Essay on death in Hamlet
How far is Shakespeare's presentation of Elizabethan attitudes towards death in Act 5 a development of earlier attitudes expressed in the play? Write about the ways attitudes to death are presented in Act 5.When Shakespeare wrote 'Hamlet', as with many of his plays, death was always an underlying if not prominent theme. Shakespeare lived in a time when death was much closer and a fact of life, rather than being a distant thought as it usually is now. The Elizabethan audience would have been living with the continual threat of death from the bubonic plague and it would have entered into most areas of life. Giovanni Boccaccio, a contemporary of Shakespeare wrote about the devastation the 'Black death' had on the population of a town or a city in Italy. Much would have been the same in Britain. Even the church had trouble keeping up with the amount of dead from this terrible disease.'Many died in the open street, others dying in their houses, made it known by the stench of their rotting bodies. Consecrated churchyards did not suffice for the burial of the vast multitude of bodies, which were heaped by the hundreds in vast trenches,'In England 90% of the victims died of the disease, that meant that nearly 2 million peo
When her death is made known the gravediggers in Act 5 debate whether or not she has committed suicide. Ophelia is presented as a weaker mind here as she could not cope with the emotional stress of her father's death whereas Hamlet could. Shakespeare was known to have had a fear of the plague and there are definite references to its effects on lifestyle in Hamlet. 'Or to take arms against a sea of troubles'. 'Here, thou incestuous, murderous damned Dane. Hamlet did not seem to be capable of dealing with the death of his father. They agree that even if she had, it would not make any difference to her in the afterlife because she was allowed to be buried in sacred religious ground due to her status and amount of wealth her family had, even though her way of death was in doubt. 'How long will a man lie i'th'earth ere he rot?' He comes face to face with the death of Yorick, someone he knew when he was alive and can now see them dead. The lines become shared to show the hurried pace of the play. Here Shakespeare is maybe introducing comic relief for the audience from the reality of death. In Conclusion, I think that Shakespeare's presentation of Elizabethan attitudes towards death appears strongly throughout the play and are expressed using the language, pace and story. ' They try to relieve the tension before the climax at the end of the play. He is unprepared to accept the reality of death. 'That skull had a tongue in it, and could sing once.
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