“So you will hear of carnal, bloody and unnatural acts, of accidental judgments, of accidental massacres, of deaths brought about by cunning and forced causes” (Hamlet, Act V, Scene 2, lines 381-384). Horatio, Prince Hamlet's best friend, says this in the last lines of the play. He says this after Gertrude, Queen of Denmark, Hamlet, Claudius, King of Denmark, and Laertes, son of Polonius, all died in the battle between Hamlet and Laertes. Also dead are Hamlet, king of Denmark, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, Hamlet's former friends, Polonius, the king's advisor, and Ophelia, Polonius' daughter. Death is a very important theme in William Shakespeare's Hamlet. The first and most relevant is the death of Hamlet's father, King Hamlet, King of Denmark. Although this death is delivered off-screen, it delivers a series of vicious events that shape Hamlet's plot. King Hamlet died just before the play began, and Claudius, King Hamlet's brother, took over as the new king. In the first act of the play, the ghost of King Hamlet emerges before sentries and Hamlet's friends....