Shakespeare’s Hamlet: A Conflicted Demonstration
Though Claudia also upset this order by murdering King Hamlet), for Hamlet to even consider killing Claudia, he crosses a moral taboo. Furthermore, when the ghost charges Hamlet to ‘Revenge his foul and most unnatural murder’ and Hamlet accepts, replying ‘Haste me to Knott, that I with wings as swift/ As meditation or the thoughts of love/ May sweep to my revenge’, he once again disregards the Christian value system that asserts Judgment and punishment to be only the right of God, and not of man.
Hamlets only redeeming action, Is that after contemplating ‘To be, or not to be’, he does not inevitably commit suicide: a death denied Christian burial. Secondly a sense of right and wrong can be derived from common sense, logic and the conscience. In this regard, Hamlet displays no moral integrity, as he firstly used Aphelia by displaying to her a faked ‘antic disposition’ (ACTA, Sac. To which she was ‘so freighted’ (ACTA, SSL) before allowing her to believe that her love had been betrayed when he stated ‘I love you not’ to her reply, ‘l was the more deceived’ (Act, SSL After this, when given the opportunity to kill Polonium, ‘Now I might do it pat’ he refrains because the victim ‘now a is a-praying’ and the murder then would send him o heaven’. He shows no mercy, deciding to Walt till later when he is behaving In a way ‘That has no relish of salvation Inner choosing then to trip him that his heels may kick at heaven,] And that his soul may be damned and black,’ As hell whereto It goes… (ACTA, IS). It is possible however, that this example of postponing the revenge is an indication that Hamlet was perhaps reluctant, and did not truly wish to kill him. This indication of repressed guilt is also shown in ACTA Scenes where Hamlet states ‘… I am myself indifferent honest, but yet I could accuse me of such things, that it ere better my mother had not borne me. I am very proud, revengeful, ambitious, with more offences at my beck than I have thoughts to put them in, imagination to give them shape, or time to act them in’.
Finally, a Judgment of moral integrity can take place when witnessing Hamlet’s response to local laws. In this he varied. By Hamlet deciding to take Claudia’ life In exchange for his fathers, he was following the pagan value systems of the era which accepted an ‘eye for an eye’. However, on discovering that Guilelessness and be struck off (ACTA, IS), he stole the commission, and illegally replaced it with a copy harming that Without debasement further, more, or less,] He should those bearers put to sudden death,] Not shriving time allowed’.
Despite the action saving his life, Hamlet both broke a law, and ensured the death of those who once were his friends. Therefore, though it appears Hamlet believed he must extract his revenge, and at times showed unwillingness to do so, by this action and the behavior he used to carry it out Hamlet betrayed the religious rules, logic, common sense, conscience and law of the Elizabethan era, Hamlet displayed an at best conflicted, and at worst absent moral integrity.
