Particular in the major soliloquies

There are many differences between audiences of today and Elizabethan audiences that influence the context within which the play is appreciated. In Elizabethan times there was no scenery, the audience had to imagine what was happening. Audiences today have to use less imagination because we have electronics to help us. The Elizabethans had to put more into watching a play, so play watching was far more interactive. Today we can even go to the cinema to see a version of a play.

The seating in Elizabethan times was slightly different from seating today. For one penny a person could get a space in the yard, these people were called "groundlings", for two pennies a person could sit in the galleries (on hard wooden chairs), this would usually consist of middle class people. Rich families would pay three pennies for seats in the galleries where they had cushions to sit on. Today there are different seats of luxurious standard and there are different prices for them but no one is left standing in the yard. Theatres in the Elizabethan era were usually theatres in the round. This meant that there was room for people to stand around the s

At the end of a scene in Shakespearean times a rhyming couplet would have to be listened for. This was how the audience knew that the scene was ending. Today audiences watch for scene changes or falling curtains. This is an easier method of letting the audience know the scene is ending.

I view Hamlet as a self-centered coward who suffers from depression. Because of the depression Hamlet suffers and because he is selfish he does not commit murder until his anger gets the better of him.

On watching performances of the play this was my opinion; in Laurence Oliviers version of Hamlet the way Hamlet is portrayed in my opinion was too dramatic and unconvincing. The ghost scenes were also unrealistic but considering the decade in which the film was made this is understandable. The modern version of Hamlet is much more convincing and true to the play, as scenes were in color and less dramatic. In my opinion Laurence Oliviers directions were much too harsh and this ruins the play.

Hamlet can be interpreted in many different ways. People have different feelings towards the character Hamlet. Some of the audiences may have pitied him because of the fact that he had lost his father to death and his mother to love within months of each other. Hamlet then becomes practically insane because of this and has pity for himself; this teases the audience into pitying Hamlet. Hamlet makes the audience pity him because he is not vengeful. Other views of the character Hamlet are that he is a coward especially since he could not bring himself to avenge his father's death by killing Claudius. Hamlet's indecisiveness to kill was not really for the good of others but to save himself from being imprisoned or killed. Hamlet made many reasons in the play not to carry out his plots.

I think that it was possible that the character Hamlet could have been diseased because of his dark actions and strange outbursts of pity for himself. Perhaps Hamlet had a mental disorder such as depression. A modern critical view is that of Earnest Jones he makes a psychoanalysis of the character as if real people. He claims that Hamlet has a Oedipus complex, this is where a child has excessive love for his mother causing him to hate his father. In my opinion hamlet did have this Oedipus complex but if this were true would he not praise his uncle for his father's death?

In the seventeenth century people believed in the Greek philosophy of humours. Four elements were in every human's body, these four elements represent Earth (cold and dry), Fire (hot and dry), Air (hot and wet) and Water (cold and wet). Each of these affect personality traits and it was believed that the balancing of humors dictated a person's character. This theory would have been in a seventeenth century's audience's mind whilst watching the play. Today an audience would be able to deduce a personality without thinking about humors.

"There is no play that suffers so much in being transferred t

Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1987
Approximate Pages = 8 (250 words per page double spaced)