Hamlet - Critical Study Essay

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The above blank verse is an insightful soliloquy of Hamlet displaying struggle and disillusionment. Explain how Shakespeare Hamlet continues to engage audiences through it dramatic treatment of soliloquies and asides. In the light of your critical study, does this statement resonate with you own perspective and voice in the ‘tone’ of Hamlet. In your response, make detailed references to 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. The quote, “To be, or not to be: that is the question” (ACT 3 SCENE 1)– Hamlet, illustrates the rhetorical questioning, a feature of dramatic struggle, of Hamlet about asking of ‘being’ in the first line. He points out that this is the question that we must all ask ourselves all the time. It is in this first line that it is noted that the soliloquy is a set piece on life and suicide rather contrasted to Hamlet’s ‘feigned’ madness which is recurred throughout the

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