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How Does Wilks Use Conscience In Hamlet

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In addition to Hamlet, other Shakespearean works sport this type of conscience. One cannot simply dismiss the recurring theme of conscience in these works and still fully comprehend the works to their fullest extent. Hamlet is not different, it uses conscience as a driving force for the decisions of characters within the work. Wilks offers further insight with the following:

In this eminently Shakespearean way, the operations of providential justice proceed through an entirely natural sequence of events, apparently the random and collateral effects of fortune coadjutant with man’s free will, but at the same time, instinct with great ethical bias, stoic/scholastic in origin, by which the whole of creation conforms to the enactment of natural law; so that the economy by which evil is employed to its own destruction, and by which “foul practices” turn against themselves, though infinitely mysterious, expresses simultaneously a moral design publically suggestive of the glory of its Creator. (123) …show more content…

Shakespeare carefully crafts a play in which God uses seemingly random events in collaboration with man’s free will in order to achieve His purpose. In the case of Hamlet, God is using the consciences of the characters in the play in order to bring about his divine justice. If one does not understand the nature of such a series of events they cannot comprehend at an intellectual level the depth of Hamlet. Shakespeare uses this notion of God ordained justice brought about via man’s free will to bring to his audience the story of Hamlet. It truly is the central narrative. Without a decent comprehension of conscience the depth of Hamlet vanishes before the eyes of the reader. Without conscience one cannot understand the purpose characters are attempting to achieve throughout

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