Hamlet Literary Merit

Throughout the years, students grow accustomed to an importance placed on literature. To keep students advancing over the years, teachers push their students to read books based on their academic level. Correspondingly, teachers assign their classroom certain books to read as a whole. Young students learn that the novels they read in class teach an important lesson, however, teachers consider more than an important lesson when choosing a book to read as a class. Each book introduced in a classroom usually encompass the criteria of a work with literary merit. A piece of work with literary merit, not only addresses a theme beyond the text itself and entertains the reader, a piece of literary merit contains ideals like complexity, originality,

Virgil Hutton asserts that, “Shakespeare utilizes the fear of [emotions] in order to establish…a greater heroism in Hamlet by the end of the play” (Hutton 11). Hamlet’s first soliloquy addresses his feelings following his father’s death and his mother’s decision to remarry with “wicked speed” (I.ii.156). Within this soliloquy, Hamlet brings to light his distress through the desire for his “solid flesh [to] melt” (I.ii.129), this yearning presents Hamlet as a frail and disorderly character. Hamlet’s pain and mourning following his father’s death transforms life into a “weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable” (I.ii.133) sight and he feels no compulsion to continue to suffer from these feelings. Hamlet obviously does not understand how to control his emotions and the excessive, consuming nature of the feelings cause his mind to jump from mourning to anger. His inability to eliminate these feelings through suicide leads to the discussion of his anger towards his mother for remarrying. He does not understand his mother’s ability to move on from his father’s death and he condemns her for her capability to move on. With Hamlet portrayed as a young adult, lamenting and resentment are expectable emotions for him to undergo, as he lacks the maturity to accept death and his mother’s adroitness to move on. Hamlet’s earlier immaturity highlights his later development throughout the play. Following

Gladys Veidemanis asserts that “the playwright achieved artistic maturity in this work through his brilliant depiction of the hero’s struggle with two opposing forces” (Veidemanis 72). One of the criteria of a work with literary merit includes that the work “[h]as been judged to have artistic quality by the literary community” (Gilmore 7). Veidemanis’s conclusion of Hamlet’s artistic maturity strengthens the text as a whole, persuading others that the text contains subject matter worthy of analyzing. Since most individuals read books based on recommendations, either from the book itself or others, the literary community’s opinion of a book plays an important part in its success. Similarly, a sign of a book’s literary merit ensures its potential to “stand the test of time in some way, regardless of the date of publication” (Gilmore 7). As literature evolved over the years, plays stand less popular than they stood in Shakespeare’s time and novels currently persist as a more common source of literature. This could have led Shakespeare’s plays to decrease in importance, however, Shakespeare is continually studied in classrooms as an important