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HAMLET
SOME ASPECTS OF THE PLAY
HAMLET as a Revenge Tragedy
Elizabethan dramatists did not first invent HAMLET. Behind the play, versions of the tale are known which go back at least to the thirteenth ■century; but in all versions, the theme is the same: revenge. Elizabethan playgoers had a peculiar delight in this theme and there are many revenge plays. Most of them follow a pattern, just as in these days the crime and detective thriller runs to type.
In the thriller, there is first the crime. The mastermind is stimulated and begins to rotate. Then follow the false clues, all set out according to the elaborate rules of the game, the triumphant but unexpected solution, the analysis of the evidence, and the punishment of the guilty.
Revenge plays also have their pattern. It occurs first in The Spanish Tragedy which was the father of all Revenge Plays and in an even more extravagant specimen, exactly contemporary with HAMLET, Marston's ANTONIO'S REVENGE.
The story of the Revenge Play begins with the crime, usually murder but with varying motives. The duty of vengeance is laid on the next of kin, who is faced with the problem of identifying the murderer, a matter of some difficulty. He encounters many impediments to vengeance. Finally in the last Act, comes the triumphant conclusion when the original murderer is appropriately dispatched and since playgoers liked their tragedies to be richly coloured, the avenger and all others neatly concerned perish together in one red ruin.
There was, moreover, etiquette, a morality, in revenge. Vengeance was a pious duty laid on the next of kin; it was wild justice, but to be satisfactory and successful something more than strict justice was needed. The Old Law claimed an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth; vengeance demanded both eyes, a jaw full of teeth and above all that the victim, after exquisite torments of body and mind, should go straight to Hell there to remain...