Chosen Question:
One of the key themes in Hamlet is suicide with two major characters giving audiences the opportunity to reflect on its implications to society. Hamlet reflects upon suicide in his famous soliloquies while Ophelia actually commits suicide. Using research from scholarly articles and books to support your argument, discuss Shakespeare’s treatment of the theme of suicide.
Introduction:
Themes have large implications for a play's outcome, a play in particular that this essay will be focusing on is William Shakespeare’s Hamlet. The context written and the relevance in regards to a historical viewpoint will be discussed, also following this will be the characters themselves and how they affect the text itself and the plays final outcome. Further discussion on the play and its relevance will be brought forward in regards to today’s society vs. Elizabethan era and how they receive the text, how they handle the social theme of suicide and how it affected them, socially, mentally and physically.
The Context Hamlet was written and relevance (historical view point):
One major element of a play's outcome is the theme which is brought to the forefront, a successful play and a play in which the likes of William Shakespeare used to write made certain themes pivotal to the final outcome. One theme in particular; suicide pertains to the well-known play Hamlet. This play was seen as well beyond its time due to Shakespeare’s clever use of soliloquys he was able to engage with the audience and gain their empathy; something that had not yet been seen before within the theatre. It was said that ‘no work in the English literary canon has been so closely identified with the beginning of the modern age (Grazia) He remains constantly...
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... the following impacts upon other characters and the overall outcome of the play.
Works Cited
Baker, Susan. "Hamlet's Bloody Thoughts and the Illusion of inwardness." Comparative Drama (1987-1988): 303.
Camden, Carroll. "On Ophelia's Madness." Shakespeare Quarterly (1964): 247-255.
Dane, Gabrielle. "Reading Ophelia's Madness." Exemplaria (1998): 1-8.
Grazia, Margreta De. "Hamlet Before its Time." MLQ: Modern Language Quarterly, Volume 62, Number 4, December (December 2001): 355-360.
Petronella, Vincent F. Hamlet's "To Be or Not to Be" Soliloquy: Once More Unto the Breach. University of North Carolina Press, Janurary 1974.
Shakespeare, William. Hamlet. London: Harper Press, 2011.
Simmonds, W.G. Hamlet Conundrums. n.d. 25 04 2014 .
Zeil, Michael. "Suicide in pre-industrial England." Social History (2008): 1-16.
There is lively critical debate about the themes in the Shakespearean drama Hamlet and their proper ranking in importance. This paper hopes to discuss the some of the main themes and their significance in the play.
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.
To continue on the subject of suicide, I will bring in some information from my last source, “Shakespeare’s Hamlet 1.2.35-38,” by Kathryn Walls. (Gather information from source and relate to the book).
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.
The way that Shakespeare portrayed Hamlet’s soliloquy touches on a global issue of suicide. While Hamlet considers his suicidal thoughts it reveals inklings about his character. Hamlet’s soliloquy advances the tone of the play because of how melancholy and sad Shakespeare portrays it to be.
Although many different positions could be taken on writing an essay for this Shakespearian play, the author took it upon himself to write about Hamlet’s grief. His grief is obvious from the beginning of the play and he continues to grieve althroughout the play. Within his twenty-one-page essay, I chose this line to represent that I agree with his outlook on the play. “…his focus is on his grief and the profound impact in which the ghost has upon it. (Hamlet pg.18 paragraph 3)
Shakespeare’s play Hamlet is a complex and ambiguous public exploration of key human experiences surrounding the aspects of revenge, betrayal and corruption. The Elizabethan play is focused centrally on the ghost’s reoccurring appearance as a symbol of death and disruption to the chain of being in the state of Denmark. The imagery of death and uncertainty has a direct impact on Hamlet’s state of mind as he struggles to search for the truth on his quest for revenge as he switches between his two incompatible values of his Christian codes of honour and humanist beliefs which come into direct conflict. The deterioration of the diseased state is aligned with his detached relationship with all women as a result of Gertrude’s betrayal to King Hamlet which makes Hamlet question his very existence and the need to restore the natural order of kings. Hamlet has endured the test of time as it still identifies with a modern audience through the dramatized issues concerning every human’s critical self and is a representation of their own experience of the bewildering human condition, as Hamlet struggles to pursuit justice as a result of an unwise desire for revenge.
Hamlet’s anger and grief- primarily stemming from his mother’s marriage to Claudius- brings him to thoughts of suicide, which only subside as a result of it being a mortal and religious sin. The fact that he wants to take his own life demonstrates a weakness in his character; a sense of cowarness, his decision not to kill himself because of religious beliefs shows that this weakness is balanced with some sense of morality. Such an obvious paradox is only one example of the inner conflict and turmoil that will eventually lead to Hamlet’s downfall.
To understand a play, you must first understand the fundamentals for the play: protagonist, antagonist, exposition, rising action, crisis, climax and resolution. I will examine Hamlet by William Shakespeare. This is a great example for the purpose of this paper it provides a clear and great examples.
Shakespeare, William. “Hamlet.” The Norton Introduction to Literature. Ed. Kelly J. Mays. 11th ed. New York: Norton, 2013.1709-1804. Print.
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.
William Shakespeare's Hamlet is, at heart, a play about suicide. Though it is surrounded by a fairly standard revenge plot, the play's core is an intense psychodrama about a prince gone mad from the pressures of his station and his unrequited love for Ophelia. He longs for the ultimate release of killing himself - but why? In this respect, Hamlet is equivocal - he gives several different motives depending on the situation. But we learn to trust his soliloquies - his thoughts - more than his actions. In Hamlet's own speeches lie the indications for the methods we should use for its interpretation.
Hamlet is one of the most often-performed and studied plays in the English language. The story might have been merely a melodramatic play about murder and revenge, butWilliam Shakespeare imbued his drama with a sensitivity and reflectivity that still fascinates audiences four hundred years after it was first performed. Hamlet is no ordinary young man, raging at the death of his father and the hasty marriage of his mother and his uncle. Hamlet is cursed with an introspective nature; he cannot decide whether to turn his anger outward or in on himself. The audience sees a young man who would be happiest back at his university, contemplating remote philosophical matters of life and death. Instead, Hamlet is forced to engage death on a visceral level, as an unwelcome and unfathomable figure in his life. He cannot ignore thoughts of death, nor can he grieve and get on with his life, as most people do. He is a melancholy man, and he can see only darkness in his future—if, indeed, he is to have a future at all. Throughout the play, and particularly in his two most famous soliloquies, Hamlet struggles with the competing compulsions to avenge his father’s death or to embrace his own. Hamlet is a man caught in a moral dilemma, and his inability to reach a resolution condemns himself and nearly everyone close to him.
Rosenberg, Marvin. “Laertes: An Impulsive but Earnest Young Aristocrat.” Readings on Hamlet. Ed. Don Nardo. San Diego: Greenhaven Press, 1999. Rpt. from The Masks of Hamlet. Newark, NJ: Univ. of Delaware P., 1992.
Hamlet is the best known tragedy in literature today. Here, Shakespeare exposes Hamlet’s flaws as a heroic character. The tragedy in this play is the result of the main character’s unrealistic ideals and his inability to overcome his weakness of indecisiveness. This fatal attribute led to the death of several people which included his mother and the King of Denmark. Although he is described as being a brave and intelligent person, his tendency to procrastinate prevented him from acting on his father’s murder, his mother’s marriage, and his uncle’s ascension to the throne.