Shakespeares Hamlet - Between Pagan and Christian Essay -- GCSE Engl

crossroads Between Pagan and Christian small town explores the borders between madness and sanity. It is also located, like King Lear, in a frontier area between a pagan revenge ethic and Christian compassion, and between a ruthless, power-hungry adult world and a younger generation with gentler and more conciliatory aspirations. Hamlets father, who now torments him, was himself a sinner, otherwise he would not have to return to earth as a ghost, demanding revenge. Hamlet is well aware of his fathers crimes (III.3.81). Inviting his son to avenge his death is tantamount to bend the clock back, thereby perpetuating a pagan code of honour that seems outdated in Hamlets own time. For - in contrast to Lear - Hamlet is a Christian of sorts, a fact that hampers rather than helps him in his mission. His Christianity is one of several reasons why he hesitates to carry out the ghosts instructions - and why, in the most historied of his seven soliloquies, he refrains from turning his weap on on himself. He worries that the tone of voice he has seen may be a devil. Obviously Christian in its origin is...