(briefly: Hamlet's on the cusp of adulthood. His comfortable life is blown away and tragedies surround him. He desparately tries to understand this new reality. He falls into a deep depression. People seem false. The world seems cold. Death fascinates him. He contemplates suicide.)
Hamlet's a student of the early renaissance. He goes to 'modern' Wittenburg University (Mother disapproves of it) His parents are more medieval, uninfluenced by Greco/Roman civilisation. (Rome in 150AD was far in advance of Denmark in 1600. The idea of a previously glorious civilisation was fascinating, mysterious, scary)
Julius Ceasar must seem a demi-god to Prince Hamlet; an all-powerful ruler of a vast, cultured, long-vanished empire. Yet, for all his power, Julius was murdered by his best friend, Brutus ('Brutal' comes from him). This betrayal echoes his own father's betrayal; his mother's; his friends'; his girlfriend's and, perhaps most importantly, the world's betrayal of his beliefs.
He compares Ceasar in life, to mud in death. What's the point, if the ruler of the world is killed by his friend and turns to mud?
Imperious Caesar, dead and turn'd to clay,
Might stop a hole to keep the wind away.
O, that that earth, which kept the world in awe
Should patch a wall to expel the winter's flaw!
It's a terrifying vision of death. Nothing Endures. Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!
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