Hamlet

Introduction

Perhaps, Hamlet is the best dramatic character ever produced. From the second we meet the sad prince, we get captivated by his stylish power. Covered in his blue-black cloak, Hamlet is a man of major contradictions; he is well-mannered yet rude, loving yet violent, careless yet alert. Hamlet undergoes his father's demise with good resentment and overwhelming anger, however he demonstrates no regret when he himself is liable for the demises of the intrusive Guildenstern and Rosencrantz, and the preaching lord chamberlain, Polonius. He employs the innocent and fragile Ophelia as an means for his hatred towards the queen, and could not understand that his own violent language have initiated her madness (Hoy, 99-111). Hamlet is filled with errors. But how is it that yet apparently depressing behaviors such as hesitancy, passion, hatred, violence, and rashness could improve Hamlet's importance as a tragic hero or a “prince among men”. This paper discusses analyze the character of Hamlet in Shakespeare's Hamlet and discuss how he is a man of contradictions. Hamlet is a tragic play written by William Shakespeare. It was composed between 1599 and 1601. Hamlet, prince of Denmark, was William Shakespeare's most fascinating hero. T

he play recounts how Prince Hamlet took revenge from his uncle Claudius for murdering his father and taking the throne by marrying Hamlet's mother. The work outlines vividly about the madness (both real and fake) and the passage of the boundless deep pain and anger. It also explores the themes of revenge, incest, betrayal and moral corruption.

Discussion

Hamlet has been inquired critically over time. The character of Hamlet has been among the most studied creations of Shakespeare. Intellectual, self-reflective, alienated and apparent by doubts about Hamlet and also the circumstance in which he is called upon to act as an agent of revenge. Hamlet has been considered as the typical modern hero.

Grene asserts that Hamlet lacks the strong markings which commonly form the chief modern celebrity in a tragedy. According to Guthrie, Hamlet's doubts and perplexities only serve to indicate how much he is like his fellow man. Thus, Guthrie praises Hamlet's ordinariness, an opinion that runs counter to the ideas of most subsequent critics, who focus on Hamlet's unique qualities.

According to Grene, Hamlet is not absorbed in the antic role's viewpoint, partly sincere and partly put on could tend to blur his emotional reality for himself and turn him into a person who self-consciously performs his emotions. Knight's modernist critical aesthetics have very little to do with determining such a radical interpretation of Claudius. Rather, his personal representation of Claudius in "The Embassy of Death" can best be understood in the context of several disquisitions on kingship in criticism of this period (Edwards, 52-63). Knight states positively that the message that Shakespeare's plays must communicate to Britain is not the choice between power and the absence of power, but between royalty in the Shakespeare sense and oppression. As Wilson Knight's, John Kerrigan also argues that revenge in the body of the play, is far ...