It is said that "HAMLET" is the second most ever read book in the world, the first is Bible. This shows how great the text is. It is also said that there are three texts most debated and discussed by scholars & critics again and again is Oedipus, HAMLET and Waiting For Godot. Because there is SOMETHING for which we have to go there again and again.
"TO BE OR NOT TO BE THAT IS THE QUESTION." No one can forget this line who have study the masterpiece of Shakespeare.even after hundreds of year of "HAMLET" publication, the book is still alive because of Psychological depth given to the play.
"HAMLET" - a play is a tragedy of a thinking man. Thinking and thinking and never putting into action. Hamlet constantly remain in dilemma that whether to take revenge or not.
Hamlet is the prince of Denmark, the title character, and the protagonist, about thirty years of age at the start of the play. Hamlet is the son of the queen Gertrude and the late king Hamlet, and the nephew of the present king Claudius. We can say that Hamlet is a play concerned with son’s revenge for the murder of his father. It is a story concerned with murder, sudden violence and the slower but more deadly reaction to that violence.
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| dual personality, to be or not to be |
Ø Salient features of Renaissance in ‘HAMLET
Hamlet – a Renaissance character in a medieval world.
In Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Fortinbras and Leartes are medieval characters. As character of this era they are driven by chivalry and hence the duty of revenge through murder. However, in the medieval world that comprises the setting of the play. Hamlet represents a character of an altogether different age. Shakespeare shapes Hamlet as a thinker who questions and examines the world around him in his own pursuits of revenge. Thus, because of his fundamentally different approach to the world than the medieval character of Fortinbras and Leartes, Hamlet can be considered as a Renaissance character. More specifically Hamlet’s renaissance view on his worlds develops him both as an Elizabethan ere Humanist and Nihilist. Thus, through Hamlet, Shakespeare illustrates humanity’s struggle with the purpose and meaning of man.
As an Elizabethan character, Hamlet is part of Renaissance era movement, which believes in worth of all humans and that truth can be found through introspections.
Another aspect of Renaissance thinking was what modern society would call NIHILISM, which proposes that human existence in fact has no meaning and thus there is no purpose to life. These two philosophy of renaissance, an appreciation that life is essential meaningless cause Hamlet’s inner strife and set him apart from the medieval characters, who are solely driven by chivalry.
As a Humanist, education and individual thought bring Hamlet to examine the purpose of man’s existence. With the exception of Horatio, a fellow student from the Wittenberg. Hamlet is the only character in the play with academic and intellectual aspirations. Hamlet’s wish to go back to school in Wittenberg demonstrates his desire for Knowledge, a yearning not present in the vast majority of characters in Hamlet. Thus, with Hamlet’s humanistic intellectual pursuit, Shakespeare separates him from his medieval counterparts.
Hamlet’s individual thought also leads him to exclaim to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern ‘what a piece of work is man, how noble of work in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god: the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals’.
In his speech Hamlet asserts that he values man and states that he believes that man is marvel, close to perfection and thus through these lines, demonstrates Hamlet’s Humanism. however, Hamlet’s intellect and insight leads to his self-doubt regarding the importance of man and brings about his conflicting nihilism, establishing him as a character at odds.
Hamlet’s speech to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern concludes with an expression of his nihilism. He states “ and yet, to me what quintessence of dust? Man delights not me, no, nor woman neither”. these nihilistic sentiments questions the purpose of life, suggesting that all humanity will eventually become dust. Indeed, in a sense these statement is a contradiction of hamlet’s previous words of admiration for mankind, and Shakespeare use this passage to clarify the identify the two forces pulling in Hamlet- his Humanism and his nihilism. Hamlet’s nihilism once again becomes apparent in his character close to the end of the play in the scene with gravediggers, when he states, “Alexander died, Alexander was buried, Alexander returned to dust; and dust is earth, of earth we make loam”. His nihilism also brought him to conclusion that Alexander, Julius Ceaser and all human eventually died.
Despite his wish to take revenge he is not able to kill Claudius because the inability to carry out the medieval style of revenge, because his renaissance thought pattern represent a tension between the rhetoric of medieval society and reasoning of Elizabethan era.
The word renaissance literally means “rebirth”, in the context of the English renaissance , the rebirth refers to a renewal of learning, especially in terms of new beliefs and ways of doing things differently from the middle ages. Characteristics of renaissance include a renewal interest in classical antiquity, a rise in humanist philosophy( a belief itself , human worth and individual dignity) and radical changes in ideas about religion, politics and science.
Here are some characteristics which we found in HAMLET
Hamlet has lot if references to classical Greek and Roman stories, characters and historical events. We can find a murderous king (Pyrrhus) and a queen in mourning over the murdered husband (HECUBA) which mirrors the main plot of the play.
In act 2 , scene 2 , line 311, Hamlet asks: “ what a piece of work is man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties….”. in this speech we can see a clear assertion of humanist ideas about the uniqueness and extraordinary abilities of the human mind.
There were a big political changes taking place during the time that Shakespeare wrote Hamlet. This Is reflected by Hamlet’s questioning of Claudius’s to ascend the throne in his father’s place. It was new idea to question anything having to do with the ‘natural’ hierarchical structures that maintain political power.
In Hamlet’s most famous soliloquy , which begins ‘TO BE OR NOT OT BE’, he alludes to an unknown afterlife. “the undiscovered country”, strict belief that people either go to heaven or hell when they die.
This point is illustrated by Shakespeare’s use of the ‘Play within Play’ in Hamlet. Here prince Hamlet’s play, THE MOUSETRAP , is presented to the court supposedly as entertainment , but Hamlet’s intent is to go rather obvious evidence of Claudius’s guilt for the murder of his father. Says Hamlet “………the play’s the thing where I’ll catch the conscience of the king”
Thus , in many ways we can say that HAMLET is a Renaissance play
