The Hamlet Project

Only family can make you exclaim like this
Or if not actual family
Then the people close enough to qualify as family.
Betrayals this close are that much more horrible –
Particularly since you’re stuck with them.
Even a brother who murders you
Is still your brother
Even if you’re dead and a ghost,
Watching your kingdom fall apart from the other side.
Interestingly, it’s not the flames of hell that make him cry “O horrible”
Nor the Being doomed for a certain term to walk the earth –
It seems to be the pain of his brother sleeping with his wife
That really makes him exclaim. Murder: awful. . .But –
The ghost instructs his son to take care of the royal bed.
He has slipped from Revenge his foul and unnatural murder
To breaking up the Queen’s new relationship.
Perhaps because it is the betrayal that continues to sting
Whereas the murder is already over.