Secound Paragraph Blog 23

Both the ghost and Claudius seem to initially share the same pattern of speech; however, at closer inspection, the ghost speaks time were of the essence while Claudius speaks as if he has all the time in the world. There are many cases in which the ghost contrasts directly with the Claudius in both the message’s each try to convey and the speech patterns of each character. Claudius’s first lines in the play are to announce his brothers death and his new marriage: “Have we as ‘twere with the defeated joy, with an auspicious and a dropping eye, with mirth in funeral and with dirge in marriage, in equal scale weighing delight and dole taken to wife” (1.2. 10-15). Only two weeks after Hamlet Sr.’s death, Claudius has married Hamlet Sr.’s widow and has become king by taking the power away from Hamlet.  Claudius seems to blend two speeches into one, the happy speech about his marriage and the sad speech about his brother’s death into one speech that mixes the sadness of the death with the happiness of the wedding. Furthermore, the intension of Claudius’s speech is to announce his marriage; however, it takes Claudius close to ten lines before he finally claims his point and when he finally announces his marriage, his words come out completely perverted due to his juggling of the two speech’s in his head. Unlike Claudius, the ghost speaks with many words but gets his point across much quicker than Claudius: “Ay, that incestuous, that adulterate beast,
with witchcraft of his wit, with traitorous gifts, -- o wicked wit and gifts, that have the power So to seduce!” (1.5.40-44). Unlike Claudius the ghost instantly makes his point through the use of strong imagery and language to attack his brother for murdering him and then marrying his widow. Furthermore, it is made obvious that Claudius has done something very wrong because the ghost uses such strong language in order to describe Claudius’s actions it is not a far leap to make to assume that the ghost will ask Hamlet to avenge his most unnatural murder.