strongly moral bent. This is inevitable. The play deals with crime and its punishment, with complex questions of right and wrong, moral decisions, moral responsibility for actions, questions of conscience. Critics and readers must respond accordingly. Most of the moral issues raised in Hamlet arise from the role imposed on its central …

…dull and muddy-mettled rascal, peak/Like John-a-dreams,unpregnant of my cause', 2, 2, 554-6). In his most famous soliloquy, he deals with the most fundamental of all questions. Before he can decide whether the better moral choice for a rational, noble creature is to suffer the blows of fate in patience or to struggle against them and perhaps die in the struggle, he must decide whether death is preferable to life (`To be, or not to be' . . . 3, 1, 56).