Hamlet

            When do you know a work of literature has stood the test of time? When William Shakespeare wrote it. But why are his works so respected and cherished? One of his famous works, Hamlet, is still a favorite among actors and occasional readers alike, but why? Why is Shakespeare's work still able to challenge and inspire people four hundred years after it is written? The answer is simple. Shakespeare's work, though complicated, will never have just one meaning. Hamlet will be interpreted differently depending on the reader. Shakespeare will always be powerful and applicable throughout time. Hamlet is a play about a young man who has different issues in his life that he needs to work out. Hamlet's indecisiveness and the "love" that he had for his mother were two key elements of the play.
             The first reason why Hamlet will never lose importance is because of the incestuous relationship between Hamlet's mother, Queen Gertrude, and his uncle, King Claudius. Even in Elizabethan times, Hamlet would have been disturbed by his mother's new love. In act I, scene ii, Hamlet's disgust with his mother's incestuous relationship and pain over his father's death is no more clear then in the lines of his speech, "But two months dead - nay, not so much, not two. / So excellent a king, that was, to this / Hyperion to a satyr, so loving to my mother / That he might not beteem the winds of heaven / visit her face too roughly. Heaven and earth, / Must I remember? Why, she would not hang on him / As if increase of appetite had grown / By what it fed on, and yet within a month- / Let me think not of't; fratility, thy name is woman!- / A little month, or ere those shoes were old / With which she followed my poor father's body, / Like Niobe; all tears, why she, even she- / O God, !.
             a beast, that wants discourse of reason, / Would have mourned longer - married with my uncle, / My father's brother, but no more like my father / Than I was to Hercules.