Richard III as Hamlet?

In a writers workshop…
Gerard: I want to write a story, about vengeance, using the Hamlet premise, you know, a character who has to take revenge on his uncle for killing his father and marrying his mother.

Instructor: A lot of people died in that play.
Gerard: Exactly. Too many deaths. Too melodramatic. All caused by Hamlet being too indecisive.
Instructor: You want to make him more decisive?
Gerard: Yeah. Have him get in there. Take out Claudius without all the fussing about.
Instructor: Like Richard III? A killer from the get-go?
Gerard: That’s it.
Instructor: No “To be, or not to be”? The play would be finished in five minutes. No Hamlet.
________

Voice-over
Over in five minutes. What would happen if you replaced Hamlet with Richard III? Vengeance is Hamlet’s superwant. But the story is also driven by his internal conflict of thinking deeply, seen by some as indecisiveness. Richard III? A decisive psychopath. Without Hamlet, there is no inner conflict, no character-driven plot, no universal themes, no story. Hamlet: therein lies the genius of Shakespeare, lasting so far 400 years.