The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark Essays Page

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Contents 1 The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark Essays Page 1.1 Disgust in Hamlet 1.2 Hamlet's Death 1.3 Rat's Story, A Humorous Essay 2 The Beginning of an Essay 3 Hamlet, The Mad-Evil Prince

[edit] The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark Essays Page

Table of Contents

[edit] Disgust in Hamlet

[edit] Hamlet's Death

Though Hamlet's "dull revenge" sharpens with the progress of the play, his uncle's will to kill him and propensity to conspiracy appears to outweigh his desire "to quit him with this arm" under circumstances he might deem suiting the offence he has suffered. After Polonius’ death at Hamlet’s hands, Claudius lies through his teeth, and pleads for him to depart Denmark's shores "for thine especial safety." However, it is soon made obvious to the theatrical spectator that he, in fact, seeks a remedy through opportunely arranging the "the present death" of Hamlet at the hands of his English allies.

Still, despite the abundant evidence pointing to a steadily deteriorating psyche, a slow slippage into the depths of madness,(see this index), Hamlet persists and outwits the murderous schemers who are "out to get him," almost certainly buoyed by his much requited though stormy love for his "weak-but-willful" mother. However his training and education continue to defeat his will and ability to take mortal action against his uncle, shaped as they are by his years at college. Though he wills his thoughts to be "be bloody, or nothing worth," their realization and implementation continues to the end to be dampened and "sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought." It will finally be through reflex and reaction that his ever-growing and all-consuming death wish is realized.

When King Claudius tames Laertes’ passionate demand for bloody and swift vengeance after Lord Polonius' son has learned of his father’s death at Hamlet’s hands, he adds a fatal rider to the collusive agreement he wrests from the young man when he promises to entice Hamlet into a friendly contest of arms, where he might be poisoned through being touched by the poisoned blade of a dueling sword. As insurance against the possibility that Laertes does not have sufficient talent to inflict a minor wound on Hamlet, the King promises to prepare a “chalice” of poisoned wine for the young prince's refreshment.

Osric, a courtier, is recruited to convey the invitation to joust to Prince Hamlet, and though his treachery might be evidenced by his transparently dissembling manner, Hamlet agrees to join with his uncle/father and mother in the doing of the duel and the wager that accompanies it, even though his opponent Laertes must be known to him at least from the time of the funeral, and presumably much longer, and the circumstances of the contest might arouse suspicion in even a doltish and gullible person.

However, after an introduction of reconciliation and friendship, where Hamlet lays his soul open to Polonius’ son and Ophelia’s brother in a rather pathetic speech, claiming not justification in the mentally and physically mortal wounds he has thus far inflicted, but rather that he, too is a victim and has given himself up to the madness by which he is taken, the duel proceeds as planned.

Laertes inflicts the needed cut with poisoned sword, but then after a violent and stunning exchange of weapons, Hamlet uses the poisoned rapier to mortally wound his adversary, while Gertrude, ignorant of the plot, and with the intent of celebrating her son’s successes, drinks of the poisoned cup despite Claudius' warning cries. As she falls dying to the floor, Hamlet raises the alarm, and shouts for assistance. Laertes, with his dying breath, then informs on Claudius, who takes to his bosom the point of the poisoned sword held by Hamlet.

By the end of the scene, all lie dead on the jousting room floor, upon which occasion Hamlet is instantly eulogized by Horatio and the young prince whose bellicose intentions were the focus of the opening of the play. Fortinbras, just arrived with his army enroute to Norway, enters upon the scene at the very moment of his former adversary's demise, whereupon Hamlet, in his dying breath, bequeathed the crown of Denmark to him, as evidently no heirs to old King Hamlet’s line remained.

Jagtig

[edit] Rat's Story, A Humorous Essay

I am a true rat, not a figment of one of Hamlet’s bizarre imaginings. But like those, I live behind the arras, verily the one in Queen Gertrude’s apartment. It’s empty now, despoiled of her precious wardrobe, her couch and even her Royal pot. However the arras, torn and bloodied, was left behind as evidence of the despicable act which soiled the name of Denmark during the troubled times following King Hamlet’s untimely demise.

I’ve been living here since having avoided an equally untimely ending at the hands of a mad, mad scientist. Before he could wrest me from my miserable cage and cut me to bits in the interest of “science,” the Crown cracked down on his wild schemes to cause monsters, human-animal misfits, to rise from his beakers and barrels, perhaps to run amok in Denmark, but certainly to cause the King’s enemies mischief.

However, this was not to be and all involved were either jailed or destroyed, with the fortunate exception of myself who miraculously escaped to this lonely place through the intervention of the Above.

Now, I pass my days in contemplation of the Queenly belongings of its former occupant, and yearn for a download of CrimeScene by Smartdraw to round out the long hours spent begging my Eternal Keeper for a bit of rind, or the end of a tallow candle.

Oh, I’ve heard the story a dozen times, and from a dozen different sources:

The cockroaches which gleaned fallen morsels from the infamous banquet table set for both good King Hamlet’s funeral and his wicked brother and sister’s marriage told of how the cooks tried in vain to keep the carefully prepared and roasted meat palatable, despite the air of decomposition hanging over all from the time it was first put out for the guests. For their kind the result was purely remunerative, and they increased their numbers dramatically following the disgust and rejection that greeted the new king and queen’s nuptial refreshments.

The bats in the belfry, annoyed as they were by the incessant din and rumor coming from the armory. That deafening noise would cease only when Count Voltimand, the great courtier, returned from old Norway with the good news that Fortinbras, the young pretender and adventurer, had been placed under arrest by his aging king. He was lucky one to be a bearer of such glad tidings.

But the swallows by the river had only sadness to tell when first they reported the demise of Ophelia, “she who was drowned.” The females properly sided with those sympathizers who disavowed her suicidal intent, while the others were not so eager to see the protective embrace of the Church turned aside, and its Holy Law so casually flouted.

A mouse that lived in a shoe told of Hamlet’s midnight rant. The poor creature quivered and trembled in terror just to think about it, but I thought less of his horrific visions, reminded as I was of my own “Dr. Frankenstein,” whose failings thankfully included not being able to remember if today was the day to euthanize Group A or Group B, a weakness which left me among the living so today I crouch, composing soliloquies concerning the demise of the Royal Family of Denmark just a few passages in the past.

The otter and the muskrat both agree that Hamlet’s departure for England was portentous, and that his vessel appeared chosen not for its sea-worthiness and indestructibility, but rather for the reverse. As a result of this report, it was with surprise that news shortly came thereafter that not only had he and it survived a boarding of pirates, but that the leaky craft had made it to England with his perfidious companions, to be dispatched themselves through the workings of a brief scribble accompanied by the twist of a Royal signet ring in a bit of sealing wax.

None could truly agree on events attending Hamlet’s untimely return to his home and country, but his avowal to have arrived naked, not unlike like we small creatures that live in the shadows of the Almighty’s Creation, was looked on with suspicion. Denmark is a not a particularly temperate place, and even the long summer days rarely beget temperatures exceeding those of winter and spring in the South. Still, his ruse seemed to work, and he managed to remain concealed from his “uncle-father and aunt-mother” until such time as he could stand before his family and former friends with sword in hand, and that seems to my small, uncomplicated mind an indicator of some sort of lethal intent.

Laertes must have gotten a taste of his mad and melancholy temper when he was surprised by the Prince in pursuit of the grim task of his sister’s burial. But who was there to deter his savage remorse? As spake his gelded stallion, the one that carried him from Paris for the purpose of burying his father, Lord Polonius, “My sides are sore from his goadings. I’ll have none of his mortal purpose. I’ll all the sooner be a Frenchman’s dinner should his antagonists resent my unwilling and less-than-witting role in his plottings.”

Oh crap, here comes owl. Why did I ever have to go out in the garden, anyway? (Rat's last words). Jagtig

[edit] The Beginning of an Essay

Before Act V, a moral dilemma has been sketched out, each character in their own way trying to appear to be "most moral."

Except, that is for Claudius and Gertrude, who regret their actions as immoral but feel that this world will exonerate them if they but spread enough money around. But even Claudius may be redeemed by those who see his virtue as having "won the peace" through his diplomatic efforts. Gertrude holds no such hope.

Hamlet, though striving idealistically for moral supremacy (to be the "most noble"), is a creature of his environment, namely the drinking halls and dueling dens of Wittenberg.

This combination of alcohol and education with a violent heritage combine to madden him to where he is willing to sacrifice all and everything around him. He is given ample opportunity by the machinations, intrigue and spying of Claudius and Polonius. Almost anyone will agree with that assessment.

The last act combines morbidity with regret, while all navigate towards a final confrontation. This could have been on the battlefield as in MAcbeth, except none of the principle actors save Laertes had any popular support, and he forewent that and decided instead to collude with Claudius.

The protagonists follow the lead set by the Italianate play, and choose poison as their weapon and vanity as its vehicle. The Italian nobility (and this play is about nobles and only nobles) were seen as quicker to use poison to gain their ends by some. Of course, this was probably a stereotype.

In the final scene, Gertrude follows her maternal instinct to to side with her son, even though she was a proponent of the insanity charges and went along with his exile to England. Laertes at the last relinquished the poisoned sword in a dueling manuever which was quite common at the time. This was a self-destroying move, and possibly not entirely a mistake.

It seems that Hamlet's disgust, a moral sentiment if ever there was one, ultimately prevailed, and his bow to Fortinbras was a final act of total deprecation of his own house and blood.

Here's a link to my home-grown, wikia study guide, no strings attached. The You Decide page will show you how Hamlet's own opinion of himself was that he had "gone off" (his rocker). http://shakespeare.wikia.com/wiki/Hamlet_Study_Guide

[edit] Hamlet, The Mad-Evil Prince

Or, Did Shakespeare intend a Great Pun when he wrote Hamlet?

Shakespeare is and was known for his puns, word twists, double-meanings and rhetorical plays on words. The question here is did the greatest playwrite of the English language intend his greatest work as a single play on the word "Medieval?" Perhaps it's going too far to say that his intent was so entirely singular, however let's line up the raw evidence for such a huge linguistic twist.

First, the Medieval period, one of great religious outpouring, the time of the building of great cathedrals and the undertaking of the Crusades, was in decline across Europe with the onset of the Renaissance. This "re-birth of Antiquity" was a self-aware movement to renew the culture of the Ancients, focusing on the writings of the Fifth Century Athenians, particularly Plato and the playwrites, but also on those Roman naturalists and philosophers who laid the foundations for the grand estates that would someday become counties and towns across Europe.

In the days before nitrate bombs, wars, even great wars, did not necessarily cause great destruction, and much of cultural import survived the long centuries between the fall of Rome to the Vandals and the rise of the Medicis in Florence. The art, architecture and literature of both the Athenian and Roman Empires was well represented in marble, paints and parchment a thousand or more years after it was created.

As the Renaissance swept North, it met with mixed reviews. Luther and his followers found the Hellenized and Humanized Court of Pius II repellent and repugnant, but not beyond words. His theses described in detail how execrable he saw the newly reasoned practices and positions of the Church, where moral lassitude was not a bar to a rich man's way to heaven, that is if they had it in them to contribute their ill-gotten gold to the greater glory of the Church and the Papal Estate. Those artists seeking to recreate the grandeur of the Greco-Roman past in Catholic tones were most favored for this exercise in religious luxury.

England also cast a skeptical eye on the onrushing tide of artists, builders and financiers. Henry the VIII forbade the Italian userers from setting foot on England's shores. Shakespeare, casting about for the kind of material that would hold a viewer's attention for long while piquing their political sensibilities, would have been able to use the story of the Danish Prince to serve as a juxtaposing moralization of the old and the new, a commentary concerning the ways of both.

What were these ways? Let's list those deemed Medieval, while placing the Danish Prince squarely in context.

First,the Medieval outlook was such that the world was a vail of tears, and life essentially a trial for the next world. This sounds a bit like Hamlet's ramblings or soliloquies.

Then, the Medieval individual would scarcely venture outside of the walls of their town or city once in a year. Town dwellers were restricted by the city walls to their homes, the marketplace, the Church, the workshop, or the neighborhood piazza for festival events. Sometimes all functions were combined in the home, which could be a veritable fortress. A private Chapel might serve for masses, marriages and burials, itinerant vendors brought food and consumer goods to the front door, while workshops, warehouses or even a bank lined the first floor of the atrium, the courtyard around which apartments were ranged on succeeding floors, accessible by a winding ramp. Family, servants and even friends lived in the rooms and suites that opened onto the courtyard.

Hamlet appears to have been in the midst of living out such a cloistered and insular life, forever bound by the walls of Elsinore, especially after he failed to return to the University at Wittenberg, restrained as he was by the pleadings of his mother and uncle.

Next, we must consider Medieval learning. The Scholasts, those scholars and teachers deemed Medieval, believed that all things existed for the use of man, their purposes having been determined by God. Here Hamlet diverges and states that things have no use for him, "life is an unweeded garden." - I,ii,133. Is this renunciation an affirmation of Medieval theology, an expression of illness, malaise or a predisposition to do evil in the context of his familial problems?

As far as Humanistic thinking goes, he approximates the tenets of the Humanists when he states that "nothing is good or bad except thinking makes it so." - II,ii,248. Should the comment rather be taken as a brush against morality, and along with his midnight magic rant (III,ii,6), do these words appear more credible as the desportings of a medieval prince bent on Hell-making?

Where is Hamlet then clearly and perfectly a Renaissance Man? Perhaps his penchant for literature is evidence of an inclination to depart the ways of the Scholasts. The play he has chosen to stage for his extended family is Italian, his guidance of the actors is sophisticated, and the references to the Classics are purely Renaissance; overtly little shows here that might be said to be Medieval. However morality plays harkened back to the time of Chaucer, and so a dressed-up version of a story of Godless murder is not proof irrefutable of an enlightened mind or reasonable intent.

Else? The trip to England, a literary ploy which surprised me and set me to thinking along these lines, was purely out of Medieval chronicles, both of pillage and booty and pilgrimage.

Then, Hamlet's instinct for violence follows from a Medieval tradition of heraldry, single combat and ongoing martial display, a tradition which left attending a university out of the question for all save the clerics and lawyers, and for the men made nobility the equivalent of a career in the Army.

The liberal use of poison might be termed a Renaissance ploy, the quiet and studied violence of the Italians. However Hamlet poisons no one, and even his allusions to revenge have been dropped by the time of the duel. His fire has consumed him, and spent he awaits the unfolding of events, especially his parent's next move.

In conclusion, Hamlet is more believably a product of the centuries that came before Shakespeare's time, but through unhappy circumstances his character is made "mad," and through the workings of a diseased mind propelled by the force of destiny, he becomes "evil." His bad acts are the undoing, maddening and unflowering of Ophelia, and the thoughtless manslaughter of her and Laertes' father, Lord High Chamberlain Polonius.

Will Hamlet go to Heaven, as is his first and very Medieval wish? Quite possibly, that is if enough money is given the Church to finance the furnishing and decoration of a new Renaissance-style Chapel in the old Medieval Cathedral.