Hamlet is one of the greatest Shakespearean tragedies. The perennial questions raised in the text concern mankind till now. Love conflicts, topics related to politics, thoughts about religion: all the main intentions of the human spirit are collected in this tragedy. Shakespeare's plays are both tragic and realistic, and character images have long become timeless in world literature. Perhaps, this is why they are considered to be the greatest pieces.
“Hamlet” is written in the genre of tragedy, however, the “theatricality” of the work should be taken into account. Indeed, in Shakespeare’s understanding, the world is a stage, and life is a theater. This is how Shakespeare explained the world as a specific attitude, a creative look at the phenomena surrounding a person.Shakespeare's dramas are traditionally attributed to the Baroque culture. It is characterized by pessimism, gloom and “aesthetization” of death. These features can be found in other Shakespeare’s works.
The main conflict in the play is divided into external and internal. Its external manifestation is in the attitude of Hamlet to the people of the Danish court. He considers them all as nefarious creatures, deprived of mind, pride and dignity. The internal conflict is very well expressed in the emotional experiences of the hero, his struggle with himself. Hamlet chooses between two behavioral types: new (renaissance) and old (feudal). He is formed as a fighter, not wanting to perceive reality as it is. Shocked by the evil that surrounded him from all sides, the prince is going to fight him, despite all the difficulties.There are several major themes that are central to understanding Hamlet as a play and identifying Shakespeare’s social and political commentary.
Hamlet’s revenge. The prince was destined to bear the heavy burden of revenge. He cannot coldly and prudently deal with Claudius and regain his throne. His humanistic attitudes make us think about the commonweal. The hero feels his responsibility for those who suffered from the evil spread around. He sees that not only Claudius is to blame for the death of his father, but the whole of Denmark, which blithely closed its eyes to the circumstances of the death of the old king. He knows that in order to carry out revenge he needs to become an enemy to the whole environment. His ideal of reality does not match with the real picture of the world. The prince realizes that he will not be able to restore peace alone. Such thoughts plunge him into even greater despair.
The love of Hamlet. Before all those terrible events happened in Hamlet’s life, he was unhappily in love. He madly loved Ophelia, and there is no doubt about the sincerity of his feelings. But the young man is forced to give up his happiness. After all, the proposal to share sorrows together would be too selfish. To finally break the connection, he has to hurt and be merciless. Trying to save Ophelia, he could not even think how great her suffering would be. The impulse with which he rushes to her coffin was deeply sincere.
Hamlet's friendship. The hero really values friendship and is not used to choosing friends for himself, based on their position in society. His only true friend is the poor student Horatio. At the same time, the prince is contemptuous of betrayal, which is why he is so cruel to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.
The problems covered in Hamlet are very broad. There are the themes of love and hate, the meaning of life and the purpose of mankind in this world, strength and weakness, the right to have revenge and to murder.
One of the main problems is the problem of decision making faced by the protagonist. There is a lot of uncertainty in his heart, he lonely thinks and analyzes for a long time everything that is happening in his life. There is no one near Hamlet who could help him make a decision. Therefore, he is guided only by his own moral principles and personal experience. His consciousness is divided into two halves. In one lives a philosopher and humanist, and in the other, a man who understands the essence of a rotten world.
His key monologue “To be or not to be” reflects all the pain in the hero’s soul, the tragedy of thought. This incredible internal struggle exhausts Hamlet, imposes thoughts of suicide on him, but he is stopped by his unwillingness to commit another sin. He began to care more and more about the theme of death and its mystery. What's next? Eternal darkness or the continuation of the suffering that he suffers during his lifetime?
The main idea of the tragedy is to search for the meaning of being. Shakespeare shows us Hamlet as an educated man with a deep sense of empathy for everything that surrounds him. But life forces him to face true evil in various ways. Hamlet is aware of him, trying to figure out exactly how it arose and why. He is shocked by the fact that one place can so quickly turn into hell on Earth. And the act of his revenge is to destroy the evil that has penetrated his world.
The fundamental idea of the tragedy is the idea that behind all these royal breakdown there is a great turning point in the European culture. And at the tip of this fracture, Hamlet emerges - a new type of hero. Along with the death of all the main characters, the old way people perceived the world now is changed.
