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Hamlet’s confusion and feeling of honor leads him to swear in behalf of his dead father to revenge on the present king. Shakespeare starts the play by bombarding Hamlet’s thinking process and leaving him with tons of weights on his shoulders. The whole aspect of the play revolves around character’s vows to fulfill their honor. The idea of honor in this play is portrayed far more advanced than any other Shakespearean play. Reta. A Terry is an author of â€Å"Vows to the Blackest Devil†: Hamlet and the Evolving code of honor in early modern England. She agrees that honor is substantial and goes another level with this idea. She diagrams in which Shakespeare used characters of Hamlet, Laertes, and Horatio to demonstrate the England’s notion of honor switching to the chivalric code of the medieval period’s idea of honor. She concludes that the shift of honor or the evolution of honor was visible in Hamlet. The early England’s notion of honor described by Terry is promise. Men were considered honorable simply by right of birth and involved forever loyalty to one’s lord. Honor simply gave its holder dignity and status of a true honorable man, and this was categorized as the most important feature in a man. However during the Renaissance period, there was a major shift in the beliefs of honor. Terry said, â€Å"One of the most complex changes in the code of honor was a move from an external code to an internalized concept of what it is to be an honorable man. † (Terry 1071) The involvement of blood and lineage stopped coming in to play and in every situation, men behaved to please both â€Å"their state and their god. (1071) The modern code of honor is heavily affected by religious affair and needs to satisfy god and one’s loyalty. Hamlet, the protagonist of the play is caught in an ambiguous world, the pressure between the old and the new code of honor leads him to become mad and think of unthinkable ideas. Horatio is Hamlet’s loyal friend who studied at the University of Wittenberg together. Horatio is a good example of early England’s notion of honor. Horatio was one of the first couple of people to see the ghost of Old Hamlet. As an Elizabethan, he does not believe in ghosts of any kind, but he is well educated to be convinced with facts by others. The guards of Denmark saw the apparition first and Horatio takes action by keeping it a secret and only telling Hamlet, his very close friend. After Hamlet talks to the ghost of Old Hamlet, Horatio makes two significant promises to Hamlet. Hamlet makes him swear to not tell anyone what they saw and tells Horatio to cope with him when Hamlet pretends to be crazy. Horatio willingly swears saying, â€Å"Not I my lord, by heaven† (I. i. 5) and swears the second time by saying, â€Å"Ay by heaven, my lord† (I. i. 5). These actions by Horatio are more of a Roman code of honor that requires trust and obedience to the lord. Horatio declares under an oath and keeps his code of honor until the end. Horatio first proves his loyalty in Act III when Hamlet acts up in front of Claudius. Horatio was able to say under control and allowed Hamlet to accomplish what he wanted to do. At the end of the play, his loyalty is clearly proven to Hamlet. In Act 5 scene ii, Horatio offers to commit suicide when his endeared Hamlet falls on the ground dying. This action is the pivotal point behind Terry’s opinion on code of honor. As a true Elizabethan, he lives by his words and dies by his words. It is completely against Christian belief in taking one’s own life, for they will be sent straight to hell. However, his definition of honor has been broken through the death of his friend and he isn’t afraid to take his own life. Laertes, similar to Hamlet lost his father and seeks to avenge his father’s death. Revenge is an act of an old honor code, but what’s interesting about Laertes is that he never makes a public promise to kill the killer of his father. Laertes’ passionate and quick actions make him more difficult to depict and more interesting to observe. His angry willingness to avenge his father and his sister can label his honor to a more medieval chivalric code, but he never swears his revenge. Terry states that Laertes rejected the modern code of honor for the sake of his father. (1079) Laertes says, â€Å"To hell allegiance! Vows, to the blackest devil! †¦. e reveng’d most thoroughly for my father. † (IV. v. 132-7). He is in midst of choosing between the two different codes of honor. The Play begins with Hamlet finding about the true reason behind his father’s death through an apparition of the king. The king is Hamlet’s father). Claudius is the new king of Denmark and he was Hamlet’s uncle until he married Hamlet’s widowed mother to become his step father. Hamlet’s life can’t go any more wrong than it is now. His beloved father and mother have been taken away by one man that he trusted at one point in his life. He was damaged psychologically since the beginning of the play and even leads him to contemplate between life and death. His soliloquy in Act 3 states his troubled thinking and his consideration of committing suicide. To be or not to be that is the question†. Abiding the modern code of honor, Hamlet wishes to end all his misery by taking his own life. However, the fact that Hamlet swore to his dead father to seek revenge for him may be reason why he is still assaying to live and this shows a bit of medieval chivalric code of honor. In act III Hamlet find Claudius praying in his room by himself. He sees this as a perfect opportunity and pursues to end Claudius’ life. However, contemplated by the modern code of honor he stops himself from doing so. How his audit stands, who knows, save heaven? † (III. iv. 82) Hamlet believed that ending Claudius’ life during his prayer will send him to heaven and that is the last thing he wanted to happen. Hamlet is struck and caught in a changing system of honor during the most important scene of the play. According to Terry, â€Å"One must not forget that if Hamlet had taken revenge immediately as required by the medieval code of honor, Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, Ophelia, Gertrude, Po lonius, Laertes, and perhaps even hamlet himself would have survived the events of the drama. (Terry 1084) Hamlet had the chance to keep his promise to his dead father’s ghost and fulfill his code of honor, but the teachings of Christianity has spoiled his moment. Hamlet is approaching the stage of adolescent and he is in great need of a father figure. The loss of his beloved father has changed Hamlet for good. Based on Freud’s opinion, Hamlet represents a case of oedipal conflict. Ernest Jones said, â€Å"Like all male children, Hamlet must have experienced jealousy of his fathers claim on his mothers love. † (Anna 142) The old Hamlet has been dead for good when the ghost appeared in front of Hamlet. Hamlet’s jealousy may have driven him mad enough to talk to something that doesn’t exist and create reasons to kill the new king. Hamlet is almost certain about seeing old Hamlet’s ghost and hearing about the new truth that only now Hamlet, old Hamlet, and Claudius knows. Hamlet even makes a promise to him to slay the new king. Then why is Hamlet so obsessed over obtaining definitive proof of Claudius’s guilt? â€Å"The play’s the thing,† he declares, â€Å"wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the king† (II. ii. 581–582). Once Hamlet sees the unusual reaction of Claudius during the play, Hamlet gets over excited and is determined to kill Claudius. If he was following any code of honor, he should not doubt his source and should simply do what he is told to do. Ironically, oedipal conflict itself might be the reason behind the delay of the assassination. According to Bynum, â€Å"For Freud, Hamlet cannot kill his uncle because of these Oedipal strivings; because he identifies unconsciously with his uncle as his father† (Bynum 395) Hamlet can’t allow his mother to experience another loss. The psychological impact that Hamlet is facing is far greater than he can sustain himself. Nobody else besides Hamlet has talked to the ghost, therefore we can’t justify that the ghost is real and true. Even if the apparition of the Old Hamlet is real, the honor for one’s blood coincides with his belief in Christianity. The evolution of these two contradicting code of honor puts Hamlet to madness. The code of honor is extra hard for Hamlet because of his widely known public figure. He is the next in line to throne and honor is even more important to him than others. He is the prince of Denmark and his actions will determine if his people will trust him or not. The shift from chivalric code of medieval period to a modern code of honor through out the play is visible, but not obvious. Yet both kind of code of honor does exist and troubles Hamlet with his decision making; it may even be the reason behind Hamlet’s madness. Precise 1. â€Å"Vows to the Blackest Devil†: Hamlet and the Evolving Code of Honor in early modern England is written by Reta A. Terry in 1999. The author intends to prove that the evolution of code of honor can be seen in the work of Shakespeare’s play The Hamlet. The author supports her claim by describing promises made by three different characters in The Hamlet. They are Horatio, Laertes, and Hamlet. This critical writing by Terry is the base of this formal essay. The contradictions of two honor codes mentioned by Terry will be used to support the possibility of Hamlet’s madness. 2. A Man to Double Business Bound is written by Anna K. Nardo in 1983. Nardo’s intend is to prove that Hamlet and Ophelia are placed in double bind situation and they end up in tragedy simply trying to escape their faith. Nardo uses many psychoanalytic critics to support her claim. One of the psychoanalytic critic named Freud points out an interesting observation about Hamlet.