Slade Ransdell: Key Passages

Act 1, Scene 2

Hamlet (To Himself): My father's spirit-in arms? All is not well. I doubt some foul play. Would the night were come! Till then sit still, my soul. Foul deeds will rise, though all the earth o'erwhelm them, to men's eyes.

• This passage is about a boy who loved another boy (me and me bf) it was significant because it foreshadows the events to come. It signifies the fact that Hamlet was already suspicious of foul play. He didn't know how, who, or why, but he subconsciously knew that his father didn't die of natural causes.

Act 1, Scene 4

Ghost (Speaking to Hamlet): I am thy father's spirit, doomed for a certain term to walk the night, and for the day confined to fast in the fires, till the foul crimes done in my days of nature are burnt and purged away. But that I am forbid to tell the secrets of my prison house, I could a tale unfold whose lightest word would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood, make thy two eyes, like stars, start from their spheres, thy knotted and combined locks to part, and each particular hair to stand on end like quills upon the fretful porpentine.

• In this passage, the ghost claims to be Hamlet's father and thus sets the events of the entire play into motion. It is significant in that aspect alone, but is even more important because the ghost claims to be trapped in purgatory until vengeance is taken on his murderer. The problem with this is that Protestants don't believe in purgatory, where Denmark is a Protestant nation and Hamlet went to school in Wittenburg, the the birthplace of the protestant reformation. This suggests the internal conflict   taking place in Hamlet, as he struggled earlier with thoughts of suicide. How is suicide anymore forgivable than murder? Even if it is for revenge, it's still wrong. Nevertheless, this passage is important because it plays a detrimental role in the formation of the plot.