Hamlet Essay

Laura Sofía Duque Flechas

Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences

INTRODUCTION.....................................................................................................................................1
SUMMARY................................................................................................................................................2
PERSONAL ANALYSIS..........................................................................................................................5
REFERENCES..........................................................................................................................................6
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INTRODUCTION

Hamlet from William Shakespear, is one of the most important plays of the universal

history, it contains topic that will always be valid in humanity since they are of the same nature,

such as hate, death, revenge, madness, love, among others.

The language that Shakespeare uses in the play Hamlet, for its time was considered

innovative since in the same work there are conversations with two-way languages, colloquial,

classic, melancholic, sarcastic, etc. Similarly, in Hamlet, verse and prose are presented which

was also quite novel for the time.

The work is divided into 5 acts structured according to the forms of the classical tragedy

genre, in which it has a beginning, a turning point and an end, as can be seen in the summary that

I make in this essay below.

SUMMARY

The play begins with some appearances made by the spirit of Ray of Denmark and father

of Hamlet in the castle of the new King Claudius, brother of the late King Hamlet and who

murdered him to stay with the throne of the kingdom, makes a dinner in the one that gathers the

nobles of the kingdom, in order to show them their loyalty and gratitude. On the other hand,

Prince Hamlet is dismayed and sad even by the death of his father and feels a deep indignation

with his mother Gertrude, who in his opinion acted reprehensibly by marrying him only a month

after the death of his father. new king Claudius.

After the appearance of King Hamlet to the castle guards, they decide to tell the

experience to Prince Hamlet, who decides to stand guard with them, waiting for the spirit of his

father to appear again and to be able to speak with him, which ended up being done. The prince's

father appears at night and tells Hamlet that he did not really die from a snake bite, but he was

poisoned by his brother Claudio in order to gain access to the throne.

In view of what happened, and the arrival to the kingdom of a group of theater actors,

Hamlet has the idea of using these people, asking them to perform before the royal court, in a

play that tells how the death of his father really was and thus - taking into account the reactions -

to be able to discover King Claudius as the murderer of his father.

Hamlet questions himself all the time and criticizes himself since he thinks that he lacks

strength and character to face Claudio and demand that he tells him the truth despite any

consequences, but he also immediately retracts that thought since he considers the possibility that

the appearance of his father's spirit is just a sham and that he ends up accusing King Claudius of
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a murder that he did not really commit and that its result ends up costing him a lot, even his own

life.

On the other hand, Prince Hamlet is in love with Ophelia, but Polonius, her father is

completely opposed to that relationship since he considers Hamlet a madman who lost his head

as a result of the death of King Hamlet and also for being the legitimate heir to the throne.

Polonius is the supreme adviser of the kingdom of Denmark and consequently he is one of the

guests to the play that Hamlet organized together with the king, queen and Ophelia.

Once the play begins with the presence of King Claudius and the queen, he asks Hamlet

for the name of the play, to which he replies that it is called "The Mousetrap", then the actors

represent the scenes just as Hamlet wrote them and they reveal the murder of King Hamlet by

Claudius and the reproach of the prince for his marriage to Gertrude. King Claudius is in shock

and angrily storms out of the room, ordering Hamlet to be rushed to England.

So far, Hamlet has had opportunities to fulfill his father's request to avenge him by

murdering Claudio, however, he always decides to postpone the crime due to thoughts that go

through his head and also because he does not want to lose the privileges they have in the

kingdom.

Faced with the consternation generated by Hamlet's play, his mother pretends to have a

frank and direct talk with her son, who becomes furious and reproaches her for having married

his uncle in a hasty manner and without keeping a reasonable amount of time. mourning the

death of his father. The mood in the conversation is getting higher and higher, when suddenly

Hamlet notices a movement in one of the curtains in the living room and thinking that it is

Claudio in hiding, he takes out his weapon and decides to stab him without thinking twice,
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unfortunately, it turns out to be not be the king, but Polonius the father of his girlfriend, who

goes mad and after time falls into a lake and drowns. Faced with the lost of his father and his

sister, Laertes blames King Claudio, but he convinces him that the author was Hamlet and

together they devise a plan to assassinate him.

The situation becomes more difficult every day for King Claudius, who hurry the sending

of Hamlet to another country, in order not to be discovered and killed at the hands of his nephew.

Despite the above, and after being rescued from some pirates, Hamlet returns to Denmark and

learns of Ophelia's death. Laertes and Claudio's plan was to challenge Hamlet to a sword duel

and poison the sword that Laertes would use and if that didn't work then put poison in a glass of

wine and give it to Hamlet to drink in said duel.

During the combat, the queen mistakenly takes the poisoned cup and the combatants

confuse the swords so both Hamlet and Laertes end up poisoned by the edge of the sword, in the

agony Laertes tells Hamlet that there was a plan to assassinate him and that the author of this

plan is Claudio, so Hamlet stabs Claudio and in this way the request of the spirit of his father is

fulfilled.
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PERSONAL ANALYSIS

Hamlet is a play that makes us think mainly about the value of life in the face of death

and the capacity that these two concepts have in the internal and moral sphere. Indeed, the

protagonist of the work through his dialogue "to be or not to be" shows us the ethical and moral

crossroads that he suffers when facing his inner thoughts with the request for revenge and death

that the spirit of the father makes him of the.

Another important aspect is the theme of madness in Hamlet, which in my view is part of

life and in a certain way is what makes the prince act, since if it weren't for this kind of madness,

Hamlet would be a character. of little action and almost submerged all the time in his sea of

personal doubts.

In short, Hamlet as a universal text makes us think about the human capacity to elaborate

plans and take actions motivated by ambitions for power and feelings of revenge, which often

only lead to the destruction and elimination of what is most precious and which makes us

precisely more human as life is pampered.

REFERENCES

 Shakespeare, William. (2006) Hamlet. Penguin Readers