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The Greene Murder Case · Chapter
Epigraph explained
The chapter opens with a quotation from Shakespeare's Hamlet, setting a tone of foul, strange, and unnatural murder.
What happens
The chapter opens with a quotation from Shakespeare's Hamlet, setting a tone of foul, strange, and unnatural murder.
Themes in this chapter
The Unnatural and Grotesque
The epigraph directly invokes the unnatural and grotesque nature of the murder, framing the crime as something beyond ordinary villainy.
Key passages
“Murder most foul, as in the best it is; But this most foul, strange and unnatural.”
This murder is exceptionally wicked, even by the standards of murder, and it is bizarre and against the natural order.
The epigraph from Hamlet foreshadows the peculiar and shocking nature of the crimes to come.