Реферат: Hamlet Essay Research Paper Context
Analysis
It may be arguable whether Hamlet is Shakespeare’s greatest play, but it is undoubtedly his most famous and most influential. Hamlet is, without exaggeration, the most written-about, interpreted, and studied work of literature in English. It has been read and analyzed exhaustively, for its aesthetic, moral, political, psychological, historical, allegorical, logical, religious, and philosophical aspects; there are hundreds and even thousands of works devoted to each of these, and books devoted as well to its characters, backgrounds, plots, performances, and place in world theater as a whole. What this means, of course, is that Hamlet supports a massive variety of interpretations and understandings. There may be wrong ways to understand the tragedy, but there is no single right way to understand it: Hamlet is concerned with deep truths about the nature of humanity in the universe, and it is no more reducible to a set of simple themes than are the complicated questions arising from human experience itself.
That said, there are a number of clear, important themes that dominate the play and form the core of its interpretability. Hamlet’s struggle over the question of whether or not to murder Claudius presents Shakespeare with an opportunity to explore giant questions. First among these is the relationship in human life between thought and action; Hamlet’s reflective, contemplative nature often renders it impossible for him to act on his convictions, and many critics have described the imbalance between his active and passive natures as a “tragic flaw” that makes his wretched fate inevitable. Other important themes explored in Hamlet include: the nature of justice and revenge; the idea that sin must beget retribution; the line between sanity and madness; the nature of political power and the connection between the well-being of the state and the moral condition of its leaders (When Hamlet declares that “Something is rotten in the state of Denmark,” that “something” is Claudius); the moral question of suicide in a malevolent universe (Hamlet longs to kill himself, but fears God’s wrath in the afterlife); the relationship between sons and fathers (Hamlet and the ghost, Laertes and Polonius, Fortinbras and the dead King of Norway); the nature of the family; the inevitability of death; and, against that inevitability, the question of truth, of what human beings can cling to in a painful, unjust, and hostile world–the question of what gives life meaning, of what lasts.
Hamlet, who is in love with learning, thought, and reason, is driven closer and closer to a kind of wild, unwilling nihilism, as every verity (religion, society, philosophy, love) fails him or proves false. The question of Hamlet’s sanity is one of the most hotly contested critical controversies surrounding the play: does he actually lose his mind, or does he only pretend to, as he claims? The answer is probably that his decision to feign madness is a sane one, a strategic move to confuse his enemies and conceal his intentions, but also that his mind is so troubled, confused, and desperate in the absence of any grounding truth that his pretense assumes the intensity of real madness, and something of its quality as well.
Hamlet
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Act I, Scenes i-ii
Summary
On a dark winter night outside Elsinore Castle in Denmark, an officer named Bernardo comes to relieve the watchman Francisco. Cold, tired, and apprehensive, Francisco thanks Bernardo, and hurries home to bed. As Francisco leaves, Bernardo is joined by Marcellus, another watchman, and Horatio, a friend of Prince Hamlet. In hushed tones, Marcellus and Bernardo discuss the apparition they have seen for the past two nights, and which they now hope to show Horatio: the ghost of the recently deceased King Hamlet, which they claim has appeared before them on the castle ramparts in the late hours of the night.
Horatio is skeptical, but the ghost suddenly appears–and just as suddenly, vanishes. Terrified, Horatio acknowledges that the specter does indeed resemble the dead King of Denmark–he says the ghost even wears the armor King Hamlet wore when he battled against the armies of Norway, and the same frown he wore when he fought against the Poles. Horatio declares that the ghost must bring warning of impending misfortune for Denmark, perhaps in the form of a military attack: he recounts the story of King Hamlet’s conquest of certain lands once belonging to Norway, saying that Fortinbras, the young prince of Norway, now seeks to re-conquer those forfeited lands. The ghost reappears, and Horatio tries urgently to speak to it. The ghost remains silent, however, and disappears again with the first hint of dawn. Horatio suggests that they tell Prince Hamlet, the dead king’s son, about the apparition; he believes the ghost will not refuse to speak to his beloved son.
That morning, the new king, the former king’s brother Claudius, gives a speech to his courtiers about his recent marriage to Gertrude, his brother’s widow and Hamlet’s mother. He says that he mourns his brother, but has chosen to balance Denmark’s mourning with the delight of his marriage. He says that young Fortinbras has written to him, rashly demanding the surrender of the lands King Hamlet won from Fortinbras’s father, and he dispatches Cornelius and Voltimand with a message for the King of Norway, Fortinbras’s elderly uncle.
His speech concluded, Claudius turns to Laertes, the son of the Lord Chamberlain Polonius, and asks what business he has from the court. Laertes answers that he wishes to return to France, where his stay was recently cut short by Claudius’s coronation. Polonius tells Claudius that Laertes has his permission to go, and Claudius jovially gives Laertes his consent as well. Turning to Hamlet, Claudius asks why “the clouds still hang” upon him: Hamlet is still wearing black in mourning for the dead king. Gertrude urges him to cast it off, but he replies bitterly that his inner sorrow is so great that his dour appearance is merely a poor mirror of it. Claudius declares that all fathers die, and that all sons must lose their fathers, and that to mourn for too long is unmanly and inappropriate. Gertrude asks Hamlet not to return to Wittenberg, where he had been studying at the university, and he stiffly agrees to obey her. Professing to be cheered by Hamlet’s decision to stay in Denmark, Claudius escorts Gertrude from the room; the court follows, leaving Hamlet alone.
Alone, Hamlet says that he longs to evaporate, and wishes that God had not made suicide a sin. Anguished, he laments his father’s death and his mother’s hasty marriage to his uncle. He remembers how deeply in love his mother and father had seemed, and curses the thought that now–only a month after the king’s death–she has married his far inferior brother. “Frailty,” he cries, “thy name is woman!”
Horatio enters with Marcellus and Bernardo, and Hamlet, happy to see his friend, asks why he has left Wittenberg. Horatio says that he came to see King Hamlet’s funeral, and Hamlet curtly argues that he came to see his mother’s wedding. Horatio agrees that the one followed closely on the heels of the other. He then tells Hamlet that he, Marcellus, and Bernardo have seen what appears to be his father’s ghost. Stunned, Hamlet agrees to keep watch with them after night falls, in the hopes that he will be able to speak to the apparition.
Commentary
With masterful economy and grace Shakespeare sets his mood, introduces his major characters, presents his background information, begins his exploration of the play’s major themes, and sets his plot in motion, all within two short scenes. The only major plot strand not established in this section is that of Hamlet’s relationship with Ophelia, who appears in the following scene. Other than that omission, these two scenes introduce all the major strands that will wind throughout the play. The appearance of the ghost affords the characters the opportunity to tell the audience about the recent death of King Hamlet and the history of his conflict with Poland (which in turn introduces the idea that Fortinbras has a grudge against Denmark), Claudius’s speech informs us of his marriage to Gertrude, and Hamlet’s bitterness toward Claudius and his subsequent soliloquy establishes his melancholy and desperation over those events. The revelation of the ghost’s appearance, and Hamlet’s decision to confront the apparition, sets in motion the main plot of the play, which will culminate in Hamlet’s death at the end of Act V.
The appearance of the ghost on a chilling, misty night outside Elsinore Castle introduces the element of the supernatural into the play, and indicates immediately that, as Hamlet puts it later, “the time is out of joint”: something is wrong in Denmark. Despite the apparent vitality of Claudius’s court, Shakespeare tells us, trouble is clearly on the horizon–Horatio interprets the ghost as a warning about Fortinbras. Hamlet, devastated by his father’s death and betrayed by his mother’s marriage, already feels that “something is rotten in the state of Denmark”; his bitterness, his cynicism, his yearning for suicide, and the other characters’ remarks about his eccentric behavior indicate the extent to which Hamlet is not his usual self. In fact, nothing in Denmark is usual: the play opens immediately after the disruption of a very long, stable, and uneventful period under the reign of King Hamlet. One of the most extraordinary qualities of these first two scenes is their ability to convey that impression, and something of what the previous period itself was actually like, without ever showing it to us directly.
Hamlet’s soliloquy about suicide (”O, that this too too solid flesh would melt”) ushers in what will be a central idea in the play. Hamlet wishes to kill himself, but God has forbidden it (”the Almight” has “fixed his canon ‘gainst self-slaughter”); the question of the moral validity of suicide in an unbearably painful world will haunt the rest of the play (the question reaches the height of its urgency in the most famous line in all of English literature, “To be, or not to be: that is the question”). In Act III, Hamlet decides that no one would choose to live under the conditions of the world if they were not afraid of what will happen to them after death. Hamlet wants to sleep, but he is afraid of his dreams.
This first soliloquy, therefore, puts Hamlet at odds with the dictates of religion; if God did not have contrary wishes that made him fear hell, Hamlet could seek the felicity of death. Throughout the play, we watch the gradual crumbling of the human verities on which Hamlet’s worldview have been based; his mind is left with little or nothing to cling to. Already, religion has failed him, and the shattered grotesquerie of his family can offer him no solace.
Act I, Scenes iv-v
Summary
In Polonius’s house, Laertes is preparing to leave for France. Bidding his sister Ophelia farewell, he also cautions her against falling in love with Hamlet, who is, according to Laertes, too far above her by birth to be able to love her honorably. Hamlet, he says, is responsible not only for his own feelings but for his position in the state, and his position may make it impossible for him to marry her. Polonius enters, and gives Laertes a great deal of advice about how to behave with integrity and practicality. Laertes leaves, and Polonius asks Ophelia about her relationship with Hamlet. She says that Hamlet has claimed to love her; Polonius sternly echoes Laertes’s advice, and forbids Ophelia from associating with Hamlet again.
Hamlet keeps watch outside the castle with Horatio and Marcellus, waiting for the appearance of the ghost. Shortly after midnight, trumpets sound from the castle, and Hamlet explains that the new king is spending the night carousing, as is the Danish custom. Disgusted, Hamlet declares that the custom is better broken than observed. Then the ghost appears, and Hamlet calls out to it; the ghost beckons Hamlet to follow it out into the night. His companions urge him not to follow, but Hamlet declares that he cares nothing for his life, and that the ghost can do nothing to his soul; he follows after it and disappears into the darkness. Horatio and Marcellus, stunned, declare that the event bodes very ill for the nation–as Marcellus declares, “Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.” After a moment, Horatio and Marcellus follow after Hamlet and the apparition of the dead king.
In the darkness, the ghost speaks to Hamlet, saying that it is his father’s spirit, come to rouse Hamlet to revenge his death, his “foul and most unnatural murder.” Hamlet is appalled, and the ghost tells him that as he slept in his garden, a villain poured poison into his ear–the very villain that now wears his crown. Hamlet’s worst fears about his uncle are confirmed: “O my prophetic soul!” he cries. The ghost exhorts Hamlet to seek revenge, and disappears as morning dawns. Intensely moved, Hamlet swears to remember and obey the ghost. Horatio and Marcellus arrive upon the scene, and ask Hamlet what has happened. Shaken and volatile, he does not tell them, but insists that they swear upon his sword not to reveal what they have seen. He pleads with Horatio not to give him away if he seems to act strangely, even if he seems to be insane. Three times the ghost’s voice echoes from beneath the ground, declaiming “Swear.” Horatio and Marcellus take the oath upon Hamlet’s sword, and the three men exit toward the castle.
Commentary
Hamlet and Laertes form one of the most important polarities in all of the play; as the plot progresses, Hamlet’s hesitance and general inability to obtain his father’s revenge will be heavily contrasted with Laertes’s furious willingness to avenge his father’s death. The centerpiece of each of these scenes is the conversations each son has with his father, Laertes with Polonius and Hamlet with the ghost of the dead king. In contrast with the bitterly fractured state of Hamlet’s made clear in the previous scene, in which Hamlet laments his mother’s “o’erhasty” marriage to his father’s brother, the bustling normalcy of Polonius’s house appears all the more striking. Polonius’s long speech advising Laertes on how to behave in France is almost deliberately over- fatherly, as if to hammer home the contrast between what Laertes has and what Hamlet does not have. (Of course, the sincerity of Polonius’s pose as loving father will be called into question later in the play, when he sends his servant Reynaldo to France to spy on his son.)
The abnormality of Hamlet’s situation is again emphasized in his meeting with his dead father: in Hamlet’s family, father and son may only interact under supernatural circumstances. And what the ghost tells Hamlet–that he was murdered by Claudius, his brother and the very man now married to Hamlet’s mother, and that until Hamlet obtains revenge on Claudius, he is doomed to an existence of torture in hell–contrasts quite sharply with the rather clich?d advice Polonius gave Laertes two scenes earlier. The ghost’s demand for revenge upon Claudius sets the main plot of the play into motion, leads Hamlet to the idea of feigning madness, and introduces the theme of retributive justice–the idea that sin must beget punishment–into the play: the idea of retribution haunts and goads characters throughout the play, spurring Claudius to guilt, Hamlet to the avoidance of suicide, and Laertes to murderous rage after the deaths of Ophelia and Polonius.
Of course, Hamlet is a revenge tragedy, written loosely in the form popularized by Thomas Kyd’s earlier Spanish Tragedy, and the ghost’s claim to have been murdered by Claudius also channels the play into the revenge- tragedy form. But Hamlet is unlike any other revenge tragedy in that it is more concerned with thought and moral questioning than with bloody action, and almost nowhere is this more evident than in the scene with the ghost. Already, Hamlet questions the appearances of things around him and worries whether he can trust his perceptions: the ghost looks like his father, but he is already troubled by religion, and worries that the ghost might in fact be a demon from hell, come to deceive him. One of the central tensions in the play comes from Hamlet’s inability to find anything to believe in as he works his way toward revenge; even here, before his work has begun, he doubts the authenticity of his father’s ghost and its tragic claim. He is already under the influence of the kind of unwilling, desperate nihilism to which he will eventually succumb.