Anger, Honor And Revenge In William Shakespeare's Hamlet

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William Shakespeare is one of the most well-known writers in the English language. In this excerpt from Hamlet, he attempts to convey a message of anger, honor and revenge to his audience by the use of a ghost. This is the ghost of King Hamlet, the protagonist’s father, and he has returned to bring an important message to his son. He uses the elements of fear and honor to inflict a sense of revenge into the heart of Hamlet, and various poetic elements are used to inflict the same sense on the audience. To begin with, it is important to take notice of the iambic pentameter used in this monologue and also determine why it is used. Iambic pentameter is not applied throughout the entirety of the excerpt, but it is found on specific lines. For instance, Shakespeare writes, “O Hamlet what a falling off was there!” (6) in iambic pentameter yet leaves many other lines alone. Quite a few of them contain eleven syllables. Shakespeare is known for applying iambic pentameter to lines of characters who have authority or wealth, and the ghost is definitely an authoritative, powerful figure. Thus, the most probable reason that Shakespeare does not appear to use the classic iambic pentameter throughout is simply because…show more content…
Probably the best example of personification in Shakespeare’s excerpt from Hamlet appears in lines twelve through sixteen in the description of how the queen’s virtue is lost: “Though lewdness court it [virtue] in a shape of heaven,” (13). He likens virtue to a woman who is courted by lewdness and taken to bed by lust. This helps to add depth to Queen Gertrude by stating that her virtue was there but lust took over and turned that virtue to garbage. In other words, the loss of her virtue was not immediate, there was a courting period; and Shakespeare’s personification helps to clarify the way in which it dwindled down to
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