I think that anyone can get several different meanings out of the play Hamlet. I know I had gotten a few meanings, messages, or morals depending on what you want to call it. Some background of the play the king of Denmark, Hamlet Senior, dies and his brother Claudius marries his wife Gertrude.

The first message on my list is love. Now I don’t necessarily know hardly anything about love, and it’s because I’ve never really felt it. In the play, Hamlet (the main person) is in love with Ophelia there relationship was good. Then Ophelia’s dad Polonius wants Ophelia to stay away from Hamlet, and to give back all the stuff he had given her. So Hamlet starts to act all crazy because he thinks he has been betrayed by Ophelia. Hamlet says/acts like he doesn’t love her anymore. Ophelia goes crazy. Then Hamlet kills Polonius for spying on his conversation with his mom. After Ophelia drowns herself because the person she loves yet can’t be around kills her father.

The second thing on my list is deviance. Claudius actually killed his brother Hamlet, the old king, by putting poison in his ear. Hamlet’s friends Guildenstern and Rosencrantz are spying on Hamlet for King Claudius. His friends are also secretly sending him to his death sent by Claudius. Polonius and Claudius are spying on Ophelia’s conversation with Hamlet. I mean this play is filled with all sorts of secrets being kept from others. When a secret gets involved then deviance is there especially if it’s being kept from others around the person.

The third thing on my list is revenge. Hamlet finds out from his dad’s ghost that he was murdered by his brother Claudius, and so Hamlet spends basically the whole play planning out revenge. Laertes, Polonius’s son, hears his father was murdered by Hamlet so he tries to get his revenge on Hamlet. In the end pretty much everyone dies because of revenge.

I think this play is very ironic because revenge is big in society now days. I mean think about it is person #1 insults person #2 there turns out to be a fight so that person #2 can get back at person #1 then person #2 has a bad attitude and involves person #3 who has to get back at person #2 then so on and so on it’s a vicious cycle that continues on until somebody stops it. So just remember people have died because of revenge including innocent bystanders, and it’s just not worth it.

James