Shakespeare's Hamlet was written during the Renaissance period. The Renaissance valorized the achievements of the Greeks and Romans (Guisepi). The intellectuals of this period wished to recover what had been lost during the Middle Ages. For this reason the Renaissance is known as a "rebirth" of art and culture (Guisepi). Hamlet is one of Shakespeare's most famous works. It is a tragedy because the plot allows great suffering for the "hero" or main character. In the play, the tragic hero, Hamlet, is visited by the ghost of his father. His father had died a month earlier and his mother had remarried. From the ghost Hamlet learns that his uncle Claudius, who had just married his mother, killed his father. Throughout the play Hamlet tries to prove that the ghost is sincere and to take revenge on Claudius. Due to the situations in the show certain themes emerge. One of the main themes is the idea of ​​suicide. There is an emphasis on the supernatural in Shakespeare's works. During the Renaissance the idea of ​​suicide was considered a crime and a mortal sin. Shakespeare deals with the topic in many different ways. In Hamlet, suicide is a major theme. Throughout the play, Shakespeare makes it clear that although most people are capable of committing suicide, they still choose life over death. The Renaissance was the first time the Bible was printed in a language other than Latin, so that ordinary peasants could read it. the word of God for oneself. The Catholic Church opposed this. The Renaissance had similar views to those of the church, regarding suicide (Cholbi). Suicide was considered a sin and was also against the law during this time (Ferngren 155). Those who committed suicide were often denied consecration gr...... middle of paper ......Works CitedCholbi, Michael, "Suicide", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2009 edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = http://plato.stanford. edu/archives/fall2 009/entries/suici de/>.Ferngren, Gary B. “The Ethics of Suicide in the Renaissance and Reformation.” Suicide and euthanasia: historical and contemporary issues. Ed. Baruch A. Brody. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic, 1989. 155-81. Print.Guisepi, RA "History of the Renaissance in Europe: rebirth, renewal, rediscovery". World History International: essays on world history from prehistory to the present. Ed. RA Guisepi. The University of California. Network. 27 July 2011. .Shakespeare, William. Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. The Norton Anthology of Western Literature Vol. 1 Eighth ed. Sarah Lawall, ed. New York: Norton, 2006, 2409-2499.