Character Deception In Hamlet By William Shakespeare

In our society, no one is as they seem. Deception is natural in human beings, whether it’s conscious or unconscious. Some people don’t show who they really are in order to achieve a goal, while others do it unconsciously. On the play Hamlet, written by William Shakespeare, all the characters deceive each other. To learn about characters and their behavior, the reader usually focuses on what they say, do and what others say about them. Shakespeare’s method of characterization includes soliloquies and asides. Soliloquies are speeches that reveal characters’s innermost thoughts to the audience, while asides are remarks that other characters are unaware of. On the play Hamlet, Hamlet’s soliloquies and Polonius and Claudius’ asides give us insight
into deception and their real identities, although the interpretation of these can be affected by the reader’s beliefs on morality and justification of actions.