Hamlet Character deception is a common characteristic that has and will be a reflecting characteristic in literature for centuries. In many of William Shakespeare’s tragedies, deception, whether positive or negative, is being used to mislead, to protect characters, or to hide a crime or future crime. Analyzing why the characters are using deception against each other is very important to the reader’s understanding of the work as a whole. In William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, He uses Hamlet’s deception of character and also the character’s use of deception towards Hamlet to carry out the overall theme of the tragedy.The theme that is represented, is that in able to get malicious revenge, you must be able to act as if you are someone different than your true self while in turn, being able to deal with others deceiving you. This could lead these characters to an undesirable ending. In Hamlet, Claudius and Polonius deceive in order to maintain power; Gertrude, Rosencrantz, and Guilderstein deceive in order to maintain their superficial items that Claudius has given them; Laertes deceives to get revenge for the death of his father and to protect Ophelia. All of these characters try to use deception for their own benefit, but in the end you reap what you sow. These characters all have the same thing in common, they deceive Hamlet to be able to carry out their plans. As these characters begin to deceive Hamlet, he counteracts their efforts in order to carry out his master plan of