Hamlet the Dane loves his mother dearly. Like many, however, his seemingly pure and innocent love contains the seeds of jealousy, sprouting when the reciprocation of that love becomes stunted and turned to the affectations of another. A love tainted by feelings of jealousy and betrayal many times drives a person to take extreme measures – he or she will do anything to win that love back. I have often felt this same way, for example when a best friend starts spending more time with a love interest than with me, or a dear sibling gets married and moves away. When someone you have shared an exclusive love with starts to pay more attention to others than they pay to you, it not only seems unnatural, it seems wrong and you wonder what you have done to cause a rift in your relationship. The pain a loss can bring and the desperate measures that pain can lead you to take are thus exposed. The lessons Hamlet learns throughout the course of his story are no different than those who many, like myself, have learned to deal with. Hamlet's jealousy is aroused when his mother's affection turns from him to Claudius, making him desperate to win her love back. With this goal in mind, he debates whether or not to kill Claudius. Ironically, the moment Gertrude reaches out to Hamlet is also the moment that his hope of regaining her love is lost through her death. With his hope destroyed, Hamlet is ultimately freed to act upon his desire to kill Claudius.
             The play begins with Hamlet feeling the weight of his mother loving another. He is angry about the fact that she is ignoring him, however he is also disgusted by the rapidity with which she wed her dead husband's brother, and how quick she was to allow herself to become fully engrossed by his presence. This only feeds the fire of his grief and prolongs his mourning period. Many, like Claudius, feel that Hamlet's grieving period has extended an appropriate amount ...