Death invades 'Hamlet' right from the opening scene of the play, where the ghost of Hamlet’s father introduces the idea of death and its consequences. The ghost, that is an apparition of dead person triggers the action of the play. Basically the play begins with dead.
“My lord, as I was sewing in my closet,
Lord Hamlet, with his doublet all unbraced;
No hat upon his head; his stockings fouled,
Ungartered, and down-gyvèd to his ankle;
Pale as his shirt; his knees knocking each other;
And with a look so piteous in purport
As if he had been loosèd out of hell
To speak of horrors—he comes before me.”
ACT 2 SCENE 1
The description of Hamlet given by Ophelia to Polonius, shows Hamlet in a mad state, presents him as a mourner and not as a revenge seeker. The concept of mourning shows he is living but life has lost its meaning for him. This kind of life is equivalent to death for him. At one point he also curses the almighty for making suicide immoral. Hamlet at this point lives but in a state of madness with dead heart and dead brain.Ophelia also compared Hamlet as if he broke loose from hell. Even she perhaps unknowingly though compares Hamlet with a dead person. Hell is a place for dead people not for a man who is still living. Hell is eternity.
The entire dialogue is a quintessence of a traumatized and a brutalized living person who has been tormented just like a dead person is treated in hell.
“ No, no, the drink, the drink!—O
my dear Hamlet!
The drink, the drink! I am
Poisoned. (dies)”
ACT 5 SCENE 2
Gertrude is probably the most controversial character of the play. No one can be sure of was she actually a part of the conspiracy done by Claudius or not. Though the ghost was genuine when he says that Claudius killed him. Later, Claudius also confessed the same that he killed his brother. But we are not very sure of Gertrude’s involvement. Even the ghost urges Hamlet not to harm Gertrude. Perhaps the ghost is only upset because Gertrude was easily influenced and persuaded by Claudius to him. Though play like the Oedipus Trilogy suggests that it was a tradition that the widow of the dead king should marry the one who succeeds the throne but we are not very sure about the fact that it happened to be the tradition of Denmark then or not. But Shakespeare had the habit of drawing allusions from the earlier plays. It is also probable that Gertrude intentionally drinks the poison in order to save Hamlet. The phrase “ I am poisoned” might have a double meaning. the literal meaning suggests that she drunk the poison while the metaphorical meaning may suggest that she has become impure after marrying Claudius and that she regrets it.
Gertrude remains one of the most controversial characters of literature ,but, if looked from the other way round, she is a mourning widow, a victim of betrayal and a benevolent mother with brave-heart. Still she dies. Why? It is probably because Shakespeare wanted to give the message that death is inevitable and cannot be avoided. Death comes to a idealist human being as well as to a traitor. After death , the various religion suggests, the outcome is heaven or hell that is another topic of debate. But death cannot be avoided.
Shakespeare in Hamlet presented death as an abstract idea with no definite meaning and something which can be analyzed on various grounds.
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