Irony And Formal Imagery In The Elizabethan Era

174 Words1 Pages
Horatio explains what happened when the ambassador from England and Fortinbras, after his battles in Poland, arrive to witness the aftermath of the deaths in Denmark. The juxtaposition of “carnal”, “unnatural”, “slaughters”, “cunning”, “cause”, “purposes”, and “inventors’” with “came about”, “accidental”, “casual”, “mistook”, and “Fall’n” sets up the intentional vs. accidental imagery. The imagery serves to explain the nature of the tragedy that events do not always occur as planned and that there is a divine force that leads the event as opposed to human intentions. Chaos leads to a disruption in the natural order which must be fixed was an important theme in the Elizabethan era, where a rigid social structure existed. The imagery also reinforces