Hamlet :: essays research papers

William Shakespeare’s Hamlet is a play full of sorrow and excitement, its full of gore and incest. The play has a large amount of betrayal and the person supplying most of that is Claudius, the king and Hamlets uncle. Claudius is cold-hearted, full of hate, and a coward. He is the king but, the ironic thing about that is he should not be and as Hamlet is the prince, the death of his father should put him at the throne.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚     Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  The play starts off with a tense setting, as the guards have seen a ghost that looks like the old king or Hamlets father who they believed had died of a snake bite. This is the showing of the first cruel deed Claudius has done, the reader does not know yet but Claudius is the reason that King Hamlet dies. The reader knows that it is Claudius when Hamlet encounters the ghost and the ghost tells Hamlet, “Thus I was sleeping, by a brothers hand, of life, at crown, of queen, at once dispatch’d.';(1) The meaning of the ghost’s quote is that he is telling Hamlet that Claudius killed him when he was asleep and that he took his crown and his queen. This is the first time the reader really knows that Claudius is cold-hearted and ruthless.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  After Hamlet heard this, he held a play where the murder of his father is reacted in a scene, that Hamlet himself designed. The purpose of this was to see Claudius’s reaction to the scene to prove if Claudius is the real murderer or not. After Claudius sees the play he storms out of the stage scared and surprised. Claudius then prays to heaven for forgiveness of his sins since he knows that Hamlet has figured out what he has done, he does this so he will not get sent to hell. Claudius says, “My words fly up, my thoughts remain below: Words without thoughts never to heaven go.';(2) He is praying for forgiveness but he is not sorry, he just doesn’t want to get sent to hell and that is what the quote is saying, since he is not sorry his words remain below, or on Earth. This further proves how cold-hearted Claudius is, he has killed his brother, taken his crown, taken his wife, has been discovered, and he still does not feel guilty at all about what he has done.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Claudius now knows that Hamlet has figured him out and what he has done, so Claudius plans to send Hamlet away to England with a note for the king of England to have Hamlet killed.