Hamlet: Shakespearean Tragedy

“To be or not to be” (3.1.56) the famous lines known far and wide from William Shakespeare's Hamlet. The play, Hamlet, is about how King Hamlet of Denmark has died and his son Prince Hamlet returns for his funeral only to hear that the guards have seen the ghost of his father. This mysterious appearance intrigues the young Hamlet and so he goes to see the ghost and when he does, the ghost tells him that he is the spirit of his late father and that he did not die naturally. Continuing on the ghost tells Hamlet that he was actually murdered by his brother and Hamlet’s Uncle Claudius. Vowing to avenge his father’s death Hamlet sets out upon elaborate schemes to confirm that Claudius did indeed kill his father. As the play progresses Hamlet slowly seems to become insane, during one of his rampages while he was with his mother, he stabbed Polonius through a curtain killing him. Polonius’ death set Laertes, Polonius’ son, on revenge on the murderer and in doing so Claudius and Laertes joined in arms to make Hamlet disappear from the world. To ensure Hamlet would die Laertes poisoned his fencing sword and Claudius poisoned a chalice. In the end they all died from poisoning from the sword or from the chalice. Shakespeare provided dimension upon dimension for Hamlet, he created a character as real as could be. His character was an educated witty, indecisive, suicidal, and insane gentleman.

Hamlet’s sarcasm portrays his personality with the dark style that he uses and it helps Hamlet as a character better be understood because one can enter his mind. The majority of sarcasm in his responses are so full of meaning that the one receiving it will not understand. Through the use of sarcasm Hamlet manages to survive in his life which has been tu...

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...ndencies. Thoughts of suicide affected the decisions Hamlet made in how he pursued his revenge for his father. Combined with his indecisiveness Hamlet made decisions that were questionable. At times he would throw all caution to the wind and do something insane like agree to the duel with Laertes and at other times he would be incredibly cautious and retreat back to think about his actions. An example of such was when he could’ve killed Claudius but he decided not to for his image. The indecision that Hamlet had was his greatest flaw. If he had not been indecisive he would’ve been able to exact his revenge upon Claudius without the unnecessary deaths of Polonius, his mother, himself, Laertes, Guildenstern, Rosencrantz, Ophelia, and so on. Unfortunately, Hamlet was a weak man, mentally he began as a giant however progressing through the play he succumbs to a dwarf.