How important is some knowledge of the basic religious beliefs of Shakespeare's audience to an understanding of Hamlet?

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How important is some knowledge of the basic religious beliefs of Shakespeare's audience to an understanding of Hamlet?

                Shakespeare wrote Hamlet in the early 17th century, in the Elizabethan period, and it is inevitable that the religious beliefs of that time will differ from those of today. In this essay I will be assessing these differences and how they affect a modern understanding of the themes and actions in Hamlet.

                The first scene illustrates a main theme in the play as Hamlets father appears as a ghost to Horatio. Today, we would not describe ghosts as an everyday occurrence, but their appearance in books and films is far from uncommon. Therefore it is a theme we understand, even if we do not have first-person experience of it. Neither does Horatio: "I might not believe this without the sensible and true avoch of my own eyes". The Elizabethans did believe, though, that ghosts could be evil, as Hamlet worries: "The devil hath power t'assume a pleasing shape", in this case the devil may have appeared to Hamlet to convince him to commit murder. This connection with religion is absent from most modern representations of ghosts, but the understanding of ghosts as a vision of the living dead remains the same. The power that a representation of a ghost has or had should also be considered. Today's audience has become desensitized to representations of ghosts, whereas in the 17th Century a ghost could wield much more power to affect. Kenneth Branagh's recent film adaptation acknowledged the ghosts reduced impact by introducing atmospheric camera angles and sound effects, instead of relying on the ghost's physical form. The methods used are irrelevant, though, as the aim is the same.

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                The ghost does not speak in the first scene, but later talks of his afterlife: "Doomed for a certain term to walk the night". Horatio also talks of the ghost starting like "a guilty thing upon a fearful summons". This summons is purgatory, a state between heaven and hell where those who have not repented before their death have their "foul crimes...burnt and purged away". This is a religious belief present in Catholicism but not Christianity. Therefore, the strong religious theme of forgiveness does not have the same relevance today. Hamlets father was "cut off even in the blossoms of ...

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