human fault through the focus on the inability to control human emotion. The power of love can be healing but can also be used as a sense of noble revenge. The love of hate also dissolves family lines and leads to incestuous fornication. Throughout the play Shakespeare also demonstrates the fragility of women and characteristics of women are often used as derogatory remarks regarding men. The criticism of Hamlet encompasses the degradation of the human soul while reflecting several themes of religion and poetic justice.

Religion pervades all aspects of Hamlet. The protagonist of this epic hypothesizes “that the Ghost is indeed the Devil.” (Klein) Hamlet begins his seemingly fruitless revenge attempt at an incarnation’s request. Hamlet loved his father which becomes increasingly evident throughout the play. He follows Christian tradition which says honor thy father. The apparition comes to him as the person he valued most in life and therefore makes his vengeance and act of God himself. His divination gives him the power to enact his retribution but he still lacks the ambition to complete the task at hand. It is ironic that

Many critics note the Oedipal conflicts within the verse of Hamlet. Again Hamlet’s conflict of “medieval … chivalry” (Blits) and the Christian belief system becomes apparent as “he censures both Gertrude and Claudius for improper surrender to the passions of concupiscence.” (Levy) Both characters succumb to carnal attraction and a baser emotion of lust. Hamlet invokes these and other sins as he describes his family. Though Hamlet entwines nobility with his role as hero he also condemns his own anger and vengeance along with his mother’s lust and his uncle’s gluttony. His inertness could also be described as slight indolence thus increasing his own deadly sins and therefore foreshadowing his untimely and tragic end. “The play probes … into the relation between reason and emotion… [revealing] a confounding and deepening of relevant Christian-humanist doctrine.” (Levy) Hamlet’s vanity betrays him in his conversations with Ophelia. Her purity in manner seems ultimately the best for his disposition yet he thrusts her away. Hamlet exhibits yet another deadly sin of pride in his deed accomplished as he begs his story be told. Christian principles mandate that a widow should not marry her husband’s brother else she lay in shame in his bed. Hamlet upholds this value as he makes pointed remarks during his play within a play. He comments that his father has been dead for two hours when in fact it had been two months. “Stanley Cavell advances the provocative thesis that Claudius is both father and mother in Hamlet’s dumb-show, because it substitutes Claudius as a veil for Hamlet’s mother.” (Stone) It confirms his bitterness towa

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