Costache Ileana – Gabriela

Professor Antonia Gîrmacea

English Literature 11
23 November 2017
Religion in Hamlet

In Shakespeare’s works are various topics such as love, family, mortality and religion.
For a controversial play such as Hamlet , it registers many of the 16th century religious
anxiaties. It is a play that dramatizes the spiritual uncertainty and the religious confusion of
the sixteenth century in Europe. This is emphasized when Hamlet says to his friend from
university,

“There are more things in Heaven and earth, Horatio,

Than are dreamt of in your philosophy”

(Hamlet, I.2, 187-188),

thus Hamlet acknowledges the religion.

Hamlet represents a complex character who is questionable about his sanity and
beliefs. He can not be considered mad because of his strong sense of moral responsibility, but
this matter can be questioned for the lightness with which he kills in the moment he thinks
“there is a rat behind the curtain”. Also, essential for Hamlet is the reality of death and the
wonder of what – if anything – comes after it. The ghost of Hamlet’s father is considered to
be in purgatory, forced to redemption after death for his sins. His suffering is in part
attributable to the fact that he was murdered without a chance to confess, giving Hamlet an
added motive for revenge. Hamlet’s reactions to the ghost reveal a complicated worldview in
which Christianity and folk bilief are not entirely separate.
Religion complicates Hamlet’s revenge. As his father was a catholic and he can be
identified as a protestant because protestants wear black and so does Hamlet. When he first
thinks about committing suicide, he expresses the wish :
“That the Everlasting had not fixed
His canon ‘gainst self-slaughter, or in other words, that it was not a sin in the eyes of
God to kill oneself”
(Hamlet, I.2, 135-136)
Hamlet also experiences religious insecurities as in his famous soliloquy beginning with
“To be, or not to be”,
he asks himself whether it is
“nobler in the mind to suffer,

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Costache Ileana – Gabriela
Professor Antonia Gîrmacea
English Literature 11
23 November 2017
or to end suffering through suicide”
(Hamlet, III.1, 64-65)
Along the play, Hamlet’s anxieties evolve, as in his exchange with the gravedigger in Act 5,
Scene 1, shows that he sees death as the absolute.
Religion is the scenery through which a saintly beliver looks at the universe and
separates the right from wrong. Religion also helps the beliver to go throush a shock, and
causes the beliver to became more ascentic. The shock Hamlet received causes to him to
consider himself not just a beliver, but as a redeemer ;
“The time is out of joint : O cursed spite,
That ever I was born to set it right !
Nay, come, let’s go together”
(Hamlet, I.5, 188-190)
Hamlet is not naturally doubtful. However, he is a beliver and through his allegiance tries to
control his demeanor, equipoising his feelings of wrath with his religious beliefs ;
“The spirit that I have seen may be the devil : and the devil hath power
To assume a pleasing shape; yea, and perhaps
Out of my weakness and my melancholy,
As he is very potent with such spirits,
Abuses me to damn me “
(Hamlet, II.2, 596-601)
Even if catholic and protestant religion are debated in Hamlet , Christianity is the
principal influence of the play.
Shakespeare, by the power of his rhetoric, is able to make a relationship between
religion and revenge, including various interpretations and beliefs about life and death in his
work.
Through those previously stated, the play leads to a variety of methods of
interpretation about life. However, religion can be considered a leading for any literary
analysis of Hamlet or a highlight of the characters and their actions, forming rational and
thorough interpretations.

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Costache Ileana – Gabriela
Professor Antonia Gîrmacea
English Literature 11
23 November 2017

References

 Shakespeare W (2005). Hamlet, Edited by B. Spencer with an introduction by Alan

Sinfield. General Editor: Stanley Wells. London. Penguin Group
 https://www.shmoop.com/hamlet
 http://www.academicjournals.org
 Baylis J (2010). Religion’s Role in Hamlet