As is revealed by two lines from Claudius right at the end of this scene, he only SEEMS to be praying. Hamlet’s desire for revenge, or at least tit-for-tat justice since his father was murdered unshriven and Claudius should die the same way, was a lost opportunity from which the rest of the tragedy develops.
I can imagine the audience at the Globe going “OOHH NOOO! WHY DIDN’T YOU JUST DOOO IT?” (or the Elizabethan-Jacobean equivalent.)
Here, edited a bit for length, is Claudius’s soliloquy, Hamlet’s full speech and Claudius’s coda:
Claudius: O, my offence is rank, it smells to heaven;
It hath the primal eldest curse upon’t,
A brother’s murder! Pray can I not,
Though inclination be as sharp as will…
… But, O, what form of prayer
Can serve my turn? ‘Forgive me my foul murder’?
That cannot be; since I am still possessed
Of those effects for which I did the murder -
My crown, mine own ambition, and my queen.
May one be pardoned and retain the offence?
… Bow, stubborn knees; and heart with strings of steel,
Be soft as sinews of the new-born babe!
All may be well.
(Claudius kneels. Hamlet enters unnoticed.)
Hamlet: Now might I do it pat, now he is praying;
And now I’ll do it. And so he goes to heaven,
And so am I revenged. That would be scanned.
A villain kills my father; and for that,
I, his sole son, do this same villain send
To heaven.
Why, this is hire and salary, not revenge!
He took my father grossly, full of bread,
With all his crimes broad blown, as flush as May;
And how his audit stands, who knows save heaven?
But in our circumstance and course of thought,
‘Tis heavy with him; and am I then revenged,
To take him in the purging of his soul,
When he is fit and seasoned for his passage?
No.
Up, sword, and know thou a more horrid hent.
When he is drunk asleep; or in his rage;
Or in the incestuous pleasure of his bed;
At gaming, swearing, or about some act
That has no relish of salvation in it -
Then trip him, that his heels may kick at heaven,
And that his soul may be as damned and black
As hell, whereto it goes. My mother stays.
This physic but prolongs thy sickly days.
(Hamlet exits. Claudius rises.)
Claudius: My words fly up, my thoughts remain below.
Words without thoughts never to heaven go.
(Claudius exits. End of Act 3, scene iii.)
The prayers weren’t taking shape; he wasn’t in any proper state for Heaven and if Hamlet had taken him out right there and then, justice would have been served. With Claudius dead, Hamlet could stop pretending insanity, escape the regicide charge with a confession from his mother, become King of Denmark, marry Ophelia and live sort-of-happily ever after.
But he didn’t, so Polonius, Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, Ophelia, Laertes, Gertrude, Claudius at last and finally Hamlet himself all die for it.
That Globe audience must have been having FITS.
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