Hamlet Mousetrap Essay

Hamlet’s feelings towards his father prompt him onto the path of revenge, but the immorality of revenge and his interaction with characters restricts him from taking action. During the Elizabethan times, revenge was not only considered a crime but was also considered an immoral act. Thus, for Hamlet, the idea of revenge plagues his mind as it questions his views on morality. At the start of the play, the ghost entices Hamlet into taking revenge for the late King Hamlet’s ‘foul and most unnatural murder’. However, he finds it hard to commit to the revenge because he has doubts that ‘the spirit that I have seen/ May be a devil, and the devil hath power’. Therefore, Shakespeare uses metatheatre staging the play ‘The Mousetrap’ in order to confirm
The characters within Shakespeare draw upon connections between moral corruption and the health of the state. The marriage between Claudius and Gertrude is the embodiment of moral corruption as it impacts Hamlet’s comparison of life to ‘an unweeded garden/ that grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature/ possess it merely’. The appearance of the ghost monopolises ‘if thou didst ever dear father love’ in order to corrupt Hamlet into dedicating his life to getting revenge on the ‘villain dwelling in all Denmark’. Also, the presence of the ghost as a supernatural being indicates that ‘something is rotten in the state of Denmark’. Rozencrantz and Guildenstern easily ‘give up ourselves in the full bent. To lay our service freely at your feet. To be commanded’ by the embodiment of corruption, Claudius himself shows that corruption can infect other people. The use of Yorick’s skull leads Hamlet to contemplate about human mortality as he looks upon the physical remains of the dead. Hamlet’s experience at the graveyard causes him to express disgust at the physical corruption of the body following death with ‘Imperious Caesar, dead and turned to clay, might stop a hole to keep the wind