Hamlet: Deception and Corruption

Hamlet: Deception and Corruption

The play, "Hamlet" is one of the finest plays written by William Shakespeare that shows extensive dishonesty, cheating and exploitation among the characters. Dishonesty and cheating can be damaging but at the same time it can be advantageous too. It can be done on others or could be practiced on one self. One wicked exploit leads to many disastrous events which in the end results in an unfavourable consequence for everyone involved. In the play "Hamlet", Claudius, Hamlet and Polonius are some of the characters that show deception and corruption through works and actions they commit.

Corruption is a growing theme in Hamlet. In the beginning of the play, corruption is shown as something very small but as the story progresses it starts affecting the lives of many important people residing in Elsinore. The act that begins the corruption is played by the character Claudius, who murders his own brother (Old King Hamlet). Claudius kills the King so he can assume the throne for himself and marry his wife, Gertrude. In the beginning of the second scene in act 1, Claudius makes a speech to the court. He is deceiving people because he killed his own brother but he is pretending as if it was an accident:

Though yet of Hamlet our dear brother's death

The memory be green, and that it us befitted

To bear our hearts in grief and our whole kingdom

To be contracted in one brow of woe,

Yet so far hath discretion fought with nature

That we with wisest sorrow think on him

Together with remembrance of ourselves (1. 2. 1-7).

In this quote, Claudius is pretending to mourn over his brother's death when in reality he is the one who killed his brother by poisoning him. This shows that Claudius is corrupted in his own sense and is deceiving the people of Denmark and everyone in the royal family. Another example of deception played by Claudius' character is when he deceives Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. He informs them about Hamlet's trip to England, telling them that the insane Hamlet must leave Denmark in order to protect the citizens of Denmark but in reality Claudius plans Hamlets killing once he is in England, "Our sovereign process, which imports at full, By letters congruing to that effect, The present death of Hamlet" (4.3. 63-65). Claudius inner corruption is shown clearly in the way he uses Hamlet's childhood friends. He turned them against Hamlet and deceived them in thinking they were helping Hamlet. Also, when Hamlet found the letter they were carrying, he thought Rosencrantz and Guildenstern were on Claudius' side so instead of Hamlet's name, He changed