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- Hamlet has one of the highest body counts of Shakespeare's plays in which heroes and villains alike are dead by the end of the final act. Much of the death occurs through the mistakes of Hamlet himself. Both his impulsiveness and indecisiveness lead to avoidable tragic consequences. We see him as an agent of his own downfall.
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Hamlet is clearly a tragedy. It fulfills many of the tragic elements found in the tragedies of Shakespeare and other writers of the genre. To start with, most tragedies end with...
The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, usually shortened to Hamlet (/ ˈ h æ m l ɪ t /), is a tragedy written by William Shakespeare sometime between 1599 and 1601. It is Shakespeare's longest play.
The only story Hamlet is given is that of a hoary old revenge tragedy, which he persuades himself (and us) can never denote him truly; but it is a narrative frame that nothing (not even inaction) will allow him to escape.
This act of violence persuades Claudius that his own life is in danger. He sends Hamlet to England escorted by Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, with secret orders that Hamlet be executed by the king of England. When Hamlet discovers the orders, he alters them to make his two friends the victims instead.
- David Bevington
- The Death of Hamlet's Father
- His Mother's Behavior
- His Villainous Uncle
- His Father's Ghost
- Interfering Polonius
- His Own Personality
- The Most Important Cause
- Tragedy Was Unavoidable
- Related Articles
Struggling to understand what caused Hamlet's tragedy? Let me explain. I believe that Hamlet's tragedy stems from a number of origins. The obvious one is the death of his father. When the play opens, the young man is deep in grief, to the extent that he wishes he were dead. 'O that this too sullied flesh would melt.' He would even consider suicide ...
The second cause of Hamlet's tragedy is his mother's behavior. Instead of sharing her son's grief and supporting him through it, she has remarried with indecent haste. He claims that "a beast that wants discourse of reason would have mourn'd longer." Indeed, she believes that Hamlet's melancholy is caused by 'his father's death and our o'er hasty m...
The third cause concerns something that becomes known to Hamlet after the play opens ~ that his father did not die as the result of a snake bite but that he was murdered. His own brother, Hamlet's uncle, poisoned him: this was "murder most foul, strange and unnatural." It leaves Hamlet in a very difficult position. His king and step-father ~ Claudi...
Yet he has promised the ghost of Old Hamlet that he will "sweep" to avenge him, and this is another cause of the tragedy: his father's spirit has put him into a difficult and dangerous situation, which will result in Hamlet being the killer of a close royal relative, just as Claudius is, and going to Purgatory, just as his father has done.
Additional matters, including Polonius's interference and spying, contribute to Hamlet's tragedy. By keeping Ophelia away from Hamlet, Polonius causes Hamlet to become ever more cynical about and suspicious of the behavior of women. Hamlet was already lacking the support of his mother during a very difficult time. By forcing Opheliato refuse Hamlet...
Finally, Hamlet's own personality contributes to his tragedy. If he had been an impetuous youth, uncaring of conscience or the afterlife, who worried not about the morality of incest or adultery, and accepted that death was inevitable for his father, who, in turn, had 'lost a father, that father lost, lost his', so should not be the cause for conce...
The most important cause, in my opinion, is the behavior of Queen Gertrude. Hamlet would have known that, at some stage, his father was likely to die and that he might then be elected king himself. At his father's death, with the support of his mother, he would have grieved until time eased his pain. As it was, by re-marrying so quickly, Gertrude s...
While Hamlet would have grieved his father's death no matter what had happened, it was the thoughtless behavior of his mother that was Hamlet's greatest tragedy.
Only at the end of Act 2 do we learn the reason for Hamlet’s delaying tactics: he cannot work out his true feelings about his duty to take revenge. First, he tells us, he doesn’t feel as angry and vengeful as he thinks he should: “I […]Peak like John-a-dreams, unpregnant of my cause” (II.ii.).
Jul 25, 2020 · As the first of his great tragedies, Hamlet signals a decisive shift from the comedies and history plays that launched Shakespeare’s career to the tragedies of his maturity. Although unquestionably linked both to the plays that came before and followed, Hamlet is also markedly exceptional.
