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Shakespeare’s ‘Hamlet’ depicts the existential crisis of a tragic protagonist and the disturbing consequences of their actions in their surrounding environment, through the character of Hamlet.
Shakespeare’s protagonist Hamlet experiences internal conflict as he seeks to elucidate a personal identity to determine his duty, authenticity and morality in a disparate world presenting contradictory societal expectations. Hamlet is characterised as a royal prince, learned scholar of Wittenberg and eloquent poet with extreme states of mind, imagination and intense feeling. His understanding of the disturbance of the ‘Great Chain of Being’ in light of his father’s ‘foul murder’ causes him to assert that he has been ‘born to set it right’. His assertion
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Utilising his educated mind, he spends time analysing those in the royal court, in order to terrorise them, cornering them with intense dialogue. However ironically, though he has seen through the frailty of human mortality, he lacks the conviction to end his life, describing himself as ‘pigeon-livered’. He has been burdened with a duty he cannot morally commit, lives in a world of a ‘foul and pestilent congregation of vapours’ and sees human life as nothing as the ‘quintessence of dust’, yet cannot bring himself to commit suicide due to the mental agony he faces. His identity is established as an ambassador of death and a tragic protagonist who wants to die. He begins the play in a suicidal state and continues to respond to events in this state, yet never takes purposeful action to change his circumstances. This is best characterised when accepts Laertes’ duel, to which Horatio says ‘you will lose my lord’. Never the less, Hamlet accepts the duel and its conditions as established by Claudius, a man who recently sought his life. The antithesis of Hamlet’s character is expressed in his reply to Horatio, a he states ‘there is special providence . . . if it be not now, yet it will come-the readiness is all’. Hamlet expresses his Protestant Christian beliefs in God’s divine providence as the basis of which to justify his absurd acceptance of the duel, stating that as he has already seen through the veil of humanity, he is ready if his time has been determined now. The inevitable nature of Hamlet’s philosophy is demonstrated as the stage increasingly fills up with corpses, the last of which being Hamlet’s. Hamlet’s philosophy was responsible for further poisoning Denmark, only to cleanse it and fulfill his filial duty, whilst gaining his greatest desire of death through murder, not having to resort to
Goldman, Michael. "Hamlet and Our Problems." Critical Essays on Shakespeare's Hamlet. Ed. David Scott Kaston. New York City: Prentice Hall International. 1995. 43-55
As more events led to the questioning of Hamlet’s sanity, the reader was given a glimpse into the mind of Hamlet in the famous “To be or not to be” soliloquy. Hamlet’s questions of life and contemplation of suicide revealed h...
Throughout Hamlet, William Shakespeare uses the idea of existentialism to explore the conflict between man and self. This conflict branches from the struggle for revenge in which Hamlet’s desire to establish order in a world of chaos leaves him destroyed and torn, leading to his inescapable downfall and deaths of the surrounding characters. However, as the play comes to an end, Hamlet is able to rise as an existential hero in Shakespeare’s work. Ultimately, Hamlet begins to understand his identity. Hamlet is able to confront his own existence and purpose in life only to realize that the world he lives in consists of facades with actors performing on a stage of false reality. As a result, the existential ideal unifies the play and the character of Hamlet, shaping the perception of action itself. Prince Hamlet is introduced as a confused, slow-to-act character. While he stays true to this characterization for almost the entire play, he does undergo a transformation. By the end of the play, Hamlet is able to prove his existence, demonstrate his own thoughts and actions, and display that...
Throughout a variety of movie interpretations of a given film, one version proves to be the most effective for distinct reasons. Within Act 3, Scene 4 of Hamlet, Shakespeare provides little direction by which the scene should be interpreted, but the play, taken in its entirety, proposes a certain way in which Hamlet and Gertrude express their emotions. This has led to distinctive cinematic interpretations of this scene, all in which portray the storyline in a unique way. Kenneth Branagh’s version of the closet scene provides a more realistic portrayal of the conflict between Hamlet and Gertrude than the Gregory Dovan and Campbell Scott versions; Branagh’s view on the mother-son relationship, Hamlet’s reaction to the ghost and Gertrude’s guilt is closer to the original text in which Shakespeare leaves room for audience interpretation.
Shakespeare’s Hamlet, published circa 1603, has engaged audiences since the Renaissance as a revenge tragedy resonating with Humanist themes that enable speculation on the scope and limitations of the human experience. Shakespeare’s construction of Hamlet’s fatal flaw relies on the archetypes of the Renaissance and Machiavellian man in terms of the dramatic treatment of struggle and disillusionment through his inability to act. The latter is reinforced through these archetypes in terms of the value placed on masculinity and intellectual coherence in relation to the demoralisation of madness and female sexuality in a religious context. Hamlet’s internal conflict is further reinforced through loyalty in terms of the ethical contrast of power and morality through Shakespeare’s political context.
Shakespeare’s Hamlet is arguably one of the best plays known to English literature. It presents the protagonist, Hamlet, and his increasingly complex path through self discovery. His character is of an abnormally complex nature, the likes of which not often found in plays, and many different theses have been put forward about Hamlet's dynamic disposition. One such thesis is that Hamlet is a young man with an identity crisis living in a world of conflicting values.
Shakespeare, William, Marilyn Eisenstat, and Ken Roy. Hamlet. 2nd ed. Toronto: Harcourt Canada, 2003. Print.
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.
Hamlet is a tale of tragedy by Shakespeare which tells the story of the prince of Denmark who is on a quest to avenge the death of his father at the hands of his uncle whom subsequently becomes king of Denmark. This is what fuels the fire in the play as Hamlet feels the responsibility to avenge his father’s death by his uncle Claudius; however, Claudius assumed the throne following the death of hamlets father. It is in this context that we see the evolution of hamlets character from a student and young prince of Denmark to the protagonist and tragic hero in the play.
As the play’s tragic hero, Hamlet exhibits a combination of good and bad traits. A complex character, he displays a variety of characteristics throughout the play’s development. When he is first introduced in Act I- Scene 2, one sees Hamlet as a sensitive young prince who is mourning the death of his father, the King. In addition, his mother’s immediate marriage to his uncle has left him in even greater despair. Mixed in with this immense sense of grief, are obvious feelings of anger and frustration. The combination of these emotions leaves one feeling sympathetic to Hamlet; he becomes a very “human” character. One sees from the very beginning that he is a very complex and conflicted man, and that his tragedy has already begun.
Up until this point the kingdom of Denmark believed that old Hamlet had died of natural causes. As it was custom, prince Hamlet sought to avenge his father’s death. This leads Hamlet, the main character into a state of internal conflict as he agonises over what action and when to take it as to avenge his father’s death. Shakespeare’s play presents the reader with various forms of conflict which plague his characters. He explores these conflicts through the use of soliloquies, recurring motifs, structure and mirror plotting.
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.
The perfection of Hamlet’s character has been called in question - perhaps by those who do not understand it. The character of Hamlet stands by itself. It is not a character marked by strength of will or even of passion, but by refinement of thought and sentiment. Hamlet is as little of the hero as a man can be. He is a young and princely novice, full of high enthusiasm and quick sensibility - the sport of circumstances, questioning with fortune and refining on his own feelings, and forced from his natural disposition by the strangeness of his situation.
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.