Up, sword, and know thou a more horrid hent: / When he is drunk asleep; or in his rage, / Or in th’incestuous pleasure of his bed, / At gaming, swearing; or about some act / That has no relish of salvation in’t, / Then trip him, that his heels may kick at heaven, / And that his soul may be as damn’d and black / As hell, whereto it goes.
Act III, Scene 3 · Hamlet
Context
Hamlet decides to wait and kill Claudius at a moment of sin rather than prayer, so that Claudius's soul will be damned rather than saved.
Analysis
Hamlet addresses his sword directly ('Up, sword') as if the weapon itself were holding him back, externalizing his inaction onto an object that has no will of its own. The catalogue of sins—'drunk asleep,' 'in his rage,' 'At gaming, swearing'—grows increasingly petty and domestic, making Hamlet sound less like an agent of divine justice and more like someone hunting for any excuse to delay, since these mundane moments will obviously be harder to catch than this perfect opportunity he's already rejecting.
Essay Tip
Support a thesis that Hamlet's revenge logic becomes increasingly unhinged—by demanding Claudius be damned as well as dead, he sets conditions so extreme and specific that he guarantees his own paralysis, revealing that the obstacle to action is Hamlet himself, not circumstance.