Hamlet: meaning within the meaning Within the play Hamlet there are many plays on words and phrases, which have a double meaning. Little puns that tend to add a bit of entertainment to the dialogue of the play. These forked-tongue phrases are used by Shakespeare to give insight into the characters in the play to give them more depth and substance. However, more importantly, these sentences make the reader or audience think. They are able to show a double meaning that not all people would grasp, which is the purpose of the comments. Little is known about Shakespeare's life, other than that he was a great playwright whose works serve to coalesce literary casts for centuries to come. . This was his occupation, he wrote and directed plays to be performed. This was his only form of income that we know of, it was his way of putting bread on the table. If people didn't like what Shakespeare wrote, they wouldn't make any money. If people didn't like what they saw, he became the starving artist. Shakespeare wrote these dialogues in such a way as to entertain the nobility, as well as the peasants. Shakespearean theater is a physical manifestation of how Shakespeare addressed more than one social class in his theatrical productions. These Shakespearean theaters have a unique construction, which had specific seats for the rich and, likewise, a separate section designated for the peasants. This clear separation of classes is also evident in Shakespeare's writing, as the nobility of the productions speak in poetic iambic pentameter, while the peasants speak in ordinary prose. Perhaps Shakespeare incorporated these double meanings into his characters' lines with the intention that only a select number of his audience would hear it in its double meaning or its true meaning. However, even when the tragic hero, Hamlet's, pun is intentional, it is not always clear why he uses it. Confuse or clarify? Or to control your thoughts without censorship? The energy and turmoil of his mind causes words to crowd into speech, stretching, reversing and distorting their implications. At times Hamlet must struggle to use the simplest words repeatedly, as he tries to force the meaning to flow in one channel. To Ophelia, after meeting her in her solitude, "reading in a book," he repeats five times, "Go to a convent;" changing the sentence very little, simply reiterating what has already been said by changing "get" to "go"..