Hamlet and Religion

William Shakespeare, a great playwright, authored a number of works consisting of sonnets, comedies, and tragedies. The story of Prince Hamlet utilizes its original audience’s primarily Christian demography and the religious strife of the time to tie actions within the play to Christian ideologies and spiritual anxieties of the 16th century. Shakespeare’s Hamlet, a revenge theater play, is laden with references to religious identities and ideologies. In the play, Hamlet feels betrayal and distrust from the people around him, namely his uncle Claudius and mother Gertrude, who marry shortly after Hamlet’s father, King Hamlet’s, ominous death. Originally contemplating suicide, Hamlet dissuades himself from following through on the basis that it was a sin. Hamlet’s kindling flames of internal indignation soon ensue into an externalized raging fire of discontent, as he feels an immense responsibility to avenge his father’s “foul and most unnatural murder” (I.v, p.57) by killing Claudius. He embarks on an existential quest to find moral integrity in Denmark’s royalty, but ultimately pays a great price to achieve his goal. Themes of jealousy, murder, and revenge that are present in the play draw many parallels between Hamlet and not only the story of Cain and Abel, but also various other parts of the Bible. Thus, religious undertones throughout the play provide a lens through which Hamlet can be viewed.

Described in chapter four of the book of Genesis, the story of Cain and Abel, the sons of Adam and Eve, draws many similarities to the plot of Hamlet. The brothers both offer their best sacrifices to God, Abel sacrifices his best lamb, while Cain sacrifices his best grain. Because God prefers the lamb over the grain, Cain becom...

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... Claudius’ death, neither does the Protestant Reformation, which ends with a multitude of Christian kingdoms who continue to quarrel, rather than the ideal church that Protestant reformers aimed for.

Through Hamlet, William Shakespeare created a play filled with drama that built strong emotions in its audience, in the genre of revenge theater. Religious and Christian based undertones throughout give the reader a better understanding of the central conflict that exists within the plot, using extended metaphors, imagery, and historical parallels. Without a doubt, religious beliefs influence the characters’ motives and actions. These interwoven religious beliefs, without question, serve the purpose of bringing up ideas of sin and confession, purity, and heaven versus hell, as well as the morality of revenge, a question that is left for the reader to decide in the end.