Shakespeare’s great tragedy Hamlet contains so many elements open to abstracting and summarizing that an entire web site could be devoted to this one play alone. One of those elements is the use of
wordplay. Hamlet's use of wordplay is a dissociative device meant to inoculate him from the contagion of the fall from Eden he associates with the societal acceptance that a serpent brought Denmark from its pure and exalted state under his
father down to its current evil and wanton situation under Claudius.
King Hamlet's ghost states that while he rested in his garden a serpent appeared and stung him and says that by association the whole country of Denmark, compared itself to an ear, has been abused. Denmark has become a gross, rank unweeded garden under the auspices of a man compared to a satyr while it had been
ruled by a loving man Hamlet compares to a Titan. Hamlet may be deluding himself about the purity of Denmark as ruled by his father, but he clearly
desires to no
longer be associated with the Danes under Claudius' rule. He distinguish himself physically from others by continuing to wear mourning garb, and even wishes that he no longer was present in bodily form. Hamlet extends this desire for dissociation from the rottenness pervading Denmark to his speech.
He couches his meaning in puns and riddles and double-entendres so that nothing that he says is perfectly clear and therefore he is not completely
accepted by those around him. Hamlet desires to remain a mystery and to stand apart from those who have accepted—as well as perpetrated—the lie of the
cause of his father's death and the cause of Denmark's degradation. Hamlet contemplates permanently escaping the fleshly environs to which Denmark has sunk, but failing that he engages in wordplay as one way to dissociate himself from the fallen while remaining alone in the idyllic, Edenic place he views Denmark as having been while under the leadership of his father.
More summaries about the Hamlet