On one level it helps develop the reader’s understanding of some of the play’s key themes. The first of these is revenge. At this point in the play, after Hamlet has earlier been told by his father’s ghost that he was murdered by his brother, Hamlet’s uncle Claudius, Hamlet has taken no significant action to claim that revenge the ghost has demanded. He believes he has established grounds for taking the appropriate revenge, yet
The ghost asks Hamlet to avenge his “most foul murder.” However, he warns Hamlet not to let revenge consume his mind. Ironically, Hamlet states “I’ll wipe away all trivial, fond records, all saws of books, all forms, all pressures past, that youth and observation copied there, and thy commandment all alone shall live within the book and volume of my brain, unmixed with baser matter”(Shakespeare I.V.106-111). In order for Hamlet to avenge his father, first he needs the proper evidence. Hamlet decides to create a play about a man who kills his brother, hoping that when Claudius sees it, he has a reaction showing his guilt. It is when Hamlet gets proof of Claudius’ guilt that he allows his emotions to dictate his actions.
he expresses his sourness against the treachery of his uncle. Critics suggest that the first soliloquy is an outline of the coming tragedy of Hamlet's life. In the second soliloquy, Hamlet appears to be a man of decision. When the Ghost discloses the secrets of King Hamlet's murder, Hamlet decides to take revenge. he puts on a mask of madness to mislead the world.
Freud notes that "Hamlet is able to do anything—except take vengeance on the man who did away with his father and took that father's place with his mother, the man who shows him the repressed wishes of his own childhood realized." In addition to Hamlet's oedipal anxiety, his delay in obtaining revenge as commanded by the ghost is also a source of psychoanalytical study. C. L. Barber and Richard P. Wheeler (1986) introduce their analysis of Hamlet by reviewing Freud's views on individual and social development. The critics assert that the psychological framework of Hamlet is informed by Hamlet's efforts to "cope with the desecration of his heritage." While they argue that Hamlet's problems cannot be simply reduced to the Oedipus complex, Barber and Wheeler state that an understanding of Hamlet "must be consistent with the presence of that complex, for the Freudian explanation clearly works."
Hamlet ICTW In conveying the contempt the Ghost and Hamlet embrace towards the Queen and Claudius, Shakespeare, in his tragedy Hamlet, integrates Claudius’s need for power in order to irradiate the notion of Claudius’s selfishness and human betrayal. In the passage, the damning diction employed by the Ghost reveals biblical undertones and apprises the reader of the conniving ways of Claudius and the Queen. The ghost describes Claudius through the metaphor of a serpent- evoking a biblical reference Adam and Eve. The Ghost reveals that Claudius murdered him by saying: “The serpent that did sting thy father’s life now wears his crown.” By employing the wording “serpent,” it highlights Claudius’ sneaky ways: slithering about to take over the throne. Claudius purposefully set out to murder his own flesh and blood, which proves his selfishness, similar to the biblical reference of the serpent.
He almost immediately begins planning his course of action towards revenge. Hamlet’s disgust toward his mother is only heightened with this news of murder, “O most pernicious woman! / O villain, villain, smiling damned villain!” (Iv.105-106). Old Hamlet’s ghost has warned Hamlet not to punish Gertrude with hell, but he does not seem to care. Hamlet has now taken this personal with his own desires for revenge, as well as his obligation to his deceased father.
The personality traits of insanity and intellectuality also contribute greatly to the death of Hamlet. Hamlet’s tragic flaw is his procrastination. Without a doubt, Hamlet portrays procrastination and indecisiveness multiple times in the play. The ghost of Hamlet’s father visits him in the beginning of the play informing Hamlet that he was murdered by his own brother, Claudius: “The serpent that did sting thy father’s life/ Now wears the crown”(I.v.44,45). Furthermore, Shakespeare exhibits how Hamlet chose to devise a plan of acting mad, rather than avenging his father’s death immediately, progressing to his demise.
After King Hamlet's death, Laertes, along with Prince Hamlet return to Denmark for the funeral services. This is the first sign that Laertes will become a foil to Hamlet in the play. Hamlet is devastated but he only mopes around whereas when Laertes father Polonius is murdered he vows for revenge “to the blackest Devil!”(4.5.215) He thinks through his emotions, not with his brain like Hamlet. When Hamlet is trying to solve if Claudius killed his father he uses Gertrude asking, “I know not: is it the King?”(3.4.123) Spying through someone else is typical Hamlet not only keeping his feeling hush but also avoiding a confrontation with the king before he knows for sure if he killed his father. When Ophelia dies Laertes is Distraught and isn’t afraid to show this whereas Hamlet loved her but his lack emotion left him without a connection to her at the end of the play.
Hamlet makes sure his uncle is guilty of murder before enacting his revenge. Hamlet is not insane because; He tells people that he will pretend to be, He makes a lot of sense even when he is supposedly crazy, and He acts insane at highly convenient times. Hamlet tells his friends that he will pretend to be crazy. He says to Horatio and Marcellus: Here as before, never, so help you mercy, How strange or odd soe’er I bear myself, As I perchance shall think meet To put an antic disposition on, (I, V, 171-173). In this quote Hamlet tells them that no matter how strange he is acting, they should not be alarmed because he is going to feign insanity.
King Hamlet's ghost uttered to Hamlet, “The serpent that did sting thy father's life now wears his crown” (1.5.39). Hamlet agreed to avenge his father's death. Now, his life had a purpose, which is to kill Claudius. Aside from his father's death, there was something else that sent him spiraling down. He was denied access to his love, Ophelia.