Hamlet And Claudius's Manipulation

A Writer’s Greatest Tool Shakespeare is the most commonly known playwright in our world today. By High School, every student in the United States has heard of and most likely read one of his plays. Shakespeare has become part of the culture in America, as well as most of the world and that is a wonderful and interesting thing. One man in the 16th century wrote plays about topics that are still interesting and in some ways still prevalent. Shakespeare worked on his writing, improving on every play he wrote, but he did not change his topics and themes. This is not true for all of his plays some are quite different from his central ideas. However, the themes stay the same and this is most likely because Shakespeare uses as many themes as possible in his plays. In fact, a person could argue any theme being in any of his plays. This is true of manipulation, a theme in almost any story no matter the format. Although manipulation can be found in all of Shakespeare’s plays, this paper will …show more content…
While Hamlet’s manipulation makes him seem more intelligent, Claudius’ shows a darker and frustrating side. The play’s main motivation is also from the manipulation of a ghost, “revenge his foul and most unnatural murder” (1.5.31). King Hamlet plays on his son’s love to entice him to start a mission of revenge that will end with Hamlet’s death. Shakespeare used this manipulation to start his story of revenge and madness. The reason that this manipulation blends so seamlessly into the plot is because of the family connection. The love that Hamlet has for his father was easy to exploit. Someone with less of a connection would realize that this revenge will only end in death and pain. But Hamlet is not in the right state of mind, he has lost his father and has just been handed a way to avenge him. He was easily influenced to do something reckless and