Shakespearean theatre is written to mimic, either positively or negatively, human emotion and interaction. This is either done directly through the dialogue and interaction of characters, or abstractly through the use of symbols and themes. One of the most common ways William Shakespeare conveys his opinion of society is through the different personas of major characters.
In many works of literature—especially classical tragedy—no character ever achieves perfection. Something that a character has done in the past, a defective personality trait, or even something as simple as a physical quality keeps them from succeeding. In William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, no major character really wins in the end because one imperfection keeps them from doing so. Polonius’s spying leads to his demise, while Laertes’s lust for revenge turns back on him and actually kills him. In Hamlet, every character’s “tragic flaw” contributes to a decay of the overall solidity of the entire scene play, ultimately leading to an archetypal tragic ending.
This effect is similar to a dying tree. A tree may look healthy, but on the inside it is being decayed by a group of insects. The tree will continue to stand upright until at one point there is almost no fiber on the inside holding it up and it will fall over and die. In Hamlet, the “decaying” Danish court functions properly until the last scene in which everything falls apart, leading to the demise of several major characters. In fact, the entire kingdom is taken over by Fortinbras, the rival King of the adjacent country of Norway. There is no clear winner besides Fortinbras, as both the antagonist and protagonist are killed by their fatal flaws.
The decaying of the Danish court started at the beginning of the...
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...racter really “won” in the end. The ending was a sum of every character’s tragic fault. It almost seems as the court of Denmark was designed to fail, as everything that was set in motion during the play was broken down by the end. For example, Hamlet’s love with Ophelia was destroyed, and the entire kingdom was taken over by the enemy, King Fortinbras of Norway.
In conclusion, the play Hamlet constantly decays over time, leading to a tragic ending. The use of disease and decay imagery throughout the play illustrates the slow decay of the court of Denmark. The “disease” of corruption, lying, and spying spreads slowly, but causes a huge collapse at the end. The collapse is so sudden that almost every character dies within a matter of fifty spoken lines. William Shakespeare redefines the tragedy and really leaves the reader or listener with a shocking, yet fated ending.
...ut his lifetime. With all the events occurring, Hamlet goes through so much stress, pain, and suffering from which started with the murder of his father. He has tried to understand his position in life, yet every step he takes, someone always steps in front of him, and it puts him in a worst situation from which he started. A young man like he should be out studying and having fun with his friends, but his two non family related friends betray him, and follow King Claudius' ruling. His mother who he once loves dearly and felt so close to also betrays him by ending her mourn so soon and remarrying to Claudius. Everyone in Denmark has a problem, and the "unweeded" garden is not being kept in good hands, for which bad things have come. The evil in everyone has come out, and Hamlet searched and searched for a reasoning in life, to only come out with one thing, nothing.
William Shakespeare’s dramatic and poetic techniques and his use of hyperbole are used to describe the characters emotions and weaknesses. The use of dramatic irony is used to create personal conflict. This is done throughout the play to describe the characters concerns and their situations.
Hamlet. The son of a king. A man who could have had it all, but instead he chose the much more painful route of revenge and a life of bloodshed. The downfall of Hamlet is comparable to trying to hide a lie one has told. The deeper we try to cover the lie, the worse it gets and harder it becomes to do the right thing. The deeper the reader explores into Hamlets life, the messier and messier it becomes. With a mind full of suicidal thoughts and insanity with no effort to contain it can only lead one thing, and Hamlets downfall is the ultimate example. Pain, suffering, and extreme
In the beginning of the play, the title character himself, Hamlet, experiences devastation after devastation. His father, the former king of Denmark, had perished unexpectedly. Following the death of his father, his uncle, had claimed the throne and arranged to marry his brother’s wife, Gertrude. All in which took Hamlet on a whirlwind of saddened emotions, which had led up to his selfish thoughts of committing suicide. Everyone in the palace is blinded by the celebrations of a new King to take notice of Hamlet. Therefore, he finds himself secluded and hostile wandering through the palace mindlessly. “Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of the outrageous failure or to take claims against a sea of troubles, and by opposing them?” ( 3.1.58-60). Hamlet asks himself whether or not it is better to push through the
...tschmerz, which was the source of his melancholy, was what controlled him throughout the play. By diminishing his own personal ability to resolve the conflict and kill Claudius, Hamlet was moved like a puppet by his unstable emotions and (temporarily) stable surrounding people. Hamlet’s humane weakness in emotion and hope connected his character to the reader by Shakespeare’s character being instead of a man who either could or could not, a man that did not know if he could. The tragedy in Hamlet is not the death at the end of the play, but instead the lack of stability of everything at the end of play, a tribute from every other character giving in to weltschmerz, the abrupt ending sharing with the reader the same feeling of disappointment. The world becomes sad. Hamlet, perhaps asks only one thing: to find a balanced stability, one that Hamlet could not find.
To summarize, Hamlet is a play that, in the end, nobody wins. Also with everyone dead at the end of the act,
Beginning with the Greeks, tragedy has been an essential form of entertainment. Although it has changed slightly over time due to different religious and social values, it is still written and performed to this day. Perhaps the most well known tragedy of all time is Shakespeare's Hamlet. Hamlet is perhaps the epitome of all tragedy. Not only does the tragic hero Hamlet meet his demise, but all the main characters in the play at some point due to some flaw in their character, or some fatal decision, also meet the same fate. It is because of their character flaw and/or their fatal decision at some time during the play that their death can be justified.
The Shakespearean play of Hamlet captures the audience with many suspenseful and devastating themes including betrayal. Some of the most loved characters get betrayed by who they thought loved them most. The things these characters do to the people they love are wrong, hurtful and disappointing. These examples lead to the destruction of many characters physically and emotionally. The characters in the play who committed the act of betrayal end up paying for what they have done in the form of death, either from nature, their selfishness, disloyalty and madness. The act of betrayal truly captures and displays the play of Hamlet as a sad tragedy.
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...
...ith a dead body count of eight characters by the end of the play, the Great Chain of Being is finally linked together again, with Fortinbras as the leader. It is pretty clear what was “rotting the state of Denmark”, and apparently a bunch of the main characters had to die to get it back to the hierarchical order it was in with Old Hamlet. What a marvelous ending, with one big happy family – of death.
...) Laertes also falls revealing that the rapier was poisoned also and that their lives would be no more in less than an hour. He blames Claudius for the entire predicament and proclaims that he is justly slain by his own treachery. The enraged Hamlet irrepressibly stabs the king, as he forces him to drink the wine that was ironically intended to slay Hamlet. They all die as Horatio is told to remain to tell the tale of everything that's happened. The prince of Fortinbras arrives to visit Claudius as he finds everyone scattered lifeless and takes over the throne of Denmark. And so ends the tragedy of Hamlet, with his world surrounded by conspiracy and betrayal.
One of the most popular characters in Shakespearean literature, Hamlet endures difficult situations within the castle he lives in. The fatal death of his father, and urge for revenge leads Hamlet into making unreasonable decisions. In William Shakespeare’s play, Hamlet, Hamlet’s sanity diminishes as the story progresses, impacting the people around him as well as the timing and outcome of his revenge against Claudius.
Hamlet soul becomes corrupt since the beginning with the sudden marriage of his mother to his uncle, the man who killed his father. His depression is much deeper then what everyone believed. Hamlet tries to explain it to his mother and Claudius that his grief is deeper and is much more then the appearance of someone who mourns. His mother seems cold rather then understanding she tells him to get rid of the black clothes and move on, “Thou kno’st’tis common. All that lives must die passing through nature to eternity.” (1.2.74-75) Claudius too is insensitive and says he over doing it and advises him to stop his “un manly grief.” (1.2.98) This lead to the physical and mental corruption Hamlet faces. He contemplates suicide. Suicides along with murder are against Hamlets religious beliefs and are the wor...
While Hamlet is cunning, clever, and well educated, he still posses character flaws that ultimately led to his downfall. His hesitation throughout the play causes miss opportunities to take revenge against Claudius, the death of Polonius, and the revenge and death of Laertes. Likewise to his indecisiveness, Hamlet undergoes an internal battle of religious reasoning and lacks the ability to anticipate the consequences of his actions which results in the deaths of almost all the characters. While Hamlet is not solely to blame for the destruction of the Danish Monarchy, his character flaws cause a ripple effect of disastrous events which leads to death, destruction, and tragedy.
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.