Shakespeare’s Hamlet takes the audience on a journey of a prince who is caught between two spheres of a society in which he attempts to discard the expected norms of a prince to converge to his new ideas on the type of man he wants to live as. The Renaissance was a period in the 16th century that challenged ideals that were limited and outdated. Hamlet is a humanist figure who lives according to the humanist ideals and this leads him to questioning the society and his role as a prince in the 16th century. During the play we see how Hamlet is in constant conflict with the morality of exacting revenge and his new learning and education. It is against this backdrop that I will discuss the argument of Arnold Kettle’s “From Hamlet to Lear” in relation the extracts I have analysed. The points I will look at are Hamlet’s encounter with his father’s ghost and how it brings him back to his educational reform, how hamlet is not accepting of anything but questions the customs of society and how hamlet reflects on the nobility of man and contemplates what it means to him as an individual. I will also discuss how the analysis of the extracts agrees with Kettle’s argument.

Hamlet’s encounter with his father’s ghost brings him back to his educational knowledge and this is evident in, “Ay, thou poor ghost, while memory holds a seat/ In this distracted globe. Remember thee!” (1.5.96-97). Hamlet makes a reference to his mind and memory as a “globe”. This reference and language suggests that