Elizabethan Tragedy

A detailed Summary of Elizabethan Tragedy

William Shakespeare's Hamlet very closely follows the dramatic conventions of revenge in Elizabethan theater. All revenge tragedies originally stemmed from the Greeks, who wrote and performed the first organized plays. After the Greeks came the Roman, Seneca, who had a great influence on all Elizabethan tragedy writers. Seneca basically laid the foundation for the ideas and the norms for all Renaissance tragic revenge playwrights, including William Shakespeare. The two most famous Elizabethan revenge tragedies were "Hamlet", written by William Shakespeare, and "The Spanish Tragedy", written by Thomas Kyd. These two plays used many of the Elizabethan conventions for revenge tragedies in their plays. Hamlet incorporated all revenge conventions in one way or another, which presented "Hamlet" as the model for Elizabethan drama. "Shakespeare's Hamlet is one of many heroes of the Elizabethan and Jacobean stage who finds himself grievously wronged by a powerful figure, with no recourse to the law, and with a crime against his family to avenge."

Seneca was among the greatest classical tragedy authors and many educated Elizabethans had read his works and his biography. There were different stylistic devices that Elizabethan playwrights

After the ghost persuades the revenger to commit his deed, an initial hesitation occurs, then a delay before the main character kills the original murderer. The revenger or his trusted accomplices must carry out the revenge, no matter what the cost. The revenger and his accomplices may also die at the moment of success, or even during the course of revenge, in order to fulfill the original "Senecan formula".

In Hamlet, Shakespeare follows convention for a majority of the play. At the beginning, Shakespeare constructs the scene, having a ghost appear on a dark night and eerie night. Everyone is working and something strange is happening in Denmark. It is as if Shakespeare is alluding to the fact that some kind of foul play has been committed. This builds towards the major theme of the play, revenge for an unlawful death. The ghost, which is the spirit of Hamlet's father, appears to speak directly to Hamlet. It is quite obvious that a gruesome, violent death has occurred, and revenge is being sought. The sexual aspect of the play is clearly introduced when Claudius, Hamlet's uncle, marries Hamlet's mother Gertrude. The ghost commissions Hamlet as the person who will take revenge upon Claudius. Hamlet must now think of how to take revenge on his uncle, although he doesn't know what to do about the situation as a whole. He ponders the possibilities for a long period of time, initially expecting to carry out the deed immediately, but instead he churns the thought over and over until the end of the play.

It is easily understood that "Hamlet" very closely follows the regular conventions for all Elizabethan tragedies. First, Hamlet is faced with the fact that he has to avenge the murder of his father and, since there is no true justice available, he must find vindication on his own. The ghost appears to guide Hamlet to Claudius and inform Hamlet of the evil that Claudius has committed. At that point, Hamlet delays his revenge and always finds a way to put it off. Finally, in Act V, Scene 2, Hamlet carries out the revenge of his father's death. Hamlet, at the same time, continues to keep a close relationship with the audience through his seven main soliloquies including the famous "To be, or not to be..."(Act 3 Scene 1). The play also consists of a madness scene in which Ophelia has gone mad because her father Polonius had been killed, and because Hamlet was sent off to England. The sexual aspect of the play was brought in when Claudius married Gertrude after he had dreadfully killed Old Hamlet and assumed his throne.

One important part of all revenge plays is that after the revenge is finally decided upon, the tragic hero delays the actual revenge until the end of the play. Hamlet's delay of killing Claudius takes on three distinct stages. First, he had to prove that the ghost was actually telling the truth, and he proved it by staging the play "The Mousetrap" at court. When Claudius stormed out in a fit of rage, Hamlet was then sure of his uncle's guilt. The second stage took place when Hamlet could have killed Claudius while he was confessing the murder to God. If Hamlet had done it at that moment, then Claudius would have gone to heaven because he confessed while Hamlet's father was in purgatory. Hamlet therefore decided not to murder Claudius at this point in the play, because the revenge would not be complete. The third delay was due to the fact that outside forces distracted Hamlet. Hamlet accidentally killed Polonius, which created a whole new problem because Laertes, Polonius's son, now wanted Hamlet dead. After he commits this accidental murder, Hamlet was also sent away, and was unable to see the king for another few weeks until he could finally do the job. "What makes Hamlet stand out from many other revenge plays of the per

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Approximate Word count = 2547
Approximate Pages = 10 (250 words per page double spaced)

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