Critical Analysis of Hamlet: Character Analysis and the Themes of Revenge and Manipulation
The play Hamlet is a text that despite its age and Elizabethan linguistic style is still resoundingly relevant to today’s modern audience due to its ability to move past time related contextual barriers and capture the universality of the human condition with its infinite confusion as evident in the character of Prince Hamlet, its ability to influence and manipulate as well as its reaction to such manipulation, revenge.
The character of Hamlet himself is very relatable today especially to young students, the reason that the play still thrives today is due to the universal relevance that his conflicting emotions hold for us. Hamlet being a university student of Wittenberg; intelligently tries like men today to justify his life, as can be seen evident of his quoting of both Aristotle and Boethius. However unable to express himself he runs rampant through his own thoughts creating elaborate wordplay and metaphors such as “get thee to a nunnery” which simultaneously means both a place of chastity as well as slang for a brothel, reflecting Hamlets confusion with female sexuality. He like a teenager is brash and impulsive, for every thoughtful soliloquy “To be or not to be” there is a burst of rage or impulsive remark, in his opening encounter with the ghost in Act i Scene iv he says “I’ll make a ghost of anyone who stands in my way” before running off after the apparition. Throughout the play he not only rages at the antagonist Claudius, but his girlfriend in Act iii Scene i and his mother in Act iii Scene iv of which the latter he stabs Polonius through the curtain without even seeing who was there. He interrupts his own production of the Mousetrap with rude remarks and condemns Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to death using his father’s signet ring while on route to England. An analysis of Hamlet’s character reveals that he clearly does not know what he wants, his thoughts are universally reflected by those of men today. In Hamlets 2nd soliloquy Act ii Scene ii he
The character of Hamlet himself is very relatable today especially to young students, the reason that the play still thrives today is due to the universal relevance that his conflicting emotions hold for us. Hamlet being a university student of Wittenberg; intelligently tries like men today to justify his life, as can be seen evident of his quoting of both Aristotle and Boethius. However unable to express himself he runs rampant through his own thoughts creating elaborate wordplay and metaphors such as “get thee to a nunnery” which simultaneously means both a place of chastity as well as slang for a brothel, reflecting Hamlets confusion with female sexuality. He like a teenager is brash and impulsive, for every thoughtful soliloquy “To be or not to be” there is a burst of rage or impulsive remark, in his opening encounter with the ghost in Act i Scene iv he says “I’ll make a ghost of anyone who stands in my way” before running off after the apparition. Throughout the play he not only rages at the antagonist Claudius, but his girlfriend in Act iii Scene i and his mother in Act iii Scene iv of which the latter he stabs Polonius through the curtain without even seeing who was there. He interrupts his own production of the Mousetrap with rude remarks and condemns Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to death using his father’s signet ring while on route to England. An analysis of Hamlet’s character reveals that he clearly does not know what he wants, his thoughts are universally reflected by those of men today. In Hamlets 2nd soliloquy Act ii Scene ii he