Hamlet's view of death morphs through the course of the play as he is faced with various problems and troubles that force him to deal with life differently. This holds particular significance for a modern audience who, unlike the predominately Christian audiences of Shakespeare's time, contains an assortment of perspectives on the subject. For the majority of the play, Hamlet yearns for death, but there are different tones to his yearning as he confronts death in different circumstances; from his encounter with his father's ghost to the discovery of his beloved Ophelia dead in the ground, Hamlet feels an irrepressible urge to end his life. There are obstacles that get in his way, both internal and external, and Shakespeare's play is an account of Hamlet's struggle with them.
When we first meet Hamlet, he is moping around Elsinore Castle on account of his father's recent death and his mother's more recent marriage to his uncle. In the first act of the play, it has been two months since King Hamlet was laid in the ground—a fairly short time ago in terms of grief, but not so long that family members could not conceivably begin their lives again, as Hamlet's mother has done in marrying her late husband's brother. Hamlet is still in mourning clothes, is wholly fixated on the loss of his father, and is positively mortified and revolted by his mother's apparent indifference. In the play's first conversation between Hamlet and his newlywed parents, they chide him for his "obstinate condolement" for his father (1.2.93). They believe that "Hamlet's long mourning for his father is against not only the rule of nature, grace, or grace, but also heaven" (Hassel 612). Thinking of death makes Hamlet an unpleasant person for the newlywe...
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Gottschalk, Paul. "Hamlet and the Scanning of Revenge." Shakespeare Quarterly, 24.2 (1973): 155-170. JSTOR Database. 13 Nov. 2009 .
Hassel, Chris, Jr. "Hamlet's 'Too, Too Solid Flesh." The Sixteenth Century Journal, 25.3 (1994): 609-622. JSTOR Database. 13 Nov. 2009 < http://www.jstor.org/stable/2542637>.
Russell, John. "Dust and Divinity: Hamlet's Fractured World." Hamlet and Narcissus. Cranbury, N.J.: Associated University Presses, 1995. 39-50. Rpt. in Shakespearean Criticism. Ed. Michelle Lee. Vol. 92. Detroit: Gale, 2005. 39-50. Literature Resource Center. Gale. 14 Nov. 2009 .
Shakespeare, William. Hamlet. The Bedford Introduction to Drama. Ed. Jacobus, Lee A. 6th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2009. 340-393.
Bradley, A.C. "Shakespeare's Tragic Period--Hamlet." Shakespearean Tragedy: Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth. Toronto: MacMillan, 1967.
Shakespeare, William. "Hamlet." Madden, Frank. Exploring Literature. 4th ed. New York: Pearson Longman, 2009. Print 539-663
To begin with, Hamlet starts off his speech asking, “Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer/ The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune/ Or to take arms against a sea of troubles/ And by opposing end them” (Shakespeare 3.1.57-60). He wonders if he would be more noble if he took his own life and end his sorrows than if he continued to endure him. This question shows the pain and grief that Hamlet has experienced since the death of his father. According to Ophelia, later in Act 3 Scene 1, she reveals that Hamlet was once the obvious successor to the throne since he was charismatic and admired by the people. Clearly, in this part of the play, he is suicidal, and he is uncertain about many of the big decisions in his life. This extreme change in Hamlet’s behaviors makes the audience worry about Hamlet’s mental health. Is his feigned madness transforming into true insanity? However, his comparison to death and sleep suggests that Hamlet is in a state of reflection and learning. Hamlet’s analogy between death and sleep is the musings of an ordinary man who wonders what happens to a soul once its body dies. Just as no one knows what dreams they will experience when they lay in bed, no knows what they will experience when their body is finally laid in a grave.
Hamlet (The New Folger Library Shakespeare). Simon & Schuster; New Folger Edition, 2003.
Beauregard, David. “Great Command O’ersways The Order”: Purgatory, Revenge, And Maimed Rites In Hamlet.” Relgion & The Arts 11.1 (2007): 45-73.
Bradley, A.C. "Shakespeare's Tragic Period--Hamlet." Shakespearean Tragedy: Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth. Toronto: MacMillan, 1967.
Goldman, Michael. "Hamlet and Our Problems." Critical Essays on Shakespeare's Hamlet. Ed. David Scott Kaston. New York City: Prentice Hall International. 1995. 43-55
Mack, Maynard. "The World of Hamlet." Yale Review. vol. 41 (1952) p. 502-23. Rpt. in Readings on The Tragedies. Ed. Clarice Swisher. San Diego: Greenhaven Press, 1996.
Sadness is the first emotion that is usually related to death. In the play, Hamlet does not try to disguise his sorrow after his father’s murder. This sadness is intermingled with disgust for the others around him who moved on with their grief and criticized him for continuing to mourn. After being criticized by Gertrude and Claudius, Hamlet chooses to talk to open space to reveal his feelings (1.2.129-158). Hamlet clearly shows the sadness in his heart, as well as the idea of bitterness. He continually attacks his mother’s quick grieving: “O God, a beast that wants discourse of reason / would have mourned longer” (1.2.150-151). This sadness continues in his fake madness, seeping into conversations that show his need for escape. In a confrontation with Polonius, Hamlet ends the con...
Shakespeare, William. Hamlet. The Norton Anthology of World Literature. 2nd ed. Vol. C. Ed. Sarah Lawall. New York: Norton, 2005. Print.
Shakespeare’s Hamlet is a tragic play about murder, betrayal, revenge, madness, and moral corruption. It touches upon philosophical ideas such as existentialism and relativism. Prince Hamlet frequently questions the meaning of life and the degrading of morals as he agonizes over his father’s murder, his mother’s incestuous infidelity, and what he should or shouldn’t do about it. At first, he is just depressed; still mourning the loss of his father as his mother marries his uncle. After he learns about the treachery of his uncle and the adultery of his mother, his already negative countenance declines further. He struggles with the task of killing Claudius, feeling burdened about having been asked to find a solution to a situation that was forced upon him.Death is something he struggles with as an abstract idea and as relative to himself. He is able to reconcile with the idea of death and reality eventually.
William Shakespeare: Hamlet. Ed. Susanne L. Wofford. Case Studies in Contemporary Criticism. Boston: St. Martin's, 256-282.
The weight of one's mortality and the complexities of life and death are introduced from the beginning of Hamlet. In the wake of his father's death, Hamlet can't stop pondering and considering the meaning of life — and its eventual ending. Many questions emerge as the text progresses. What happens when you die? If you're murdered, then will you go to heaven? Do kings truly have a free pass to heaven?
Hamlet is one of the most often-performed and studied plays in the English language. The story might have been merely a melodramatic play about murder and revenge, butWilliam Shakespeare imbued his drama with a sensitivity and reflectivity that still fascinates audiences four hundred years after it was first performed. Hamlet is no ordinary young man, raging at the death of his father and the hasty marriage of his mother and his uncle. Hamlet is cursed with an introspective nature; he cannot decide whether to turn his anger outward or in on himself. The audience sees a young man who would be happiest back at his university, contemplating remote philosophical matters of life and death. Instead, Hamlet is forced to engage death on a visceral level, as an unwelcome and unfathomable figure in his life. He cannot ignore thoughts of death, nor can he grieve and get on with his life, as most people do. He is a melancholy man, and he can see only darkness in his future—if, indeed, he is to have a future at all. Throughout the play, and particularly in his two most famous soliloquies, Hamlet struggles with the competing compulsions to avenge his father’s death or to embrace his own. Hamlet is a man caught in a moral dilemma, and his inability to reach a resolution condemns himself and nearly everyone close to him.
In the tragedy of Hamlet Shakespeare does not concern himself with the question whether blood-revenge is justified or not; it is raised only once and very late by the protagonist (v,ii,63-70) and never seriously considered. The dramatic and psychological situation rather than the moral issue is what seems to have attracted Shakespeare, and he chose to develop it, in spite of the hard-to-digest and at times a little obscure, elements it might involve [. . .] . (118-19)