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Action Analysis on Hamlet by William Shakespeare
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Shakespeare, often called the national poet of England, occupies a unique position in the world of literature and no writer’s reputation can compare to that of Shakespeare. He was considered as the greatest dramatist of all times and the plays he wrote in the early 16th and 17th centuries are now read and performed in almost every country of the world. Shakespeare loved to include violent and traumatizing scenes in his plays which had lasting effects on the audience. Hamlet is one of the celebrated tragic action plays and considered as Shakespeare's masterpiece. It is one major classic, also called the revenge play, where a person takes revenge from those who wronged him. The acts of the play are full of violent actions and bloodshed. In the play, Hamlet’s decisions accelerate the action of the drama and put all characters in a loop of tragedies. After knowing about his father’s murderer, he was bound to take decisive action and fueled the many ongoing conflicts in the play.
Actions start from within the mind of Hamlet and the conflicts that drive the plot of Hamlet are entirely eternal. Hamlet struggles with his doubts and uncertainties and is always in the state of thinking about revenge but his thoughts never supported his actions and he failed to act appropriately in many scenes of the play. His famous monologue in Act three “To be, or not to be”, is about his decision whether to act or not ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM CSL_CITATION {"citationID":"f3nf4Q0F","properties":{"formattedCitation":"(Shakespeare, 2010)","plainCitation":"(Shakespeare, 2010)","noteIndex":0},"citationItems":[{"id":100,"uris":["http://zotero.org/users/local/bWNXhCgk/items/ENJ27JWX"],"uri":["http://zotero.org/users/local/bWNXhCgk/items/ENJ27JWX"],"itemData":{"id":100,"type":"book","title":"Hamlet","publisher":"Mizzou Publishing - The Mizzou Store","number-of-pages":"188","source":"Google Books","ISBN":"978-1-61600-218-3","note":"Google-Books-ID: UIhvvQEACAAJ","language":"en","author":[{"family":"Shakespeare","given":"William"}],"issued":{"date-parts":[["2010"]]}}}],"schema":"https://github.com/citation-style-language/schema/raw/master/csl-citation.json"} (Shakespeare, 2010). But when he does act, he does not think of the controlled and purposeful ways of doing it, rather he prefers to do it blindly. However, the other characters think less about action and simply act upon things that are appropriate to them. Therefore, they are not affected by the results of their actions. They do not think rather they just do it. Thus, this play falls greatly under the category of action because every character, in one way or another is involved in some kind of action that becomes the reason for plot twist and acceleration.
Based on the action, this play has many prominent themes which can be thoroughly discussed and analyzed. For example, death is considered the primary theme of Hamlet by many distinguished critics throughout the years. The play revolves around death and one can observe that the plot of the play starts with the murder of Hamlet’s father who was the king of Denmark. Hamlet, like the play, is a death-obsessed person which means he wanted to kill all the people who contributed to his father’s death. However, Hamlet has a strange desire to die especially after his father’s death but at the same time, he fears it too. He is always in the state of planning a death plan for his uncle, Claudius, who according to Hamlet killed his father and is a murderer. He also arranges the death of two of the characters ‘Polonius and Ophelia’.
When Hamlet knew about the murderer of his father through the revelation from his father’s ghosts, he became active and determined to kill his uncle ‘Claudius’ who married his mother right after his father’s death. This marriage was more for a political purpose but Hamlet was not ready to accept this fact and did not think of putting the idea of revenge down. What matters to him was the message brought by the ghosts of his father. In such a madness Hamlet killed a man behind a curtain thinking of him as Claudius. This man called Polonius, was the father of his beloved Ophelia, whom he was madly in love with. Hamlet does not seem to forget his father and his tremendous grief is intensified by his mother's cold-hearted actions.
The memories of late father tortured him which resulted in him becoming a vengeful person. As in the play he praises his father, “So excellent a king, that was to this Hyperion to a satyr, so loving to my mother”. He thus develops a disgust for Claudius and all the people associated with him. Likewise, Polonius who was the garrulous Lord Chamberlain of Denmark and father of once-cherished Ophelia, was mistakenly killed by Hamlet because he saw him eavesdropping behind the curtains. The death of Polonius puts Ophelia under depression which Hamlet never wanted. She always wanted to be with Hamlet because she adored him a lot but the actions of Claudius and Gertrude have tainted Hamlet’s thoughts and feelings towards women. He saw his mother marrying his uncle and ruining all the love his father once showed to her.
All his love was dried up because of his mother and now he could not trust another woman and destroys Ophelia with his harsh behaviour and cruelty which was almost unbelievable. His rage was fueled by his mother’s betrayal. Thus, he constantly mistreated her and disrespected her which ultimately resulted in Ophelia's death. This kind of cold-hearted behaviour of Hamlet and her vulnerabilities compelled Ophelia to commit suicide by drowning which later gave rise to another revenge. Laertes, Ophelia's brother vows to take revenge for his sister's and father's death. When he came to know that Hamlet is the reason why his father and sister died, he stabs Hamlet with a poisoned blade but he failed in the attempt to kill him. He then wounds himself and died at the spot.
Since death is the cause of consecutive acts of revenge, it turns its way towards Gertrude, who drinks the poisoned wine and dies. All of this started from a desire to kill Claudius and went of sweeping away all the characters. Claudius knew that he has come under the rage of Hamlet and his cunning will not save him from death. There is no other way to escape than to face his revengeful behaviour but he did not miss any chance to kill Hamlet and poisoned a cup intended for him. Hamlet in full rage kills Claudius and pours the poison down his throat. After the death of Claudius, Hamlet undergoes in a strange state where he thinks of committing suicide. But the thought of it as morally legitimate action stops him doing so. He considers suicide as a way to escape from the things he did to take revenge. The lack of action on hamlet's side leads to his death t the end of the play.
The sheer number of dead bodies at the end of the play can be surprising but not unexpected. The death of eight primary characters did not clear the idea of mortality rather it presented revenge as an evil act of human behaviour. Death decided all their fate and nothing was left behind by the characters. It was just their life that mattered but now at the end, every character learned to bear with the uncertainties that come along with death.
References
ADDIN ZOTERO_BIBL {"uncited":[],"omitted":[],"custom":[]} CSL_BIBLIOGRAPHY Shakespeare, W. (2010). Hamlet. Mizzou Publishing - The Mizzou Store.
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