Ears And Hearing In Hamlet

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Pages: 3

In Shakespeare’s Hamlet, the ears and hearing are certainly used to underline key concerns about humans and the human understanding. One of the major motifs at work, which has an undercurrent running throughout the entire play, is that words themselves are not to be trusted, and especially in spoken form can corrupt an individual's thinking patterns as they enter through the ears. I will be assessing how this furthers other ideas in the play such as the wider views emerging in that time period which emphasised the need to see for oneself, and how the text had a relationship with these.

Claudius poisons the king by pouring poison into his ear, and the skills he prides himself involve manipulating others with lies that they hear from him.