Shakespeare's Use Of Foils In Hamlet

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In a novel by William Styron, a father tells his son that life “is a search for justice.” This is relevant to the main character in Shakespeare’s tragedy, Hamlet. Hamlet is mainly built upon Hamlet’s inaction; his excessive ponderings over whether his actions would be justice and injustice. With Shakespeare’s use of soliloquies the readers were able to understand the thoughts and feelings, state of mind and heart, most intimate thoughts and feelings, and the motives and intentions of Hamlet. Shakespeare also created many foils in his tragedy to further help the readers understand Hamlet’s true nature. At the beginning of the tragedy, Hamlet’s justice is mainly built around his Protestant beliefs. The ghost tells Hamlet that he must take revenge…show more content…
Hamlet welcomes Rosencrantz and Guildenstern and tells them that “I am but mad north-north-west. When the wind is southerly I know a hawk from a handsaw.” (II:ii:388-389) Hamlet tells them that he is actually not mad and knows what he’s doing. Hamlet initially pretended to be mad or crazy to deceive Claudius and Gertrude, the King and Queen, so that they wouldn’t know his suspicion of Claudius and his father’s death. Eventually the other characters such as Polonius, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, and Ophelia started to fall for his deception. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are brought into the play to find the cause of Hamlet’s madness because they were Hamlet’s childhood friends. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are manipulated by everyone in the royal family as they are afraid of offending the wrong person or give away the wrong secret at the wrong time. Hamlet compare them to sponges, “Ay, sir, that soaks up the King’s countenance, … squeezing you and, sponge, you shall be dry again.” (IV:ii:16-21) They eventually lose Hamlet’s trust and get executed in Hamlet’s place. As Hamlet starts to act mad, Polonius starts to assume that Hamlet’s madness was caused from being separated from Ophelia. From this assumption, Polonius starts to spy on Hamlet by using Ophelia. Ophelia listens to everything that Polonius orders her to do, despite her feelings getting hurt, “If thou dost marry,

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