Losing a loved one can be difficult, hard, and can even drive a person insane. In Shakespeare’s play Hamlet death takes its toll on the entire royal family. When King Hamlet died, it caused Claudius to take the thrown and the hand of queen Gertrude. As soon as the King and Queen hear about how mad Hamlet has gone they discuss the idea of death and wonder if the thought of death or not mourning the made him go crazy. Claudius quotes, “When sorrows come, they come not single spies. But in battalions” (3.4.52-53). This quote symbolizes that death brings sorrow and how this is a view on death. Although mourning is common between characters in the beginning of the play, views on death become different and apparent among Gertrude, Claudius, and Hamlet.
In the play Gertrude depicts her take on death as a part of life in which one needs to move on from and almost forget them as they once were. To some the circle of life is more than death; it can be way for someone to release feelings through the mourning, except that is not what Gertrude believes. Gertrude tells Hamlet, “Good Hamlet, cast thy nighted color off, And let thine eye look like a friend on Denmark. Do not forever with thy vailèd lids. Seek for thy noble father in the dust” (1.2.70-72). Gertrude’s words are saying for Hamlet to stop wearing black clothes and just remember his noble father how he once was, which may seem harsh but it may also be the only way in which Gertrude knows how to handle it. Another way Gertrude may handle it is through forgiveness from Hamlet. The article Acts III and IV: Problems of Text and Staging states that Hamlet says, “O, throw away the worser part of it And live the purer with the other half. Good night. But go not to my unl...
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Bonnet, N.J. (2010) “The Manipulative Nature of Claudius in Shakespeare’s ‘Hamlet’.” Student Pulse, 2(02).
Fly, Richard. “Accommodating Death: The Ending Of Hamlet.” Studies In English Literature (Rice) 24.2 (1984): 257. Literary Reference Center. Web. 6 Feb. 2014.
Kastan, David Scott. "'His Semblable In His Mirror': Hamlet And The Imitation Of Revenge." Shakespeare Studies 19.(1987): 111. Literary Reference Center. Web. 5 Feb. 2014.
Nevo, Ruth. “Acts III and IV: Problems of Text and Staging.” Modern Critical Interpretations: William Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Ed. Harold Bloom. New York: Chelsea House,1986. (53). Print.
Shakespeare, William. Hamlet. New York: Dover Publications, Inc. 1992. Print
Walls, Kathryn. "Shakespeare's HAMLET 1.2.35-38." Explicator 63.1 (2004): 4-6. Literary Reference Center. Web. 5 Feb. 2014.
Through the death of Hamlet’s father, Shakespeare shows how one tragedy can lead to many stages of grief as well as the downfall of the character. Throughout the novel, Hamlet journeys through the grieving process in the stage of anger, depression, and acceptance. Elisabeth Kubler Ross states, “The purpose of life is more than these stages….it is not just about the life lost but also the life lived”
After the death of Old Hamlet and Gertrude’s remarriage to Claudius, Hamlet feels extremely angry and bitter. “How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable / Seem to me all the uses of this world!” (1.2.133-134). Due to the death of his father, he is already in a state of despair and the lack of sympathy that his mother has towards his sorrow does not aid him in recovering from this stage of grief. “Good Hamlet, cast thy knighted colour off, / And let thine eye look like a friend on Denmark” (1.2.68-69). Hamlet is struggling to accept the fashion in which Gertrude is responding to the death of Old Hamlet; she seems quite content with her new life with Claudius, which is a difficult concept for him to accept as after the d...
Shakespeare’s sinful woman in the tragedy Hamlet is named Gertrude. Wife of Claudius and mother of the prince, she is not selected by the ghost for vengeance by the protagonist. Let’s consider her story in this essay.
Rose, Mark. "Hamlet and the Shape of Revenge." English Literary Renaissance 1.2 (Spring 1971): 132-143. Rpt. in Shakespearean Criticism. Ed. Lynn M. Zott. Vol. 68. Detroit: Gale, 2003. Literature Resource Center. Web. 28 Feb. 2010.
Low, Anthony. "Hamlet and the Ghost of Purgatory: Intimations of Killing the Father."English Literary Renaissance 29.2 (1999): 443-67. Wiley Online Library. Web. 30 Mar. 2014.
Findlay, Alison. "Hamlet: A Document in Madness." New Essays on Hamlet. Ed. Mark Thornton Burnett and John Manning. New York: AMS Press, 1994. 189-205.
...r. Hamlet speaks to Horatio quietly, almost serenely, with the unexultant calm which characterizes the end of the long, inner struggle of grief. He has looked at the face of death in his father’s ghost, he has now endured death and loss in all the human beings he has loved, and he now accepts those losses as an inevitable part of his own condition. “He states, “The readiness is all” suggesting what is perhaps the last and most difficult task of mourning, his own readiness to die” (Bloom 135). Hamlet recognizes and accepts his own death.
Mack, Maynard. "The World of Hamlet." Yale Review. vol. 41 (1952) p. 502-23. Rpt. in Readings on The Tragedies. Ed. Clarice Swisher. San Diego: Greenhaven Press, 1996.
Mack, Maynard. "The World of Hamlet." Yale Review. vol. 41 (1952) p. 502-23. Rpt. in Shakespeare: Modern Essays in Criticism. Rev. ed. Ed. Leonard F. Dean. New York: Oxford University P., 1967.
“So shall you hear of carnal, bloody, and unnatural acts, of accidental judgements, casual slaughters, of deaths put on by cunning and forced cause”, (Hamlet, Act V, Scene 2, Lines 381-384). Horatio, best friend of Prince Hamlet, says this in the final lines of the play. He says this after Gertrude, Queen of Denmark, Hamlet, Claudius, King of Denmark, and Laertes, son of Polonius all die in the battle between Hamlet and Laertes. Hamlet, King of Denmark, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, former friends of Hamlet, Polonius, councillor to the King, and Ophelia, daughter of Polonius are also dead. Death is a very important theme in William Shakespeare’s Hamlet.
Shakespeare’s Hamlet is a tragic play about murder, betrayal, revenge, madness, and moral corruption. It touches upon philosophical ideas such as existentialism and relativism. Prince Hamlet frequently questions the meaning of life and the degrading of morals as he agonizes over his father’s murder, his mother’s incestuous infidelity, and what he should or shouldn’t do about it. At first, he is just depressed; still mourning the loss of his father as his mother marries his uncle. After he learns about the treachery of his uncle and the adultery of his mother, his already negative countenance declines further. He struggles with the task of killing Claudius, feeling burdened about having been asked to find a solution to a situation that was forced upon him.Death is something he struggles with as an abstract idea and as relative to himself. He is able to reconcile with the idea of death and reality eventually.
Shakespeare, William, Marilyn Eisenstat, and Ken Roy. Hamlet. 2nd ed. Toronto: Harcourt Canada, 2003. Print.
In his tragedy Hamlet, William Shakespeare explores and analyzes the concept of mortality and the inevitability of death through the development of Hamlet’s understanding and ideology regarding the purpose for living. Through Hamlet’s obsessive fascination in understanding the purpose for living and whether death is the answer, Shakespeare analyzes and interprets the meaning of different elements of mortality and death: The pain death causes to others, the fading of evidence of existence through death, and the reason for living. While due to the inevitable and unsolvable mystery of the uncertainty of death, as no being will ever empirically experience death and be able to tell the tale, Shakespeare offers an answer to the reason for living through an analysis of Hamlet’s development in understanding death.
Corum, Richard. Understanding Hamlet: A Student Casebook to Issues, Sources, and Historical Documents. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1998. Print.
...World of Hamlet.” Yale Review. vol. 41 (1952) p. 502-23. Rpt. in Shakespeare: Modern Essays in Criticism. Rev. ed. Ed. Leonard F. Dean. New York: Oxford University P., 1967.