Relation of religion in the play-Hamlet

In that case, Claudius's later whispered plottings with Laertes, Ophelia, and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are further examples of "poison in the ear." In view of the development of poison imagery early in the play, it is significant that Hamlet, Claudius, and Laertes ultimately fall as victims of swords "envenomed" by the same "serpent" Claudius (5.2.326). .
             Claudius has also wed Gertrude, Hamlet's mother and queen of Denmark. The ghost accordingly accuses her of incest and adultery; she has been seduced by the serpent (cf. 1 Corinthians11:1-3). Thus King Hamlet, "by a brother's hand, of life, of crown, of queen at once dispatch'd" (1.5.74-75). In short, the initial world of the play is a fallen world. Hamlet notes the cosmic dimensions of his predicament with his famous line, "Thetime is out of joint" (1.5.189). .
             The question that presses the action forward is whether or not Hamlet should, as he puts it, "set it right" (1.5.190). More theologically stated, the question is whether it is man's duty to redeem the fallen world. The ghost encourages Hamlet to take this task into his own hands. But as Northrop Frye has put it, the ghost's credentials are very suspect: "why does purgatory, as the Ghost describes it, sound so much as though it were hell?"[10] The dissonance in the ghost's speeches indicates that he is not what he claims to be. Rather, he has come as a tempter to pour 'poison' into Hamlet's ear. .
             Hamlet is a revenge tragedy, a common genre in Shakespeare's day. As with other theatrical genres, the revenge tragedy had certain conventions that could not be flouted. As Rene Girard has noted, it is Shakespeare's genius that he challenges the very foundations of the revenge tragedy in the course of writing a revenge tragedy, and that he does it without violating the conventions of the genre. In this sort of play, Girard notes, "all eloquence must be on the side of revenge" and all criticism of the ethic "remains a half-formed thought, an almost incoherent feeling that must fail in the end to gain full control of the hero's behavior.