In Hamlet Acts 2 & 3, discuss the origin and the nature of Hamlet's guilt and comment on how effectively he seems to be dealing with his guilt.

I have
heard
That guilty creatures sitting at a play
Have by the very
cunning of the scene
Been struck so to the soul that presently
They
have proclaim'd their malefactions;
For murder, though it have no tongue, will
speak
With most miraculous organ. I'll have these players
Play
something like the murder of my father
Before mine uncle: I'll observe his
looks;
I'll tent him to the quick: if he but blench,
I know my
course. The spirit that I have seen
May be the devil: and the devil hath
power
To assume a pleasing shape; yea, and perhaps
Out of my
weakness and my melancholy,
As he is very potent with such
spirits,
Abuses me to damn me: (Act II, scene
i)

In Act II, scene i, while
speaking of Claudius's guilt in the murder of Hamlet's father, the King of Denmark,
Hamlet also reveals some of his own guilt. Hamlet primarily feels guilty for not acting
more expeditiously (i.e., quickly) on taking the revenge against his father's murderer
that the ghost--of whose source and identity Hamlet is unsure (“The spirit that I have
seen
May be the devil”)--has required of him. Guilt notwithstanding, Hamlet's
hesitations stem from legitimate moral and religious grounds.

Hamlet
is a deeply devoted Reformationist. He is being educated at the Wittenberg University,
which is the academic home of Martin Luther, the father of the Protestant Reformation of
Catholic doctrine. In Act I, scene ii, Gertrude begs Hamlet to "go not to Wittenberg"
after Claudius has declare that he prefers Hamlet not go "back to school in Wittenberg."
Two deep precepts to devout believers in God and Reformationists are the injunctions
against communing with spirits of people who have died and against taking revenge. A
third precept deeply held to is that humans must not end their own lives. Hamlet was
forced to do the first, is being asked to do the second, and is voluntarily
contemplating the third.

As a result of these, he suffers crippling
feelings of guilt. He deals with the first--communing with ghosts--by recognizing that
"the devil hath power" to appear in a compelling light. The motive of such an
appearance, though, is, as Hamlet says, that the devil "Abuses me to damn me," in other
words, to trick Hamlet into carnal sin that will lead to Hamlet's damnation. Hamlet
deals with the second--taking revenge--by attempting to gather substantial evidence of
Claudius's guilt so that his role will be much more like righteous appointed executioner
and less like assassinating avenger. Hamlet deals with the third--taking his own
life--in two ways. First he protest against God's precepts,
saying,

that
the Everlasting had not fix'd
His canon 'gainst self-slaughter! O God!
God!

Second, he
soliloquizes about the necessity and virtue of death in his famous Act III, scene i, "To
be, or not to be" speech. He ends by explaining that the cowardice to face the
consequences of such a deed overrides the resolution "To die: to
sleep":

Thus
conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of
resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought, ....