To what extent is spirituality woven into the fabric of Shakespeare's tragic drama Hamlet? This essay aims to answer this question. David Bevington, in the Introduction to 20th century interpretations of Hamlet, finds a very evident spiritual dimension in the play: According to Elizabethan popular belief, both Catholic and Protestant, the spirits of the dead could in fact "take a pleasant form", in order to abuse a person in Hamlet's vulnerable state of mind and thus lead him to damnation.[. . .] Hamlet must face the ghost once again to explain why he “let himself go in the important execution of thy terrible command”; yet his purpose in confronting Gertrude with her weakness is the laudable one of restoring her to at least an outward habit of virtue. . .] Hamlet has always believed that heavenly justice will prevail among men: “Wicked deeds shall shew, though all the earth overpower them, in the eyes of men” (6). The spiritual aspect of the play is made evident in the second scene when Hamlet dresses in black for the court celebration in the state hall of Elsinore Castle. His motivations for this are spiritual in nature. The first soliloquy, or “act of speaking to oneself, either silently or aloud” (Abrams 289), occurs when the hero is left alone after the actual social encounter. He is dejected by his mother's “hasty marriage” to his uncle less than two months after Hamlet's father's funeral (Gordon 128). His first soliloquy emphasizes two religious/moral themes: the corruption of the world at large and the fragility of women – an obvious reference to his mother's hasty and incestuous marriage: Oh, that this too solid flesh would melt and resolve itself into a dew ! O that the LORD had not set his canon against self-slaying! Oh God! God! How tired, stale, flat and useless, all the uses of this world seem to me! Shame! oh damn! it is a weedless garden, which grows until it produces seeds; the gross and gross things in nature, just own it. That it had to come to this! But two months dead: nay, not so much, not two: Such an excellent king; that was, for this reason, Hyperion for a satyr; so loving to my mother that she could not bear the winds of heaven, visiting her face too roughly.