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Acts Of Betrayal In Hamlet

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The play of Hamlet by William Shakespeare is full of many acts of betrayal. One such of these acts is when Hamlet goes against the wishes of his father’s ghost and debates on whether or not he should kill Claudius. Not only this but he also is extremely cruel to his mother and hurts her feelings which were also against the wishes of the ghost. He wanted Hamlet to avenge his death without hurting others along the way and almost everything Hamlet did in the play went against that. Hamlet’s first act of betrayal against the ghost of his father is one that stretches throughout the entire book. Everytime that Hamlet has a chance to kill King Claudius, he hesitates and ends up not even doing it until his final attempt. The first time he has a chance …show more content…

The ghost even gave him specific instructions on that telling him “Taint not thy mind, nor let thy soul contrive/against thy mother aught” (pg. 25, l. 19-20). The ghost could not have said it any cleared to him to leave his mother out of this whole situation and just focus on killing his uncle. Hamlet thinks t his mother needs to be taught a lesson as well though so he criticizes her on this new marriage. He exclaims to her “the funeral baked meats/Did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables” (pg. 12, l. 10-11). In his mind, the marriage to his uncle was much too quick and she should’ve waited longer to remarry. His father had been dead for a very short period of time and she already had moved onto a new man. None of this seemed right in Hamlet’s eyes. This is just one of the many things Hamlet says about this but his mother takes this to heart and gets strongly offended. Later on when Hamlet puts on the play Mousetrap, his mother takes even more offense to how he was indirectly referring to his uncle the entire time. In a private conversation with Hamlet after the play, she tells him “Hamlet, thou hast thy father much offended” (pg. 72, l. 9) with father referring to his uncle. Anything that Hamlet did against his uncle his mother took that as an attack on her as well. This was her new husband after all and whatever he felt she felt with him. This attack was a way of him hurting his mother but in more of an indirect way. Even though it was not directly against her, it still hurt her and that was still against the wishes of the ghost of his father. There is many example of betrayal of trust in this play but Hamlet betraying his father’s ghost may be one that is not as well noticed. Yes his father may be dead, but he is still given a mission of just killing his uncle without harming others and not to harm his mother. This is something

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