...Act four of this play, Shakespeare proficiently brings together the main plot and sub-plots of the play, and moves rapidly towards the final resolution. Shakespeare decided to set corruption in Elsinor, a royal castle in medieval Denmark. Prior to the first act Hamlet’s mother, Queen Gertrude is widowed to King Hamlet. When this tragedy starts, we are introduced to Marcellus, Bernardo, and Francisco who guard the castle at night. While on watch an apparition of King Hamlet appeared to them and they then knew something was wrong, the question was what should they do. Once hamlet learns of his father’s return, he at once insists that he go on watch to witness his father’s appearance. The following night Hamlet’s father does appear and commands Hamlet to avenge his death. Hamlet’s father tells him of the corruption that has taken place behind the walls of Elsinor. He informs Hamlet of his uncle’s rage and what it has lead him to do. He tells Hamlet of the serpent who stung him, and how he goes by the name of Claudius. Hamlets composure wit, and strength would know be tested to their limits. What could Hamlet do, what would he do? A clever wit and common sense are his only hope to avenge his father’s death. Hamlet then lives in madness and by that madness hopes to force Claudius to confess his sin. Act One is considered to be a link in the revenge plot sequence, which is commonly known as the main plot. Act One distinguishes relationships between all of the characters in the...
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...In William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, a common theme is revenge. The plots all have one common driving factor. Three revenge plots in Hamlet are Hamlet’s revenge on King Claudius, Fortinbras’s revenge on Denmark, and Laertes’s revenge on Hamlet; they add inadequacy to the play. To begin, Hamlet wants to get revenge on King Claudius for killing his father. Hamlet discovers, after speaking to the ghost of his late father, that King Claudius killed King Hamlet for power and love. The Ghost tells Hamlet to avenge his death and kill King Claudius, which Hamlet has a hard time accepting. Hamlet has to plot a revenge plan against King Claudius in order to avenge his father’s death. Next, Fortinbras, Prince of Norway, wants to bring revenge on Denmark to...
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...Hamlet, a tragedy about how Prince Hamlet of Denmark seeks to and eventually exacts revenge on his uncle King Claudius for murdering his father King Hamlet, explores a number of themes, each contributing to the flow of its overall plot in one way or another. Some of the predominant themes in the text include revenge, treachery, deception and gender. The idea of revenge first comes up in the text when the ghost of the dead King Hamlet appears to Prince Hamlet, discloses to the prince that he was murdered by his brother King Claudius and demands that he avenges him. Prince Hamlet agrees to this and even though he is hesitant about fulfilling this, as he struggles with the idea of murder, he finds a solution when a group of actors arrive at Elsinore, the Danish royal castle, and decides to use them to stage a play, with his uncle King Claudius among the audience, about the murder of his father as told to him by the ghost. This was meant to determine Claudius’s guilt or innocence by observing his reaction to the play. As the murder scene was presented, Claudius abruptly rose and left the room where the play was being staged and Prince Hamlet saw this as proof of guilt. Queen Gertrude, Prince Hamlet’s mother who was also among the audience, summoned his son to her closet to demand an explanation. While they were in her closet, Polonius, Claudius’s counselor, who was spying on the scene from behind an arras, cried out for help when it seemed as if the prince was about to murder the...
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...Elements of Drama: A Review of Hamlet Elements of Drama: A Review of Hamlet The way an artist creates a sculpture is similar to the tactics of a drama writer. While artist focus on the color and shape of their creations, writers of drama focus on specific elements. In Hamlet, Shakespeare uses plot, character, setting, staging, and theme to create a well-rounded story. One of the first elements of drama is plot. Considered to be the foundation, plot is the idea in which the setting and characters surround (Mays, 2014). As a stack of dominoes, lined in a row, the plot of a story creates a similar effect. As each domino falls, it enables the rest to follow suit. Plot is comparable, because the events within a story usually lead to the next. The drama, Hamlet, revolves around a prince seeking revenge for his father's death. As the story begins, Hamlet's father has died, and his mother marries her husband's brother, the new king. Soon, Hamlet realizes, after meeting with the spirit of his father, that his dad was murdered. The spirit convinces Hamlet to seek revenge. Pretending to be mad, Hamlet conspires to kill the king. During his scheme, Hamlet pretends to despise his crush, Ophelia, and accidentally kills her father. The death becomes reason to send Hamlet away. As Hamlet travels back to school, Ophelia's brother seeks revenge on Hamlet for his father's death. Hamlet returns and is informed of Ophelia's suicide, along...
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...Comparative analysis: Hamlet and The Lion King Hamlet is a 1990 drama film based on a tragic play with the same name, written by William Shakespeare. On the other side The Lion King is an animated musical movie. Walt Disney Pictures released the movie in 1994. As the movie Hamlet, The Lion King was also influenced by Shakespeare’s play, Hamlet. Both the movies are about revenging the death of a cherished family member but in different ways. Since a long time the idea of revenge has existed in our human nature. It has been our instinct to take back for a person that has been hurt. Today we find that many literary works uses revenge as a theme for the plot but how it is shown depends from a character to another. Hamlet and The Lion King are two superb examples. In the castle of Elsinore in Denmark, prince Hamlet sees his father’s ghost. Through the ghost Hamlet learns that his own brother, Claudius, who wants the thrown to Denmark had murdered his father and married his dead brothers wife, the queen Gertrude. The spirit tells Hamlet to, “revenge his foul and most unnatural murder” (1.5.25 Shakespeare) and Hamlet obeys the spirit’s wishes. He then begins to seek more evidence on Claudius and his betrayal towards his brother. Hamlet enters into a deep melancholy and appears to be in madness, which makes Claudius and Gertrude worry about his erratic behavior. They employ Hamlet’s friends, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to watch over him and to discover the cause of his...
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...Plot Overview A ghost resembling the recently deceased King of Denmark stalks the ramparts of Elsinore, the royal castle. Terrified guardsmen convince a skeptical nobleman, Horatio, to watch with them. When he sees the ghost, he decides they should tell Hamlet, the dead King's son. Hamlet is also the nephew of the present King, Claudius, who not only assumed his dead brother's crown but also married his widow, Gertrude. Claudius seems an able King, easily handling the threat of the Norwegian Prince Fortinbras. But Hamlet is furious about Gertrude's marriage to Claudius. Hamlet meets the ghost, which claims to be the spirit of his father, murdered by Claudius. Hamlet quickly accepts the ghost's command to seek revenge. Yet Hamlet is uncertain if what the ghost said is true. He delays his revenge and begins to act half-mad, contemplate suicide, and becomes furious at all women. The Lord Chamberlain, Polonius, concludes that Hamlet's behavior comes from lovesickness for Ophelia, Polonius's daughter. Claudius and Gertrude summon two of Hamlet's old friends, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, to find out what's wrong with him. As Polonius develops a plot to spy on a meeting between Hamlet and Ophelia, Hamlet develops a plot of his own: to have a recently arrived troupe of actors put on a play that resembles Claudius's alleged murder of Old Hamlet, and watch Claudius's reaction. Polonius and Claudius spy on the meeting between Ophelia and Hamlet, during which Hamlet flies into a rage against...
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...between Hamlet and the lion king. For example both of the kings in the lion king and Hamlet were killed by there brothers, but there are also some differences like in Hamlet, hamlet dies at the end and so does his uncle, but in the lion king only the uncle dies. In Hamlet, hamlet sees his father in a ghost form and the father ask him to avenge his death by killing his uncle, in doing so he makes people believe that he is mad so they don’t know what he’s trying to achieve. In doing so they ship hamlet away from Denmark because he accidently killed Polonius. Laeretes is trying to avenge his sister and Polonius's death by killing hamlet. His plan was to poison the sword when they dueled when the do duel hamlet gets hit with the poison but manages to Laeretes as well. In the lion king the uncle kills his father, the uncle becomes king because Simba leaves the village because he’s scarred he might Pumba and Timon they bring him back to the village finds that hyenas have been in there village Simba...
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...Hamlet Many of Shakespeare’s plays tend to have focus on many common themes between each other. Like in Titus Andronicus, where revenge is the main purpose of the entire play, Hamlet also primarily focuses on revenge. Death is the only reason in Shakespeare’s play that the characters get vengeance. Hamlet, known to be one of Shakespeare’s greatest tragedies, brings together the idea of both death and revenge through the main character, Hamlet. From the moment the play begins, the first encounter of death that the audience sees is the death of the Hamlet’s father. In this play, we see how the death of King Hamlet affects his son who is also named Hamlet, through his own ghost. The ghost is the character that reveals the information to Hamlet causing the other events to take place. Through the ghost, we can see how both death and revenge merge together. When Hamlet has an encounter with his dead father’s ghost, the ghost reveals to Hamlet how he was murdered demonstrating how death turns into vengeance. Not only is Hamlet the only one with intentions to seek vengeance for his fathers death, but the ghost its self tells Hamlet to “revenge his foul and most unnatural murder” (1.5.25). The ghost was already the representation for death, now he shows the representation and the true motivation for Hamlet’s vengeance. The ghost is the primary reason for Hamlet’s desire to kill King Claudius, the new King of Denmark. Continuously throughout the play, death and revenge seem...
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...William Shakespeare’s The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, there are many themes of betrayal, plotting, deceit, and revenge. With so much going on it can be hard to distinguish a character’s motives and plots, especially with regards to the main protagonist, Hamlet. This clearly disturbed character, whose problems over the course of the story take their toll on his emotional as well as physical health. His plot for revenge is never explicitly clear to the reader, as his monologues get more and more dark and vague. This leaves a lot of his actions up to interpretation, most clearly his descent into madness, which while some see as an act, others see as the result of a deep depression. Many people have vastly different opinions on the topic, and for the rest of time they will only be that, as Shakespeare is no longer here to give a definitive answer of his intentions. That is not to say that these different ideas have no merit however, as it has been a topic that has been heavily debated for years. Some say that Hamlet was driven insane by the death of his father, and the “betrayal” of his mother. Others say that his madness was all a plot to trick and confuse the antagonist, Claudius. While others even see it as a mixture of both, with Hamlet slowly losing his mind over...
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...Guildenstern Are Dead and Hamlet are very different in many ways, such as context, overall perspective, structure, conveyance, supposed truths, and message. In Shakespeare’s Hamlet, the plot has a specific structure which contains a beginning, middle, and end. By the conclusion of the story, the story or problem has been resolved. Most, if not all, parts of the story serve a specific purpose in its portrayal and more importantly result. In Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, by Tom Stoppard, the story’s structure focuses on the processes that occur in the story, not the results. Its plot is characterized by a lack of control and a sense of chaos, as shown by many scenes in the play, to share the awareness at the time of life’s lack of purpose. Guildenstern asks Rosencrantz for him to recall the “first thing that happened today” (17), despite hesitantly replying that they were sent for, an uncertainty in what their purpose is serving lingers in the air, and persists throughout most of the play. Also, the perspectives displayed in both stories differ in their purpose. In Hamlet, the audience is emotionally invested and involved with Hamlet’s tale. Hamlet experiences melancholy and suffering, and death in the plot is characterized dramatically. In the conclusion, the experiences and emotions of the audience lead to catharsis because the loose ends have been tied. In Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, the audience is distanced from whatever drama existed in Hamlet. Due to the randomness...
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...In Shakespeare's Hamlet, the main character, Hamlet, is used to drive the plot in many different ways. He makes Hamlet think, or thinks he knows, a key aspect in the plot. Hamlet’s character traits mixed in with the story creates a plot that has transcended through generations. Shakespeare has many different techniques that express Hamlet’s character traits. Shakespeare is able to express Hamlet’s traits in his actions, his words, his thought, which are expressed in monologues and soliloquies, and what other people say about him. The Lion King, a movie based off of Hamlet, also uses these techniques to express the character traits of Simba, a character based off of Hamlet. Shakespeare uses these techniques to express Hamlet’s Character...
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...Hamlet Essay A great amount of events occurred in Act IV of Shakespeare’s famous play Hamlet, which helped to further the plot of the story and enhance the theme of revenge and justice. Some events that took place are; the Queen betrayed her son and told Claudius of the murder of Polonius, Ophelia became insane and eventually drowned herself in the river, and King Claudius plotted to ship Hamlet off to England to be killed. Shakespeare wrote his plays during the Elizabethan era, and life was much different for people of that era, then it is for people of present day. How words and dialogue were written in the play, is hard for us to understand with are modern day language and slang; the same can be said for the ideas and influences certain parts of the play have on us. Someone who was alive during the Elizabethan era and attended one of Shakespeare’s plays would view the live production very differently than a modern day audience would. There are a few points that come to mind when comparing the differences between the Elizabethan era and modern day; such as the great chain of being, extreme importance on religion, and the pride in defending your honor. These examples of the differences between the two eras are very noticeable in Act IV Scene IV lines 53-66, when Hamlet exclaims: Rightly to be great Is not to stir without great argument But greatly to find quarrel in a straw When honor’s at the stake. How stand I then, That have a father killed, a mother stained, ...
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...“Of Deaths Put on by Cunning and Forced Cause” – Death and Dying in Hamlet and The Winter’s Tale Abstract Shakespeare employs the concept of death in every genre he writes, and Hamlet and The Winter’s Tale provide insights into the revenge tragedy and late romance respectively. Drawing inspiration from a web article on death in revenge tragedies (namely, Hamlet), death seems to me the common emotional connector between Hamlet and the audience, which Shakespeare then exploits to enact a singular catharsis. Similarly, a dissertation on counterfeit deaths in the late romances and a web article on resurrection in The Winter’s Tale provide me the basis to argue that death and resurrection are successively utilized in the romance to draw a self-awakening in Leontes, which Shakespeare uses as a proxy for the audience. It is intriguing how Shakespeare employs death as emotional bridge between audience and characters across the two genres, creating the heightened emotional state necessary to deliver his concluding catharsis: death as redemption when not used as a tool for personal gain. Death appears many times in both Hamlet and The Winter’s Tale, serving to drive both the action of the play as well as the development of characters. In Hamlet, it is the murder of Old Hamlet that necessitates the act of vengeance, forcing into motion all subsequent plot developments and character deaths. According to Thomas, “The Winter’s Tale is structured on the counterfeit deaths and resurrections...
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...ENG 4U Ms. Straus May 23, 2015 Hamlet Quotation Test Quotation 1: “How all occasions do inform against me And spur my dull revenge! What is a man, If his chief good and market of his time Be but to sleep and feed? a beast, no more. Sure he that made us with such large discourse, Looking before and after, gave us not That capability and godlike reason To fust in us unus’d.” (Hamlet: IV, iv, 3238) Literal Level: This quotation is from Act IV, Scene IV, when Hamlet observes Fortinbras leading the army through Denmark towards Poland. Hamlet learns that the Norwegians are going to war with the Polish over a small, worthless patch of land. In this soliloquy, Hamlet ponders how these men are willing to risk their lives for such a small cause, when he is still so hesitant to act on his revenge on Claudius for his father's murder. 1. This passage helps to develop Hamlet’s character and the plot of the play because it is in this scene that Hamlet realizes that he must act on his revenge plan or else he is just going to be a purposeless “beast”. Throughout the play, Hamlet struggles with whether or not to exact revenge on Claudius because he is not certain of all of the facts. When Hamlet sees how willing the soldiers are to fight over such a small piece of land, he realizes that without action Hamlet is not taking advantage of the gift of life that God has given him. Hamlet realizes that humans have “capability and godlike reason” and that ...
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...Essay #4 Revenge causes the characters in Hamlet to act blindly through anger and emotion, rather than through reason. It is based on the Old Testament principle of an eye for an eye; this action is not always the best means to an end. Fortinbras, Laertes, and Hamlet were all looking to avenge the deaths of their fathers. They all acted on emotion driven by the want for revenge for their father's deaths, and this led to the downfall of two, and the rise to power of one. Since the heads of the three major families were each murdered, the eldest sons of these families felt that they needed to take some kind of action to avenge their father's deaths; this need to bring honor to their respective families was ultimately the demise of Laertes and Hamlet. To set the background we will start with Hamlet himself. Hamlet is the prince and heir to the Danish throne, under the King, his father, also Hamlet. His father has recently enjoyed a wildly successful military campaign against the King of Norway and actually killed King Fortinbras in a one on one battle to the death. By doing this, he is made a clear target of Prince Fortinbras, the son and soon-to-be-king of Norway. Also looking at his recent successes is his brother Claudius, who allegedly plots to kill the elder Hamlet in order to steal wife and Kingdom. Once the deed is done, Hamlet is visited by a ghost who explains the plot of Claudius. In order to divert attention, Hamlet begins to act as though he was mad. An idea...
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