Shakespeare's Use Of Manipulation In Hamlet

Hamlet is arguably William Shakespeare’s best play, but is it a classic, and should people that have not read it read it? Shakespeare uses inner struggle and manipulation to tell the story, but is that relatable?

Hamlet is a well worded and poetic play about a distressed youth. Hamlet is a very indecisive character; he struggles with suicide, murder, and madness. Despite the extreme conditions of these categories, most young people have to deal with these kinds of situations in some way. Hamlet deals with depression in the form of questioning the meaning of his existence, as the timeless line explains ‘“To be, or not to be- that is the question’” (3, 1, 1750), he questions whether he should exist, or live, and what death even is. Finding

the meaning of death becomes far more difficult for hamlet as he lives in a world with ghosts and we do not. These are questions all people have to deal with; therefore it is relatable particularly for young people, around high school age.
Hamlet is visited by the ghost of his father, the ghost tells Hamlet that his uncle is the one that killed him “…Thus was I, sleeping, by a brother's hand, of life, of crown, of queen, at once dispatch'd” (1, 5, 778). Hamlet pretends to be insane so he can use that as an excuse for any trouble he gets in when he is trying to spy on everyone, that’s where the manipulation comes in. Hamlet gets some people to perform a show for his uncle that would make him feel guilty enough for Hamlet to see it in his face.
These subjects can be relative to today, it’s a timeless story; family issues, suicide, murder, love, betrayal, and lies. Any writer is going to have a field day with those plot points; it’s realistic, for the most part. Almost everyone can pull something familiar to them out of the story. Let’s face the facts, people will lie, people will die, and people will cry, that’s the common elements between story’s and our lives. But that still does not make it a classic, does it? Can u just declare any relatable story as a classic?
Hamlet is a classic for one main reason, we are still talking about it, after all these years people still talk about and quote Hamlet all the time. There is no battle, the fact that we are discussing whether it is a classic or not defines it as one, it’s a very ironic situation. Why do we talk about it all these years later is most likely because it is relatable. It has something for everyone that is why hamlet is indeed a classic.