Why Is Spying Important In Hamlet

Finally, in act 3, scene 2, we are shown the true nature of King Claudius.  The players enact the same scenario described to Hamlet by the ghost.  The King rises and calls for lights, showing the players, Hamlet, and the audience that what has just been acted has shocked him tremendously.

At best, I believe that Act I, Scene II might be one of the most important parts of Hamlet. It prepares any reader with the character’s styling of Hamlet, its importance to the play, its characters, and the logical play on words to show the complexity of Shakespeare’s skills as a playwright. Though, it might be a bit of over-aggrandizing to say that the first Act and second scene could be so crucial. It set the tone of the play for many of the characters and their motives from Claudius, Gertrude, and Hamlet. The Act shows the true nature of many of the characters and where they stand in the apparent and the hidden stance. As the scene begins, we see Claudius come straight out as the antagonist, though not immediately. He (Claudius) begins to establish himself as King of Denmark but it is until Hamlet makes his appearance that we see some of Claudius’s attributes.

In Act I, Scene i of the play, a supernatural being assuming the shape of the late king is seen by Marcellus, Bernardo and Horatio. They tell Hamlet of their peculiar sighting and in Act I, scene iv of the play the ghost reappears to Hamlet and reveals Claudius 's sinful secret. Claudius heinously murders his own brother by pouring a poisonous liquid into the king 's ear during his nap in the orchard. This toxin curdles the blood of the king causing a short but painful death. This information sets vengeance in the mind of Hamlet to murder his uncle and bestow tranquility among his family.

See the Furthermore, Hamlet and Horatio make their own plan to see if Claudius would react suspiciously when presented with an oddly specific scene. Their plan was to tell the actors that came for a show to act in an extremely specific scene which happens to be the way that Claudius killed King Hamlet and see if he reacts to it. If he does react to it, they know he is guilty, if he does not then they will just go along and say it was a coincidence. The play they were doing was very specific and obvious, it was about Gertrude and King Hamlet before Claudius died. It shows that Gertrude and King Hamlet had what seemed like good love for each other, but then comes in Claudius and takes over.

Spying, the act of observing someone secretly, is a theme that is commonly found in William Shakespeare's Hamlet, and is the source of many internal and external struggles between characters throughout the play. Multiple characters in Hamlet, such as Polonius, King Claudius, Hamlet, Rosencrantz, and Guildenstern, are guilty of this deceitful act. Their scandalous ways often result in anger, destruction, and death.

This, in turn, exploits Hamlet’s similar flaw of ego and furthers the conflict, but what’s more, it illustrates Claudius’ sheer audacity and lack of repentance. He continues to try to cover up the sin and appease Hamlet into complacency rather than confess and ask for forgiveness. In a mark of pure arrogance, Claudius tells Hamlet to “throw to earth / This unprevailing woe and think of us / As of a father”, conceitedly requesting that Hamlet merely forget the murder and replace his father with the murderer himself (I, ii, 110-112). Similarly, instead of directly confronting Hamlet about his mental condition, the king more or less hires Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to spy on the prince, again cementing his smug mindset. The king does not believe he can be caught or, rather, that Hamlet is competent enough to figure out his plan and foil him. Claudius, too, thinks only of himself after Hamlet’s inadvertent killing of Polonius, pondering “how shall this bloody deed be answered? / It will be laid to us” instead of considering the ramifications of the murder with respect to Hamlet (4.1.17-18). The other two paper-thin traps the king hatches only reinforce his failure to see beyond the apparent; his attempt to deport Hamlet to England and have him killed reeks of treachery and, luckily, Hamlet realizes the king’s subterfuge, crushing the plot and flipping it back on him. Claudius remains steadfast in his efforts to remove Hamlet, going so far as to set up a

Hamlet mistakes that spy for the King, whom he intended to kill to avenge his father’s murder; unfortunately the spy was actually Polonius, a relatively innocent character who was attempting to discern why Hamlet was

Both Hamlet and Claudius betray many to reach their goals of ridding themselves each other other. Even from the very start of the play, when Hamlet is first introduced, he is visibly unhappy with the situation at hand with his new father, but he can’t really do anything about it. This is the way things stand until the end of the first act, when the spark that ignites the plot and theme of treachery takes place. Old Hamlet appears to Hamlet on the outer walls of the castle and tells him of the treachery that his uncle has committed. Of course Hamlet is shocked but he still isn’t ready to take action on his uncle. Not until he knows for certain that it was his uncle, Claudius who killed his father. Act 2 is almost entirely betrayals, Claudius and Gertrude hire Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to spy on Hamlet, while Polonius commits a similar act. He orders one of his servants, Reynaldo to go to France and spy on Laertes.

Claudius has experienced failed and successful perception that has left massive impacts in his life. An example of how failed perception caused suffering happens when Claudius attends the play, “The Murder of Gonzago”, where Hamlet jokingly calls “The Mouse-Trap” and fails to see it as a trap Hamlet has staged for him. Hamlet has set up the play to receive a reaction from Claudius therefore confirming he was the one who murdered Old King Hamlet, his own brother. Due to this failed perception of the play’s true intentions, Claudius seems to be quite upset about the play

is what Hamlet says to Horatio and Marcellus after he talks to the ghost of Old Hamlet. Hamlet is telling them not to mention that he is just pretending to be mad to anybody, which hints that Hamlet does have a plan to put on an antic disposition to fool Claudius and the courtiers. Later on in the play, Hamlet asks the traveling player to put on a show of the play The Murder of Gonzago, which is quite similar to the current situation with Claudius and Old Hamlet. Hamlet says, "We'll ha't to-morrow night. You could for a need study a / speech of some dozen or sixteen lines which I would set down and / insert in't, could you not?" (II, ii, 506-508), when he asks the players if he could add a speech into their performance. This speech makes the plot virtually parallel to the occurrences between Claudius and Hamlet, and Hamlet will see Claudius' reaction to the play in order to determine his guilt. Claudius'

     Claudius’ lies are effective enough to persistently deceive to play’s antagonist, Hamlet. Despite Hamlet’s disgust with Claudius for marrying Gertrude, and his view of Claudius as “a king of shreds and patches” (III.iv.104), Hamlet suspicion of Claudius as a murderer is preliminarily nonexistent. The appearance of a spirit claiming to be Hamlet’s dead father first alerts Hamlet to the actions of “that incestuous, that adulterate beast, /With witchcraft of his with, with traitorous gifts” (I.v.42-3). And yet still, Hamlet remains hesitant to believe that Claudius was the murderer, searching for complementary evidence. The play that Hamlet enacts -- designed to “catch the conscience of the king” (II.ii.562) --succeeds in revealing Claudius’ guilt, but does not provoke instant action on Hamlet’s part. So effective is Claudius’ manipulation of the royal circle that he manages to almost permanently stay the revelation of his guilt, and if it weren’t for supernatural intervention against an injustice, he may never have been exposed.

Hamlet questions the true intentions of the ghost and whether it be “a spirit of health or goblin damn’d,” (1.4.669). The Ghost enlightens the Prince of the treason committed by his uncle Claudius, which Hamlet doubts the legitimacy for an instance. According to “Hamlet’s Precarious Emotional Balance,” “Hamlet conceives a way out of his uncertainty, a way to make certain that he has not, because of his melancholy, simply hallucinated the ghost's revelations or been tricked by an evil spirit,” (Lidz). Hamlet develops a scheme to “catch the conscience of the king” by staging a play that depicts the murder of King Hamlet precisely (2.2.581).

He plans to accomplish this by devising a play that parallels the conspiracy against his father's death. The play he develops portrays a reenactment of Claudius poisoning Hamlet's father, and will expose the guilty and alleviate all thoughts that the ghost was the devil. Hamlet explains his reasoning by saying:

In order to verify that Claudius was in fact the one to murder his father, Hamlet assembles a plan. When a group of actors come to the castle to perform, Hamlet requests that they perform The Murder of Gonzago which mirrors what has taken place in Denmark with King Hamlet and King Claudius. The player agrees to perform the play and Hamlet states, “"We'll ha't tomorrow night. You could for a need study a speech / of some dozen or sixteen lines which I could set down and insert / in't, could you not" (2.2 491-93). By adding his own lines to the performance, Hamlet intensifies the actions of the play in order to confirm what the Ghost had told him. Hamlet states, “the play’s the thing / Wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the king” (3.1 556-7). As expected, the King storms off during the play which, in turn, proves the King is guilty of his brother’s murder. After Hamlet had confirmed Claudius to be the killer, one would expect Hamlet to kill Claudius immediately, however, this action is prolonged till the end of the play.

“O, that this too too sullied flesh would melt, Thaw and resolve itself into a dew, 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 Scene 1, Hamlet) Hamlet’s idea of role-playing was truly important to Hamlet in the play, because it was his way of conducing revenge, for his father’s death. Hamlet acted deranging and irrational throughout the whole play, to cover up his capacity of killing Claudius, who was the killer of his father, King Hamlet. Hamlet’s actions of insaneness, led him to committing many mishaps in the play that completely disarranged his objective of obtaining revenge against Claudius. However, due to Hamlet’s exploitation in role-playing in the play, it precipitated him into temporizing and delaying his ability to obtain his revenge, which effected many characters along the way. Characters like Polonius, Ophelia, Laertes, Gertrude, and Claudius suffered dramatically throughout the whole play, because of Hamlet.