Denmark's a prison

As I was reading Act II, I was struck by how archetypal Hamlet is in terms of adolescent emotion. He exhibits many of the same teenage angst type feelings that modern teens do. For example, he gloomily tells his friends, "Denmark's a prison." He goes on to complain about how it is so confining and how it is the worst place in the world. With a Shakespearean translator, Hamlet would sound just like many modern teens. This shows that as time changes, human emotion, and even human nature, does not. Human nature remains static throughout changes in language, culture, and knowledge. We are inseparably attached to our basic nature just as we are attached to our arms and legs. For this reason, I often find myself believing that things such as murder and war are not a result of society's influence, but rather an inevitable consequence of being human.