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Shakespeare's Hamlet

This study will examine the theme, characters, and plot of Shakespeare's Hamlet, focusing on ways that the playwright uses these elements in developing the tragedy of the work. Specifically, the study will concentrate on Hamlet as the heart and soul of the tragedy, and the ways that the other literary factors of the play grow out of his character. The tragedy of Hamlet and his society is the tragedy of the corruption of the human condition. Aside from the character of Fortinbras, there is little in the play which is not thoroughly corrupted and degraded.

At the same time, it is clear that Shakespeare is trying to say something special, something mysterious with such a strange character as Hamlet. It is too easy and very misleading to simply say that Hamlet thought too much and did not take the necessary action as soon as he should have.

The play is about the damage that is done when the people and the society live by lies rather than by truth, when they live with self-interest as the guiding light and refuse to recognize the corruption in their hearts and all around them in society and government. The characters of Hamlet and the others, aside from Fortinbras, the theme of human and social corruption, and the plot of murder and deception---all these factors are rooted in lies.

As Germaine Greer writes, even the attempts of Hamlet to fully and completely expose Claudius as the killer of his father, attempts to expose the lies and proclaim the truth, are themselves mired in lies. Greer discusses the play-within-the-play which Hamlet devises to draw out Claudius' guilty conscience:

The action that Hamlet mounts is extremely formal, with its elaborate dumb show, its Prologue, and its long speeches in rhyming couplets. What is contained within this stylized structure is the "occulted [hidden] truth" that is causing the disease of Denmark. All around Hamlet, Elsinore is presenting feigned actions of a more naturalistic va...

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Shakespeare's Hamlet. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 10:54, March 29, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1681559.html