William Shakespeare's Hamlet the Film
The film of Hamlet has become one of Shakespeare's most famous works.
Many different directors have each given their own interpretation of
Hamlet. We have looked at three different film versions. Kenneth
Brannagh, Lawrence Olivier and Franco Zefirelli.
The part of the play I am going to look at is Hamlets monologue;
"To be, or not to be"
I have chosen this monologue because it is the section of the play
which most people remember. It is also a very strong powerful
monologue.
This speech is important to the play because Hamlet is asking the one
question that many people ask…why should I carry on living in this
disrupted, sinful world? This makes it an important scene to the
audience.
Hamlet follows his argument through talking about the bad things in
the world, but he moves on to talk about life after death. He finally
persuades himself against the idea of suicide.
I will look at the different methods used by the directors to create
their desired impact on this scene.
In the Franco Zefirelli version (1990) of Hamlet this scene is set in
a crypt in the cellars of Elsinore Castle. The lighting is very dark,
which adds a sense of mysteriousness and evil. Hamlets face is lit
from above which makes his features and the shadows more defined. The
way Hamlets face is lit creates the image that there are two sides to
life, a dark side and a light side. This is because his face is lit
brightly from above and darkly from below. This could also create the
impression of heaven and hell. We think of heaven as being above us
and hell being below. Therefore the lighting reflects this.
When Hamlet first speaks in this scene he puts emphasis on certain
words and puts feeling into the speech. This will make the audience
realise the importance of this speech. They will feel that they know
the feelings Hamlet is going through because of his facial expression
Sigmund Freud, the father of psychology and psychoanalysis, spent a great deal of his time and effort examining the conscious and unconscious mind, which is pertinent to Hamlet. When reading Hamlet, most people jump to basic conclusions about Hamlets madness without delving into what the actual cause is, but using the psychoanalytic lens can give readers a better understanding of Hamlet’s insanity. For example, the main question of the play is why Hamlet didn't kill Claudius earlier in the play. Many people argue that he’s religious and is a man of inaction, but while looking through the psychoanalytic lens it is evident that Hamlet can’t kill Claudius until Gertrude is dead. Kendra Cherry is a psychosocial rehabilitation specialist who holds a Bachelor of Science in Psychology and is the author of What is an Oedipal Complex. Cherry gives a simple understanding of the Oedipal Complex which states “According to Freud, the boy (Hamlet) wishes to possess his mother and replace his father, who the child views as a rival for the mother's affections” (Cherry). In the play, Hamlet’s actions are motivated by the Oedipal Complex and his unconscious forces (id, ego, and superego) which prove that only by the death of Gertrude can Hamlet kill Claudius.
Hamlet the Play and the Movie Hamlet by William Shakespeare is a story about a king that was murdered by his brother and the prince has been asked by his father?s ghost to avenge his murder. The original story line has been altered a few times since it has been written. The original Hamlet the play and the altered Hamlet the movie are shown differently in many different ways. Hamlet the movie with Mel Gibson shows different things than the play, but there are three major differences between the two. The three major differences are in the way both of the productions start out, differences in the scene that the players put on a play, and differences in the way the productions end.
William Shakespeare was a Stratford Grammar School boy, who was a member of the Church of England, similar to just about everyone else in Stratford. However, due to some events that occurred in the Shakespeare family home, there is some evidence that could prove that the family may have had some Roman Catholic connections. When William Shakespeare was 10 years old, legal issues and debt took a toll on his family’s life. Shakespeare’s father’s stopped attending alderman meetings which resulted in the removal of his name to become an alderman, and he was also forced to sell his beautiful home. The cause of this crisis is unknown, however the records can be used to throw together the idea that there were peculiar religious events going on (Fox). Due to these mishaps, William Shakespeare’s religion is a bit of a mystery. The play, Hamlet, was written by William Shakespeare during the Elizabethan era, which happened to be a time when religious conflicts were a big deal (Alsaif). The protagonist in the story, Hamlet, is a character who seems to make his choices through his religious beliefs. Hamlet is a very indecisive person, but his thoughts on religion tend to persuade him. In the play Hamlet, William Shakespeare uses the character of Hamlet to show the flaws in all religions. Hamlet does his best to follow the rules of Christianity, but he often questions the morality involved. Although Shakespeare belonged to the Church of England, he didn’t find any particular religion to be perfect.
William Shakespeare's Hamlet Relationships between characters of the younger and older generations is a main focus and central theme of Hamlet. The play differs from convention in that older characters are generally found to be the ones who have acted wrongly or who have made mistakes. The younger generation, Hamlet included, tend to act according to what they believe to be morally correct and appear to have a greater conscience and sense of justice. Generally, productions of Hamlet present the younger generation in such a way that the audience would feel sympathy with them and disgust at the actions of the older generation. However, there are exceptions to this and at certain places in the text,
Tragedies in the Greek theater when compared to tragedies in the Renaissance theater varied in similarities and differences. Greek theater encouraged the use of religious figures while Renaissance theater was supposed to be strictly pagan in its ideologies. Theater was most dominantly used to depict the social and religious constraints of the time period. For example, Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex are both portrayals of deceit, murder, and revenge all of which lead to the demise of its leading characters. Hamlet is depicted as a young man who is seeking revenge for his fathers death. Oedipus is a king who means to free the people of Thebes from a disease that has been plaguing them. They share similarities in that each of their love interest are conduits of their pain and anguish, further pushing the protagonists over the precipice. The voice of reason that they share is Creon in Oedipus Rex and Horatio in Hamlet. Their tragic flaw is that they are both ultimately and utterly doomed and no amount of guidance will steer them away from what has been predestined by fate. They are ultimately doomed to be their own Achilles heel.
One of Shakespeare’s great pieces of work, Hamlet, has been divided to alternate versions Quarto 1and Quarto 2. Focusing on Act I Scene iii, apparently the differences in these two versions are mainly on the way the characters are formed and the language that is used. Quarto 1 is a much more compact version that has weakly defined characters and uninformed language. As for Quarto 2 this lack of complexity is not so. This version has a higher quality of character depth and a language that is more comprehensible to allow more meaning to the play. Nonetheless the mutuality between these two versions main idea are clearly the significant mutilations to these scene are factors that make the play have a different meaning. The Quarto that would be most appealing to actors and the one that would be more fulfilling to the reader would be the second one because of it richness in characters and language.
William Shakespeare's Hamlet Perhaps the greatest uncertainty in William Shakespeare's Hamlet is the character of Queen Gertrude. Undoubtedly a major player with regard to number of lines and contribution to the action of the play. her personality is nonetheless basically undeveloped. It is also notable that Gertrude is perhaps the only character besides Hamlet. with enough power over all of the characters to stop the play's tragic.
Far too often we see men and women with noble causes lose their motive because of their emotional behavior. Their emotions cause them to lose track. We see no finer example of a man with a noble cause whose emotions cause him to lose sight of his noble cause: the character of Laertes in the play Hamlet. Laertes has a vendetta against Hamlet for killing his father. Although Laertes meant well in avenging his father’s death, his emotional behavior overtook him in the process. If we look at other characters in the play, we find a similar struggle between a noble goal and one’s emotions. Hamlet fights the same battle as Laertes does; however, Hamlet is better able to control his emotions. To maintain a noble goal without faltering, one must be able to rid one’s self of emotions that lead to undesirable actions.
The complexity and effect of father-son relationships seems to be a theme that Shakespeare loved to explore in his writings. In Hamlet, the subject is used as a mechanism to identify the similarities between three very different characters: Fortinbras, Laertes, and Hamlet. They have each lost their fathers to violent deaths, which leads them to seek vengeance. As different as they may seem, they all share the common desire to avenge their father’s deaths. The method they each approach this is what differentiates each of their characters, and allows the audience to discern their individual characteristics. Fortinbras, Laertes, and Hamlet’s intense loyalty to their fathers drives them to individual extreme measures of revenge, exemplifying Shakespeare’s masterful use of describing the human psyche during Elizabethan times.
When in the course of human events, something’s are made self-evident, like having to read Hamlet and write about three soliloquies. These soliloquies tend to be very lengthy and have very sub surface meanings to them that require some enabled humanoids to use the frontal cortex of their neurological brains in order to understand these meanings. In other words, they are hard to understand, especially with them being written in the Shakespearean era of influence in the island Kingdoms that are Untied. However, they offer meanings unimaginable and crucial to the outcome of the play Hamlet. As I have just explained, the three soliloquies of Act I, II, III, of the play Hamlet by William Shakespeare have very deep important meanings and messages to them.
In William Shakespeare’s play Hamlet, Hamlet does avenge his father’s death but at the cost of many life’s. Multiple characters must be analyzed in order to make an opinion about Hamlet’s revenge. There are many reasons to hamlet delaying avenging his father’s death because he finds out from a ghost he could not trust. Hamlet can be compared to Laertes and Fortinbra. They are very similar but different and the same time. Each of them loved their fathers very much and felt as if they have to avenge their father’s death. Something they had in common has been that they felt their fathers were disrespected not only their fathers but them as well. Hamlet took a very weak approach to his father revenge where as in Laertes was quick to act and Fortinbra was in the middle.
Hamlet has been praised and revered for centuries as one of William Shakespeare's best known and most popular tragedies. Based on its popularity, critics alike have taken various viewpoints and theories in order to explain Hamlet's actions throughout the play. The psychoanalytic point of view is one of the most famous positions taken on Hamlet.
While a revenge tragedy by definition, William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, is first and foremost a play concerning memory. The importance and effect of memory and the ars memoria could not be stressed more. Memory, remembrance, or, in some cases the lack there of, frame much of the dialog throughout the work and are therefore unmistakable themes of the play. In Act one, scene five, the ghost of old king Hamlet uses memory as a call to arms, “Mark me…Remember me,” he commands his astonished son (1. 5. 2, 91). This supernatural encounter, with its simple directives to memory, changes everything for Denmark. Memory becomes Hamlet’s foundation for avenging his father’s murder. However, his dwelling in the past soon proves problematic and his memory of the phantom’s words becomes warped. Hamlet regrettably suffers from selective memory when it comes to his father’s directives. This corrupted recollection of the ghost’s instructions develops into the core conflict of the tragedy. While Hamlet is ultimately able to reach his vengeful goal, it is not in a timely manner and certainly not without added bloodshed; making each casualty of the play a result of Hamlet’s inability to follow orders, to remember correctly.
I am not a big fan of the 1990 movie version of William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, starring Mel Gibson. I feel that while it stands alone as a very well made movie and contains great acting performances throughout, I think that it strays too far from the original text and layout of the play. The omissions and transposing makes the play weaker, and while it is a great screenplay, it fails in comparison to Shakespeare’s original work. The three things which bother me the most are the omission of Fortinbras and the handling of the, “To be or not to be…” soliloquy and the “Get thee to a nunnery…” scene, and Hamlet’s Oedipus complex. Omitting the subplot of Fortinbras took away the whole political aspect of the piece. It also weakened the ending.
How does the use of comic relief best contrast the tragedy of Hamlet? In great works of literature a comic relief is used as contrast to a serious scene to intensify the overall tragic nature of the play or to relieve tension. As illustrated in Shakespeare’s tragedy Hamlet, intense scenes are joined with character’s banter and vacuous actions as to add a comic relief. In Hamlet, Polonius acts as a comic relief by his dull and windy personality, Hamlet uses his intelligence and his negativity toward the king and queen to create humor, while on the other hand Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are a comic relief by their senseless actions and naïve natures. Polonius, Hamlet, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are all used as a comic relief to increase the ultimate tragic nature of the play.