Hamlet starts to act as a madman to avenge the death of his father by his uncle. Ophelia on the other hand, goes mad after the death of her father. Shakespeare uses both these characters to affect the main plot in the play and their relationships with other characters. Many people debate whether Hamlet’s madness is real or fake. Shakespeare incorporated the theme of madness to serve a motive for Hamlet in order to deceive others.
Revenge in Hamlet Hamlet is a play written by William Shakespeare and is based on revenge and how the act of certain individuals can lead to tragedy and affect everyone. Hamlet’s father has just died, and as a ghost, visits Hamlet and secretly tells him the truth of what had happened. He tells Hamlet that he did not die of natural causes, but was poisoned by Claudius, Hamlet’s uncle and now stepfather. This encounter begins a challenge and obligation to seek revenge for his father. Hamlet is speaking to the mysterious ghost, whose message is if Hamlet ever loved his father he will “Revenge his foul and most unnatural murder” (1.5.25).
Hamlet was already greatly affected by his father's death and was in deep mourning. After the ghost came into contact with Hamlet, he embodied anger and found a deep addiction to revenge. The ghost of Hamlet's father revealed something to the young Hamlet about how the ghost, Hamlet's father, had died. From there, it set the course for the rest of the play. The ghost informed Hamlet that he had been killed by Sir King Claudius and that Claudius was, in fact, Hamlet's uncle.
He only obtained the throne after killing his brother and marrying his brother’s widow. King Claudius appears to the audience as a civil, diplomatic ruler and it is only until the ghost first appears to Hamlet that is revealed he killed his brother with poison. The betrayal of his mother marrying King Claudius within a month after his King Hamlet’s death leaves Prince Hamlet feeling angry, bitter and revengeful towards his mother. Also the fact that she married her brother-in-law was considered to be incestuous and sinful in that era. When Prince Hamlet hires travelling actors to perform an act to the King Claudius and Queen Gertrude, they notice the plot to be similar to the murder of King Hamlet.
Hamlet shows Gertrude that she has lowered her standards by marrying Claudius, When he refers to old Hamlet as, “A combination and a form indeed / Where every god did seem to set his seal” (3.4.55-61). This quotation shows what Hamlet saw in his father and how bitterly disappointed he is in his mother’s choice of lord. Hamlet’s frustration is made bigger due to Claudius’ unsympathetic remarks. Earlier in the play, King Claudius comments on the irrationality of Hamlet’s grief by saying, “That thus hath put him/ So much from th’ understanding of himself, I cannot dream of.” (2.2.8-10) The intensity of Hamlet’s grief may encourage others besides Claudius to be prejudiced towards treating him as insane. In the wake of his father’s death, Hamlet takes actions that other characters perceive as insane.
This is apparent through the appearance of his father. The apparition claims that “I am thy [Hamlet’s] father’s spirit” (I.v.14). This shows that the king’s physical body is dead but not his soul. But the king admits that he had done some bad things in his life therefore he is “doomed for a certain term to walk the night” (I.v.15). As hamlet figures it out that the husband of his mother is a murderer—Uncle Claudius—he realizes that his mother is at fault.
Sarcastically, Hamlet states, "What should a man do but be merry? For look you how cheerfully my mother looks, and my father died within's two hours". Unlike Hamlet, Laertes has developed a different kind of madness, a madness that is controlled by revenge. When Laertes is talking to Claudius, Laertes gets so much revenge building up inside him against Hamlet that Laertes now wants to cut his throat.
Soon after, the young prince is visited by a ghost that resembled the appearance of his dead past father. To increase confusion on Hamlet’s situation even more, the ghost gives details about the truth of King Hamlet’s death; the King was murdered by Claudius while asleep. Because of this and other similar factors, like betrayal, Hamlet began to fall down into a sense of insanity. Throughout William Shakespeare’s play The Tragedy of Hamlet: Prince of Denmark, indication of Prince Hamlet’s true madness is seen in his feelings of abandonment and betrayal from the relationships he has with his family and friends, the unstable emotions and thoughts of avenging his father’s “unnatural” murder, and the unbelievable appearance and meeting of the presumably ghost of former king of Denmark Hamlet’s father, King Hamlet. The character of Hamlet has
In the soliloquy, Hamlet is at first upset with himself about finding ways to avoid avenging his Father’s murder, like his spirit in ghost form told him to. This complaining turns into self hatred and then Hamlet is insulting himself outright. The main reason for this is he has agreed to get revenge on Claudius so his father’s spirit can be at peace, but he hasn’t done it yet. The fact that the Player seems to be more able to get into the mindset of revenge than he can further discourages him. This on top of the fact that Hamlet’s dad is dead and his mother married that man he hates most in the world makes for a pretty melancholy fellow.
In “Hamlet” byWilliam Shakespeare, Hamlet experienced acts of betrayal by individuals in his inner circle and reciprocated with acts of revenge which ultimately resulted in his his death. In the novel, Hamlet, the main character was portrayed as an intelligent university student who returned home to attend his father’s funeral. The first incident of betrayal Hamlet experienced occurred when Claudius, Hamlet's uncle/stepfather /King, killed his father and took control effectively robbing Hamlet of the crown and the chance to be King. Hamlet adored his father and was devastated when his mother, Gertrude, had an incestuous relationship with his uncle who she married so quickly after his father’s death that ..the funeral baked meats…did furnish forth the marriage tables. 1.2.184-185.