Hamlet - The Master of Deception

1526 Words7 Pages
What is a tragedy without deception? In William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Prince Hamlet portrays deception by acting insane and seeking revenge in order to trick almost all of the characters in this play regarding his underlying motive. Hamlet acts insane and out of his mind in order to deceive some of the main characters, such as King Claudius, Polonius, and Laertes,which makes his intentions seem threatening. Hamlet’s threatening intentions cause these characters to be on edge when he is around and feel the need to spy on him. This is when Hamlet’s sneaky deception is shown the most. Deception hides the truth and is often used to protect the people who are deceiving others from a much larger scale problem. The underlying motive of Prince Hamlet’s actions is to fulfill his late father’s commands to bring justice to King Claudius, who poisoned his brother, King Hamlet, in order to become king and marry Queen Gertrude. There are many reasons as to why Prince Hamlet feels the need to deceive King Claudius. When King Hamlet’s ghost approaches Prince Hamlet in Act I, he soon finds out that he, along with many others, were lied to about his father’s death. When King Hamlet’s ghost informs Prince Hamlet that King Claudius poisoned him, he cannot let anyone know that he is aware of this information. When Hamlet finds out that King Claudius murdered his father, it ignites a fire in him that drives him to complete his father’s request and murder Claudius. If he were to let the other