Why is Hamlet a renaissance man?

is a man
of the Renaissance in the sense that he's torn between two radically different worlds. On the
one hand, he lives in an intensely religious age, in which belief in God is near universal. This
is an age in which popular superstition is rife, with even educated people firmly insisting on
the reality of witchcraft.

On the other hand, this is an age which is also
rapidly becoming more secular. Scientific knowledge is developing at a considerable pace,
changing the way men and women think about themselves, the universe, and their place within it.
Some scholars have argued that many of 's troubles, especially his notoriously debilitating
procrastination, stem from his inability to reconcile these two paradoxical aspects of the
Renaissance in his personality.

Hamlet is a highly intelligent young man,
educated to the very highest traditions of Renaissance humanism. Yet he cannot entirely let go
of his belief in Christianity. Indeed, it is Hamlet's conception of himself as not just a prince
but a Christian prince that largely prevents him from settling scores
withfor murdering his father.

Like the Renaissance man he is, the
self-absorbed Hamlet is the center of his own universe. But he's still a Christian, and as such
sees himself as a small, insignificant part of a much bigger whole. In the troubled,
multi-faceted character of Hamlet we see, then, a living embodiment of the many paradoxes of
this most remarkable historical and cultural era.