The Daring and Brave Hamlet

The Daring and Brave Hamlet

Hamlet is a tragedy written by William Shakespeare. The young Prince Hamlet is the protagonist of the play and is portrayed as a very emotional soul, a daring, brave character with a violent temper.

Hamlet is a very emotional young man who struggles to cope with the death of his beloved father.

‘Tis not alone my inky cloak, good mother, / Nor customary suits of solemn black,

Nor windy suspiration of forced breath, / No, nor the fruitful river in the eye,

Nor the dejected havior of the visage, /Together with all forms, moods, shapes of grief,

That can denote me truly. These indeed seem, / For they are actions that a man might play;

But I have that within which passeth show, / These but the trappings and the suits of woe (I.i.82-91).

He lets it be known that, regardless of how grief-stricken he might outwardly appear, his appearance cannot hold a candle to how miserable he feels inside.

Claudius, speaking as one who is incapable of reaching Hamlet’s depth of emotion, mentions that Hamlet is taking the mourning of his father's death to extremes:

To give these mourning duties to your father; /But you must know,

your father lost a father;/ That father lost, lost his, and the

survivor bound/ in filial obligation for some term to do

obsequious sorrow (I.ii.94-98).

The King tells Hamlet that death is a part of the natural order of things and he should get over it. In his mental state, Hamlet is greatly disturbed by the fact that his mother does not share his sense of pain and loss. Once he learns of the murder, he berates himself for not “stepping up to the plate” and avenging his father’s death. Hamlet wonders, "How stand I then, /That have father killed, a mother stained”(IV.iv.58-59). He is asking himself what kind of a person he is if he can allow his father to be murdered and his mother to be married to his uncle so soon after his father's death.

She married. O, most wicked speed, to post/ with such

dexterity to incestuous sheets!/ It is not, nor it cannot come to

good./ But break my heart, for I must hold my tongue (I.ii.162-165)!

Hamlet feels that the marriage is not good, nor can this marriage between Claudius and Gertrude come to any good.