Hamlet Prince of Denmark

German philosopher, Karl Marx transformed the ways in which people analyze works of Literature. He claimed that people’s behaviour and judgment in society is determined by economic factors. Typical readers analyze literature from the text in which it’s presented, rather than analyzing for further meaning. The Marxist critical lens encourages the reader to pay attention to detail within the text, especially to the social power systems within the plot. Social class is based on the positions people hold in society, the arrangements of certain groups, and the hierarchy system, can greatly alter the outcome of a story. Reading text with a Marxist lens requires that a reader focuses on how characters interact with their environments, and the people around them. The various different classes, persecution, social inequality, racism are aspects to keep an eye on when doing a Marxist reading. The goals of a Marxist literary critic include assessing the social tendencies of the literary work, and comparing them to the social tendencies of today, and the specific time period in which it was written. The analyst must also recognize to what social class the author belongs and how that might affect the portrayals of certain characters. When analyzing Shakespeare’s most notable play Hamlet Prince of Denmark, the reader will being to understand the hierarchy system, the relationships between the characters, different classes and there social acceptations, as well as the political power struggle in Denmark, and Shakespeare’s personal social beliefs . These interactions between the social classes are what drive the conflicts and events in the play.

Within the first act of play the representation of the social classes begins to unfold. Shakespeare ...

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...for the speech Hamlet gives about his old family jester Yorik. During that speech Hamlet begins to question the social class system, and the outcomes it yields. He begins by questioning how people with so much power, and influence in the world end up in a hole under the ground “Isn’t it possible to imagine that the noble ashes of Alexander the Great could end up plugging a hole in a barrel?” (V, 1,179). He mentions the names of people at the top of the hierarchy system such as Caesar and Alexander the great. He beings to wonder why people who once ruled, and conquered the world, end up as ashes on the ground? “Oh, that that earth, which kept the world in awe, Should patch a wall t' expel the winter’s flaw! But soft, but soft a while” (V,1, 195). Shakespeare poses the question of why we separate into classes at all, when after we die, we are subject to the same fate.