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 distasteful statement endearing. It has the odor 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 (I.v.80)  -- Gideon Rappaport, Shakespeare's Problem Audience, unpublished book ms., p. 165.