"Hamlet", Noboday wants to be him

In some ways, all men (and a few actresses) want to be Hamlet. He is intelligent and funny, he knows how to value true friendship (Horatio), how to tease sycophantic phonies (Rosencrantz and Guildenstern), how to treat pompous political authority (Polonius). Yet there are problems. He is glib and unconvincing in his fifth-act apology to Laertes and both confused and cruel in all of his encounters with women. My reasons for not wanting to be …

…to death: his own death, the death of any God transcending him, and the deaths of a good percentage of the play's dramatis personae. The instrument of death at the end is poison, a disorder that enters the blood and pervades the whole body. The poison that kills at the end is Hamlet and his idea of providence, for he was finally unable to kill until he could discover a God to blame for it.