Society's Moral Decline

Paper Summary:

The paper examines "Hamlet" and "The Importance of Being Earnest" and explains that both of these plays analyze the moral state of the 'modern' society. The paper notes that these plays are at two very different moments in time, the Renaissance and the end of the Victorian Age, but they both show the moral decline of society. The paper discusses how the plays reach a similar conclusion about humanity: the trivial side of human nature usually prevails over the spiritual, ethical one.

From the Paper:

"In Shakespeare's Hamlet, the state of moral decline of the society at the Court of Denmark is the main focus. Denmark is meant to figure, of course, the larger, universal context of man. The plot is somewhat simple: Hamlet is called upon to revenge (morally) the death of his father. The appearance of the ghost of the murdered king in the first act is already a sign of the moral direction in which the play goes: a dead spirit comes back to claim justice. Thus, Hamlet's own ideas about the world and about man, which are essentially idealist, meet with an obvious obstacle in the material world, where he sees the baseness of character of both his uncle and his mother who are capable of murder, adultery and duplicity. All of Hamlet's famous soliloquies oppose the idealist and the actual, real view of man as an immoral and trivial creature."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Shakespeare, William. Hamlet. London: Methuen, 1961.
• Wilde, Oscar. 2000. Oscar Wilde: the major works. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

More papers on Society's Moral Decline:

• Essay # 36329 : "Moral Deterioration of Society"
• Argumentative Essay # 119318 : "Pornography, Crime, and the Decline of Morality"
• Narrative Essay # 149132 : "A Decline of Social Values Today"

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