(Detmold addresses the question of why Hamlet delays taking revenge on Claudius by assessing his status as a tragic hero. According to the critic, a tragic hero has three prominent characteristics: (1) a will-power that surpasses that of average people, (2) an exceptionally intense power of feeling, and (3) and unusually high level of intelligence….
Category: Shakespeare
Hamlet – Critical Analysis
(This essay discusses imagery and symbolism in Hamlet, beginning with an examination of what he considers the most apparent image pattern in the play— disease. The critic suggests that images of disease are not associated with Hamlet himself, but a sense of infection surrounds both Claudius’s crime and guilt and Gertrude’s sin. Muir attributes Hamlet’s…
Hamlet – Psychological Analysis Essay
(This essay applies Sigmund Freud’s techniques of psychoanalysis to Hamlet’s character, asserting that the prince is afflicted with an Oedipus Complex. This psychological disorder involves the unconscious desire of a son to kill his father and take his place as the object of the mother’s love. According to the critic, Hamlet delays taking revenge on…
Hamlet – Historical Background – Setting
Children’s Acting Companies Hamlet speaks about children’s acting companies with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern in act 2, scene 2, when they explain to him that the players who are visiting Elsinore have been forced to travel because of the popularity of the newly emerging children’s acting companies. In fact, beginning in 1598, after a decade of…
Hamlet – Puns – Soliloquy – Revenge – Blank Verse
Aside An aside is the term for a remark uttered out loud but understood by the audience as reflecting a character’s thought while not being heard by the other characters on the stage. Hamlet’s first words in the play, ‘‘A little more than kin, and less than kind,’’ constitute an aside. The words are not…
Hamlet – Themes – Revenge – Spying
The Active versus the Contemplative Life As the hero of a revenge tragedy, conventionally, Hamlet ought to be a man of action, not of thought; what thoughts he does have ought to concern carrying out the deed he is dedicated to accomplishing. Shakespeare’s hero, however, is a contemplative man. He thinks about the actions he…
Hamlet – Characters
Bernardo Bernardo is a guard at Elsinore. During his watch on the ramparts, along with his partner Marcellus, Bernardo sees the Ghost of Hamlet’s father, the old King Hamlet, and reports the event to Hamlet’s friend Horatio, who joins the two guards on the night watch. Claudius Claudius is the old King Hamlet’s brother and…
Hamlet – Act Wise Summary
Act 1, Scene 1 Hamlet opens on the battlements of the castle at Elsinore, in Denmark, where the guard is being changed. Bernardo and Marcellus, accompanied by Horatio, come to relieve Francisco. The first words spoken, ‘‘Who’s there?’’ a nervous inquiry by Bernardo indicating suspicion and the need to find something out, set the tone…
Coriolanus – Analysis – Essay
After his candidacy has been approved by the plebeians and he is about to assume the office of Roman consul, when the two tribunes of the people challenge him and rescind the people’s vote, Coriolanus, furious that he is being made to bow to what he believes is an illegitimate authority says, [M]y soul aches …
Coriolanus – Historical Context – Setting
King James’s Attempts to Assert Absolute and Unitary Power In Shakespeare’s time, some members of the nobility believed that King James was attempting to assert his absolute power as governing monarch and was determined to undermine their rights, such as had been won in 1215 through the Magna Carta, in which King John surrendered some…