Free Essays on Hamlet to Get Inspired & Learn by Example

Despite the fact that the world depicted in William Shakespeare’s Hamlet is unequivocally a masculine world, the female characters Ophelia, the lover Hamlet, the prince of Denmark and the male protagonist, and Gertrude, Ophelia’s mother, are significant characters and contribute to the meaning of the play as a whole. These female protagonists retain significance because the males portrayed in the play do not fully understand them. Prototypical tragic heroes are often ascribed a brand of masculinity that is predicated on and constructed around a plethora of fears and anxieties regarding maternal corporeality. Indeed, both Ophelia and Gertrude Continue reading...

Like all of Shakespeare’s plays, there is a common element that connects each play. In the plays, “Hamlet” and “King Lear,” the matter of madness is a major theme. Shakespeare shows the characters as they ease into feigned and true madness. The characters Lear, Edgar, Hamlet, and Ophelia all display signs of madness in the two plays. Lear’s madness is gradual in its descent, while Hamlet feigns his madness. Ophelia represents female madness. The stages of madness that she experiences are similar to that of Lear and Hamlet. Ophelia is struck by the actions and behavior of Continue reading...

The William Shakespeare play Hamlet has often been the object of much discussion among critics and literary scholars; while most consider it one of the greatest plays ever written, T.S. Eliot himself criticizes the play in his essay “Hamlet and His Problems.” His central issue, in essence, is that it lacks an appropriate objective correlative – namely, a personification of the emotional state of the character in the form of “a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events” (Eliot). Eliot attempts to argue that Hamlet has no objective correlative, and therefore the play fails to convey Shakespeare’s Continue reading...

Two contrasting views emerge in discussion about the character of Hamlet in Shakespeare’s tragic play about a young son who seeks out to avenge his father’s most foul and unnatural murder. The first view is that Hamlet is just a deep thinker and concerned about the nature of humanity and the fate stemming from his impending mortality. The entire play is a dance to death. But what is the takeaway? To answer this question, some critics have tried to paint the story of the play as an illustration of mental illness. The second view is that Hamlet Continue reading...

1. In Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, Claudius kills his brother King pouring poison into his ear during his sleep in the garden. Prince Hamlet learns this from his father’s Ghost: “With juice of cursed hebenon in a vial,/ And in the porches of my ears did pour/ The leperous distilment”(1.5.62). Hamlet asks actors to play the scene of his father’s murder during the play before the King, the Queen and court. He wants to see Claudius reaction to prove his guilt.
The symbolic meaning of pouring poison into someone’s ear is telling lies and Continue reading...

The literary world is characterised by the necessity to replicate the real life and explore the problems it poses both to the writer and the target audience. In this regard, every literary work aims to contribute to life in this or that way. Sometimes it is aimed at improving reality, sometimes at creating something new. On the other hand, in some cases, literary works are aimed at explaining the real life and trying to find the meaning of it. In this regard, in some literary works, the key to understanding of the entire plot is in analysing the significance Continue reading...

In the Hamlet play, various issues could have arisen if Ophelia didn’t die and ended up marrying Hamlet. First, the marriage between Ophelia and Hamlet could have resolved Ophelia dilemma and confirmed that her heart has real feeling about Hamlet. However, the marriage would have fostered several conflicts.
The first conflict would be between Ophelia and her brother and father who never wished to see her and Hamlet together. One of the factors in the play that limits Ophelia to marry Hamlet is that she stands between the two contradictory poles. First, she lived Hamlet, and she was Continue reading...

The type of criticisms borrows a lot from the works of Freud, who wrote about the psychoanalysis of literature. In his explanation, the art adopts the style of reading that looks at the interpretation of texts with the use of a psychological lens. The argument is that literature just as dreams display the secret desires and concerns of an author. For that reason, literature is seen as an exhibition of a writer’s neurosis, which is his or her psyche. Looking at the works of Shakespeare by focusing on Hamlet specifically, readers all over will agree that it is Continue reading...

Introduction

Hereditary kinship was one of the main causes of chain deaths and murders in Shakespeare. Kinship could only change hands on the death of the sitting king and the immediate heir would be his son. In the story of hamlet, we are encountered with one of the strategies that were used by the king’s relatives to transfer kinship to a different family through murder. The murder was done in a clever way that will not be suspicious and at the same time prompt revenge. However as it happens, the late king appears in form of a ghost and Continue reading...

A Psycho-Analytic interpretation of Hamlet

The magnum opus of Shakespeare is filled with concepts that can be best explained by psychoanalytical approach. Sigmund Freud himself took an interest in analyzing the play and in interpreting it in the light of his own psychoanalytical theory. Finding the reason behind the hesitation on the part of our hero became the prime interest for Freud. For Freud, it was the repressed Oedipus complex that was the reason for the indecision of Hamlet.
According to Farber, the most significant point to analyze in the play is Hamlet’s hesitation in killing the King. Hamlet’s indecision is a Continue reading...