HAMLET by Martha —-

sanfrancofolettina — 2024-01-18 19:50:46 UTC

The story is set in the castle of Elsinore, in Denmark.The king, Hamlet’s father, has died suddenly. His brother Claudius has succeeded him and married Gertrude, the king’s wife.

Some officers, on their night watch, see a strange apparition which resembles the dead king.

They inform Hamlet and the ghost appears again to him and decleares himself to be a spirit of the king. He reveals that he was poisoned by his brother Claudius and invite Hamlet to take revenge for his murder. The ghost seems to know the relationship between Claudius and the queen before his death.

sanfrancofolettina — 2024-01-18 19:51:51 UTC

Hamlet begins to behave in a strange way with Ophelia, Polonius’ daughter because he rejects her. Polonius thinks that Hamlet is fallen in love with her and he wants to report it to king.

Claudius and his wife invite two of Hamlet’s childhood friends because they want to find out why Hamlet is behaving strangely.

Polonium tries to speak to Hamlet who pretends to be insane.

In the meanwhile a traveling company of actors arrives at the castle. Hamlet asks them to perform a play “The murder of Gonzago” in which a queen marries the murder of her husband.

He also asks them to insert a scene of the murder of his father because he wants to find evidence of Claudius’ guilt by observing his reaction

sanfrancofolettina — 2024-01-18 19:53:20 UTC

In the third act, Polonius forced Ophelia to refuse to see Hamlet. The king believes that Hamlet is worried about some hidden reason. After a while they watch the play, but when the king watches the scene of the murder, he leaves the room, and realises that Hamlet knows about the crime of his uncle, Claudius. At the end of the act, Hamlet stabs Polonius thinking he is Claudius.

sanfrancofolettina — 2024-01-18 19:54:02 UTC

When Ophelia finds out about Polonius' death, she becomes insane and dies, at this point her brother Laertes wants to revenge their deaths. In a duel Hamlet kills Laertes. The queen also dies after drinking the poisoned wine that Claudius had prepared for Hamlet; Hamlet finds the strength to kill Claudius, and names his successor Fortinbras prince of Norway.

sanfrancofolettina — 2024-01-18 19:54:59 UTC

The main character of the play is Hamlet, he has a lots of characteristic of the stereotypical Renaissance man, however he is more melancholic. Critics thought that Hamlet is often represented as incapable of making decisions, but it isn’t true; in fact he doesn’t lack courage but delays his actions because he analyses every aspect of what he intends to do.

Hamlet speaks much more than the other characters during the play. His monologues shows a big variety of register, from the highest to the lowest. The dialogues and the soliloquies shift from philosophical to the comical. He uses a lots of metaphors, puns and imagery.

He spoke in verse and in prose, in fact is common in Shakespeare’s play that the dramatic moments are expressed in verse, while more colloquial ones are expressed in prose.

sanfrancofolettina — 2024-01-18 19:55:27 UTC

Hamlet is defined as a revenge tragedy in which lots of themes are intertwined. The father’s ghost sets the theme of death and of love between father and son. In the description of the plot, the role of Hamlet’s mother’s guilt emerges, the love between mother and son is intertwined with guilty and ambiguity, giving a complexity to the parental relationship. Hamlet seeks revenge but he is a highly imaginative idealist, forced to face a crude reality. Another important theme is suspicion that gives the sense of precariousness of everyone’s actions. Hamlet is suspicious of his uncle about the cause of his father’s death, whether believe it or not that it’s due to poisoning, as his father’s ghost said. Ophelia stops meeting Hamlet for no reason and he starts to believe that the woman might be a tool in Claudius’ and her father’s hands or that she might not love him anymore. When Hamlet finds out about his childhood friends’ plot, he is alarmed about everyone. Hamlet’s complex mental and emotional state illustrate his confusion in finding out the truth. Hamlet’s actions and decisions show how difficult it is to distinguish between appearence and reality, and to make choices. At the end of the play Fortinbras takes the throne, thanks to Hamlet’s sacrifice, who gave his life to renew his father’s reign.

sanfrancofolettina — 2024-01-18 20:03:13 UTC

Hamlet is one of the greatest modern myths for having marked England's passage from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance age. Hamlet is tormented by doubts,by the need to reach knowledge of the truth, by the weight of moral problems that cause a conflictual relationship with his conscience. Without the religious and political certainties of the Middle Ages anymore, he feels the obligation to experiment, probe and understand the motivations of his actions. through madness, he carves out a space of freedom to discover the truth through lies. He is in an ambiguous, simulated madness. when he is alone or with friends, he is lucid and aware, he is capable of profound reflections; when he pretends to be crazy he takes on the role of the avenger. In this vortex of reason and madness, Hamlet is forced to distinguish what is real and what is appearance, even if his psychological barriers begin to falter, so much so that he appears joyful and sad, comical and violent, a man of high ideals who loves and hates life, a sensitive person but with a weak will. Equipped with a hyperactive conscience, he easily falls into recrimination and self-flagellation and evaluates his thoughts , he does not justify any action, so his path towards the truth will find a solution only at the end of the story