Hamlet Analytical Essay

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Recommended: How does Shakespeare use literary devices to talk about revenge

Many a Shakespearean scholar would claim that the Bard carries the genre of revenge tragedy to its near perfect peak in Hamlet, a goal toward which he had been working for quite some time since his writing Titus Andronicus. As with all literary research, one finds it interesting to investigate such a claim–can we be so sure? Is Hamlet’s revenge structure truly “perfect” in the traditional sense? It would be surprising to think so after reading the final act of Hamlet, where after hours of rumination and careful planning for his ultimate revenge against Claudius, our title character carries out his plan in an almost hurried and highly messy fashion. Truly, the quick and brash poisoning of Claudius–the man who killed his own brother (Hamlet’s …show more content…

Trapped by the demands of what revenge tragedy calls for, we are left with a character who is fundamentally wrong for the world crafted around him and for the task to which he is assigned, the task of murdering his uncle. As such, Hamlet is so often aware of his inability to fulfill the expectations set by both plot and by audience, and throughout the beginning of the play he criticizes himself for his hesitancy: “Oh, what a rogue and peasant slave am I!/Is it not monstrous that this player here,/But in fiction, in a dream of passion,/Could force his soul so to his own conceit/That from her working all his visage waned” (2.2.509-13). Here, Hamlet feels himself to be placed in a world–the world of the play–where he, as a player, must force himself to experience and act upon false feelings that are considered more appropriate to the revenge drama. In fact, he seems to be very wary of his being unfit from the outset, hence why he says “The time is out of joint, O cursed spite,/That ever I was born to set it right!” (1.5. 190-1) in response to the Ghost’s call for vengeance. Hamlet knows that the play and its players have called him to action, but as an inherently thoughtful and philosophical character, he realizes he has assumed a role beyond his scope and ability. Indeed, this dilemma then becomes the crux of Hamlet’s internal struggles for the remainder of the

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