William Shakespeare's Hamlet as a Revenge Tragedy Essay

In William Shakespeare 's revenge tragedy play Hamlet, the prevailing themes of revenge, madness, and morality were recognized by the Elizabethan audience and appealed to them. The play 's central focus is on a young prince, Hamlet, who has gone through many challenges to avenge his father 's death. Prince Hamlet got his revenge on his deceitful uncle, Claudius, the same man who murdered his father and married Hamlet 's mother. From the original text of the play, a major scene in Act 4 shows where Hamlet decides that it 's time for vengeance, expressing it in a soliloquy. This scene would have appealed to the Elizabethan audience because they would observe Hamlet 's thoughts. In addition, the soliloquy would have expanded on the theme of revenge, and how it would affect the final scene. Finally, by emphasizing the theme of morality in his speech, it would have the audience to make connections towards their own consciousness. Shakespeare 's Hamlet successfully targets the Elizabethan audience in Hamlet 's speech from Act IV.

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Shakespeare sprinkles subtle lines alluding to Hamlet’s apparent cowardice and failure as a classical revenger. In addition to this, Shakespeare may intentionally delay Hamlet’s revenge and remove emphasis from his passion to break the trend of morally blind, obsessive, psychopathic avengers as traditionally depicted in plays such as “The Spanish Tragedy”.

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"The time is out of joint: O cursed spite, / That ever I was born to set it right!" (I.5). Shakespeare's Hamlet is an unwilling avenger. Despite his hatred of his uncle Claudius and his sense of the injustice perpetuated upon his father's memory, Hamlet seems unable to obey the will of his father's ghost. Ultimately, this is not shown to be a sign of weakness or cowardice upon Hamlet's part. Rather, the intellectual protagonist understands all too well the futility of attempting to use violence to enact justice. By attempting to become an avenger, Hamlet simply begets more violence.

“If you seek revenge, dig two graves.” This ancient Chinese proverb explains the mood in Hamlet, a play, written by Shakespeare. The theme of revenge is seen throughout the play as each character extracts one form or another of revenge from a person who has wronged them. In the play the characters Hamlet, Laertes, and Fortinbras all desire revenge for a lost father; however, their motivations for murder differ.

Many scholars classify William Shakespeare's The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark as a revenge tragedy, a genre popular during the Elizabethan era (Gainor 41). Shakespeare's tragedy focuses on three sons–Hamlet, Laertes, and Fortinbras–seeking retribution for the unfortunate death of their fathers– King Hamlet, Polonius, and King Fortinbras respectively. In the play, the father-son relationship is the primary motivator for each son's revenge. Because Elizabethan society places a strong emphasis on the relationship between father and son, each son feels obligated to right his father's wrongs. According to Fredric B. Tromly, author of Fathers and Sons in Shakespeare: The Debt Never Promised, “A defining . . . feature of Shakespeare’s

In this case, Hamlet is obsessed with yet unable to act out his revenge since he is a man of thought and reflection, not of action and impulsiveness. "Revenge, said Francis Bacon in his essay on the subject, is a kind of wild justice, and something in Hamlet is too civilized for stealthy murder," says Northrop Frye (Frye). While he knows it is his duty to avenge his father's murder, Hamlet's desire to fulfill this obligation constantly wavers. In self-pity he cries, "O cursed spite / That ever I was born to set it right!" (1.5. 188-189), and yet in rage he utters, "Now could I drink hot blood / and do such bitter business as the day / Would quake to loot on," (3.2. 397-399). Hamlet hesitates numerous times to fulfill his duty to avenge his father, and in the end he must actually convince himself to kill Claudius. "... I do not know / Why yet I live to say 'This thing's to do', / Sith I have cause, and will, and strength, and means / To do't... / ... / O, from this time forth, / My thoughts be bloody, or be nothing worth!" (4.4. 43-46, 65-66). This unusual flaw leads to Hamlet's inevitable demise, and is the most convincing evidence that Hamlet is, indeed, a tragedy. The protagonist, however, is not the only character in the play that experiences a want for revenge. Shakespeare uses all three of the sons seeking vengeance to reveal the complexity of the human yearning for

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You have to watch more Jerry Springer! (I’m not really serious). I like your observation about Hamlet’s revenge not being up to the reader. But I wonder if Shakespeare intended for it to be, letting readers work through Hamlet’s situation for themselves and decide what they would do in his position?

Self- knowledge is when a person gain understanding of their selves. It is when they recognize their goals and abilities. Hamlet was bitter in the beginning of the play, due to his father’s death. He was disgusted with his mother, and he had hatred for his uncle Claudius. Hamlet felt this way because his father had just died and his mother had already re- married and to his uncle, which made him become his father. Hamlet’s goal was to avenge his father’s death, but he first needed to gain the strength and right plan to do so. Othello on the other hand was looked upon as a noble man, a hero in the beginning of the play. But by him being naïve he was tricked into believing that his love, Desdemona, betrayed him. This caused Othello to try to

Revenge. Revenge causes one to act blindly through anger, rather than through reason. It is based on the principle of an eye for an eye, but this principle is not always an intelligent theory to live by. Young Fortinbras, Laertes, and Hamlet were all looking to avenge the deaths of their fathers. They all acted on emotion, and this led to the downfall of two, and the rise to power of one. Since the Heads of the three major families were each murdered, the eldest sons of these families swore vengeance, and two of the three sons died while exacting their acts of vengeance. Revenge is a major theme in the Tragedy of Hamlet.

Shakespeare's Hamlet is filled with murder, revenge, and betrayal. The way the characters go about their revengeful murder says a lot about them. Claudius is a manipulating coward: he poisoned his own brother in his sleep in order to obtain the throne. Hamlet is completely indecisive: he spends majority of the play debating whether not to kill Claudius, when he would do it, and how he would do it. As soon as Laertes hears of his father’s death, he leaves Paris and marches an angry mob into the castle to demand blood. The methods in which the protagonist, antagonist, and foil murder others reflects back on their true in our character.