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.
In this essay I will consider the significance of Act III scene I. Before the scene, Hamlet has been contemplating suicide. He also gathered a number of players to act in his “Dumb show”. Polonius has just begun to hatch a plan of spying on Hamlet from behind a curtain. His scene is crucial to the play as it hints at Claudius’s indiscretion and Hamlet’s first outward rejection of Ophelia.
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.
Hamlet’s Defect: A reinterpretation of the word “defect” in Hamlet The word “defect” appears only twice in Hamlet’s Shakespeare yet this is a word which has profound consequences on the interpretation of key elements in the play depending on the definition attributed. It is very possible Shakespeare incorporated such words to help add a sense of ambiguity when needed, yet it is also possible our current or common understanding of words such as “defect” give a false meaning which Shakespeare had not intended. If one takes “defect” to mean something essential that is lacked, then the scene where Hamlet tells Horatio about the things which cause people to “in the general censure take corruption,” (1.4.35) and the scene where Polonius ponders “the cause of [Hamlet’s] defect,” (2.2.102) ostensibly lead an audience to relate the scenes to the larger issue of ambition throughout the play. The two definitions of the word “defect” which are important in this paper are best described in the Oxford English Dictionary. The first definition given is a meaning conceived very close to the time when Shakespeare wrote Hamlet—1589.
Check your notes; below is a succinct synopsis of that introductory discussion: “Waiting for Conventions” In Waiting for Godot, Beckett implements broken conventions of traditional theatre in order to successfully satirize the detrimental nature of the human condition symbolized throughout this absurdist play (which seems to have no plot). A certain level of tension is created by this plays lack of plot which leaves the audience expecting something to happen that never comes. This lack of plot to some overshadows the reasoning behind why Beckett does this. Although these broken conventions can act as a looking glass into the true meaning of the play, they require the audience to do a certain amount of searching to crack the nut which is Waiting for Godot. Waiting for Godot, unlike many plays follows no specific plot, a concept in which most conventional plays ought to have in order to rope in an audience member to the contents and morals of the play.
William Shakespeare’s Hamlet (1599-1601) has successfully continued to engage audiences through its dramatic treatments of soliloquies and asides. It has retained value as being worth critical study in both an Elizabethan and modern context – this may be said due to its mirroring of human nature in society, thereby depicting the thematic concepts of struggle and disillusionment. Shakespeare’s use of dramatic and language techniques, consisting of much great symbolism and metaphorical language, illustrates the dramatic irony and action of textual integrity in Hamlet. Thus these salient notions are achieved through Hamlet’s speech directed towards a society that reflects both an Elizabethan and modern contemporary context, whereby audiences reflect upon the depiction of humanity’s struggle in a disillusioned reality. In Hamlet’s third soliloquy, there are echoes of struggle and disillusionment which are illustrated as important concepts in dealing with Shakespearean language throughout the play of HAMLET.
he puts on a mask of madness to mislead the world. In the Third Soliloquy Hamlet appears more determined. According to certain critics this soliloquy has a great importance because it reveals Hamlet’s rational mind, as he puts Claudius to test by enacting a play. The Fourth soliloquy is the most famous and essential, And is considered as a pioneer in English literature. Here Hamlet enters with a dilemma: “To be or not to be”.
It provides the story with a point to change character smoothly to the audience and add dimension to the character creating very static characters. In the first soliloquy in Hamlet during Act two, scene two, Hamlet discusses the speech the player has just performed for him, and how angry he is that this player who was able to feel such great emotion for someone who meant nothing to him, when Hamlet couldn’t properly express his emotion and he had something terrible happen to him. This hatches the plan of the play in Hamlet’s mind and he finds out that he will be able to see if Claudius is guilty or not when he watches it. When he questions his character stating “But I am pigeon-liver’d and lack gall”(2.2.583) he admits his cowardly behavior and that if he had courage he would have “fatted all the region kites,”(2.2.585). By the end of the soliloquy he comes up with a plan, to make sure that Claudius definitely killed late Hamlet, and the Ghost is not a damned spirit here to taunt him.
Iago, who is known as the Machiavellian villain perpetuates the tragedy by bringing forward a hamartia or a fatal flaw from Othello. As soon as the play begins, Shakespeare used dramatic irony to illustrate Othello’s view of Iago as an honest and trustworthy man through his repeated description of “honest Iago” and “a man of exceeding honesty” to the audience. Of course that is not the case, the audience views Iago to be “Janus-faced” and deceptive through his constant declaration of “I am not what I am” and how he “hates the moor”. This juxtaposition is created so that the audience can empathise with Othello. I know I can definitely empathise with him.
Madness in Hamlet and King Lear The subject of madness is a major theme in two of Shakespeare’s most well-known tragedies, “Hamlet” and “King Lear”. In both of these plays, a character feigns insanity to carry out a motive - Hamlet and Edgar respectively. However, while it is made quite clear to the audience that Edgar is only pretending to be a mad beggar (“Whiles I may escape I will preserve myself, and am bethought to take the basest and most poorest shape that ever penury, in contempt of man brought near to beast”), it is somewhat less clear whether Hamlet has crossed the line and lost control of his “antic disposition”. Shakespeare gives evidence which suggests that Hamlet is sane by having three other men also witness the manifestation of the ghost of Hamlet’s father. If Hamlet were to have seen his father’s ghost by himself, there would be a greater argument for him being insane from the outset of the play.