Once Prince Hamlet of Elsinore learns that his uncle, King Claudius, who has recently wed his mother, killed his father, his emotions become unstable and he becomes disillusioned with the world. He has planned to behave with an ‘antic disposition,’ however, whether his madness is methodic or authentic is uncertain. Hamlet’s frustration with the world is expressed:
I have of late, but wherefore I know not, lost all my mirth, forgone all custom of exercises, and, indeed, it goes so heavily with my disposition that this goodly frame, the Earth seems to me a sterile promontory; this most excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave o'erhanging firmament, this majestical roof, fretted with golden fire-why, it appeareth nothing to me but a foul and pestilent congregation of vapors. What piece of work is a
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After his childhood friends admit to spying on him, Hamlet realizes the difference between appearance and reality. Although he is describing the heavens, Hamlet specifically uses words of physical shape, ‘canopy,’ ‘firmament,’ and ‘roof,’ communicating his firm belief in the divinity of the gods and the reality of heaven. Uncertainty in truth is thus communicated by his assertion that Earth is a mere ‘pestilent congregation of vapors’. He believes that Earth itself, and likewise humankind, are sinful and deceitful; thus, cannot be trusted. That though the Earth is ‘excellent’ and ‘majestical’ place of great beauty, he cannot embrace or see that beauty because ‘foul and pestilent vapors’ are preventing him from being able to see the beauty. The beauty, which all men are granted access to, is now intangible to him, an allusion to his Uncle killing his father for the throne. He now suffers conflicting emotions due to the evil existing in a godly figure such as man and how the world, that was once radiant is now corrupt in his