Shakespeare’s Hamlet has and intricate plot formed by the characters and themes throughout it. One major idea is Hamlet’s changing sanity, which fluctuates through the play as a performance and as a true madness. The other main theme which develops the play is the act of vengeance, with the delay and doubt that accompanies it. These themes, along with dramatic devices and the characters in the plot, add to the textual integrity of the play. There is a duality to the character of Hamlet, as his madness changes from a performance to true insanity throughout the play.
Old Hamlet’s ghost appears for the second time to remind Hamlet of his mission of revenge for his father’s murder. Hamlet suggests to his mother he is not actually mad at all, he is just pretending to be. Shakespheare shows us many conflicts with characters throughout this scene and also the consequences which the scene puts out, including Ophelia’s madness due to her fathers death. The ‘closet scene’, as it is commonly referred to, is significant in a number of ways. On one level it helps develop the reader’s understanding of some of the play’s key themes.
In lines 60-65 the ghost says “My custom always of the afternoon, / Upon my secure hour thy uncle stole / With juice of cursed hebenon inn a vial, / And in the porches of my ears did pour / The leperous distilment, whose effect / Holds such an enmity with blood of a man.” In these lines the ghosts view on the garden changes. The garden was once viewed as a peaceful place where the king spent his afternoons, and at the end the garden was where his uncle murdered him. Later in the speech, the ghost says “Thus was I, sleeping, by a brother’s hand / Of life, of crown, of queen at once dispatched / Cut off even in the blossoms of my sin, / Unhouseled, disappointed, unaneled.” (Line 74-77) The king’s diction changes in this part of the speech. He begins to think about how his brother took his life before he can confess his sins and be free of them and how his brother has taken his wife and committed adultery with
This underlines the thin wall between pretending in real life and acting in a play. When Claudius asks Hamlet if the play has any offense in it Hamlet answers: “No, no, they do but jest, poison in jest.”(lines 256-257) He says that it is just pretending and that they are just actors in a play. During the whole plot of Hamlet, characters use lies, stage situations and manipulate each other to find out truths. They are all acting. In this passage, language is also used to play.
Later in the last scene of Act 1, Hamlet accompanies the guards to the platform on which the ghost was spotted. Surely, the ghost appeared and beckoned Hamlet. He followed and the ghost revealed a terrible secret to him. The ghost revealed the murderer, Claudius. King Hamlet's ghost uttered to Hamlet, “The serpent that did sting thy father's life now wears his crown” (1.5.39).
Rashmitha Rapuri Mr. Morano ENG 2DB-03 June 5th, 2015 Macbeth Act 2 Modernization Rationale The Shakespearean play Macbeth, explores many genres and themes to many audience’s interests. It carries a sense of comedy, tragedy and supernaturalism. Macbeth is a play of contradiction and the power of being a king which the protagonist, Macbeth, is striving for. In the beginning of the play, Shakespeare highlights Macbeth’s gracious qualities such as bravery, modesty and loyalty. However, these qualities turn into greed, apathy and self-indulgence soon after Macbeth takes fate into his own hands, guided by his wife and the three weird sisters.
· He tells Ophelia he loves her and does not love her, thinks she should never have trusted him but wants her to go away to a nunnery for her own protection. He calls himself a liar, but when he discovers Ophelia is dead, Hamlet's reaction suggests that he did, love her. · · I loved Ophelia: forty thousand brothers · Could not, with all their quantity of love, · Make up my sum. · · Hamlet does not always tell the truth, but there is enough evidence to suggest that Hamlet probably did love Ophelia. 4.
By saying these words to her he is crassly calling her a harlot, and making to appear that he never really loved her. Ophelia made one decision and that was to love Hamlet, and now he is using her actions to make her feel inferior and sinful. Up to this point in the play, Shakespeare depicted Hamlet as a mad man hell-bent on avenging his fathers suspect death, however: his cruel outburst at Ophelia is not a turning point in the story in which he goes from being a hero to being a cold-hearted oppressor. Hamlet tells Ophelia that she will have to ‘marry a fool’ because ‘wise men’ would know better than to marry her; he yells at her ‘get thee to a nunnery’, and yet the way it fits into the plot makes it seem almost expected. As the plot progresses Ophelia begins to lose her mind, resulting in her eventually suicide, but at no point his Hamlet called out for his harsh words against her in a significant way.
I, Claudius In the William Shakespeare classic, Hamlet, the main antagonist is the King, Claudius, who is suspected of murdering his own brother and marrying his wife in order to take the throne for himself. Claudius lacks most of the warrior-like qualities that his brother was respected for, but is instead a politician at heart. He uses word-play that has been compared to the pouring of poison into an ear, the very method he used to kill his brother. Though his statesmanlike qualities and wit help him to govern Denmark, his abilities as king are overshadowed by his flaws: lust, greed, and excess. As Hamlet explains of his uncle when he hears his late night revelry: “The king doth wake tonight and takes his rouse, Keeps wassail, and the swaggering up-spring reels; And as he drains his draughts of Rhenish down, The kettle-drum and trumpet thus bray out The triumph of his pledge”(I, iv, 9-13).
During that time, it was believed that the death of a King would upset the natural balance of order and society. The downfall of a king or the death of a king and the theme of suicide, would have made a dramatic impact on the Shakespearean audience, compared to a modern day audience ,who were used to a diet of violence in tragic plays. The shock value of these themes would have produced the required effect that Shakespeare intended. King Lear is a powerful King at the beginning of the play, who would, in my opinion, would have found it hard to be humble and to be able to achieve humility without having lost his power, supporters, family and material wealth. When he asks his daughters