Deception In Hamlet Essay

Shakespeare had to make recourse to a wholly artificial device in order to show Hamlet in action, or inaction the soliloquy.

Another strain that goes through Hamlet, and a disturbing one, is the abuse by Hamlet of his former beloved and his mother, Ophelia and Gertrude. In his scenes with Ophelia, Hamlet is relentlessly cruel, charging her with a lustful nature, a dishonest heart, a dissembling appearance, and so on. He builds up, in scene three, to an utterly misogynistic rant, beginning, I have heard of your paintings well enough. Men in the English Renaissance were obsessed with womens make-up, which they took to be a symbol of feminine wiles, excuses, manipulations, artifices, and hypocrisies. Shakespeare, especially, has a long rhetorical history with this line of vitriol; it shows up in many of his plays and features strongly in his Sonnets. Readers have long sympathized deeply with Ophelias position in the play; as far back as 1765, Samuel Johnson wrote, [Hamlet] plays the madman most, when he treats Ophelia with so much rudeness, which seems to be useless and wanton cruelty.

draw attention the artifice of the play. Through meta-theatre the audience are presented with the fact that they are watching a production, actors acting and quite often there is are explicit reference made to the literary artifice within the production. Meta-theatrical devises also include plays within a play, such as the Mousetrap in Hamlet, or the Mechanicals

In the play "The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark," William Shakespeare has used the theme of deception, and how its use by one or more characters leads to their downfall. Polonius explicitly stated this theme when he said to Laertes in I, ii, "By indirections find directions out." Each major character in Hamlet, in his or her own way, provided an example of this theme. By using deceit the characters in "Hamlet" employed methods to fulfill their own agenda, an action that ultimately resulted in tragedy.

Shakespeare's use of deception is seen most clearly in Hamlet's actions. He began to "act mad" early in the play in order to manipulate his friends. "...Hereafter [I] shall... put an antic disposition on" (I.v.171-2). Hamlet swore to use this antic disposition to uncover his father's murderer. He used this performance as a tool of artifice in order to cover up his true feelings. Hamlet went too far however, and his underhanded plan began to work against him.

By not coming clean with those he trusts most, Hamlet served to alienate them from himself, and from his cause (of avenging his father's death). In III i, Hamlet said to Ophelia, "Go

Hamlet has always been very much about artifice versus reality; "really meaning it" versus "just pretending"--but this production heightens the effect by installing mirrors everywhere, so that the characters aren't even alone with themselves.****

Hamlet, more than almost any character in literature, hates deception and craves honesty. It is one of the brilliant ironies of the play that Hamlet, an absolutist in his quest for truth, is trapped in a seamy political world where deception is a necessary part of life and political "spin" rules the day. This contrast, fascinating to the audience, is a torment to Hamlet. Deception is necessary for and used by every character in Hamlet, for every purpose ranging from love to parenting to regicide