Hamlet: "there is a divinity that shapes our ends"

Essay by vickularJunior High, 9th grade September 2006

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Hamlet: "When our deep plots do palls; and that should learn us. There is a divinity that shapes our ends. Rough-hew them how we will-" (V, 2, 9-11)

There are doubts to divinity as Hamlet explores this idea. During the play, Prince Hamlet often questions his existence. In one of his soliloquies, he was exceedingly desperate, yet fears to go into the mists of the unknown if he exonerates himself free from life.

In the beginning of the play, Hamlet had doubts about divinity as he believed that it's freewill and choices that paths one's future, not controlled by a greater power. When the Prince is approached by his father's ghost, revealing to the former his duty to fate; Hamlet must avenge his father's death in order to ultimately cleanse Denmark from its rottenness. Here, Hamlet feels the burden that fate has put upon his shoulders. "The time is out of joint: O cursed spite that ever I was born to set it right!" (I, 5, 196-197) Hamlet undoubtedly feels that he was born to avenge his father's death, and he vows to devote his life to the duty of revenge.

Here, Hamlet realizes that he is the man upon whom the fate of the kingdom -his kingdom really-depends.

Although he does not ultimately do it, Hamlet tries to take destiny into his own hands. Hamlet becomes obsessed with his mother's injustice to his dear father. He finds that he must restrain himself from letting his deep-rooted disturbance with his mother veer him away from the duty that destiny has set before him. Before the bedroom scene, he must say to himself, "I will speak daggers to her, but use none" (III, 2, 387). Hamlet should not be letting these thoughts go this far; his duty is to take revenge...