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Literary Perspective Of Hamlet

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Hamlet, a play written by William Shakespeare, can be read, looked at, and studied from multiple different perspectives. After a few read throughs one may see some some recurring ideas throughout Shakespeare’s work as well as various hidden patterns or underlying messages. Shakespeare uses puns, irony, and drama to strengthen the plot of his play. Hamlet has many different themes that can be analyzed in the play, such as: revenge, family, insanity, and death.
The Handbook of Critical Approaches to Literature refers to this play as a revenge tragedy, which is normally the story of when a father seeks revenge for his son, or vise versa (Guerin 35). The audiences of these plays at the time loved the idea of revenge as well as plays based off of it, which made Hamlet very popular among them. This play was dark and filled with feelings of melancholy. This entire play was walking through the spiritual and physical journey of Hamlet trying to get revenge on his uncle, Claudius, who murdered his father and then married his mother. His journey of revenge took him awhile because according to Guerin, “Before actually initiating his revenge, Hamlet wants to be sure it will hit the guilty person” (Guerin 35). He wanted to properly execute his revenge and make sure everything was right which led him to confusion and his own personal struggles. Hamlet definitely had a journey of
Matejka 2 ups and downs as well as growth while he plotted and followed through with the avenge of his father.

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