Hamlet: Hamlet and Classic Tragedy Hamlet Essay

Submitted By sadiegray
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* Satisfaction in Revenge * “Revenge: an opportunity to retaliate or gain satisfaction” (Webster’s Dictionary). Revenge or vengeance is a feeling every human feels, whether they act upon it or not, and Hamlet is no exception. Revenge is a prominent theme in Hamlet and in Hamlet’s case, it is his inability to take action that leads to the downfalls of Laertes, Ophelia, Polonius, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern which all are a result from his delay. The rest of the play focuses on Hamlet avenging his father’s death and how his mental health decays as a result of his lack of action. In William Shakespeare’s classic tragedy Hamlet, Hamlet’s inability to carry out his action of revenge is prolonged because of his uncertainty. * What sets Hamlet apart from Shakespeare’s numerous tragedies is that the action everyone in the audience expects to see happen is repeatedly and continuously postponed while Hamlet tries to gather more information, making sure he knows exactly what he is acting upon. After much deliberation and wasted time, Hamlet decides that he will murder his uncle, Claudius, for killing his father, but because he originally discovers Claudius’s doings from a ghost, he has to make sure his source is legitimate. His father’s ghost is an extremely unreliable source that could easily be interpreted as Hamlet losing his mind because he is traumatized * from his father’s death. For this reason, Hamlet must make sure Claudius killed his father. Hamlet then devises a plan to write and produce a play for the sole purpose to see if Claudius shows any signs of guilt. The play was written to replicate the exact actions that the ghost told Hamlet about the murder of his father. If Claudius shows any form of guilt, then “the play's the thing
Wherein [he’ll] catch the conscience of the king” (2.2.606-07). Writing and preforming a play would take an immense amount of effort, thus drawing out any action from Hamlet. * Another one out of the many reasons Hamlet has to extend the killing of his uncle is that he is afraid of the possible consequences as to what will happen to Claudius after he is murdered. One way to interpret this is Hamlet is extremely religious and seeing that his fait could be altered from a promising to a negative one if he murders Claudius while he is praying, "Now might I do it pat, now a is a-praying, and now I'll do't - and so goes to heaven, and am I reneged. That would be scanned. A villain kills my father, and for that, I his sole son do this same villain send to Heaven." From this scene, the audience can conclude that Hamlet is extremely religious and fears the results of killing Claudius. He knows that if he murders him while he is praying in the garden, Claudius will go to heaven and not pay for his actions, and Hamlet would pay for this actions and go to Hell. One could say that he delays his actions of the revenge because of his paranoia and anxiety of being caught for the murder and what his consequence will be if he follows through with this plan. Murder is not an action to be taken lightly, which is why Hamlet is letting opportunities go so he knows that even if he is punished, he feels as though he is * doing it for the right reasons. One might agree that the reason Hamlet does not take action is because he is basing his morals off of the new
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