t is made aware that Claudius killed his father, is made up of a series of delays, pretenses, rationalizations and ruminations revolving around Hamlet's refusal to do his duty. The reality is that he knows what happened and knows what he is bound to do; the fiction is that somehow perhaps there has been a mistake made and Claudius did not kill his father after all. Therefore, for example, we find Hamlet's intricate and complex play-within-a-play which is designed to strip the mask away from Claudius and get him to reveal himself as the killer of Hamlet's father.
At the same time, although he delays the inevitable act of revenge to which duty impels him, Hamlet is much more aware than anybody around him of the profound degree of corruption and disintegration which marks the entire society and government of which they are a part. We recognize the fact that the play arose out of a Renaissance era in which the court was a central power, and in which that central power was subject to much corruption.
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