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Hamlet Frame Of Mind Analysis

Decent Essays

In the quotation above, Shakespeare uses Hamlet’s meeting with his former schoolmates to outline his frame of mind. By this point in the play, Hamlet remains forsaken by nearly everything he holds dear. His recently deceased father appeared to Hamlet as an apparition, and informed him of the evil perpetrated by his (now step-father) uncle. Gertrude commits what Hamlet calls “incest”, by marrying Claudius and by declining to mourn for his late father. Furthermore, his love, Ophelia, refuses to meet with him under the decree of her father, who perceives Hamlet to be delirious. Even Hamlet’s friends, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, have been turned against him into spying for the King and Queen. The weight of Hamlet’s melancholy that has been bottled inside of him since the play’s onset …show more content…

He analyzes humans from multiple perspectives each one glorifying the species. Man is “noble in reason, ... infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension, how like a god”, he continues calling man “the paragon of animals”. Humans in action are angelic while humans are god-like in apprehension, G_d being greater than an angel. Hamlet makes this subtle note as an expression of self-deprecation. While he has constantly thought about murdering his uncle, Hamlet has been unable to complete the task. Although he lists off these attributes as if he himself believes them, Hamlet’s own beliefs could not be more opposite. Hamlet calls man the “quintessence of dust” referring to Genesis 3:19 in the Bible. In this verse, G_d scolds Adam for eating the apple and commands “By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return.” To Hamlet, mankind is merely dust that will remain dust whether it is alive or dead, a belief that foreshadows the futility of Hamlet’s own

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