The Complicated Character of Hamlet

A detailed Summary of The Complicated Character of Hamlet

"Hamlet is the solitary, unknowing to all the places he will afflict. He walks about, ...he denies others by looking at them, and even without willing it spreads death about him. 'The black presence of the doubter causes this poison' " (Edwards P. on Mallarme's essay

Crayonne au Theatre (1886) in Coyle 1992,page 21)

Shakespeare, with his character of Hamlet has provided one of the most complex, though intriguing characters in the history of literature. The most striking aspect of his character is the question of whether he was really mad or just acting to his advantage, and the dilemma he faces. This dilemma is the heart and soul of the play, to choose between avenging the death of his father or to think about the consequences on the ones he so dearly loves if he follows through. This has been subject to analysis from the day many different people of different attitudes and from different times first performed it. Elizabethans would see any result of Hamlet's actions as a moral lesson whilst a modern person would see it a violent play but also as Shakespeare's most philosophical work.

In the 17th Century when the play was first performed, it was popular for the reason that belonged to the category, or genre of

While the Elizabethans saw this as a flaw, modern audiences saw this as a virtue of Hamlet's character. Jan Kott called him a despairing modern man (in Kott 1967). Today he is seen as a person whose life has been interrupted because he has been set a task which is violent and hard to swallow. It is nothing less than natural that he would keep thinking and analysing every detail of the revenge process in his head. The idea of revenge by means of death is something hard to digest, since our culture has become far more civilised in the past 400 years. The 17th Century audience would see him as a man whose duty to avenge is affected by his emotions, a contemporary audience would see him as a man's emotions which are disturbed by the promise to take on revenge. Another characteristic of the contemporary audience is that they look at the revenge aspect of the play as an extreme, such as Francis Bacon who, despite writing in the 17th Century, felt revenge "is a kind of wild justice" and that it offends the law. While the famous "to be or not to be" soliloquy may have shown to the original audience that he would not commit suicide because he would be damned to purgatory, to the modern audience symbolise his maturity, his passage into manhood because he has began to question the whole concept of death and philosophises upon it. The way he reflects on himself is a definite indication of an intelligent, highly philosophical person.

Fallen on th'inventors' heads. " (V.ii:374-379,page 203)

With Shakespeare, this construct was most certainly upheld with Hamlet's tragic flaw being his constant pondering over his actions and his reluctance to accept the vastness of the task he had promised to carry out. Also upheld by Shakespeare, is the Kydian form of a revenge tragedy, the separation into five acts, and Seneca's use of violence and blood. It was always expected for a revenge tragedy to end with all or almost all the characters being killed, and indeed this is what we get in Hamlet. Horatio in fact describes the revenge tragedy genre in the play itself at the very end:

Some common words found in the essay are:
Francis Bacon, Hamlet Horatio, Isaac Asimov, Edwards Mallarme's, Claudius Freudian, Jan Kott, Thomas Kyd, Hamlet Ophelia's, Charles Marowitz, Century Renaissance, revenge tragedy, 17th century, revenge tragedy construct, tragedy construct, modern audiences, contemporary audience, taking revenge, elizabethan view, francis bacon, 'tragic flaw', bacon despite, francis bacon despite,

Approximate Word count = 1928
Approximate Pages = 8 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: English