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Hamlet Revent

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Submitted By austinjgerhardt
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Hamlet is a revenge play. At this time, Shakespeare wrote Hamlet, this was a very common genre. It had certain conventions: a villain commits a murder; the son of the murdered man insists revenge; he carries out his duty and pledge, but in so doing destroys himself. In Hamlet, the entire action of the play is centered on the task assigned by the ghost to Hamlet to avenge his father’s murder But Hamlet has to answer four questions: Is the ghost real? Is revenge good or evil? Is Claudius guilty? These questions, complicates Hamlet’s decision and his reflective, intellectual nature and the revenge obligations of Laertes and Fortinbras that parallel the main plot. Hamlet is tasked with avenging his father’s horrible and unnatural murder. However, he faces a dilemma: should he believe in the honesty of the ghost? The ghost might be a devil. By nature a thinker and truth-seeker, his first step is to evaluate the truth of the ghost’s command, but this self-examination causes delay. Moreover, his extreme depression at his mother’s detestable remarriage, and the fact that Claudius was elected king, has served to make him sarcastic and disbelieving. A chain of circumstances provides a series of obstacles that Hamlet first has to overcome in order to achieve his revenge. This however, affects Hamlet on a spiritual level, as he accepts that both good and evil exist in the world, and that there is a fitness in performing his duty of revenge. His nobility and balance is at constant war with each other from the beginning to the end of the play. The ethical concerns Hamlet has for Claudius and Gertrude are plain to see, at the time, the church considered marriage to a sister in law tantamount to incest. Hamlet’s ethical concerns surrounding his mother’s sudden remarriage is overtly expressed when Gertrude asks Hamlet at her wedding, “If it be, why seems it so particular with

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