Literary study on Hamlet by William Shakespeare
             Hamlet by William Shakespeare clearly explores both individual experience and themes of universal significance.
             In the beginning of the play we see some examples of deceit and lying. The queen has married her dead husband's brother Claudius. According to the law of the time this was wrong but somehow the Danish courts let the marriage go on, probably because of the king's power. The queen married Claudius only about two weeks after her first husband died which shows that the queen must have been having an affair behind the queen's back.
             We also see in act 1 scene 2 how prince Hamlet has taken to his father's death and his mother's "o'er hasty" marriage. We see the king and queen scolding Hamlet for still mourning over his father's death.
             "Good Hamlet, cast thy knighted colour off,
             and let thine eye look like a friend of Denmark.
             Do not for ever with vailed lids seek for thy noble father in the dust".
             Hamlet then shows his mother that unlike her grief his is genuine by saying
             "Seems, madam? Nay it is, I know not 'seems'
             `Tis not alone my inky cloak good mother".
             When Hamlet says "not alone my inky cloak" he means that his grief, unlike hers was not only a matter of dress.
             We see examples of deceit, contamination and revenge right through the whole of the play, but we also see a lot of what is happening in Hamlet's mind, through his actions and through his soliloquies.
             We see in Hamlet's first soliloquy how depressed he gets about his father's death and his mother's hasty marriage. He wishes that "the Everlasting had not fixed his cannon `gainst self slaughter" so that he could kill himself. Hamlet also shows his hate of what his mother had done by saying:
             "O most wicked speed! To post
             with such dexterity to incestuous sheets!"...