”O, this is hire and salary, not revenge.
He took my father grossly, full of bread;
With all his crimes broad blown, as flush as May;”
Hamlet tells of how his uncle killed his father by killing him when he was sleeping and full of bread this could also be interpreted as a shamanic tradition, a sin eater would be employed by the family of a deceased person, or sometimes by the Church, to eat a last meal of bread and salt from the belly of the corpse as it lay in state.
By so doing it was believed that the sins of the dead person would be absorbed and the deceased would have clear passage to the hereafter. Hamlet could be saying that his father may have been full of sins but he did not even get his sins atoned by having them eaten by a sin eater.
”And how his audit stands who knows save heaven?
But in our circumstance and course of thought,”
Hamlet says that only heaven knows how many sins you have commited throughout your life and if you have atoned for them and when they add up how many of those sins you have that is the deciding factor to see whether you go to heaven or hell.
”'Tis heavy with him: and am I then revenged,
To take him in the purging of his soul,
When he is fit and season'd for his passage?
No!”
Hamlet thinks again is it better for me to teke him when he is full of sin or is it better for me to take him when he has atoned for his sins, of course it is the latter one because then his father would truly be avenged as his uncle would go to hell. He is very final when he says no because Claudius killed Hamlet’s father while Hamlet Sr was still carrying his sin therefore Hamlet Jr did not want to send the man who had sent his father into purgatory, to heaven.
”Up, sword; and know thou a more horrid hent:
When he is drunk asleep, or in his rage,
Or in the incestuous pleasure of his bed;
At gaming, swearing, or about some act
That has no relish of salvation in't;”
Hamlet talks to his sword and tells it that they will get him another day when he is full of sin so that he goes to hell so that he truly avenges his death.
”Then trip him, that his heels may kick at heaven,
And that his soul may be as damn'd and black
As hell, whereto it goes. My mother stays:
This physic but prolongs thy sickly days.”
In this passage hamlet says that to his sword that they will get him so that he goes to hell as hamlet had intended but he does not want to hurt his mother maybe because he believes that his mother is innocent and Claudius made her marry him. He wants his uncles soul to be blackened for eternity so that his father is truly avenged.
Shakespeare shows that hamlet is quite intellectual as he thinks that if he kills his uncle while he is praying then he will go to heaven and not to hell as hamlet had intended so that his father is avenged. Of course this is the ultimate irony shown by Shakespeare as Claudius is not really praying to god as he feels that he cannot get through to him as the crime that he has committed is to awful to be forgiven.
By
Craig Thompson 10TRM
