Hamlet Feelings Essay Research Paper Everyone contains

Hamlet Feelings Essay, Research Paper

Everyone contains a tinge of Hamlet in his feelings, wants, and worries, and

proudly so, for Hamlet is not like the other tragic heroes of his period. He

stands apart from other Shakespeare’s heroes in his today much discussed

innocence. Is this supposed tragic hero maybe an ideal hero – one without the

tragic flaw, which has been a part of the formula for the tragedy since the

Golden age of Greece.; is a question that has been the field for many literary

critics’ battles. The main, and, most often, the only flaw that has been

attributed to Hamlet is his delay. This seems to constitute the central part in

Hamlet. Critics seem to cling to this detail, as if trying to save the status of

Hamlet as a typical Elizabethan tragedy of revenge. By the definition of

tragedy, there should exist a flaw in the character of the main hero, who is a

great personality that is engaged in a struggle that ends catastrophically

(Stratford, 90). If Hamlet had no flaw, what kind of tragic hero is he. No

doubt, Hamlet is a tragical drama, for it has many characters "from the

top" ending up losing their lives. But the play wouldn’t lose its tragic

tone if Hamlet was a an ideal hero instead of tragic one, which is exactly the

case. If just all critic realized this, maybe today we wouldn’t have that much

trouble trying to "decipher" Hamlet’s character, just like Elizabethan

audience never raised any questions concerning Hamlet’s delay. It was only in

the last two centuries, that the audience and their perceptions have drastically

changed, which causes this confusion concerning the character that was created

by Shakespeare for common people, some ignorant ones among them, perhaps. Hamlet

is like a soldier that is thrown into a war where he has to do some things he

rather would avoid doing, but under the given circumstances he bites his teeth

and carries himself well (Stratford, 128). In this war, the circumstances

brought on by Claudius’s murdering of King Hamlet are Hamlet’s enemy. His dead

father is the destroyed country, painful truth which leaves so much hatred and

resentment in his heart. Being a loyal prince and son, and one whom entire

kingdom respected, he should seek revenge and bring justice back in the royal

court. The whole play would be very simple if this murdered was an open

assassination. But no, Shakespeare made sure that this assassination was secret,

that no one, except maybe Claudius, knew about it. This puts in a completely

different context the play that was written by Thomas Kyd, a play titled

Ur-Hamlet, which Shakespeare used as a basis for his Hamlet (Grebanier,

111).This way, Shakespeare accomplished very different development of action,

and ultimately one of the best plays in the history. Along with that,

Shakespeare created disagreement concerning reasons why Hamlet waited so long

before killing Claudius. A careful reader can notice that more than two months

pass between Hamlet being told by the Ghost about the evil deed, and Hamlet

following through his plan. One can argue that from this follows that Hamlet

procrastinated, having that one flaw – being passive, not daring to act. But

Shakespeare never payed attention to this time interval. An audience wasn’t

aware of it, because Shakespeare didn’t want it to be – the rather large time

interval was of no consequence, and truly one cannot notice this without a

conscious calculation (Grebanier, 179). More critics, especially during

popularity of Freud, have tried to explain Hamlet’s delay exclusively from

psychological point of view. But how can one psychologically analyze a character

that doesn’t exist in physical world; whose existence is dependent merely on his

actions and reactions to the events and other characters from play. J. Dover

Wilson summarized it by saying that Hamlet is a "character in a play, not

in history" (Weitz, 107). From the point of view of these critics, it

follows that character preceded the plot, thus shaping it for its needs. But

Shakespeare, not to mention all the other play writers, followed Aristotelian

view that drama is imitation of life, of the actions of man. Plot is a way to

organize the action, and thus, plot precedes character in Hamlet (Grebanier,

108). This, without even knowing Aristotelian method, can also be deduced from

knowing that Shakespeare adopted plot of Ur-Hamlet, and changed it just

slightly. A slight change in the plot, however, hardly slightly affects the

characters. But one should notice that "preceding" means "comes

before the other one", and it does not mean "eliminates the

other." Therefore, the cause of Hamlet’s fall cannot be ascribed

exclusively to the situation. That would mean eliminating every element of

tragedy, and even drama, from Hamlet – Hamlet would thus have become

Внимание, отключите Adblock

Вы посетили наш сайт со включенным блокировщиком рекламы!
Ссылка для скачивания станет доступной сразу после отключения Adblock!

Скачать