Hamlet's first soliloquy strikes a note of despair and reveals his feelings towards life and the hasty marriage between his mother and his uncle. Hamlet wishes to "thaw and resolve [...] into a dew" but is restrained by the canon law that condemns him to eternal suffering in hell if he were to do so. Hamlet is disheartened and full of sorrow because he continues to mourn his father's death, but the primary source of his sadness is his mother's wedlock with his uncle.…
Hamlet decides to get more information / prove what the ghost was saying before doing…
The play Hamlet, is about dealing with life and death as well as understanding the purpose of one's existence. This is seen through the infamous character Hamlet. Hamlet's mind is tumultuous, with its ups and downs and abrupt turn a rounds. There are many sides to him; only through his soliloquies does Hamlet reveal his true thoughts and feelings. In his soliloquies, Hamlet insists that he is an individual with many psychological and philosophical sides. He also shows he has difficulty understanding and accepting these layers. At the beginning of the play, Hamlet is full of self doubt. He gradually experiences emotional despair and bouts of anger and eventually…
The primary function of the first soliloquy is to reveal to the audience Hamlet's profound melancholia and the reasons for his despair. Hamlet explains, with an outpouring of disgust, anger, sorrow, and grief that everything in his world is either futile or contemptible.…
In Hamlet, many think of Hamlet as being the main or only tragically flawed character within the play. However, in actuality, the play contains many other characters that possess varying severities of imperfection, some of which put the shortcomings of Hamlet, the title character of Hamlet, to shame. Despite the tragically flawed nature of Hamlet’s character, other characters in the play are clearly more flawed in comparison to Hamlet. As a result of this character’s imperfection, many of the characters within the play Hamlet are considered tragic; however, those in which this trait is predominant are Claudius, Laertes and Gertrude.…
William Shakespeare’s play, Hamlet, is thought by many readers to have the major theme of revenge. Although revenge is a significant part of the play, it is not the main theme. Throughout the play there are many ways Shakespeare uses dramatic irony and for each one there is always a cause and effect. He uses this Cause and effect to target the audience and to keep them engaged in the play. An example of cause and effect would be in Act IV, Scene IV (IV, iv, 35-70). In this scene it shows Hamlet and his liking of Fortinbras and how angry he is at himself. The cause is from the audience while the speech and other things are the effect. The cause and effect from this scene and the soliloquy is one of the ways Shakespeare connected with his audience, which was in his time the Elizabethan era.…
How all occasions do inform against me,/ And spur my dull revenge! What is a man/ If his chief good and market of his time/ Be but to sleep and feed? A beast, no more./ Sure, he that made us with such large discourse,/ Looking before and after, gave us not/ That capability and godlike reason/ To fust in us unused. Now, whether it be/ Bestial oblivion, or some craven scruple / Of thinking too precisely on th' event—/ A thought which, quartered, hath but one part wisdom/ And ever three parts coward—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. Examples gross as earth exhort me./ Witness this army of such mass and charge/ Led by a delicate and tender prince,/ Whose spirit with divine ambition puffed/ Makes mouths at the invisible event,/ Exposing what is mortal and unsure/ To all that fortune, death, and danger dare,/ Even for an eggshell. Rightly to be great/ Is not to stir without great argument,/ But greatly to find quarrel in a straw/ When honor’s at the stake. How stand I then,/ That have a father killed, a mother stained,/ Excitements of my reason and my blood,/ And let all sleep—while, to my shame, I see/ The imminent death of twenty thousand men,/ That for a fantasy and trick of fame/ Go to their graves like beds, fight for a plot/ Whereon the numbers cannot try the cause,/ Which is not tomb enough and continent/ To hide the slain? Oh, from this time forth,/ My thoughts be bloody, or be nothing worth! (IV.iv.34-68)…
1.The change of mood that occurs In scene one is mainly because of Polonius. This is shown in the beginning of the act when Polonius is hiring a spy to find out how his son is behaving. In the beginning of the scene it is quite funny and suspicious since Polonius acts like he trusts his son, but in actual fact he’s so concerned that he hired someone to look after him. The change of mood occurs when Ophelia runs into the room and explains to Polonius what had just happened with Hamlet ( II,i,ll 85-112). This changes Polonius’s mood and concern about his son towards his daughter Ophelia and how he was the reason for Hamlet’s insanity, Polonius shows that he is very concerned and feels that he is to blame for what is going on.…
Consider how an individual’s response to injustice has been reflected and developed in Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Discuss the idea(s) developed by Shakespeare about the role of self-respect plays when an individual responds to injustice.…
Throughout the scene Claudius depicts a personality that evaluates situations and makes choices out of desire without much concern for consequence. Although Claudius does show a little bit of concern for consequence, he generally acts from an “inner-child” psyche. In the scene, Claudius plots with Laertes and acts quickly out of a sense of DESIRE and makes a plan to kill Hamlet. Demonstrated in the lines; “A sword unbated, and in a pass of practice, Requite him for your father.” (4.7.137 - 140) And “I will do’t. And for that purpose I’ll anoint my sword. I bought unction of a mountebank, So mortal that, but dip a knife in it, Where it draws blood no cataplasm so rare, Collected from all simples that have virtue Under the moon, can save the thing from death That is but scratched withal. I’ll touch my point With this contagion, that if I gall him slightly It may be death.” (4.7. 140 - 145). In these lines, Claudius and Laertes plan to kill hamlet by sharpening a fencing blade and dousing it with a poison that will cripple upon contact. This is clearly a representation of a psyche that acts rapidly out of an intense sense of desire.…
Throughout the play, Hamlet shows many examples of being an indecisive person and being unable to do anything he wants to, as if something stops him. An example would be in act five, when he decides to confess his love for Ophelia on her grave. He took too long to tell Ophelia or anyone for the matter about his love for her. Another example would be his mother remarrying, and Hamlet not being able to confess his true feelings about King Claudius being his new father. In the first four acts, Hamlet goes on about his life being miserable and in some kind of melancholy mood. He can’t find a way to deal with it, so he keeps all of his negative feelings to himself. This “depressed” funk he is in interferes with his will to act upon things that go on around him. However, he does manage the courage to finally step up and confront his feelings about King Claudius, which puts him in fear of Hamlet. Besides his mood affecting his will to act, how Hamlet over thinks his actions ruins his ability to do anything. For him, there is always something else that can go wrong, so he decides not to go with his original plan.…
1. In Hamlets speech on line 165 of Act 1, Scene 5, he makes his friends swear upon his sword that they will not reveal anything that they had seen or heard that night. In this scene the sword is a symbol much like the cross; if an individual was asked to swear upon a cross they are likely to keep that promise because they know that they are making a promise with God or with a greater power. He later goes on to make them insist that if they believe his actions are “strange or odd” they must not question his motives. The friends swear.…
Essentially, Hamlet has reached a turning point in which he diverges from a stagnant state to that of implementation of action. Hamlet becomes growingly apprehensive of the matter at hand (in exacting revenge against his uncle, the King) and decisively opts to take action. Hamlet’s new state of mind is reflected within his dialogue: “What is a man/If his chief good and market of his time/Be but to sleep and feed? Now, whether it be Bestial oblivion or some craven scruple Of Thinking too precisely on th-event--- a thought which, quartered, hath but one part wisdom and three parts coward – 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.” Hamlet’s view of himself is characterized by that of self-deprecation; he feels that he has been too wary and ineffective in dealing with his plot of vengeance and refuses to further linger in idleness. The opening part of the soliloquy blatantly defines Hamlet’s incentive for revenge: “How all occasions do inform against me/ And spur my dull revenge!” Hamlet notes the manner in which Fortinbras swiftly and hastily undertakes action, which subsequently exhorts him to act in this very manner; Hamlet elucibrates, “Led by this army of such mass and charge/ Led by a delicate and tender Prince… to all that fortune, death and danger dare/ Even for an eggshell”. Essentially, Fortinbras serves as a reflective mirror to his Danish counterpart. In the closing lines of the soliloquy, Hamlet thus revolves to avenge his father’s untimely death at last, as demonstrated through his statement "O from this time forth/My thoughts be bloody or be nothing worth." The justification behind his keen blood thirst and malevolent intent toward his uncle is that the preservation of honor (his father’s and his own) is largely at stake. Hamlet is driven by the notion that revenge is exigent and eminent,…
Hamlet’s struggle to exact revenge is first revealed when he examines the words of the ghost. Hamlet’s conversation with the ghost leads him to question its intentions. He says to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, “There is nothing good or bad but thinking makes it so.” () revealing to his fellow man that he struggles with thought and determining whether the task the ghost as unexpectedly bestowed upon him is moral and true or deception. This is noted in Bloom’s criticism of Hamlet when it is said that, “The important question about a dramatic mirror was like the one Hamlet found himself asking about the ghost: is this “thing” strange because its revealing a hidden truth—or because some power is trying to deceive me?” (Bloom 56). Hamlet is able to see that the information contained in what the ghost has told him is most likely true, but his sense of morality still needs concrete proof of his Uncle’s guilt. This leads to the attempts at revealing his Uncle’s guilt whether through the play within the play or through his extreme grief and feigned madness caused by the death of King Hamlet. These actions make Claudius acutely aware of Hamlet’s intentions, as precursors to possibly attempting to exact revenge.…
In The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark Shakespeare uses personification, allusion, and a rhetorical question to advocate that the climatic moment of Act III is when King Claudius admits to the murder of King Hamlet because, by definition, it is the act that turns the action of the scene around, leading toward an inevitable conclusion. Shakespeare uses personification when King Claudius says that “[his] offense is rank, it smells to heaven” (line 36). Claudius’ guilt of killing his very own brother, King Hamlet, is constantly on his conscious, which is why he gives the “offense” the trait of a rank smell, something whose presence is constant and putrid. The purpose of personifying Claudius’ “offense” to have a smell that reaches to heaven is because Claudius is aware that heaven is where King Hamlet’s spirit lies due to his own fault, and his admit to the murder will drive the scene to an inevitable conclusion because he has released key information to a driving mystery in the plot line. Shakespeare makes a biblical allusion to Abel and Cain in lines 37-38 of the play when Claudius says that his “offense […] hath the primal eldest curse upon’t, / A brother’s murder!”. Shakespeare is atoning that murder is never outdated; no matter the era or the place, the murder of a brother by a brother is never acceptable in the eyes of society or God. This allusion purposefully informs us that King Claudius did kill his brother, King Hamlet, as a warning that falling action concerning Claudius’ unforgivable acts is to proceed. Claudius rhetorically asks, “O, what form of prayer / Can serve my turn?” (lines 51-52).Claudius’ asks this with the knowledge that there is no form of prayer that would serve his turn because his acts were unforgivable and he must face the consequences for them. Rhetorical questions are always immediately answered, whether directly or indirectly, and King Claudius’ question is consequently to be answered via the falling action that is to proceed…