"Father" versus Son-Hamlet Act 1

The first act in Hamlet really does it's job of setting up the characters and their relationships. One of themes of this book is family relationships. We can see right from the get go that Hamlet is a person who cares about his family and will stand by them. The play opens up with his father having just died and his uncle has married his mother to become king. Almost immediately it is seen the distaste hamlet and his uncle have for each other. His uncle thinks he is a pussy and is grieving for his father too long even though its only been two months. Hamlet thinks his uncle is a lying thieving man who should not be king or married to his mother. It really sets the stage for many more disagreements in the future. On page fourteen King Claudius tells Hamlet that he is disgracing his father by mourning and that he is disgracing himself and heaven. This will give way to Hamlet having bad feelings toward Claudius in the future. Hamlet later empresses in his soliloquy how he feels about his uncle. It also here introduces the theme of imbalance throughout the play. Hamlet describes the situation as “things rank and gross” on page fifteen. Hamlet puts out the themes for play here and relationships.