LITERATURE

Literature

Literature

Introduction

Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, by William Shakespeare, tells the morbid tale of a young man's quest for revenge. Set in Denmark during the Middle Ages, the play chronicles the assassination of a king and his brother's usurpation of the throne and insinuation into the king's old life, to the point of marrying the king's own widow. Hamlet, the young prince, is charged by his dead father's ghost to bring his uncle to justice and restore the rightful crown.

In contrast, Oscar Wilde's clever use of language, characters, dramatic irony and absurdity makes his play 'The Importance of Being Earnest' very funny. Wilde wrote the play with intentions of making a mild mockery of his contemporary upper-class society's manners and values. He does this very successfully by having his upper-class characters over-expressing their manners and their language to such an extent his characters are seen to be quite absurd. However, not all of the humour comes from mocking upper-class manners and values. The plot is quite ridiculous and so adds to the laughter of his audiences. The final result of adding all the funny parts about the play together is a play that cannot fail to make one laugh, even though it was not written for a modern audience.

Body

The approach taken by Shakespeare in Hamlet has produce countless different explanations of meaning, but it is through Hamlet's struggle to tackle his internal dilemma, to make a decision when to revenge his fathers death, that the reader becomes aware of one of the more common analysis in Hamlet; the idea that Shakespeare is endeavour to comment on the influence that one's state of mind can have on the decisions they make in life. The Elizabethan play The Tragedy of Hamlet Prince of Denmark is one of William Shakespeare's most popular works. One of ...