Critical approaches to Hamlet amuse their rulers with their inventive language. Osric and Polonius seem to especially respect this suggestion. Claudius' speech is full of rhetorical figures, as is Hamlet's and, at times, Ophelia's, while Horatio, the guards, and the gravediggers use simpler methods of speech. Claudius demonstrates an authoritative control over the language of a King, referring to himself in the first person plural, and using anaphora mixed with metaphor that hearkens back to Greek political speeches. Hamlet seems the most educated in rhetoric of all the characters, using anaphora, as the king does, but also asyndeton and highly developed metaphors, while at
Critical approaches to Hamlet thus offers a contradiction: does he avenge his father and kill Claudius, or does he leave the vengeance to God, as his religion requires? The play's Protestantism lies in its location in Denmark, a Protestant (and specifically a Lutheran) country in Shakespeare's day, though it is unclear whether the fictional Denmark of the play is intended to mirror this fact. The play does mention Wittenberg, which is where Hamlet is attending university, and where Martin Luther first nailed his 95 theses. One of the more famous lines in the play related to Protestantism is: "There is special providence in the