The Dangers of Not Acting

So...I was reading Christ in Shakespeare, enjoying it quite a bit (even though the title is misleading...it's really more of a Morality in Shakespeare thing), when I came upon this bit in a discussion of Hamlet and Hamlet:

"...instead of acting, he was prone to action in the light of thought. It was his habit to meditate and generalise rather than immediately to do a thing. All action implies limitation, and Hamlet with his subtle mind preferred the unlimited freedom of reflection, to the limitation inherent in a deed. "  (pp. 85 - 86)

"Hamlet's delayed obedience has a nobler route. It springs not from want of will but from excess of thought. It is akin to the spirit that does nothing and its craving for an impossible perfection. It is the malady of the man who sees so clearly, or is so eager for a perfect vision, that he fails, amid the half lights of this world, to do the duty that is appointed him." (p. 88)

"Whenever he acts on overmastering impulse, you at once detect a change of spirit. He grows alert and interested. The clouds break; he is actually gleeful. But his prevailing temper,  in inaction, is strangely different from that, and he moves on the margins of despair. 

"There is a profound and abiding truth in that. Let anybody shirk his duty, no matter for what reason; let him dally, and refuse to come to grips, with the task that has been given him, and always the sun darkens, and joy goes, and all the thrill of life, and the clouds return after the rain.

"Shakespeare is not disparaging the life of thought, nor is he pitiless to the shattered spirit. He only shows what inevitably follows when duty lies undone. Melancholy deepens; life grows worthless; intensity of interest vanishes; the man grows 'half in love with easeful death.'

"Bunyan 1  tells us that his pilgrims cross the stile into Bypath Meadow. The meadow doubtless was very easygoing, and the highway was flinty to the feet. But it was Bypath Meadow, and just because of that it brought the travelers to Doubting Castle, and to the grim clutch of Giant Despair." (pp. 91 - 92)

"Not to decide may seem innocuous, but in this mysterious life it is never that. It involves others, and tangles up their lives, in ways that sometimes seem incredible. We talked of 'living dangerously,' but no man lives more dangerously than the man who dallies with his duty. " (p. 93)
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1  The reference here is to John Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress, a heavy-handed allegory in which the main character, Christian, wends his way toward the Celestial City, encountering numerous distractions along the way.

Christ in Shakespeare by  by George H. Morrison, 1928