An analysis and Review of Shakespeare's Hamlet

I'm a lover of Shakespeare's work and although he appears to be mostly renowned for his tragedies, it is necessary to observe that he actually started out writing comedies first in his career. This was not unconnected with the fact that comedy was the vogue of the theater when Shakespeare began writing.

Gradually, however, he advanced to writing tragedies. The raw materials for his tragedies were usually drawn from realistic historical events as well as contemporary realities which of course makes me even more interested in his works.

In the cause of writing tragedies, he produced Hamlet which is by general consensus accepted as the most complex of his tragedies.

The complexity of the play in Hamlet draws largely from the complexity of the major character Hamlet. It is necessary to mention that most of Shakespeare's tragedies are eponymous.

Spoilers Ahead

Hamlet is set in Denmark and the play illustrates the sad consequence that attends man's unbridled quest and inordinate ambition for position and power.

At the beginning of the play, the audience is introduced to a Denmark that is in mourning mood having lost its king whom unknown to the audience was murdered by his brother Claudius in order to usurp the throne and inherit the queen, Gertrude.

Prince Hamlet, like the audience, is also unaware of the circumstances that led to his father's death. However the appearance of his father's ghost leads to a lot of revelations that would gradually culminate in the tragedy explored in the book. For example, he gets to know that his father's death is not natural but untimely.

The ghost describes his uncle's action as both immoral and unnatural. It is considered immoral because of the cultural milieu within which the play is set. It is also from this particular incident that the themes of regicide and incest are drawn.

There is also the theme of unrequited love which is a bye product of the charge laid upon Hamlet by the ghost. This is because Hamlet's preoccupation with the execution of this charge results in his neglect of Ophelia who pines for his love and dies in the process.

Meanwhile, one would have expected Hamlet to discharge this commission given to him by his father with dispatch but that is not to be.

Hamlet vacillates and puts up this execution for lack of concrete evidence that proves his uncle's guilt. He also devises several strategies in order to prove the allegation against his uncle.

First, he feigns madness and when that fails, he resorts to staging a play within a play. During the play, the audience focuses on the stage but Hamlet focuses on his uncle's face. This is because the subject matter of the play is a recreation of his father's murder. His aim here is to see his uncle's reaction to the murder scene.

Predictably, his uncle shudders at the point of the murder thereby proving his guilt but again, Hamlet delays. He seeks for a better opportunity to present itself for him to execute his father's command. That opportunity soon presents itself in Act three where the King in his room makes a personal confession of his culpability in his murder track. This scene also exposes a paradox that is inherent in most of Shakespeare's tragedies. That is the fact that Shakespeare imbues his villains with an aspect of humanity that attracts the sympathy of the audience or reader while not at the same time undermining the place of poetic justice.

Having listened to the confession of the King, Hamlet's determination to execute judgment is again weakened and he reasons that avenging his father's death on the uncle at that point would be counterproductive. This is because according to him, his uncle is performing a righteous act of prayer and again, he is the incumbent king. So killing him at the point of prayer will send him to heaven and send Hamlet to hell. This situation places him at a crossroads.

Hamlet's procrastination therefore becomes his greatest tragic flaw but ironically it is also this procrastination that stretches the plot of the play. Conversely, this indecision on the part of Hamlet results in multiple tragedies. For example, Ophelia does, Ophelia's father is killed in the king's palace, her brother who is Hamlet's best friend does from the effect of a poisoned sword while Gertrude also dies by drinking poisoned cup meant for her son and ultimately, Claudius himself has a taste of his own poison.

From this account therefore, it is safe to conclude that Elizabethan tragedy is often characterized by the element of collateral damage. This is because unlike in classical tragedy where the villains or tragic heroes suffer personally the consequences of their actions or inactions, the tragedy in Elizabethan play usually affects others who are not directly involved in the tragic events but the important question in Hamlet is; why does Hamlet delay being product of the same society that believes in the veracity if proclamations by ghosts?

For one, that same society reveres the throne and would not dare to desecrate it. Above all, his training and discipline as a student of philosophy comes to play here. It is common knowledge that philosophy is interested in asking questions and providing proofs and evidence which are arrived at through logical and rational reasoning in order to provide indisputable and unassailable evidence.

Hamlet is unable to find this kind of evidence and so he delays but the delay becomes deadly and consumes even him.