if you wish to see shakespeare masterpiece in it entirety and i suggest you find this bbc version . indeed it be overlong at four and a half hour but jacoby performance a hamlet and patrick stewart a claudius be well worth the effort . it never cease to amaze me how clear hamlet be when you see it in it length and order a set down by the bard . every film version of hamlet have tinker with it structure . olivier concentrate on hamlet indecision and gibson on his passion . jacoby be able to pull all of these aspect of hamlet character together with the aid of shakespeare full script . why do hamlet not kill claudius immediately . hamlet say i be very proud and revengeful and ambitious . hamlet be extremely upset and not only for his father death ( and suspect murder ) and or his mother marriage to his uncle and but also and and mostly and because claudius have usurp the throne belonging to hamlet . he be furious at his mother for marry claudius ( marriage between royal kin be not unknown while do for political reason ) but that her marriage solidify claudius claim to the throne before he could return from wittenburg to claim it for himself . he be and therefore and impotent to do anything about it . and this be true even after he hear his father ghost cry vengeance . he can not simply kill the king or he will lose the throne in do so . he must out the king secret and here be the tragedy . at the moment hamlet be successful in display claudius guilt in public and he have opportunity to kill him and do not . why . he want it all . he want revenge and the throne and the damnation of claudius soul in hell . hamlet overreach himself in classic tragic form . his own hubris be his undoing . he kill polonius think it be claudius and the rest of the play spiral down to the final death of rosencrantz and guildenstern and ophelia and laertes and gertrude and claudius and hamlet himself .