With this regard their currents turne awry,Īnd lose the name of action. Is sicklied ore with the pale cast of thought:Īnd enterprises of great pitch and moment, The undiscover'd Countrey, from whose borneĪnd makes us rather beare those ills we have, With a bare bodkin? who would fardels beare,īut that the dread of something after death, That patient merit of th' unworthy takes, The pangs of despised love, the Lawes delay, Th' oppressors wrong, the proud mans contumely, When we have shuffled off this mortall coyleįor who would beare the whips and scornes of time, To sleep perchance to dreame, I there's the rub,įor in that sleep of death what dreames may come, That flesh is heire to 'tis a consummation The heart-ake, and the thousand natural shockes Or to take armes against a sea of troubles,Īnd by opposing end them: To dye to sleepe The slings and arrowes of outragious fortune, Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer To be, or not to be, that is the question: These concepts are perhaps explored most eloquently in the famous soliloquy that begins 'To be or not to be'. Hamlet is unpredictable, manipulative, misogynistic ('Frailty, thy name is woman'), indecisive, testing his relationships with his mother and Ophelia to destruction and yet he is capable of deep contemplation on the nature of human existence, examining the relationships between life and death, action and inaction, fear and fury, inward emotion versus physical violence, and performance versus reality. The fact that Hamlet continually delays taking revenge for his father's murder is the key that opens up Hamlet's inner thoughts to the audience. The suspense is built upon a central question: when will Hamlet take revenge for his father's murder? But the prince, throughout the play, seems emotionally paralysed and, in turn, tortured by his inability to take action. Claudius has subsequently married Hamlet's mother and claimed the throne. In the first Act, the ghost of Hamlet's father appears to him, revealing that he has been murdered by Hamlet's uncle, Claudius. It is a revenge tragedy that revolves around the agonised interior mind of a young Danish prince. Some of the themes and issues Hamlet explores include madness and sanity justice and revenge, and the meaning life.Written between 15, Hamlet is widely recognised as one of the most powerful plays in the history of English theatre. What makes Shakespeare’s Hamlet stand out, though, from the popular revenge tragedies of its time, is its depth of characterisation, its psychological insights, its complexities of ideas and issues, as well as its poetry. Oresteia by Aeschylus) and the plays of the Roman philosopher, Seneca. The tradition of revenge tragedy in which the central character seeks vengeance for a crime and to which Hamlet in part belongs, can be traced back much earlier however, to both classical Greek drama (e.g. The revival and popularity of the revenge tragedy in Shakespeare’s time has been attributed by some to the The Spanish Tragedy. The Spanish Tragedy was a story with another revenge plot – this time a nobleman’s revenge for his murdered son. Kyd was also well known in his time for his very popular play called The Spanish Tragedy. Although lost, some things are known about Ur-Hamlet, including the fact that it shared many similarities with Shakespeare’s Hamlet such as plot devices and characters. Kyd’s play, Ur-Hamlet, may have been based on Belleforest’s story and is believed to have been performed in London before 1590. The main influence on the story of Shakespeare’s Hamlet is believed to be Ur-Hamlet, a lost play perhaps written by the English playwright, Thomas Kyd (1558-1594). In 1608, it was translated into English under the title The History of Hamblet. Francois de Belleforest wrote his story in 1576. In Historia Danica we find a story about a character called Amleth, whose background, circumstances and quest for revenge are reminiscent of Shakespeare’s character, Hamlet.Ī story by the French author, Francois de Belleforest, also shares some similarities with Shakespeare’s Hamlet.
In the twelfth century a Danish historian, Saxo Grammaticus, collected many stories and legends of Northern Europe and created a work called We do not know for certain, however, which source(s) Shakespeare actually drew upon for his characters and plot, although the lost play by the English playwright is considered the most likely. Hamlet was Shakespeare’s longest play.Įlements of the story found in Shakespeare’s Hamlet are believed to have come from various sources, including an old North European legend a story by a French author, and a lost play by another English playwright. Shakespeare (1564-1616) wrote plays during the late part of the sixteenth century and in the early part of the seventeenth century.
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