The Ideas Of Death In William Shakespeare's Hamlet

In one of the most famous plays by William Shakespeare, the main protagonist Hamlet obsesses with the thought of death throughout the story, struggling over the moral and physical components of death in all its aspects. The general plot reveals itself to readers with the appearance of Hamlet’s deceased father in the form of a ghost. The ghost tells Hamlet that his own brother, Claudius, had wrongfully murdered him with poison in order to take the crown of Denmark and marry Gertrude, Hamlet’s mother. Upon hearing this, Hamlet feigns insanity telling no one but his close friend Horatio. He does this in order to distract Claudius and his mother while simultaneously investigating the truth in the ghost’s words. Feeling a sense of responsibility

They beseech him to not return to his old school in Wittenberg, and Hamlet grudgingly agrees. Feeling the despair in the recent loss of his father, and his mother’s hasty marriage to his uncle, which he refers to as “incestuous”, Hamlet expresses his wish to disappear. “O, that this too, too sullied flesh would melt/Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew,” (Act 1.2, p. 29). In these lines, Hamlet expresses his desire to melt or fade away, to no longer exist. Often times, when external circumstances, like the death of a loved one occurs, human nature tends to not want to feel the pain of such a loss. In Hamlet’s case, his mother’s sudden marriage to his uncle on top of losing his father brought forth a spirit of depression that perhaps made it seem that suicide was the better alternative to living, if it weren’t forbidden by religion. He pities himself due to the painful world he is currently living in, and wishes to end it all. The Christian ideals that take place in Hamlet’s time however, says that if one commits suicide to end the pain, eternal damnation in hell is inevitable. Because of this, Hamlet cries out saying “Or that the Everlasting had not fixed/His canon ‘gainst (self-slaughter!) O God, God/How (weary), stale, flat, and unprofitable/Seem to me all the uses of this world!” (Act 1.2, p. 29) In these statements, Hamlet concerns himself with the morality of suicide in

Hamlet is obviously referring to whether or not he should live or die, but there is also a philosophical standpoint when he speaks of this. He talks as if he were a philosopher in a way, questioning the morality and the nobility in embracing pain and living. “Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer” (Act 3.1, p. 127) or “To die, to sleep/To sleep, perchance to dream. Ay, there’s the rub/For in that sleep of death what dreams may come/When we have shuffled off this mortal coil/Must give us pause.” (Act 3.1, p.127) Hamlet here compares death to sleeping, and wonders about the afterlife once “we have shuffled off this mortal coil.” The “rub”, or obstacle, in committing suicide however, is the uncertainty of the afterlife, which perhaps holds Hamlet back from the actual deed itself. Interestingly enough, Hamlet does not refer to himself though he may be thinking of himself. Never once using possessive terms, Hamlet uses abstract philosophical expressions to describe the debate that goes on in his head. He mentions the weary burdensome things of life like “The pangs of despised love…/The insolence of office” (Act 3.1, p.129) and asks the question of why anyone would want to go through all of that “When he himself might his quietus make/With a bare bodkin?” (Act 3.1, p.129) “His quietus make” in more modern terms