Analysis Of Revenge In Hamlet

William Shakespeare’s play Hamlet contains a number of different themes including revenge, conflict, death and procrastination which are used to dramatize the story of Prince Hamlet of Denmark. The play depicts the story of how Prince Hamlet seeks revenge against his uncle Claudius who killed Hamlet’s father the old king, and then married his mother, Queen Gertrude. The play contains a number of other themes which contribute to the development of the story which illustrate the complexity of the play and the meaning that Shakespeare wanted to convey. However, this paper will attempt to argue that revenge is the most plausible of all of the themes which are contained in the play. In order to achieve these aims an in depth analysis of the text will be conducted in order to determine the extent to which Hamlet can be considered as a tragedy with revenge as its most plausible theme. Throughout the course of writing this paper a considerable amount of background research has been conducted into the various themes which are contained within Hamlet as well as an examination of academic opinion as to the most important and plausible themes in the play. This information along with the text of the play will therefore be cited accordingly during this paper in order to support the arguments which will be presented. Finally a balanced conclusion will be drawn which will present the main findings of the paper and determine the extent to which revenge can be considered as the most plausible theme of Hamlet.

The first main section of this paper will therefore attempt to analyze how Hamlet could be considered as a Shakespearean revenge play and will also attempt to define the concepts of tragedy and revenge as presented in Shakespeare’s most famous...

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...venge while being set in tragic circumstances that creates a central protagonist who attempts to revenge his father’s death on a number of occasions before being forced into a conflict which determines the outcome of the play. The nature of these circumstances and the ways in which Hamlet deals with revenge, which subsequently causes the death of a number of the central characters ensures that Hamlet remains one of Shakespeare’s most famous and important works. The theme of revenge is therefore the most plausible theme of the play and it links together all of the other themes such as conflict, death and procrastination as well as the characterization of the protagonist. Hamlet must be considered as one of Shakespeare’s most important works because of the focus on the theme of revenge which dominates all of the aspects of the play, its characters and its story-lines.