Shakespeares Hamlet - Between Pagan and Christian Essay -- GCSE Engl

Hamlet Between Pagan and Christian Hamlet explores the borders between madness and sanity. It is also located, like King Lear, in a frontier area between a pagan revenge ethic and Christian compassion, and between a ruthless, power-hungry adult world and a younger coevals with gentler and more conciliatory aspirations. Hamlets father, who now torments him, was himself a sinner, otherwise he would not have to return to earth as a ghost, demanding revenge. Hamlet is well conscious of his fathers crimes (III.3.81). Inviting his son to avenge his death is tantamount to turning the clock back, thereby perpetuating a pagan code of honour that seems outdated in Hamlets own time. For - in contrast to Lear - Hamlet is a Christian of sorts, a fact that hampers rather than helps him in his mission. His Christianity is one of several reasons why he hesitates to carry out the ghosts instruction manual - and why, in the most famous of his seven soliloquies, he refrains from turning his weapon on himself. He worries that the spirit he has seen may be a devil. ostensibly Christian in its origin is...