A Letter to Hamlet

The recent loss of your father and spectacular revelation that his brother, the very uncle who married your mother, is responsible for his murder has thrown your world into near madness. Thomas Marc Perrot (135) maintains you are a perfect example of what can happen to a "very young" man who sees his entire support system "disintegrate" within a "single moment." Your youth confuses you as you confront the death of your father and its implications. You believe your life is not worth "a pin's fee" and seem suicidal in your detachment from others and the world you view as a "goodly" prison, "Denmark being one of the worst" (Shakespeare 1076; 1084). Although your father's death and the circumstances surrounding and unfolding from it are sufficient cause of grief and despair in anyone, you are Divine as the presumptive heir to the throne of Denmark and must abandon any thoughts of suicide.

The revelation that your uncle Claudius killed your father and married your mother has turned your world upside down. Because of these actions, Muir and Schoenbaum (66) believe you are "forced to face" the truth of your father's death and your "own willingness to accept that death." This is a tale order for any young man Hamlet, but you must not give in to despair. You have argued that no course of action can harm your soul, "for my soul, what can it do to that, / Being a thing immortal as itself" (Shakespeare 1076). However dear Hamlet, your soul

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ou. She has been set up by Polonius to reject your letters and deny you access to see her. You treat her as cruelly as you do your mother. When she tells you she believed you loved her, you break her heart by telling her "You should not have believed me; / for virtue cannot so inoculate our old stock / but we shall relish of it: I loved you not" (Shakespeare 1089). As you do with your mother, you continue to berate Ophelia and her sex. You deliver the ultimate blow by telling her you will never marry her because women make men into monsters, "If thou wilt marry, marry a / fool; for wise men know well enough what / monsters you make of them" (Shakespeare 1089). So you see dear Hamlet, these women love you deeply and genuinely. You think they have betrayed you but they have also been victims of treachery and deceit and continue to love you. If you could see this then perhaps you would understand the world is not as "rotten" a place as you currently find it. None of us knows God's purpose or master plan for us as individuals. He has chosen you to be the rightful heir to the throne of Denmark. You seem to believe in this partly but have lost some faith in it due to the gravity of your uncle's actions, "There's a ro

Category: Literature - A