The Influence Of Religion In Shakespeare's Hamlet

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We perceive religion as a way to face the unknown, does Shakespeare’s Hamlet feel the same way? Hamlet encompasses plethora however, religion plays a monumental factor in his life and his ideas of death. In Shakespeare 's Hamlet, the questioning of religious beliefs illuminates the inevitable mortality of man. Hamlet from the beginning of the play is confronted by a Ghost who questions all knowledge Hamlet has had about the afterlife. The Ghost of his father explains the idea that since he was murdered without confessing he is left to “hell fire” during the day and to wander the Earth at night. This idea leads Hamlet to question the ideology of life after death. The reader learns from this first encounter with the ghost that Hamlet is not…show more content…
Hamlet at this time in the play is still trying to figure out where he stands on the thought of religion and where one truly goes once they die. Once again Hamlet is drawn to the thought of suicide. He questions his life “To be or not to be—that is the question:Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, Or to take arms against a sea of troubles and, by opposing, end them.”(3.1.64-68) Hamlet for the first time throughout the play is looking at religion and as to why must our lives be plagued with unfavorable luck yet Heaven be…show more content…
Throughout Hamlet’s to be or not to be solique he expresses the emotion that death is the only outlet. Death is a force that people have yet to truly understand “But that the dread of something after death,— The undiscover’d country, from whose bourn No traveller returns,—puzzles the will, And makes us rather bear those ills we have Than fly to others that we know not of? Thus conscience does make cowards of us all.”(3.1.77-83) The masses are afraid of death because no one truly knows what is to come after. This is the first time in the play Hamlet expresses the fact that death forces us all to be afraid. Never before has Hamlet came to the realization that he to is a coward when it comes to death.Hamlet not only realizes that he is a coward in the face of death, nevertheless death is the towering equalizer. For instance, it is “Not where he eats, but where he is eaten. A certain convocation of politic worms are e 'en at him. Your worm is your only emperor for diet. We fat all creatures else to fat us, and we fat ourselves for maggots. Your fat king and your lean beggar is but variable service—two dishes but to one table. That 's the end.” (4.3.19-28) Hamlet fabricates this statement to validate the fact that our demise gives maggots a place to eat the bodies of those who have gone. Death makes cowards of

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