My Dearest Foe in Heaven

Earlier, Hamlet implied a distaste for imagining the salvation of his enemies: "Would I had met my dearest foe in heaven / Or ever I had seen that day" (I.ii.182-83).  Clearly, a Christian audience would not find this distaste endearing. Such a statement is rich in signs warning of original sin.

Here, as Shakespeare's audience would have seen, he has become guilty of both malice and supreme pride He would rather damn a sinner than execute a penitent, and, though he does not recognize that he is doing so, he is claiming for himself what is solely a divine prerogative: the judgment of a man's soul. In addition, he would consign Claudius to a fate far worse even than that about which the ghost of his father has recently cried, "O, horrible, O, horrible, most horrible!" (I.v.80)  -- Gideon Rappaport, Shakespeare's Problem Audience, unpublished book ms., p. 165.