So Shakespeare packed his works with popular beliefs about the supernatural. ... The passage of years replaced it with seriousness and later with pessimism. ... The Ghost in Hamlet is an excellent example of the skill with which Shakespeare had in forming his supernatural characters with Elizabethan beliefs. ... They possess most of the powers that Elizabethans believed they possessed including the ability to raise storms and command the winds (Dayan 309). ... All authority is taken form the spirits in The Tempest and the power to harm is gone. ...

• Word Count: 1725
• Approx Pages: 7
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School

This event broke Hamlet's relations with his mother. ... He no longer had the chance to talk about girls with his father, such as Ophelia. He was left with no real male role model in his life. ... He had the fresh new heart ache of Ophelia being gone and refreshed memories of his father being killed. ... Hamlet's life now at this point, is the most ruined a life can possibly wind up. ...

• Word Count: 1433
• Approx Pages: 6
• Grade Level: High School

Nor do we find him forward to be sounded, but with a crafty madness, keeps aloof-(41). The Prince of Denmark does confess there is something amiss, but his old friends do not yet see that the thing gone awry is his father's death and not his mind. Hamlet though, has become disillusioned with mankind and slowly slips into the clutches of madness. ... Dr Samuel Johnson in an article of critical thinking notes, "Ophelia is treated with wanton cruelty"(2). ... Wolfgang VonGoethe writes this of his maddening, "How he winds, turns, agonizes, advances, and recoils, ever reminded, ever remi...

• Word Count: 1514
• Approx Pages: 6
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School

If Hamlet had taken action at the first opportunity and killed Claudius while he was praying, Claudius" soul would have gone to Heaven. ... Hamlet's relationship with Gertrude is affected greatly by the death of King Hamlet. ... Hamlet insists that he is not but Gertrude seems not to believe him and straight after Hamlet leaves she goes to Claudius to report that Hamlet is "mad as the sea and wind when both contend which is the mightier". ... Hamlet's relationship with Ophelia is also greatly affected by his desire for revenge and his "madness". ... She tells her father of this encou...

• Word Count: 2360
• Approx Pages: 9
• Grade Level: High School