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Hamlet, By William Shakespeare

Good Essays

As early as the mid 1800’s, the phrase “looking through rose-tinted glasses,” has been used. This simple saying was utilized to explain instances when people looked at their surroundings and choose to see the positives rather than the negatives. The idea of specifically looking at certain aspects of a situation is commonly found in any scenario, and within the Shakespearian play, Hamlet, this is certainly the case. By experiencing a large portion of the drama through Hamlet’s opinions and voice, the audience has little choice than to see other characters as Hamlet sees them. While giving a consistent flow and viewpoint to the whole play, this singular interpretation of characters leads to a bias that is hard for the text itself and other characters to overcome. By investigating the idea that this bias causes a misinterpretation of Hamlet itself, the play’s overall meaning becomes convoluted as other characters such as Claudius are revealed to have more meaning and depth than originally conveyed.
I) DISCREDITING HAMLET AS A NARRATOR
One of the most debated topics of the play Hamlet is the question of sanity in terms of the main character. Hamlet experiences a particularly traumatic incident when his father is killed by Claudius, his uncle. While he does not know this fact until later, Hamlet harbors a contempt for his uncle who has married his mother. Claudius addressed this contempt early in the play at a celebration of the two’s marriage and his new rule over Denmark. He

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