To quote Chuck Palahniuk, an American journalist, satirist and writer of the book “Fight Club”, “Only in death will we have our own names since only in death are we no longer part of the effort. In death, we become heroes”, and thus is the case in Hamlet, death is not only an intellectual gateway for Shakespeare to unleash his philosophy of the human condition, but to a further extent it is a convenient path to glorification and remembrance of characters and more pragmatically, humanity. Death manifests itself in both a diegetic manor to intensify the imminent plot as well as in the form of a trope, figuratively to broaden the minds of an uneducated audience, weak in their unequivocal perception of death. As the play treats death like a concept more than just a stage in life at times, Shakespeare thus can explores the many facets of death in order to convey various perceptions of life and afterlife, ultimately the human experience.
Shakespeare wastes no time in divulging into the chasm of death, the fact that the play begins with an argument of the supernatural is an obvious foreshadowing of the level of debate, death and the afterlife, eventually reach. Reason and logic was at its revitalisation in the English Renaissance, yet it was still contradictory to traditionalist thought in Protestant England, so Horatio’s rationalism, “Horatio says tis but our fantasy” (Marcellus Act 1 Scene 1) in reference to the Ghost, would be anger an audience, the condescending remark of “How now Horatio? Is not this something more than fantasy?” (Barnardo Act 1 Scene 1) would have been a pleasing response to an audience superstitious and faith driven, the supernatural a common aspect in the human interpretations of experience at the time.
The Ghost, as a manifestation of death and the repercussions of sin, quote, “I to sulphurous and tormenting flames must render up myself”, is a clear diegetic tool in Shakespeare’s puppetry to sustain death as a driving subject, in the...