it in his plays, Shakespeare is able to communicate on a deeper level with the emotions of the audience. Also, apart from the abnormally regular occurrence of death every day, Shakespeare questions the more controversial issues of religion and spiritual issues of death and the afterlife. The audience would have enjoyed these tragic plays even though the time they were living in would have made a modern reader believe they had had enough experience with death.
             Even though death was a common occurrence in Elizabethan times, the form of death that was never acknowledged was suicide due to it being a mortal sin. I think that to see a man considering suicide on stage would have brought the audiences to the theatre. In Act 3 scene 1 Hamlet contemplates committing suicide. In his soliloquy his thoughts and feelings emerge about dying because of the terrible responsibility he has undertaken, to avenge his murdered father.
             'To be or not to be – that is the question;'
             This is a deeply philosophical soliloquy and voices Hamlet's fears about his mortality. The audience would be deeply affected by the contemplation of a man whose problems lead him to the question of suicide. The thought of taking away God's sacred gift was sacrilegious and inconceivable in Elizabethan times. The interpretation of this passage however could change to read that Hamlet is unsure of whether of not he should act against Claudius. 'Or to take arms against a sea of troubles'. It is evident that thoughts and fears of the unknown override his desire to die. 'But that the dread of something after death,'
             However Ophelia has no such fears of dying and her insanity leads her to commit suicide. Ophelia is presented as a weaker mind here as she could not cope with the emotional stress of her father's death whe
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