How far is Revenge a key theme in Shakespeare’s ‘Hamlet’?
...onvinced that what he is being told is true when he acknowledges the ghost for himself: which “harrows [him] with fear and wonder” and of whom he believes to resemble the late King Hamlet. This leads him to predict that the appearance of the ghost is an omen for telling great disasters for Denmark: “This bodes some strange eruption to our State… Fortinbras of Norway … dared to the combat; In which our valiant Hamlet…did slay this Fortinbras; who… forfeit all… lands “ This is prophetic of Fortinbras’ plans to take back the land “his father lost” during the reign of King Hamlet. This raises the idea that the ghost of King Hamlet may be viewed as a symbol of forthcoming troubles in Denmark. According to Horatio he was a force “sharked up [with] landless resolutes”, using a shark metaphor for this ‘hungry’ army ready to bestow anarchy in vengeance of their country and their king. From this we can determine Fortinbras’ character to be that of a real revenge hero. He is a man of action unlike Hamlet and acts upon his thoughts without hesitation. In Act one Scene two, Shakespeare’s protagonist, Hamlet, is introduced to the play; the name Hamlet is very similar to the name of Shakespeare’s young son, Hamnet, who died many years before the play was written. Perhaps Shakespeare’s continuing grief for his son is echoed in Hamlet’s grief for his father. It is immediately presented to the audience, that Hamlet is disgusted with his mother’s marriage to Claudius, his uncle. “O God, a beast that wants discourses Of reason would have mourned longer – Married with my uncle, my father’s brother, But no more like my father that I to Hercules… On most wicked speed to post with such Dexterity to incestuous sheets”. This soliloquy clearly shows that Hamlet is mortified by his mother’s ‘incestuous’ behaviour. He refers to her as a ‘beast’. He is also satire towards the situation, when he says that Claudius is no more like his father than he is to Hercules. These events further lead to the hunger in Hamlet for revenge. They also lead to Hamlet’s melancholic introspection which we see most prominent in his thoughts from his famous “to be or not to be” soliloquy where he contemplates life and death and how life is a struggle with his cloud of duties hanging over him: “To be or not to be, that is the question - Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, Or to take arms against a sea of troubles And by opposing end them” The dramatic purpose of this is to establish Hamlet as characteristically detached, reflective, analytic, thinking and moral. He is presented through this as somebody temperamentally unlike simple-minded figures such as Hamlet, Fortinbras and Laertes. The metaphor ‘Take arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing end them’ in this soliloquy is deliberately confused. This inevitably captures Hamlet’s feelings of being unequal to the task that has been assigned to him further weighing upon his mind and increasing his state of melancholy. Hamlet feels that trying to set the world to rights would be like committing suicide. The rest of Hamlet’s speech in this soliloquy is fluent however, it says nothing about his immediate situation as he never uses the words ‘I’ or ‘me’ but instead reflects dispassionately, in general terms, on how tempting it is to try and escape his human condition. Hamlet shares his thoughts with the audience, he reflects on death, and whether it is better to live or die. He is greatly affected in his thoughts and actions by his ever-changing state of melancholy. Hamlet gives in to his melancholia and shows several characteristics of it, his self-centred nature steers him away from performing the vigorous duties bestowed upon him, moreover this contrasts the character of Hamlet with the character of Fortinbras who is perhaps presented as the ideal revenge hero. After Hamlet's encounter with the ghost, he appears to be in a state of madness. The statement “in this distracted globe” suggests the Prince’s battle with his own conscience. He has vowed to seek revenge for his father but he is torn between his father’s request: “if thou didst ever thy dear father love… revenge his foul and most unnatural murder” and his obedience to God, which in Elizabethan times would have been an extremely important factor. Hamlet’s main fear is “purgatory”, he fears that if he kills Claudius, his spirit will lie in purgatory; also a common fear amongst people at this time due to the religious nature of society. Hamlet’s apparent state of madness is linked to the common convention of ‘feigned madness’ in a Shakespearian revenge tragedy. In Act four, Scene four, Shakespeare uses a revolutionary technique to highlight Hamlet’s delayed revenge for his father’s death, in Hamlet’s soliloquy he criticises himself because of his delay in acting: “How all occasions do inform against me, And spur dull my revenge, what is a man If his chief good and market of this time Be but to sleep and feed? A beast no more” It is at this point that the audience sees the protagonist realise his mistakes and act on them. Hamlet convinces himself not to delay any more as he is questioning his place as a man and a Prince and is shown to realise his duty: to carry out his father’s requests and kill Claudius. Hamlet also contrasts the actions of Fortinbras with his own as he compares himself in Act two with the actor, the comparison clearly leaves him feeling ashamed and resolves to have bloody thoughts from now on; more suited to the literary tradition of revenge tragedy plays. Hamlet’s decision to stage the play the ‘Mousetrap’ may have been in the hope of revealing Claudius’s guilt. Hamlet is obviously not happy with mere killing as revenge at this point, but he wants to expose the new King for what he really is. It may also be thought that Hamlet is unsure whether to trust the spectre of his father ...