Shakespeare’s tragedies true to their style contain death, but it seems in Hamlet the events are based around it. Death is popular theme in tragedy, as it is a source of great loss, but Shakespeare’s pieces contain mass death. In this way, nearly every characters suffers the greatest loss: their own life. Death is referenced or occurs in 18 of the 20 scenes in Hamlet (“Thread: Hamlet: A Play About Death”). Hamlet is obsessed with death, and the trigger for his obsession is discovered in the first scene with the revelation of his father’s death. It seems that this event lead Hamlet down a path that left death in his wake. In the first scene the audience is introduced to the Ghost, the old King Hamlet. The King was brought to an untimely death. His absence had Hamlet on the verge of suicide, “O, that this too too solid flesh would melt/ Thaw and resolve itself into a dew!” (1.2.129-130), until he speaks to the Ghost himself. Throughout the play, Hamlet questions whether this is his father or some evil attempting to deceive him. Although Hamlet questions the reality of the Ghost, he is quick to accept that Claudius killed his father. It seems entirely possible that Claudius killed his brother, King Hamlet, to take the throne for himself, and thus Hamlet begins to plot the death of Claudius. Hamlet becomes determined to prove that Claudius ended the King’s life before he acts on his cravings for revenge (SparkNotes). All the characters are affected by death, but Hamlet is twisted by it. Hamlet shows a fascination with dead bodies in the graveyard scene and holds Yorick’s skull as if it he could connect to Yorick through it (Untermacher). Hamlet determines that no one would choose to live a life of pain and misery unless they were fearful of what may await them in the afterlife (“How does Hamlet”). True to what Hamlet says, multiple characters commit suicide throughout the play. The other protagonists and antagonists meet their demise through murder, revenge, and even accidental death in the wake of the madness caused by the unnatural death of Denmark’s King (“Death in ‘Hamlet’”). The method as to which the characters meet their end play an important role in the imagery and theme of the play. The exact cause of death is undetermined for Rosencrantz and Guilderstern (Thread: Hamlet: A play about death), all the audience knows is that Hamlet had them killed, but for the other key characters there is a variety of causes: suicide, poison, and murder. Poison causes many of the deaths in the play: King Hamlet, Gertrud