The Use Of Lies In Hamlet

The play, Hamlet is , in the best words, a web of lies. The story takes place in Denmark, sometime around the year 1600. With the King of Denmark recently dead, and his brother now the new king, there seems to be a bit of foul play going on. The great failure of these characters is that they refuse to confront the truth, either with others or themselves. In fact, nearly of these conflicts are met with lies. Though some of these lies do start with good intentions. The question they beg is, do these good intentions justify the act of lying? If so, where is it line drawn on a well-intended lie or a poor-intended lie? Hamlet proves the idea that not all lies are created equal. There are well-meaning lies, purely evil lies, and some genuinely justified

Ophelia, Hamlet’s girlfriend, recently rejects him. Polonius, Ophelia’s father and counselor to King Claudius, is convinced that the rejection has caused a heartbroken Hamlet to go mad. To prove his theory to Claudius, they have Ophelia meet Hamlet and see how he acts towards her. This plan backfires in the end because Hamlet is rude to Ophelia saying, “You should not have believed [that I loved you], for virtue cannot so inoculate our old stock but we shall relish of it. I loved you not”(Act 3, Scene 1). He tells her to go to a brothel and that she is useless. After this shocking encounter, Claudius is not convinced that Ophelia’s rejection has anything to do with Hamlet’s crazy actions. However, Polonius still believes that this is an effect of his past relationship. The set-up by Claudius and Polonius is a reasonable action. They were trying to find out why Hamlet is going insane, and if it is because of Ophelia. However, it’s hard to look at this impartially because of Claudius’ previous actions of murder. If you just look at this incident alone, however, it does make sense as to why they would set this up. However, as seen before, this could have been resolved before it even happened if only people would approach Hamlet and try to talk to him instead of setting him up and trying to get him to confess in an indirect way. Even a merited lie is generally

But since that didn’t happen, the readers are left to interpret the moral and ethical justice of the different acts of deception that are fabricated. Shakespeare’s Hamlet digs deep into moral compasses of deception. We are taught through this play that lies are the only sin that will never go unpunished. We all lie, and all for different reasons. It’s important to look at those reasons and honestly decide what lies are worth telling and which are not. Even then, it’s nearly impossible to predict how big the lie could get, which can cause more problems than before. As a general guideline, it’s much easier to take the repercussions of a truth, than take the pain and confusion that comes with