Comparing Hamlet And The Arabian Nights

A story-within-a-story extends the life of literature by picking up an entirely new story instead of ending it. The sub story serves to teach characters within the frame story a lesson. This literary technique has been used in literature for many centuries. Many well-known authors have used this technique to portray something they want other characters to know about. An example is William Shakespeare’s Hamlet. During the play, Prince Hamlet has a group of people preform another play depicting his father’s murder, which prolongs Hamlet and explains to the other characters what had happened to his father. This is similar to what Shahrazad is doing in The Arabian Nights. The play that Hamlet put on had a more direct approach than the stories Shahrazad
Each of these stories is meant to have a hidden lesson for the king, she makes up different situations in order to teach the king a moral, such as the first old man’s story which teaches the king about karma. However, she needed to be creative in order to avoid being put to death like the other women. To do this she would tell a story each night, but end it on a cliff hanger, leaving the king curious so he would let her live another day to finish the story, but instead of ending the story she would start another one. Shahryar had been ruining the kingdom, not only had he killed off every young woman in the kingdom, greatly reducing the future population, but the people of his kingdom were furious, which is understandable. Fearing an uprising and/or losing the rest of the female population, Shahrazad decided to stop Shahryar. Her plan to tell the king stories to keep him from killing more women, as ill devised as it seemed, works well. Each night she told him a story, either continuing the previous night’s story or starting a new one, and leaves him wanting to hear more. She does this by stopping the story at a cliff hanger, such as “the demon replied, ‘I must,’ and raised his sword to strike” (Roazen 19). King Shahryar, wanting to know what happened, granted Shahrazad another day to live so she could finish the story. She also uses Shahryar’s curiosity to keep teaching him
Shahrazad tells this story as a warning that if he continues to kill young women then he will likely be murdered by someone who is upset with his actions. The moral of the second old man is similar to the first old man’s; if you mess with the wrong people, you will likely get hurt. He explains how his brothers attempted to murder him and his new wife, well his wife was actually a demon and in return to the brother’s actions, had them turned into dogs (Roazen 29). Once again trying to teach him about karma, but also subtly showing that murder isn’t the only way to get