and taking account of his responsibilities as aprince and future king, Hamlet most likely would want to avoid civil war. Even thoughClaudius is a murderer, and probably not as noble a king as Hamlet's father was, he is stilla king. He brings order to Denmark. Hamlet does not wish to plunge his country intochaos. He realizes that this will happen when he kills Claudius. Hamlet is unable tocombine the spiritual world (in the form of his father's ghost) with the tangible, every-dayworld that surrounds him. There is much irony throughout this play. One occurrence of irony I foundparticularly striking was the fact that Hamlet effectively maneuvers himself into the sameposition as Claudius. Claudius had attacked and killed a man who did not have theopportunity to defend himself, but when Hamlet kills Polonius, is he not guilty of thesame? It is intriguing that both Claudius and Hamlet have killed fathers. It is interestingto see how these two completely different characters deal with this problem in differentways. Other interesting parallels I found are the numerous deaths by poison. Hamlet's fatherwas murdered by Claudius with poison. In the final act, the queen is the first to bepoisoned, by drinking from Hamlet's cup. Then, Hamlet is wounded by the poisoned tipof Laertes' sword. When they change swords, Hamlet gets the upper hand and Laertes ispoisoned. When the queen dies, Laertes explains all to Hamlet, before he dies. Hamletthen kills Claudius before dying himself. It is ironic that, as Claudius is poisoned becauseof his own plotting, he had already signed his own death warrant when he killed Hamlet'sfather, the first tragic action of the play. There are only three people in this play whodon't die by poisoning: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern meet their deaths in England, afterbeing outsmarted by Hamlet. The third is Ophelia, who is drowned. There are three types of conflict I can identify in the play: 'm...
