In act 1, a ghost claiming to be Hamlet’s father accuses Claudius, Hamlet’s uncle, of having stolen the crown, the queen, and the late king's life. Claudius’s punishment, the apparition says, must be death. Murdered before he had the chance to repent for his earthly sins, Hamlet’s father has been sent to purgatory, a state between heaven and hell where he is "confined to fast in fires / Till the foul crimes done in [his] days of nature / Are burnt and purged away." The ghost’s tormented existence in purgatory presents Hamlet with a perplexing and difficult choice: to sin by murdering Claudius may expose Hamlet’s soul to the very same divine punishment his father speaks of, yet to allow Claudius’s sins to go unpunished would mean betraying his deceased father and king. This conflicting choice weighs heavily on Hamlet, whose contemplative nature leads him to reflect at length upon his spiritual and moral obligations. Even when he catches Claudius in an unguarded moment, seemingly at prayer, Hamlet's opportunity to achieve a swift and perfect revenge is thwarted by his religious questions: if Claudius is killed while praying, Hamlet wonders, will Claudius be sent to heaven? This uncertainty stays Hamlet’s sword—though unbeknownst to Hamlet, Claudius's guilt prevent him from engaging in true prayer.

As the play progresses, Hamlet appears to shed his concerns about the spiritual implications of his revenge, a shift that perhaps signals his own mental deterioration. He murders Polonius without regret; manipulates and abuses Ophelia, likely contributing to her madness and death; and vengefully orchestrates the demise of his former friends Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, dismissing their fate as "not near my conscience." In the graveyard in act 5, Hamlet reflects once again upon what it means to die, yet now he appears preoccupied with the finality and inevitability of physical death rather than what awaits in the spiritual afterlife. 

Hamlet is ultimately a product of his religious and social context, which are brought into conflict throughout the play. He has been raised to be a nobleman of honor and loyalty, yet this same honor puts him in the impossible position of choosing between upholding his religious ideals and remaining loyal to his father. As he lays dying, Hamlet says that "the potent poison quite o'ercrows my spirit," referring literally to his fast approaching death but also perhaps figuratively to the corrupting effects of revenge on his immortal spirit.