In
Hamlet, Claudius resembles Cain, who could not fathom the impetus behind
Abel's sacrifices -- Abel's love of God. Cain was blind to love,
and saw only the outward forms, the sacrifices and the rewards. Cain's
devotion to form, and blindness to the love, was interrelated was so radical,
that he believed he could obtain the rewards by murding his brother, the
object of God's affection. Put another way, Claudius and Cain share
in common an inability to apprehend the oscillation between rhetoric and
philosophy.