Shakespeare is famous for many plays and the tragedies that fall upon them. Hamlet is a play of a young man who saw his father’s ghost who demands vengeance for his death. The hero while trying to kill his stepfather finds him trying to be a villain. What lays out for the hero can he truly avenge his father’s death? If not will he crumble and turn mad himself with all the dilemmas around him? The tears, effort, laughter, and all frustrations the audience has to go through to find about almost the whole main cast wiped out. However for Hamlet to not only avenge his father, but to stay sane through the end. While many of these problems come from the corruption of other characters, may it be forced upon them or accepting with open arms, many of the characters go mad to the end. Shakespeare uses the dramatic elements of plot, characters, and dialogue to illustrate the theme of corruption in Hamlet.
Shakespeare uses plot to show the theme of corruption. In the rising action, the spectators are revealed that Claudius is the villain, not only did he murder his own brother but married his widow only two months after her husband’s death. Polonius describes Hamlet being mad because of the fact he had been away from Ophelia. The king decides to use her against Hamlet to see if she is the reason. However, in the falling action Polonius death turns Ophelia mad making her drown. Being suspected of suicide she is scorned in death for having a Christin burial. Goldstein states, “Laertes too has so very little reason for attacking Claudius that, despite Laertes’ passionate desire for revenge, the king can manipulate and destroy him.”(71) Laertes made his decision to fight Hamlet to the death. Claudius lets Gertrude drink from the poison ...
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...hakespeare’s tragedies pull on the watcher’s heart. People will never know what will happen when one seeks revenge. If someone could succeed in getting revenge and survive would it be fulfilling? Can they say that it was a win in their book? Fulfilling or not in Hamlet revenge truly solved nothing, instead cause one to their grave early. The performance is over and as the audience leave they will remember that vengeance brings madness, corruption, and suffering to everyone involved.
Works Cited
Goldstein, Phillip. “Hamlet: Not a World of His Own.” Shakespeare Studies 1980: 71.
Literary Reference Center Plus. Web. 1 April 2014.
Shakespeare, William. “Hamlet.” Compact Literature: Reading Reacting Writing eighth edition.
Boston: Cengage, 2007. Print.
Sterling, Eric. “Shakespeare’s HAMLET.” Explicator fall 2012: 2.
Literary Reference Center Plus. Web. 1 April 2014.
The Tragedy of Hamlet is a play written by William Shakespeare about a young prince trying to avenge his father’s death. In the beginning of the play, young Hamlet is visited by the ghost of his father, who tells Hamlet that his uncle, Claudius, killed him. Meanwhile Hamlets mother, Gertrude, has gotten married to said uncle. Now it is Hamlet’s job to kill his Uncle-father to avenge his dead father, a task that may prove to daunting for Hamlet. In Shakespeare’s, The Tragedy of Hamlet, the author uses diction and syntax to make Hamlet portray himself as mentally insane when in reality, he is sane thorough the duration of the play, tricking the other characters into giving up their darkest secrets.
Hamlet also corrupted by the ghost of his father. After his father’s death, Hamlet mourned over his father and was left dark and bitter. Without even getting an adequate time to mourn he is approached by the ghost of King Hamlet. With Hamlet caught off guard by the ghost and its demands put Hamlet into turmoil. With thoughts of revenge and death, Hamlet is hesitate to make a resolve. The longer it takes for Hamlet to make a decision the greater the corruption takes control of him. The vengeance of the ghost sinks into Hamlet making is madness greater every moment that passes. Hamlet gripped with his own madness withdraws from the world. Unable to make up his mind, he hides from Claudius and won’t reproach him till his resolve is absolute. The crippling madness o...
Throughout Shakespeare’s play, Hamlet, the main character, Hamlet, must seek revenge for the murder of his father. Hamlet decides to portray an act of insanity, as part of his plan to murder Claudius. Throughout the play, Hamlet becomes more and more believable in his act, even convincing his mother that he is crazy. However, through his thoughts, and actions, the reader can see that he is in fact putting up an act, he is simply simulating insanity to help fulfil his fathers duty of revenge. Throughout the play, Hamlet shows that he understands real from fake, right from wrong and his enemies from his friends. Even in his madness, he retorts and is clever in his speech and has full understanding of what if going on around him. Most importantly, Hamlet does not think like that of a person who is mad. Hamlet decides to portray an act of insanity, as part of his plan to seek revenge for his fathers murder.
This, of course, causes a landslide of tragedy in the play. Claudius exiles Hamlet to England and sends sealed letters to the King of England telling him to kill Hamlet upon his arrival. Ophelia goes insane. Laertes, Hamlet's brother, returns from France with an army, demanding to know why Polonius was killed. Claudius enlists Laertes to kill Hamlet. Ophelia commits suicide. Hamlet and Laertes duel at her funeral; both of them are mortally wounded, Gertrude kills herself and Hamlet kills Claudius.
William Shakespeare is widely known for his ability to take a sad story, illustrate it with words, and make it a tragedy. Usually human beings include certain discrepancies in their personalities that can at times find them in undesirable or difficult situations. However, those that are exemplified in Shakespeare’s tragedies include “character flaws” which are so destructive that they eventually cause their downfall. For example, Prince Hamlet, of Shakespeare’s tragedy play “Hamlet,” is seemingly horrified by what the ghost of his father clarifies concerning his death. Yet the actions executed by Hamlet following this revelation do not appear to coincide with the disgust he expresses immediately after the ghost alerts him of the true cause of his death. Thus, it is apparent that the instilled self doubt of Prince Hamlet is as the wand that Shakespeare uses to transform an otherwise sad story to an unfortunate tragedy.
Troubled by royal treason, ruthless scheming, and a ghost, Denmark is on the verge of destruction. Directly following King Hamlet's death, the widowed Queen Gertrude remarried Claudius, the King's brother. Prince Hamlet sees the union of his mother and uncle as a "hasty and incestuous" act (Charles Boyce, 232). He then finds out that Claudius is responsible for his father's treacherous murder. His father's ghost asks Hamlet to avenge his death and Hamlet agrees. He plans very carefully, making sure that he doesn't kill Claudius when in he has already been forgiven for his sins. Hamlet accidentally kills Polonius, the King's advisor, thinking that it was Claudius hiding behind a curtain spying on Hamlet and his mother. This drives Ophelia, Polonius' daughter and Hamlet's love interest, insane. She then drowns in a suspected suicide when she falls from a tree into a river. Laertes, Ophelia's brother, teams up with Claudius and plot revenge on the strained prince.
Arriving at Ophelia’s funeral, Hamlet is faced by Laertes' rage. Laertes justly blames Hamlet for the death of Polonius and the subsequent suicide of Ophelia. Again both deaths were due to choices made by Hamlet, Polonius' murder and driving Ophelia insane.
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.
Hamlet is Shakespeare’s most famous work of tragedy. Throughout the play the title character, Hamlet, tends to seek revenge for his father’s death. Shakespeare achieved his work in Hamlet through his brilliant depiction of the hero’s struggle with two opposing forces that hunt Hamlet throughout the play: moral integrity and the need to avenge his father’s murder. When Hamlet sets his mind to revenge his fathers’ death, he is faced with many challenges that delay him from committing murder to his uncle Claudius, who killed Hamlets’ father, the former king. During this delay, he harms others with his actions by acting irrationally, threatening Gertrude, his mother, and by killing Polonius which led into the madness and death of Ophelia. Hamlet ends up deceiving everyone around him, and also himself, by putting on a mask of insanity. In spite of the fact that Hamlet attempts to act morally in order to kill his uncle, he delays his revenge of his fathers’ death, harming others by his irritating actions. Despite Hamlets’ decisive character, he comes to a point where he realizes his tragic limits.
Throughout Hamlet, each character’s course of revenge surrounds them with corruption, obsession, and fatality. Shakespeare shows that revenge proves to be extremely problematic. Revenge causes corruption by changing an individual’s persona and nature. Obsession to revenge brings forth difficulties such as destroyed relationships. Finally, revenge can be the foundation to the ultimate sacrifice of fatality. Hamlet goes to show that revenge is never the correct route to follow, and it is always the route with a dead
In Hamlet Shakespeare is able to use revenge in an extremely skillful way that gives us such deep insight into the characters. It is an excellent play that truly shows the complexity of humans. You can see in Hamlet how the characters are willing to sacrifice t...
Hamlet’s mourning about the death of his father and the remarriage of his mother drives him to madness. This is the main characters inner tragedy that Shakespeare expresses in the play. First he considers suicide but the ghost of King Hamlet sends him on a different path, directing him to revenge his death. Shakespeare uses Hamlet to articulate his thoughts about life, death and revenge. Being a moral character he must decide if revenge is the right thing to do. Shakespeare relays many scenarios of reasoning to the audience about mankind His hero sets the wrongs on mankind right again.
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.
Like all Shakespearean tragedies, Hamlet’s ending is no different in end-result. Hamlet’s separation from society and his self-imposed confusion caused by over-thinking results in the unnecessary deaths of most of the major characters. In turn, Hamlet’s pre-occupation with factors inessential to his mission of revenge slows down his action. It is this internal struggle that illustrates the intensity and complexity of Shakespeare’s revenge tragedy, something that is often looked at from a psychological perspective.
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.