Name:
- Dodiya Asha .b
Roll
no: - 12
SEM:
- 1
Title:
- Hamlet as a revenge play
Paper
no: - 1(The renaissance literature)
Submitted:-Maharaja
Krishnakumarsingh university Bhavnagar.
Department
of English.
Hamlet
as a revenge play
Introduction:-
Shakespeare was a groundbreaking
pioneer in his time and wrote plays that were totally different from anything
the world had ever seen before. He explored the human spirit and what Big Willy
wrote Hamlet between 1599 and 1601, and the play tells the story of Prince
Hamlet. Hamlet, in particular, has a lot of "most famous" things in
it. It is Shakespeare's most line: "To be or not to be, that is the
question." If extraterrestrials were to visit Planet Earth, we would
probably put a copy of Hamlet in their welcome basket. It's that good. Now,
over Here I am going to consider “Hamlet” as a revenge tragedy. Before doing
so, I would like to discuss something about Elizabethan era in which the play
was written.
“Hamlet” as a revenge
play
:
During
the Elizabethan era the revenge plays were well acclaimed. Most of them were a
typical tragedy, a melodrama with so many twists and turns to keep the audience
spellbound. Shakespeare has also enriched the field of revenge plays with his
“Hamlet”. But Hamlet is certainly a great advance on The Spanish Tragedy.
Hamlet is definitely a great example of it as a revenge play quite perfectly. Hamlet
is definitely one of the greatest revenge stories ever written and it was all
influenced first by Sophocles, Euripides and other Greeks, and that were
required for the consummation of a great revenge tragedy.
Characteristics of a revenge play
and their application in “Hamlet”:
(1) Such play deals with the
theme of murder or some crime to the
person of the state.
In
this reference we can say that the central theme of the play “Hamlet” is
revenge to be taken. The play “Hamlet” is built upon the long, tragic conflict
between Hamlet and Claudius the play namely exposition, gradual development of
the plot, the suspense, climax and the catastrophe of the play is the revenge,
especially the revenge for the death of father. It is not the plot. In the play
“Hamlet” two of the characters’ fathers are brutishly murdered. The first
murdered character is King Hamlet who is supposed to be revenged by his son
prince Hamlet. Hamlet and Laertes go to seek revenge for the death of fathers,
however they will each use different methods to accomplish their deeds.
So far as the crime to the person
of the state is concerned, the king Claudius makes a secret plan to kill Hamlet
while Hamlet is in England.
(2)The ghost of the dead appears
to tell about the identity of the killer.
Generally
speaking the ghost is a part of the machinery of the revenge play, and as such
the ghost in Hamlet. The ghost is primarily connected with the motif of
revenge; and so there thing that nobody will question. The opening scene sets
the tune of the whole playa play shrouded in mystery and terror. The ghost does
indeed visible appear, but it is a shadowy figure, We can observe the subtle
skill of Shakespeare in that the ghost is not made to speak but strides away
majestically. It leaves a profound impression upon the night guards. Horatio
becomes to our state.” The ghost appears twice in the opening scene, but will
vouchsafe no reply to Horatio’s question. The speculation that the ghost
invokes Horatio has some bearing upon communicated to Hamlet.
In
“Hamlet” the Prince of Denmark is urged in very strong terms by the ghost of
the dead king to take revenge upon Claudius who has ascended to the throne by
foul means, whose guilt The real tension of the play begins as soon as the
ghost of the late tells Hamlet about his murder. Hamlet learns that his
father's death was no mistake, but it was Hamlet's uncle's take revenge upon
Claudius. So, like a typical revenge tragedy, in Hamlet a crime is committed and for various reasons laws and
justice cannot punish the crime "And so I am revenged. That would be
scanned: A villain kills my father, and for that, I, his sole son, d this same
villain send to heaven;"
In
this quote, Hamlet states that since he is his father's only son, it is up to
him to avenge his murder. This development for Hamlet comes after his encounter
with his father.
Plot overview=Major
conflict:-
Hamlet feels a responsibility to
avenge his father’s murder by his uncle Claudius but Claudius is now in hamlet
would be morally justified in taking revenge on his uncle
In Hamlet the revenge is of son
for the murder of father. Revenge the desire to retaliate for an injury is a
powerful natural and dangerous human
emotion.
-
Claudius
convinces him that hamlet is to blame for his father’s and sister’s deaths when
Horatio and the king receive letters from hamlet indicating that the prince has
returned to demark after pirater attacked his ship en route to England audios
concocts a plan to use Laertes drier for revenge to secure hamlet’s death
-
Revenge never
sleeps as Thomas kyd dramatically demonstrate in his work.
= Seneca and Thomas kyd
revenge tragedy
The Spanish tragedy and
titus and romicaus are the early
and successful examples of the dramatic use of revenge.Chief feature of
revenge play. There is much bloodshed and physical horrors.
Delay in revenge :-
Most interpreters
of hamlet s tart with the assumption that the tragic her has a clear and
sacred obligation to kill Claudius and to do so without delay .the Basic
question than is why does so much time elapse.
Hamlet had acted prompty instead
of verbalism in which he repeatedly form preastination gestured
Polonius,Reasons for his delay. Hamlet the victim of external difficultier.
Hamlet the senitimenta dreamer:-
-Leading romantic critics of the late eighteenth and eary nineteenth
centuries and gifted in many ways but incapable of positive action.
- Goethe hamlet is a young man of lovely pure and moral nature without
the strength of nerve which forms a hero .
- A.W.Schleget – “no firm belief either in himself or in anything else…
in the resolution which he so often embracer and always leaves unexecuted his
weakness in too apparent.
- chloride hamlet suffers from an “over balance of the contemplative
faculty” and like any man thereby. William Hazlitt in the 20th century Arthur quiller
church “hamlet character is the prevalence of the abstracting and generalizing
habit overs the practical.
- Hamlet the victim of the Oedipus
complex Freadin interpretations. Dr. Ernest Jones :- disciple and biographer of
signmund freud concisely stated in hamlet and Oedipus it that prince of demark
suffered from in Oedipus complex. Mr.Haery Levin:- this ingenious theory
“motivates hamlet’s delay by identitying him with Claudius through whom he has
vicariously accomplished the oedipal feat of murdering.
A summary of the play :
The main lines of
the plot of hamlet are clear hamlet prince of Denmark and heir presumptive to
the danish throne is grief stricken and plunged into melancholy by the recent
death of his father and the “o’erhasty” remarriage of his mother to her late
husband ‘s
Hamlet
is tasked with avenging his father’s horrible and unnatural murder. However, he
faces a dilemma: should he believe in the honesty of the ghost? The ghost might
be a devil. By nature a thinker and truth-seeker, his first step is to evaluate
the truth of the ghost’s command, but this self-examination causes delay.
Moreover, his extreme depression at his mother’s detestable remarriage, and the
fact that Claudius was elected king, has served to make him sarcastic and
disbelieving.
A chain of circumstances provides a series of
obstacles that Hamlet first has to overcome in order to achieve his revenge.
This however, affects Hamlet on a spiritual level, as he accepts that both good
and evil exist in the world, and that there is a fitness in performing his duty
of revenge. His nobility and balance is at constant war with each other from
the beginning to the end of the play. The ethical concerns Hamlet has for
Claudius and Gertrude are plain to see, at the time, the church considered marriage
to a sister in law tantamount to incest. Hamlet’s ethical concerns surrounding
his mother’s sudden remarriage is overtly expressed when Gertrude asks Hamlet
at her wedding,
"If
it be, why seems it so particular with thee?" Hamlet disputes Gertrude’s
charge that he is being hypocritical, "Seems, madam? Nay, it is, I know
not ‘seems’…"
For him, she is the one who has
shown hypocrisy and he does not agree with her ‘seems’ Whereas, Hamlet’s social concerns for Denmark
is purely centered around the king and the influence he might have on the rest
of the kingdom. Hamlet makes use of an ambiguous pun that depicts his dislike
towards Claudius’s insincerity and Claudius’s attempt to polish over what has
happened. Hamlet displays clear hostility, "A little more than kin, and less
than kind", Hamlet is more than close
in relationship to Claudius an uncle and a ‘father’, but He resents him and has
no feelings of liking and kinship for Claudius.
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