When do you know a work of literature has stood the test of time? When William Shakespeare wrote it. But why are his works so respected and cherished? One of his most famous works, Hamlet, is still a favorite among actors and occasional readers, alike, but why? Why is Shakespeare's work still able to challenge and inspire people, four hundred years after it was written? The answer is simple. Shakespeare's work, though complicated, will never have just one meaning, it will always be up to the interpretation of the people of the time that is interpreting the drama. And with this reason, Shakespeare will always be powerful and applicable to the day.
             One of the first reasons why Hamlet will never lose importance is because of the incestuous relationship between Hamlet's mother, Queen Gertrude, and uncle, King Claudius. Even in Elizabethan times, Hamlet was disturbed by his mother's new love. In scene II of the first act, Hamlet's disgust with his mother's incestuous relationship and pain over his own father's death is no more clear then in the lines of his speech:
             But two months dead: nay, not so much, not two: so excellent a king; that was, to this, Hyperion to a satyr; so loving to my mother that he might not beteem the winds of heaven visit her face too roughly. Heaven and earth! Must I remember? Why, she would hang on him, as if increase of appetite had grown by what it fed on: and yet, within a month-let me not think on't-frailty, thy name is woman! -a little month, or ere those shoes were old with which she followed my poor father's body, like Niobe, all tear:--why she, even she-o God! A beast, that wants discourse of reason, would have mourn'd longer-married with my uncle, my father's brother, but no more like my father than I to Hercules: within a month: ere yet the salt of most unrighteous tears had left the flushing in her galled eyes, she married. O, most ...