There is a common component that is present through the tragedy Hamlet, that being that the character Hamlet is not necessarily rash with his action, but with his words. Hamlet will speak what he wishes to whomever he desires, a consequence of his divine lineage, yet his opinions are based off the moment at times; changing with the difference of what characters are present, the setting, and the surrounding circumstances. An instance of this is when comparing Hamlet’ thoughts of death with Act 4 and within Act 5. During Act 4 Hamlet is conversing with the King, adrenaline streaming through his veins after slaughtering Polonius, Hamlet casually states, “Not where he eats but where he is eaten./Your fat king and your lean beggar is/ but variable service - two dishes but to one table.”(Act 4.Sc3.Lines 22 and 26-27). This being very different then the conversation that Hamlet has with Horatio in the graveyard, “Alexander died, Alexander was buried, Alex-/ander returned to dust, the dust is earth; of earth/we make loam, and why of that loam here to he/was converted might they stop a beer barrel?”(Act5.Sc1.216-219), both conversations are similar in theme, but different in context. While place with the King, a character Hamlet loathes from the beginning, Hamlet responds to the King with hostility, but when placed with Horatio, whom of which can be considered Hamlet’s best friend, Hamlet responds with a placid demeanor and grasps and interpretation of mortality. This stands to reason that when placed with the ghost, that is believed to his father so short after the late King’s death, Hamlet was liable to commit himself to, what can be considered, a burden that he would be unable to complete. While Hamlet does indeed slay the King as pa...
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...evenge for his father but for his mother, with a connotation that Hamlet did not accomplish his promise to his father.
The tragedy of Hamlet is complex, leading the audience to more inquisitions then resolutions. While several element lead to Hamlet striking the King dead, the motivation for Hamlet to strike was the Queen. The blood of the Queening staining King Claudius’s already red hands lead for Hamlet to be impulsive with his actions. With the Queen’s murder being the incentive for Hamlet to slaughter the King it stands to reason the Hamlet infringe his oath of revenge over his father’s death. Hamlet in the end, let his words get away from him when he promised himself to his father’s ghost, leading to the failure to keep his promises.
Works Cited
Shakespeare, Willaim. Hamlet. Ed. Barbara Mowat and Paul Werstin . New York: Folger Shakespear Library, 1992.
Hamlet (The New Folger Library Shakespeare). Simon & Schuster; New Folger Edition, 2003.
Shakespeare, William. Hamlet. Ed. Paul Werstine and Barbara A. Mowat. Folger Shakespeare Library ed. New York: Washington Square Press, 1992. Print.
Displaying an 'antic disposition', Hamlet first attempts to side step his trepidation by feigning madness. After meeting with his fathers proposed ghost, Hamlet attempts to distance himself from the thought or evidence of death. Hamlet notifies his friends, Marcellus and Horatio, of his plan to distract the kingdom from his real intentions. Although Hamlet proposes this as a way to fool those in Denmark, in the last lines of his meeting with Horatio and Marcellus, he curses that this revenge be placed upon him. This is the first indication of Hamlets reluctance to perform murder. Hamlet then returns to Claudius and Gertrude, at the castle, and acts out his madness for them and for the visitor, Polonius. Upon speaking to Polonius, Polonius picks up upon Hamlets 'madness', yet decides that this unnatural nature is because if Ophelia's behavior toward Hamlet. Indication of Hamlets fear is presented when Polonius asks leave of the prince. Hamlet then states that Polonius can take anything from him, anything but his life. Hamlet repeats thrice this idea of taking anything 'except [his] life.' Not only does this indicate how compulsive Hamlets fake insanity is becoming, but how afraid he is of dying. During the 'To be or not to be' soliloquy, Hamlet contemplates his view of death. As he go...
Hamlet wishes to avenge the murder of his father and rectify this great injustice. The conflict between his desire to seek revenge and his own thoughts of incompetence is the cause of his initial unrest. "Haste me to know't , that I , with wings as swift / As meditation or thoughts of love , / may sweep to my revenge (1.5.29-31). Here Hamlet pleads to the Ghost of King Hamlet to reveal the name of his murderer.
Throughout the play Hamlet is in constant conflict with himself. An appearance of a ghost claiming to be his father, “I am thy father’s spirit”(I.v.14) aggravates his grief, nearly causing him to commit suicide and leaving him deeply disgusted and angered. Upon speaking with his ghost-father, Hamlet learns that his uncle-stepfather killed Hamlet the King. “The serpent that did sting thy father’s life Now wears his crown”(I.v.45-46) Hamlet is beside himself and becomes obsessed with plotting and planning revenge for the death of his father.
Once Hamlet has learned of his father’s death, he is faced with a difficult question: should he succumb to the social influence of avenging his father’s death? The Ghost tells Hamlet to “revenge his foul and most unnatural murder” (1.5.31) upon which Hamlet swears to “remember” (1.5.118). Hamlet’s immediate response to this command of avenging his father’s death is reluctance. Hamlet displays his reluctance by deciding to test the validity of what the Ghost has told him by setting up a “play something like the murder of (his) father’s” (2.2.624) for Claudius. Hamlet will then “observe his looks” (2.2.625) and “if he do blench” (2.2.626) Hamlet will know that he must avenge his father’s death. In the course of Hamlet avenging his father’s death, he is very hesitant, “thinking too precisely on the event” (4.4.43). “Now might I do it…and he goes to heaven…No” (3.3.77-79) and Hamlet decides to kill Claudius while “he is drunk asleep, or in his rage, or in th’ incestuous pleasure of his bed” (3.3.94-95). As seen here, Hamlet’s contradicting thought that Claudius “goes to heaven” (3.3.79) influences him to change his plans for revenge. Hamlet eventually realizes that he must avenge his father’s death and states “from this time forth my thoughts be bloody or be nothing worth” (4.4.69). From this, Hamlet has succumbed to the social influence and has vowed to avenge his father’s death.
David Scott Kastan points out that “for Hamlet, however, to accept the filial obligation sounded in his name is to disregard and dismiss all other relations he has established” (1). He is trying to convey here that if Hamlet does step up and take revenge on his father’s murderer, he would be destroying his previous relationships with anyone he knew if they found out he fought murder with murder. This worsens Hamlet’s situation, because his relations to his father are so strong he feels he must avenge him, but as Kastan suggests, Hamlet is “only the son, sworn to remember and revenge his father” (1). Hamlet, however, commits himself to his father, to symbolize him; as his son and as his agent (Kastan 1). According to the ghost King Hamlet, “to be Hamlet, to deserve the name” “is to be a revenger” (Kastan 2).
Shakespeare, William. Hamlet. Ed. Barbara A. Mowat and Paul Werstine. New York: Washington Square-Pocket, 1992. Print.
Shakespeare, William. The Three-Text Hamlet. Eds. Paul Bertram and Bernice Kliman. New York: AMS Press, 1991.
Death threads its way through the entirety of Hamlet, from the opening scene’s confrontation with a dead man’s ghost to the blood bath of the final scene, which occurs as a result of the disruption of the natural order of Denmark. Hamlet is a man with suicidal tendencies which goes against his Christian beliefs as he is focused on the past rather than the future, which causes him to fall into the trap of inaction on his path of revenge. Hamlet’s moral dilemma stems from the ghost’s appearance as “a spirit of health or a goblin damned”, making Hamlet decide whether it brings with...
Hamlet's character lends itself to a possible motivation for his unwillingness to kill Claudius. He is a scholar, and a student of theology. It is a moral dilemma for Hamlet to kill without a just cause, or kill at all. He wants proof of the part his uncle and his mother played in his father's death. His royal birth leads him to consider his responsibilities to his country, which is Hamlet's internal conflict throughout 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.
With his thinking mind Hamlet does not become a typical vengeful character. Unlike most erratic behavior of individuals seeking revenge out of rage, Hamlet considers the consequences of his actions. What would the people think of their prince if he were to murder the king? What kind of effect would it have on his beloved mother? Hamlet considers questions of this type which in effect hasten his descision. After all, once his mother is dead and her feelings out of the picture , Hamlet is quick and aggressive in forcing poison into Claudius' mouth. Once Hamlet is certain that Claudius is the killer it is only after he himself is and and his empire falling that he can finally act.
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.