Chaucer Both Shakespeare's Hamlet and Chaucer's the

Chaucer Both Shakespeare's Hamlet and Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales do offer universal truths. As Volve states about Chaucer's work in particular: "The tale is firmly anchored in one specific period of history…but it seeks as well to represent other periods and other lives," (300-301). Likewise, Shakespeare's plays like Hamlet have endured precisely because there are few cultural, geographic, or temporal barriers that would prevent universal understanding and interpretation. Texts like these lend themselves towards literary regurgitation; allowing for the recycling of themes, characters, and conflicts.

However, within the texts, reality is skewed, distorted, and ambiguous. This is especially notable in Hamlet, because of the play-within-the-play. Chaucer accomplishes a similar goal by cloaking themes in the garb of ancient Greece. For Shakespeare, reality and the truth are absolute. There is no moment in the play at which the audience is led to doubt the guilt of Claudius. The truth might not be easy, or comfortable; but it is hard, concrete, and evident. For Chaucer, universal truth is less apparent.

Upon his death, Arcite becomes suddenly humble: testimony that he might indeed love Emelye. Morality is even more ambiguous in The Knight's Tale than it is in Hamlet, in which there are clear evils as those represented by Claudius. Chaucer gives Emelye a voice, empowering her beyond the passive feminine role she might have been offered. Yet there is no overarching ethical value in the tale. The Miller's Tale is even more morally ambiguous: given the tendency to sympathize with Alisoun and her suitors more than for the poor carpenter.

The audience cares little for the real motivations and feelings of the main characters. For instance, what does Alisoun really want? There are no universal moral prescriptions that would hold back the story from being told, and re-told. The Miller's Tale is especially suitable for literary perpetuity. Its fart jokes and lighthearted view of love are akin to modern tales such as those told in the animated television show South Park.

Hamlet's insistence on Claudius's guilt leads him to stage a "mousetrap," a means by which to expose the lies told and lived by his uncle and his mother. The Murder of Gonzago is the means by which to evoke the emotions of the false king: to present to the audience the universal truth in absence of hard, forensic evidence. Hamlet's perceived insanity engenders even more sympathy, making him a figure who transcends the boundaries of culture and time.

It is frustrating that Hamlet has to resort to embarrassing himself in order to expose the truth. The fact that the supernatural realm is where the truth actually lies becomes a central motif in Hamlet. The King's ghost possesses the truth, but the audience does not know for sure whether the ghost is in Hamlet's mind as a manifestation of grief and stress; or whether the ghost bears witness to the murder of its former incarnate self.

The mousetrap becomes the means by which to divulge the truth, which is yet another rich and paradoxical layer within the play. First a ghost, and then a fictionalized performance.