Selected question: One of the key themes of Hamlet is suicide with two main characters giving the audience the opportunity to reflect on its implications for society. Hamlet reflects on suicide in his famous soliloquies while Ophelia actually commits suicide. Using research from academic articles and books to support your thesis, discuss Shakespeare's treatment of the topic of suicide. Introduction: Themes have great implications for the outcome of a play, one play in particular that this essay will focus on is William Shakespeare's Hamlet. The written context and historical relevance will be discussed, as well as the characters themselves and how they influence the text itself and the final outcome of the work. Further discussion will be made about the play and its relevance to today's society compared to the Elizabethan era and how they receive the text, how they deal with the social issue of suicide and how this has affected them, socially, mentally and physically . The context Hamlet was written and relevance (historical point of view): an important element of the outcome of a play is the theme that is brought to the foreground, a successful play and a work in which artists of the caliber wrote by William Shakespeare made some themes crucial to the final result. One theme in particular; Suicide is about the famous play Hamlet. This play was also seen beyond its time due to Shakespeare's clever use of soliloquies, which was able to engage the audience and gain their empathy; something that had not yet been seen before in the theater. It has been said that 'no work in the English literary canon has been so closely identified with the early modern age (Grace). He remains constantly... in the middle of the paper... the following impacts on other characters and the overall result of the work. Works Cited Baker, Susan. "Hamlet's bloody thoughts and the illusion of interiority." Comparative Drama (1987-1988): 303.Camden, Carroll. "On the madness of Ophelia." Shakespeare Quarterly (1964): 247-255. Dane, Gabrielle. "Read the madness of Ophelia." Exemplaria (1998): 1-8.Grazia, Margreta De. "Hamlet before his time." MLQ: Modern Language Quarterly, Volume 62, Number 4, December (December 2001): 355-360. Petronella, Soliloquy "To be or not to be" by Vincent F. Hamlet: Once More Unto the Breach. University of North Carolina Press, January 1974.Shakespeare, William. Hamlet. London: Harper Press, 2011. Simmonds, W. G. Hamlet Conundrums. nd 25 04 2014 .Zeil, Michael. "Suicide in pre-industrial England". Social history (2008): 1-16.