Free Hamlet Essays: Hamlet’s Deceit :: GCSE English Literature Coursework

Hamlet’s Deceit In the play hamlet we see hamlet, a man stuck in a deceitful world. The spies, everybody but Hamlet, need deceit and treachery to live, and without it they would perish. Polonius, perhaps the most underhanded member of the play lives and dies while spying, literally. Other characters spy also to better themselves to certain individual to advance their social status. We see Hamlet, the one honest man left in the bunch, spying his one time to save his very own life. The perceptiveness of Hamlet is short-lived as are all actions in this play save the killing. "That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain"(I, v, l.108) This is to be my theme, something that Hamlet discovered and lived by for many a year and scene. "Neither a borrower nor a lender be, far loan oft loses both itself a friend"(I, iii, l.75-76). Experience Polonius has in both fields, for he represents the loathing, scheming men of the world in Hamlet. Polonius is an underhanded man in the play. We see this fat Lord chamberlain play goofy and somewhat stupid during his talks with Hamlet. We know that when his son Laertes is sent to France, Polonius send a spy to follow him and to make sure he is not doing any wrong. Polonius also likes to keep tabs on everyone including his daughter Ophelia, who is expected to report her relations with the lord Hamlet to her father. Later in the play, Ophelia lets Polonius and Claudius spy on Hamlet and herself conversing. "Her father and myself†¦, seeing unseen, we may from encounter frankly judge†¦ if’t be th’affliction of his love or no that thus he suffers for" (III, i, l.32-37). Polonius, known for his deceit is the only real symbol of it, and it is symbolic when haml et kills him, almost like killing the evil which plagued the land in his natural form, for Polonius was unceremoniously spying on Hamlet and his mother from behind a curtain. Other characters in Hamlet are also deceitful. Laertes, has poison, from where did he get it? Ophelia as said earlier, serves as a medium for Claudius and Polonius to tap into hamlet’s thoughts. The queen is even a part of it one time. Even without the spying however, she is intertwined in guilt, marrying the brother and killer of her husband on the day of his funeral; what shame (unfortunately only experienced by Hamlet!).