Essay on William Shakespeare's Hamlet

How does the use of comic relief best contrast the tragedy of Hamlet? In great works of literature a comic relief is used as contrast to a serious scene to intensify the overall tragic nature of the play or to relieve tension. As illustrated in Shakespeare’s tragedy Hamlet, intense scenes are joined with character’s banter and vacuous actions as to add a comic relief. In Hamlet, Polonius acts as a comic relief by his dull and windy personality, Hamlet uses his intelligence and his negativity toward the king and queen to create humor, while on the other hand Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are a comic relief by their senseless actions and naïve natures. Polonius, Hamlet, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are all used as a comic relief to

Hamlet fascinates many readers and the first thing to point out about him is that he is mysterious. Shakespeare's work demonstrates Hamlet's dilemma as the role of revenger showing a man of thought forced to be a man of action. Hamlet is extremely philosophical and introspective. He is particularly drawn to difficult questions or questions that cannot be answered with any certainty. Faced with evidence that his uncle murdered his father, Hamlet becomes obsessed with proving his uncle's guilt before trying to act. He is equally overwhelmed with questions about the afterlife, about the wisdom of suicide, and about what happens to bodies after they die.

When you think of William Shakespeare, Hamlet is the first thing most people think of, as his work. Hamlet is also a classic example of a tragedy. In all tragedies the hero suffers, and usually dies at the end. All good pieces of literature written way back when, are usually tragedies.

act of revenge and waits for the ideal moment to avenge his father’s murder. He

In the play “Hamlet” by William Shakespeare, Prince Hamlet uses many double meaning phrases to speak his mind to the audience and the other characters in the play. "I am but mad north-north-west: when the wind is southerly I know a hawk from a handsaw" (II.ii.387-8). This is a classic example of the "wild and whirling words" with which Hamlet hopes to persuade people to believe that he is mad. These words, however, prove that beneath his "antic disposition," Hamlet is very sane indeed. Beneath his strange choice of imagery involving points of the compass, the weather, and hunting birds, he is announcing that he is calculatedly choosing the times when to appear mad. “Hamlet feigns

The transition of royalty from King Hamlet to King Claudius seemed smooth, but the tension within the royal family created some complications. Almost all of Denmark gave their loyalty to a new king without any suspicion as to how the previous ruler died. Although Denmark’s citizens are unaware of the fratricide, this fickle faithfulness exemplifies the social and moral decay of Denmark. Most of Denmark’s subjects act upon their own selfish interests and lack any conviction. Shakespeare uses Polonius, formerly a loyal servant to King Hamlet, as a microcosm of Denmark’s oblivious and hypocritical society as a whole. The Lord Chamberlain of Claudius’s court and the father of Laertes and Ophelia, Polonius has good intentions, but he tends to

In William Shakespeare’s, The Tragedy of Hamlet, each character stands out in unique ways. Madness is one of the crucial themes as Shakespeare depicts the chaotic turbulence in the Hamlet family and the court of Denmark. Though she is generally read as a minor character, Ophelia’s madness reveals the struggle of the female character that attempts to have a voice of her own. Ophelia’s life certainly seems tragic based on Aristotle 's definition of tragedy, which says that “A tragedy is the imitation of an action that is serious and also, as having magnitude, complete in itself; inappropriate and pleasurable language;...in a dramatic rather than narrative form; with incidents arousing pity and fear, wherewith to accomplish a catharsis of these emotions (1).” Throughout the play, Ophelia’s character demonstrates a three-phased change from a timid daughter who lacks the will of her own, to a temptress on a mission who suddenly reveals the bawdy part of her nature, and finally to the mad woman who liberally expresses her oppressed feelings and sorrow with lyrics and songs.

Why does Hamlet delay taking action against Claudius? This is a question that everyone want to know. We all know that Hamlet want to kill his Uncle Claudius as soon as possible. But why does he wait so long to sweep to his revenge? I believe that there are more than one reason why Hamlet delays before he takes action.

Hamlet play a very important role in this play. Basically the whole play revolves around him. In this play Hamlet is faced with the obligation to kill Claudius because Claudius has killed his father. Some people see Hamlet as a tragic hero with a clear and sacred obligation to kill Claudius but since he is scared to kill him and has many other things going on in his life, he is unable to kill Claudius right away. Throughout the entire play Hamlet procrastinates on killing Claudius. Why does Hamlet procrastinate for so long to revenge his father's death?

I am not a big fan of the 1990 movie version of William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, starring Mel Gibson. I feel that while it stands alone as a very well made movie and contains great acting performances throughout, I think that it strays too far from the original text and layout of the play. The omissions and transposing makes the play weaker, and while it is a great screenplay, it fails in comparison to Shakespeare’s original work. The three things which bother me the most are the omission of Fortinbras and the handling of the, “To be or not to be…” soliloquy and the “Get thee to a nunnery…” scene, and Hamlet’s Oedipus complex. Omitting the subplot of Fortinbras took away the whole political aspect of the piece. It also weakened the ending.

William Shakespeare's Hamlet Prince Hamlet bitterly opposed the marriage of his mother, Gertrude, to Claudius, her own brother-in-law, so soon after her husband's death. Hamlet had a strange suspicion that the new king - his stepfather and former uncle - had somehow plotted his father's mysterious demise, and he refused to stop mourning his natural father, now two months dead. Hamlet was approached by his close friend Horatio, who revealed that for three nights now castle guards had seen the former king as a ghost. He persuaded the prince that his father must have some message of importance and so Hamlet should wait with him that night for the ghost to appear again.

William Shakespeare's Hamlet Hamlet might well claim to be Shakespeare's most famous play because of its language and the charm of its central

Hamlet by Shakespeare is a very wonderfully written book that contains so many literary elements and motifs throughout it that it is still one of the most debated and talked about pieces of literature ever written. It begins with a very mysterious opening that sets the pace for the rest of the book. The old king of Denmark has died and he has returned as a ghost to inform his son, who is also named Hamlet, of the terrible misfortune that has befallen him and left Denmark in a political and emotional turmoil. He has come to inform the young Hamlet that his uncle Claudius murdered the old king in order to gain access to the throne by remarrying the widowed queen a mere two months after he has passed. The timing is very important because it

Hamlet has been praised and revered for centuries as one of William Shakespeare's best known and most popular tragedies. Based on its popularity, critics alike have taken various viewpoints and theories in order to explain Hamlet's actions throughout the play. The psychoanalytic point of view is one of the most famous positions taken on Hamlet.

In 1604, William Shakespeare finished one of the most famous plays of revenge in English history. This play has left a plethora of questions, most left unanswered even after the hundreds of scholars who have analyzed it. The complexity and multiple facades of the characters, the use of many themes, and the symbols in this play have been construed into a delicate tale; Shakespeare purposely left out many details in order to shroud this piece in mystery. In The Tragedy of Hamlet, Shakespeare 's vague developing characters create such an impossibility of certainty that readers are often left with a plethora of unanswered questions in the end: Can the ghost be trusted? Was Claudius truly guilty? What were Gertrude’s motives?