Crime and Punishment had a terribly brutal and very unjust place during the Elizabethan era, it filled the period with fear, torture, execution, but very little justice. The justice system of the time period was established to favor the persecution, and most likely get the accused executed. Queen Elizabeth I took justice and punishment back in history when she took power, those accused of a capital offense where not even allowed to have a defendant council while going through trial and were usually tortured mercilessly for a guilty plea before they were even proven guilty in any way. This terrible use of punishment to enforce the law showed no mercy to anyone unlucky enough to be accused of a crime, not even women would not escape any amount of torture and even minors were know to be punished gruesomely. Types of capital punishment were extremely common as the idea of incarceration was not yet seen as a permanent punishment and prison time was used mainly just to have the convicted wait and suffer before execution. Living in confinement in a Elizabethan jail was very uncommon and reserved for valuable prisoners.
Even though this was not the same time period or setting as that in which the Shakespeare play Hamlet is set, it was the time and place in which Shakespeare lived. Especially since there was no well established information sharing system in the time of Shakespeare such as there is in place today, he would have written to what he had personally experienced and learned throughout his life.
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