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Recommended: What role did the characters play in hamlet

Throughout the play Hamlet addresses questions of death, action versus inaction, loyalty, and his familial relationships. These issues all appear in the selected passage from Act V, Scene ii, shortly before his death. This interaction between Hamlet and Horatio is rich on its own and in the broader context of the play.
Shortly before he is to die, Hamlet acknowledges death as an authority figure over everyone. Death is personified as the “fell sergeant...strict in his arrest.” (V,ii,337-338) Despite Hamlet’s status as a prince, he is not exempt from death. This continues the ideas Hamlet presented earlier in Act V, Scene i in the graveyard. There Hamlet recognized the equalizing nature of death while surrounded by skulls. Whether a lawyer, an emperor or a jester, death looms over everyone and Hamlet does not assign it some high title or rank as it comes for him. Death is not a king or a lord, but a sergeant enforcing the rules that govern life. This personification of death is unyielding in performing a solemn duty. Hamlet accepts that death has come for him and does not ...

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