A Study of William Shakespeare's Hamlet

A Study of William Shakespeare's Hamlet

“Frailty, thy name is woman” Hamlet famously exclaims in the first act

of William Shakespeare’s longest drama, and one of the most probing

plays ever to be performed on stage. It was written around the year

1600 in the final years of the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, an era of

real uncertainty and confusion; while the prospect of Elizabeth’s

death and the question of who would succeed her brought grave anxiety

to the nation as a whole, the rise of the Renaissance movement gave

rise to many challenges and unanswered questions to the old ideals and

beliefs that were for such a long time embedded in every Englishman’s

soul and mind. Women during that time had no role in society;

traditionally, they occupied different ‘spheres’ to men and so were

expected to be completely obedient to their husbands, to do all the

house duties and to raise their children up on the very same image of

society at the time. In ‘Hamlet’, through the characters of Gertrude

and Ophelia, Shakespeare reflects on this truth: both are

disrespected, insulted, abused and manipulated by the leading male

characters, and both die due to tragic circumstances. Thus, through

the illustration of the two characters, Queen Gertrude and Ophelia,

Shakespeare is able to explore the role of women in society, touching

on many controversial contemporary issues under the mask of

beautifully constructed lies of poetry and an unpredictable cycle of

events, which tragically ends with the deaths of two of Shakespeare’s

most infamous female characters.

The use of Ophelia in ‘Hamlet’ explores the idea of women as mere

objects and pawns for other...

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...so open to impressions that they now usurp her reflexes and take

possession of her. She has loved, or been prepared to love, the wrong

man; her father has brought disaster onto himself, and she has no

mother and thus she is terribly lonely. Thus, in many ways Ophelia is

the quintessence of the impact society’s mistreatment of women and the

deprivation of their rights as human beings has on each and every one

of them. “In her meek conformity, she lives in a meaningless world

until her madness relieves her of the responsibility of language and

she can ignore the speech of everyone else and herself speak whatever

gibberish comes into her mind” says one critic, Zulfikar Ghose, she is

very much like a delicate, wilted, flower… ruled by the men in her

life, Ophelia, like many women at the time, was never allowed to

blossom.