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The Historical Approaches Of Hamlet

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Hamlet is a play written by William Shakespeare, a famous and influential writer from the 16th and 17th centuries. His contributions to the English language are great in their importance, as he created thousands of words, with many being words we use on a day-to-day basis. Along with his contribution of diction, he bestowed upon us his plays, that have been open to dozens of different interpretations throughout the centuries that they’ve existed. Each approach to his work reveals a different meaning, from the historical approach showing the the influence of real world events on his plays, to the philosophical approach, making us question both the play and ourselves. This paper will analyze five different approaches that can be used on Hamlet: traditional revenge tragedy, philosophical, Freudian, Historical, and Sociological. The traditional revenge tragedy is form of tragedy that was used widely in Shakespeare’s playwriting era by himself and other playwrights. They were “dramas in which the dominant motive is revenge for a real or imagined injury” (Encyclopædia Britannica). Hamlet is the perfect example for this type of literary criticism, as it is used as the prime example for it as well, as the entire story is based upon Hamlet getting revenge for his father’s murder by his uncle. While this is what the story revolves around, there are many other instances of revenge in the play. Fortinbras looks to get revenge on the Kingdom of Denmark for the murder of his father,

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