Live By The Sword, Die By The Sword

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Term Paper Title	Live By The Sword, Die By The Sword
# of Words	701
# of Pages (250 words per page double spaced)	2.8

Live by the Sword, Die by the Sword

     It is commonly said that if you play too close with the fire, you are going to get
burned.  This generally means that if you live a dangerous lifestyle, then you will
eventually falter and suffer the consequences.  In Shakespeare’s Hamlet, there are many
cases where characters are killed because they lived a murderous lifestyle.  Claudius
murders his own brother and is then murdered himself.  Laertes kills Hamlet but is killed
himself before Hamlet dies.  Hamlet murders Polonius and Laertes avenges his father by
killing Hamlet.  The lives and deaths of these three individuals are inextricably
interwoven.  Their destinies are forged by the others actions.  To attempt to separate the
life and death of each separate character would be impossible because their destinies are
so closely tied together.  Each one’s destiny is determined by the actions of not only their
life but also the reactions of others.
     Claudius, King Hamlet’s brother, desires to have more power than he currently
has.  He devises and executes a plan to murder his brother, the king by placing poison in
the sleeping man’s ear.  The king dies from the poisoning, and Claudius exclaims that the
king must have been bitten by a snake and died from the venom.  “The serpent that did
sting thy father’s life now wears the crown.” (p 29)  It is the perfect crime except that
young Hamlet gets wind of the evil deed from the ghost of his father.  Hamlet is told that
the only way to put his father’s soul to rest is to right the crime that was committed.  So
Hamlet sets his sights on proving that Claudius murdered his father.  Hamlet devises an
ingenious plan to trap Claudius.  He rigs a play to portray the same murder that Claudius
commits.  “You shall see anon how the murderer gets the love of Gonzago’s wife” (p 79)
Claudius is very shaken by this and stops the play.  Later on, Hamlet is speaking to his
mother and chasticizing her on her inappropriate behavior.  Polonius, Alert’s father, is
listening in on the conversation from behind a large tapestry.  When Polonius speaks,
Hamlet send his sword through the tapestry and kills the old man.  Claudiu...

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