Act 1 as an Effective Opening to Hamlet by William Shakespeare
The play Hamlet is a dramatic love story written by William
Shakespeare. It is set in the late sixteenth century. Most scenes take
place in the grounds of the Danish castle at Elsinore. The play has
many characters, and the main ones are members of the royal family or
were close to them. It is a very long, complicated story that twists
into a tragic end.
The main characters are Hamlet, Gertrude, Claudius, King Hamlet,
Polonious and his two children, Laertes and Ophelia. In this essay I
will be analyzing and discussing the opening scenes of Hamlet and the
use of dramatic effects and techniques. The main themes I will be
looking for are appearance and reality.
Scene I introduces an effective opening to the play. The scene is set
at the castle grounds of Elsinore. It is bitterly cold "Tis bitter
cold, and I am sick at heart" and it is twelve o'clock "Tis now struck
twelve". This creates an effective opening, as we know it will be
dark, and nighttime is useful for portraying supernatural or evil
occurrences. The audience will there for be prepared or expecting a
supernatural being. The use of short, snappy sentences indicates a
mood of fear, as if the characters are unsure of what is happening.
This would be dramatic for an audience as it creates a large amount of
instant suspense.
The guards start talking about strange occurrences "What has the thing
appeared again tonight?" They claimed to have seen a ghost "What we
have two nights seen", but Horatio was sceptic, and didn't believe in
ghosts until he saw them "Tush, tush, twill not appear". This brings a
supern...
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audience and the characters. This is why Shakespeare is so clever with
his works, as he can play with them mind of the audience through the
use of acting. The whole theme of appearance and reality relates
throughout the whole of the play, as each character hides many secrets
that are all unfolded at the end. Most appearance that are put on,
relate around Hamlet. For example, Claudius and Gertrude (who are
spying themselves) pay some old school friends of Hamlet to spy on
him. Hamlet soon uncovers what they were up to. This theme of
appearance and reality relates to many deaths as well. The play
finishes up with all the main characters dead, due to conspiracy
behind characters backs, that, only the audience knew about. This in
turn with deception created a perfect atmosphere of tension,
expectancy and anxiety.
My so called friends Rosencrantz and Guildenstern whom I know from Wittenberg were invited by my mother and Claudius to spy on me because they were concerned with my behavior and my apparent inability to recover from my father’s death. Claudius wasn’t only worried about me but also worried that Prince Fortinbras’s would attack Denmark thankfully he only asks if his armies could be allowed safe passage through Denmark on their way to attack the Poles. Relieved to have averted a war with Fortinbras’s army, Claudius gives him permission to only pass by. When I saw my friends have arrived I asked why they came to visit they lied and said just to see me I knew my mother and her king were behind this so I didn’t worry much
My mother told Claudius that I murdered Polonius. Claudius told Gertrude that they must ship me to England at once and find a way to explain my misdeed to the court and to the people and sent them to find me. After I safely stowed Polonius’s body Rosencrantz and Guildenstern found me and asked me where I placed the body. I refused to give them a straight answer. Feigning offense at being questioned, he accuses them of being spies in the service of Claudius. I agreed to allow Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to escort him to Claudius. All Claudius did was tell everyone why he was sending me to England. After I left with Rosencrantz, and Guildenstern on our way to the ship bound for England, we ran into the captain of Prince
Hamlet Soliloquy Act 1, Scene 2. The play opens with the two guards witnessing the ghost of the late king one night on the castle wall in Elsinore. The king at present is the brother of the late king, we find out that king Claudius has married his brother’s wife and thus is having an incestuous relationship with her, and her love. We also learn that Claudius has plans to stop.
Act 3 Scene 4, so called the closet scene, is the first time we see Hamlet and Gertrude together alone. In this scene Hamlet releases his anger and frustration at his mother for the sinful deed she has committed i.e. her marriage to her brother-in-law and the murderer. We can see that Gertrude is unaware of her husband's murder when she says `As kill a King?' and it is the first time she confronts her own behavior. There is a conflict between the two; Hamlet gives powerful replies
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.
The song “When It’s Sleepy Time Down South”, may possibly portray Holiday’s sadness and experience during the Great Depression. The line “Homesick, tired, all alone in a big city” can be ...
In “Hamlet,” Shakespeare commendably conveys a, if you will, a “love story” between the major characters in the play. Hamlet, Gertrude and Claudius are the individuals he writes about. In this story, Gertrude must choose between her son, a loyal, sincere male figure in her life that has always supported and loved her, or a man who can offer her power and fulfill her dependency trait, which one may say is what she has always strived to attain. Gertrude’s inability to see the bigger picture of King Claudius’ deceit and ill morals is what makes Gertrude a weak and submissive character. While Gertrude means no harm, her poor judgment contributes significantly to the rotten events that occur throughout the play. The choices Gertrude does make ultimately leads to her death and the downfall of the ones she loves as well.
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.
Shakespeare’s Hamlet revolves around the title character’s undeniable obligation to immediately avenge his father’s death by killing Claudius. Yet much time elapses before Hamlet finally does slay his evil uncle, leading to a fundamental question: what causes the hero to delay before eventually managing to salvage some retribution? The answer is that Hamlet’s reoccuring state of impractical contemplation renders him incapable of any decisive action that could have brought quick revenge.
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It was a cold, dark morning when the phone rang. It was boisterously loud and the clock read six o'clock. The deafening noise jolted us again, and there was only one way to make it stop. Chris picked up the phone and in a tired, drowsy voice, answered, "Hello."
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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.
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