Goethe's Hamlet is weighed down (even to inaction) by the sensitive soul of a poet. He finds himself in an impossible situation; living under the assumption that he will accomplish a task that is to great for a sensitive psyche like his own.

The time is out of joint: O cursed spite,    That ever I was born to set it right! In these words, I imagine, will be found the key to Hamlet's whole procedure. To me it is clear that Shakespeare meant, in the present case, to represent the effects of a great action laid upon a soul unfit for the performance of it. In this view the whole piece seems to me to be composed. There is an oak tree planted in a costly jar, which should have borne only pleasant flowers in its bosom; the roots expand, the jar is shivered. A lovely, pure and most moral nature, without the strength of nerve which forms a hero, sinks beneath a burden which it cannot bear and must not cast away.  - J.W. von Goethe, in The Romantics on Shakespeare. p. 306.