Assignment
Name- Hareshwari Kapdi
Course- M.A. English
Semester- 1
Roll No - 10
Topic- Hamlet as a revenge play
Paper - Renaissance Literature
Batch -2019-2020
Submitted - Smt.S.B. Gardi Department of English MKBU
Enrollment no- 206108420200020
Hamlet as a revenge play
William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare was an English poet, playwright, and actor, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's greatest dramatist.
Two revenge play:-
It deals with some crime – murder heinous and most unnatural.
Some near relative pr intimate person is called upon to avenge the murder
It is the Ghost of the dead who reveals the crime committed.
Sacred duty to take revenge is accepted and revenge is taken with disastrous consequences
There is much bloodshed and physical horror
There is much that is thrilling and sensational use of fighting, of violence, madness, adultery, even incest.
Hamlet is one of Shakespeare’s most well-known tragedies. At first glance, it holds all of the common occurrences in a revenge tragedy which include plotting, ghosts, and madness, but its complexity as a story far transcends its functionality as a revenge tragedy. Revenge tragedies are often closely tied to the real or feigned madness in the play. Hamlet is such a complex revenge tragedy because there truly is a question about the sanity of the main character Prince Hamlet. Interestingly enough, this deepens the psychology of his character and affects the way that the revenge tragedy takes place.
Audiences watching Hamlet at the time it was first performed would recognize the play as belonging to a particular genre: they didn’t have a name for it, but modern scholars call it “revenge tragedy.” In a revenge tragedy the hero has suffered a great wrong, usually the murder of someone he loves, and the plot is driven by his desire for revenge. At the end of the play, the hero murders the person who has wronged him, and typically the hero also dies. The first really popular revenge tragedy was The Spanish Tragedy by Thomas Kyd. It was written more than a decade before Hamlet, and it was still being performed when Hamlet was first staged. Shakespeare’s audiences would have noticed that Hamlet borrows several features from Kyd’s play, including a vengeful ghost, a play-within-a-play and a hero who goes mad. But rather than simply repeating the familiar conventions of the revenge tragedy, Hamlet subverts many of the tropes to question both the genre of revenge tragedy, as well as the nature of revenge itself
Shakespeare’s Hamlet is complex and multifaceted play bringing together many themes. It is evident that in writing Hamlet, Shakespeare, to some extent, adopted the dramatic conventions of revenge tragedy. Revenge proved to be a popular theme for Elizabethan dramatists and the audience. Although it was a wild justice, Elizabethan audience considered vengeance to be a pious duty laid upon the next of kin. The old law claimed an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth; vengeance demanded both the eyes, a jaw full of teeth, and above all the victim should go direct to hell there to live in everlasting torment. A perfect revenge therefore needed great artistry.
Hamlet is a play that very closely follows the dramatic conventions of revenge tragedy. All revenge tragedies originally stemmed from the Greeks, who wrote and performed the first plays. After the Greeks came Seneca who was particularly influential to all Elizabethan playwrights including William Shakespeare. The two most famous English revenge tragedies written in the Elizabethan era were Hamlet, written by William Shakespeare and The Spanish Tragedy, written by Thomas Kyd. These two plays used almost all of the conventions for revenge tragedies in one way or the other. Hamlet especially incorporated all revenge conventions which truly made Hamlet a typical revenge play.
During Elizabethan era revenge plays were well acclaimed. Most of them were a typical revenge tragedy, a melodrama with so many turns and twists to keep the audience spell-bound. “Hamlet” as well as “The Spanish Tragedy” tackled almost all those areas that were essential for the consummation of a great revenge tragedy.
Shakespeare in Hamlet employs the framework of Senecan Tragedy to convey the revenge theme. But underneath the outer framework of Senecan Revenge Tragedy, lie key Shakespearean themes of human condition, social indoctrination, the morality of the ghost’s injunction, and the ethics of revenge.
The opening scene sets the tone of the play – a play shrouded in mystery and horror. The ghost appears to the night guards, a shadowy figure resembling much in the dress and the armour of the late king. The appearance of the dead king’s ghost has a profound effect upon the night guards as Marcellus remarks: “Something is rotten in the state of Denmark”. Although Horatio will not believe in the ghost until witness of his eyes; it appearance “harrows him with fear and wonder”. It is not made to speak rather “stalks away majestically”. The ghost appears twice in the opening scene but does not vouchsafe a reply to Horatio’s questions. Hamlet is amazed at the idea of his father’s apparition:
“My father’s spirit in arms! All is not well/ I doubt some foul play.”
Hamlet himself is dumbfounded at the sight the ghost. The ghost makes the shocking revelation of its murder to Hamlet. It further enjoins on Hamlet the sacred duty of avenging his “foul and the most un-natural murder”. The ghost’s injunctions are very clear:
“Let not the royal bed of Denmark be/A couch for luxury and damned incest”.
The awful revelation of the ghost forms the soul of the tragedy and drives the entire action.
Verity points out:
“Without the ghost’s initial revelation of truth to Hamlet, there would be no occasion for revenge; in other words no tragedy of Hamlet.”
Hamlet’s mind is assailed with doubt whether or not this apparition is a demon sent from hell, or if it is truly his father’s spirit which has come from purgatory, to divulge the horrors of his murder, in the hope of revenge:
“The spirit that I have seen/ May be the devil and the devil hath power/To assume a pleasing shape.”
To verify the truth of the ghost’s statement, Hamlet first feigns madness, and then gets enacted mousetrap play to “catch the conscience of the king”. During the play Hamlet closely watches Claudius’ reaction when the actors perform the murder scene. Hamlet's plan works and his uncle in a fit of discomfort runs out of the room, where Hamlet goes after him. Now, Hamlet knows that Claudius is guilty.
Afterwards Hamlet finds Claudius at prayer, confessing his sins:
“O, my offence is rank it smells to heaven/It hath primal eldest curse upon it/A brother’s murder.”
He pulls out his sword and gets ready to kill Claudius. But suddenly Hamlet changes his mind because if he kills his uncle while he is praying he will go to heaven, and Hamlet wants him to go to hell. So Hamlet postpones the execution of his uncle at this point in the play.
The next confrontation between Hamlet and Claudius does not happen till the end of the book. Claudius hatches a plan according to which Hamlet and Laertes will have a mock sword fight, but Laertes will be using a real poisoned sword. Laertes stabs him with the poisoned sword then Hamlet takes hold of the poisoned sword, and stabs Laertes with it. Meanwhile Queen Gertrude dies from the poisoned drink intended for Hamlet. As Laertes lays dying he reveals to Hamlet that his uncle King Claudius was behind it all. Hamlet then in a fit of rage runs his uncle through with the poisoned sword. Hamlet has now finally revenged his father but too late and at the cost of so many lives.
Hamlet fulfills all the conventions of typical revenge tragedy: there is murder, adultery, insanity, incestuous marriage and faithfulness. Besides these, there is a melodramatic element also – violence and bloodshed, terrible and blood-chilling scenes – which is in line with the revenge tragedy conventions.
Hamlet is not a simple revenge tragedy. Shakespeare has woven complex threads of the contrasting characters. Shakespeare has introduced characters like Laertes and Fortinbras that are obviously foils to Hamlet. Fortinbras, the son of the slain king of Norway, is all hot for action. He finds “quarrel in a straw” and intends to risk his life even for an “egg-shell”. He travels many miles to take his revenge and ultimately succeeds in conquering Denmark. When Hamlet murders Polonius, another revenge is ready to begin. Laertes is a typical revenger who is capable of direct and headstrong revenge even at the cost of damnation.
“To hell, allegiance! Vows to the blackest devil. he declares.
If Hamlet feels “Thus conscience doth make cowards of us all”, Laertes consigns conscience to the devil, and will “cut his throat in the church”. Hamlet, on the other hand, has to convert the external action of revenge into one that is internal, free and truly moral.
Summing up, to say Hamlet merely a revenge tragedy would be to do a great injustice. It would ignore play’s artistic superiority over other plays of this genre. It is only befitting that its hero falls to the beautiful heavenly benediction of Horatio:
“And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.”
