Shakespeare Themes - Prayer

In Hamlet Claudius the murderer tries to pray, but it doesn't work because his prayer is not genuine - he will not give up what he has wrongly won. In Macbeth the nearest things to prayer are incantations to evil, whether it is the witches' chanting or Lady Macbeth's efforts to be rid of her femininity and become hardened to evil: "Come, thick night, And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell, That my keen knife see not the wound it makes, Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark, To cry 'Hold, hold!' "

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