#5

       Young Hamlet lives in a time in which humanism and Christianity are the predominant schools of thought.  Humanism was a Renaissance way of thinking.  Although in most cases the humanists were Christians, often times their new discoveries went against the orthodoxy of Christianity.  Europeans began questioning the scholastic way of thinking, they realized that everything was not known, and many subjects were yet to be discovered.  Shakespeare captures the spirit of humanism in Hamlet's famous soliloquy, To Be or Not To Be.  The speech revolves around death, it questions existence and what comes after it.  One of the most important lines from the speech speaks frankly of the questioning of the day, "But the dread of something after death/ The undiscovered country from who's bourn/ No traveler returns, puzzles the will" (III.I.86-88).  Here Hamlet references exploration.  He speaks of death as if it is one of the New Worlds yet to be discovered.  The difference between this world and the Far East and the Americas that had been discovered is that many had traveled into it but none had returned.  Europeans knew that the new world could bring good or bad.  The same could be so for death, good or bad might be found in such a place.  At the same time many Europeans understood that death was not completely a known.  They had come to a time in which the church's scholarly writings had not always proven true.  In that case there was a possibility that Heaven or Hell may not exist and a totally different world came with death.  Hamlet's insecurity concerning this matter was classic for the time period.  It shows Shakespeare's awareness and genius about the changes being experienced in Europe.