Which episode in Hamlet is the plot? Mastery of dramatic composition of the tragedy “Hamlet”
Let us now see how the main characters are connected to the action of the tragedy as a whole. Shakespeare was a master of multifaceted composition, in which the play has several independent lines of action that intersect with each other. At the center of the tragedy is the royal family: Claudius, Gertrude, Hamlet and the Ghost of the murdered king hovering over the entire action. Nearby is the family of the royal minister Polonius: he, his son and daughter. The third line of action is formed by the history of the Norwegian royal dynasty; Only Prince Fortinbras is the only one who speaks about her more and is directly involved in the action, while his late father and living uncle are only mentioned.
From the very beginning, Shakespeare begins to connect different lines of action with various strokes. From Horatio's story in the first scene, we learn that Fortinbras's father challenged Hamlet's father to a duel and, having lost, was forced to give up his lands to the Danish crown. Now Denmark fears that Fortinbras might decide to take by force what his father lost.
In the second scene, Claudius first sends envoys to the Norwegian king to stop Fortinbras' plans. Having finished with state affairs, he begins to listen to the requests of those close to him, and his first word is addressed to Laertes. He grants the request to let him go to France no sooner than asking what Polonius thinks about it. The king clearly favors Polonius, for, as we can guess, when the throne suddenly became vacant, the minister apparently contributed to the election of Claudius to the throne.
In the third scene we learn that Hamlet is paying attention to Polonius's daughter, with her brother advising her and her father ordering her to break off her relationship with the prince. So already in the first three scenes of the first act, Shakespeare intertwined three main lines of action. Further, the relationship between the royal family and the minister's family becomes more and more dramatic. Polonius helps the king in the fight against Hamlet, and the unsuspecting Ophelia is also involved in this. Hamlet kills Polonius. Ophelia goes crazy after this. Laertes returns from France to avenge his father. At Ophelia's open grave, Hamlet and Laertes have their first confrontation, then the king conspires with Laertes to kill the prince. The intertwining of the destinies of these two families runs through the entire tragedy.
What does Fortinbras have to do with the plot of the tragedy? After the Norwegian king dissuades him from attacking Denmark, Fortinbras goes on a campaign to Poland. To do this, he needs to pass through Danish territory, for which he receives permission. At an important moment in the action, the two princes almost come face to face. The example of Fortinbras, active in the fight for his interests, has great moral significance for Hamlet.
Returning from the Polish campaign, Fortinbras sees the complete destruction of the entire Danish dynasty. By feudal law, since the lands belonging to his father are part of the Danish domain, he is the only legitimate claimant to the crown of Denmark, and it, we guess, will pass to him.
The background of the tragedy, the real basis for its action, is formed by the intertwining of the destinies of three families, and personal relationships are combined with great political interests. In a certain sense, we can say that the political center of the events of the tragedy is the question of the throne of Denmark: Claudius usurped it, depriving Hamlet of the right to inherit his father, both die, leaving the crown to the Norwegian prince. The listed elements of action seem simple; readers, and especially viewers, pass by them, taking everything for granted. Meanwhile, all this is the result of a carefully developed plan, translated into dramatic action. Nothing should have been superfluous; everything was designed to achieve a certain effect.
Not only does the playwright carefully “fit” one line of action to another. He makes sure that the episodes are varied in tone.
The gloomy night scene of the Phantom's appearance is followed by a formal scene in the palace. The solemn atmosphere of the monarch's reception of his entourage is replaced by the intimate home atmosphere of Laertes' farewell to Polonius and Ophelia. After two scenes in the "interior" we are again on the site of the castle, where the Phantom is expected to appear at midnight. Finally, the Ghost's terrible discovery of the secret of the death of the late king.
If the first scene in Polonius’s house was completely calm, then the second begins with Polonius’s concern about how Laertes behaves without his father’s supervision, then Ophelia learns alarming news - Prince Hamlet is not himself, apparently, he has lost his mind. The large scene that follows is equal in volume to a whole act and consists of several phenomena: Claudius instructs Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to find out the reason for the strange change that has occurred with Hamlet, the embassy returning from Norway reports that the danger of Fortinbras's invasion has been removed, Polonius informs the royal couple that The reason for Hamlet's insanity is his unhappy love for Ophelia. If the first two parts of this scene were in a serious tone, then Polonius’s reasoning exposes him in a comic form; the comedy intensifies when Hamlet, talking with Polonius, showers him with ridicule. And not just small talk, Hamlet’s meeting with Rosecranz and Guildenstern begins, the meeting with the actors takes place in a lively tone, it gives way to tragedy when the actor reads a monologue from an ancient tragedy, the act ends with Hamlet’s meaningful monologue about Hecuba. It is worth noting all this, and it will become obvious how well thought out the construction of the action is, not only from the point of view of the variety of events, but also the differences in tonality between the individual parts of this act.
The content of Hamlet and the ideological and psychological problems arising from it have always occupied criticism so much that the artistic side of the tragedy received much less coverage. Many readers even now take for granted everything that happens in the tragedy. This is due to the deeply ingrained idea of Shakespeare's work as a "document" reflecting an actual incident. And it is often forgotten that the content of Hamlet was constructed by the author according to certain laws and techniques of dramaturgy. If the dramatic merits of Hamlet were insignificant, the tragedy would not have taken the place it belongs to in world culture and in the history of ideas. The ideological problems of tragedy excite with such force because Shakespeare affects primarily aesthetically. Regardless of how much the reader and viewer realizes it, the secret of the impact of Hamlet lies precisely in Shakespeare's artistic mastery. The impression made by this tragedy is determined by the masterful use of the entire arsenal of dramatic art and the art of poetry. How did the artist use the effective dramatic techniques that made the tragedy “Hamlet” so interesting and attractive to viewers and readers?
“Hamlet” is a work with exciting dramatic action. This is an entertaining play in the best sense. Those who, knowing the plot, immediately look for a solution to its problems in the tragedy, forget that when creating the work, Shakespeare considered his first task to be to create an entertaining action. The spectators of his theater did not at all have the reverence for Shakespeare that is characteristic of us. They weren't even interested in who wrote the play. True, before Shakespeare, “Hamlet” by another author had already been performed on stage. But the public's attention had to be won over again. Over the years of work in the theater, the playwright learned this art. It was necessary to structure the play in such a way that in the very first minutes of the performance the audience would be seized with a desire to find out what would happen, and so that their attention would not weaken until the end of the performance. Even if one could imagine a viewer not interested in the ideological content of the tragedy, he would still be captivated by the very course of events.
Each new stage of the action is accompanied by a change in Hamlet's position and state of mind, and the tension increases all the time - right up to the final episode of the duel, ending with the death of the hero. The viewer is constantly waiting to see what the hero's next step will be and how the enemy will react to him. Difficulties and obstacles arise on the character’s path, sometimes he himself complicates his situation, as when, for example, he kills Polonius, thinking that he is killing the king, and he guesses who Hamlet was aiming at. As the action develops, the dramatic knot tightens more and more until the moment when direct confrontation between Hamlet and his opponents arises.
Although Hamlet occupies our main attention, the tragedy depicts not only him, but also the fate of a large group of people around him. If Hamlet is in the center of the action and his figure is highlighted, then in the second are King Claudius, Queen Gertrude, Ophelia, Polonius, Laertes. They are directly related to Hamlet, and his fate is intertwined with theirs. The relationship between Hamlet and Claudius is antagonistic from beginning to end; there is first a hidden and then an open struggle between them.
The relationship between Hamlet and his mother is also dramatic. Hamlet cannot forgive her for such a quick betrayal of the memory of her late husband. Having established Claudius's guilt, he decides to open her eyes to the true state of affairs. Without suggesting her complicity in Claudius's crime, Hamlet reveals to her the full horror of her situation: she became the wife of the one who killed her first husband!
Hamlet loved Ophelia, and she reciprocated his feelings, but his brother and father opposed their rapprochement, based on the fact that the inequality of social status made marriage between them impossible, and an extramarital affair between the prince and a court lady, such as Ophelia, would be a dishonor for her and shame.
Polonius is Claudius' outspoken henchman. In an effort to help the king and find out the secret of Hamlet's madness, he repeatedly talks with the prince. The constant desire to serve the reigning persons puts him at risk in the struggle taking place between Hamlet and the king, and he dies at the hands of the prince. The death of Polonius is the cause of Ophelia's madness and arouses Laertes' thirst for revenge on Hamlet, whom he, in collusion with Claudius, mortally wounds.
This group also includes Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, whose helpfulness the king uses in the fight against Hamlet. First they are assigned the role of spies, then they arrest Hamlet, and finally they are assigned to take Hamlet to England. They are not aware of the true state of affairs and, like Polonius, perish because of their zeal.
The third plan is formed by persons who are not directly involved in the struggle between Hamlet and Claudius. This is, first of all, the prince's friend - Horatio. In the tragedy he is assigned the role of confidante, confidant of the hero. Besides the king and Hamlet, he is the only one who knows what the essence of the ongoing struggle is. Hamlet bequeaths to him to tell everyone the truth about what happened.
The second important person of the third plan is the Norwegian prince Fortinbras. He appears on stage only twice, and then only briefly, but this is not what determines his significance in the tragedy. The world of Fortinbras is located outside of Denmark. But the Danes also have to reckon with its existence. He is initially expected to invade to take back the lands his father lost. Then he abandons his claims to them and instead marches on Poland; returning from there through Denmark, he learns the tragic outcome of Claudius’s struggle against Hamlet and receives the dying man’s vote for the upcoming election of a new Danish king.
The fourth group of characters are those who are involved in the tragedy only as accidental witnesses and messengers. Such are the night guards Bernardo, Marcellus and Francisco, who were the first to see the Phantom; courtiers Cornelius and Voltimand, envoys to Norway; Polonius' confidant Reynaldo, whom he sends to Paris to spy on Laertes; a captain from Fortinbras's army talking with Hamlet before his departure for England; gravediggers digging a hole for Ophelia's coffin; the priest performing the funeral rites for her; sailors bringing news of Hamlet's return to Denmark; Osric and a second nobleman inviting Hamlet to a supposedly friendly duel with Laertes.
For one character the author could not determine his place among the characters. He is not an earthly creature, but a native of the other world. Formally, he should probably be classified in the same group as his brother and wife. The ghost, on the one hand, is outside the action, and on the other, it begins with him and is accomplished in his name - how else can you say about the task he entrusted to the hero? Let's leave him outside the ranks and categories, remembering that without his death and emergence from the other world, the whole tragedy would not have happened...
Hamlet's central place in the tragedy is determined by the fact that the main thing in the plot is revenge for the murdered king, and this task lies with Hamlet. This is confirmed in a purely external way. Of the twenty scenes of the tragedy (according to the traditional division), Hamlet participates in twelve, and in the remaining eight scenes he is constantly mentioned. So, directly or indirectly, he is always on stage.
This circumstance also deserves attention. The king communicates with a relatively small number of people close to and subordinate to him: with the queen, prince, minister Polonius, his son Laertes, Ophelia, envoys to Norway Cornelius and Voltimand, with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Here are the names of who he is talking to directly. He, as befits him, does not deign to pay attention to the rest.
Hamlet, of course, also communicates with the court circle, with the exception of Cornelius and Voltimand, with whom he does not say a word. But instead of them, he talks with Osric and another nobleman, who invite him to a duel with Laertes. In addition to them, Hamlet's interlocutors are the warriors Marcellus and Bernardo, sailors, people of ordinary rank who occupy a low position in society - actors and a gravedigger. The breadth of Hamlet's communication is striking when comparing him with other characters. All characters move within their own circle, except for Hamlet, who goes beyond these limits. The exception is Laertes, who raises the people to revolt (there will be a special discussion about this later). One way or another, there is no doubt that Hamlet, in his own way, is more democratic than the reigning and courtiers.
Shakespeare wrote plays not only for the inner eye, but also for the outer eye. He always had in mind the spectators who surrounded the stage in a crowd and greedily demanded an entertaining spectacle. This need was met by the interesting plot chosen by the playwright, which unfolded before the eyes of the audience throughout the performance.
It is naive, however, to think that the action of the play was, as it were, given in advance by the narrative chosen for staging. The epic story had to be turned into a drama, and this required a special skill - the ability to build action. Some aspects of Shakespeare’s compositional skill have already been mentioned above, but not all have been noted. Now we return to the question of how the tragedy is constructed in terms of the development of its action.
Shakespeare wrote the play without dividing it into acts and scenes, because the performance in his theater was continuous. Both the quarto of 1603 and the quarto of 1604 did not have any divisions of the text into acts. The publishers of the 1623 folio decided to give his plays as scholarly a look as possible. To this end, they applied to Shakespeare the principle of dividing plays into five acts, recommended by the ancient Roman poet Horace and developed by Renaissance humanists. However, they did not apply this principle consistently in all the plays of the folio. In particular, in Hamlet the division is carried out only until the second scene of the second act. Further the text proceeds without divisions into acts and scenes. The first complete division of Hamlet was carried out by playwright Nicholas Rowe in his edition of Shakespeare in 1709. Thus, the division into acts and scenes that exists in all subsequent editions does not belong to Shakespeare. However, it is firmly established and we will stick to it too.
Captivated by the mystery of Hamlet's character, many readers involuntarily forget about the play as a whole and measure everything only by the significance of this or that circumstance for understanding the hero. Of course, while recognizing the central significance of Hamlet in the tragedy, one cannot, however, reduce its content to his personality alone. This is evident from the entire course of the action, during which the fates of many individuals are decided.
The composition of Hamlet has been carefully studied by researchers, and their conclusions have been far from uniform. Modern English critic Emrys Jones believes that this tragedy, like the rest of Shakespeare's plays, is divided into only two parts. The first consists of the entire action from the beginning, when the Ghost entrusts the prince with the task of revenge, until the murder of Polonius, after which Hamlet is urgently sent to England (IV, 4). The second phase begins with the return of Laertes (IV, 5). If in the first part the central content was Hamlet’s desire to find out the guilt of Claudius and take revenge on him for the murder of his father, then the second part of the tragedy centers on Laertes’ revenge on Hamlet for the murder of Polonius.
The outstanding English director H. Granville-Barker believes that the tragedy is divided into three phases: the first is the plot, which occupies the entire first act, when Hamlet learns about the murder of his father; the second occupies the second, third and fourth acts until the scene of Hamlet's departure to England; the third phase of Granville-Barker coincides with the second phase of E. Jones.
Finally, there is also a division of action into five parts, which does not quite coincide with the division of tragedy into five acts. It's more traditional. Its advantage is the division of the action into parts, reflecting the complex escalation of events and, most importantly, the various mental states of the hero.
The division of tragedies into five acts was first established by the ancient Roman poet Horace. It was recognized as mandatory by the theorists of Renaissance drama, but only in the era of classicism of the 17th century did it begin to be used everywhere. In the mid-19th century, the German writer Gustav Freitag, in his Technique of Drama (1863), came to the conclusion that the traditional division into five acts had a reasonable basis. Dramatic action, according to Freitag, goes through five stages. A correctly constructed drama has: a) an introduction (commencement), b) a rise in action, c) a peak of events, d) a fall in action, e) a denouement. The action diagram is a pyramid. Its lower end is the beginning, the action that arises after it follows an ascending line and reaches the top, after which a decline occurs in the development of the action, ending with a denouement.
Freitag's terms may give rise to the incorrect conclusion that as the action progresses and after the climax, there is a weakening of tension and a corresponding decline in the interest of the audience, which the German writer did not mean at all. He added three more dramatic moments to his pyramid.
The first moment is the initial excitement, the second is the peripeteia, or the tragic moment that comes at the peak of the action, the third is the moment of final tension.
Many Shakespeare scholars of the late 19th and early 20th centuries used Freytag's pyramid to analyze Hamlet. Let us indicate how the action of our tragedy is divided accordingly.
1) The plot is formed by all five scenes of the first act, and it is clear that the moment of highest excitement is Hamlet’s meeting with the Ghost. When Hamlet learns the secret of his father's death and the task of revenge is entrusted to him, then the plot of the tragedy is clearly defined.
2) Starting from the first scene of the second act, the action develops, arising from the plot: Hamlet’s strange behavior, causing the king’s fears, Ophelia’s grief, and the bewilderment of the others. The king takes measures to find out the reason for Hamlet's unusual behavior. This part of the action can be defined as complication, “increase”, in a word, the development of a dramatic conflict.
3) Where does this part of the tragedy end? Opinions differ on this matter. Rudolf Franz includes in the second stage of the action both the monologue “To be or not to be?”, and Hamlet’s conversation with Ophelia, and the presentation of the “mousetrap”. For him, the turning point is the third scene of the third act, when all this has already happened and the king decides to get rid of Hamlet. N. Hudson recognizes the climax of the scene when Hamlet can kill the king, but does not lower his sword on his head (III, 3, 73-98). It seems to me that Hermann Conrad’s idea is more correct that the peak of the action covers three important scenes - the presentation of the “mousetrap” (III, 2), the king at prayer (III, 3) and Hamlet’s explanation with his mother (III, 4).
Is this too much for a punchline? Of course, you can limit yourself to one thing, for example, exposing the king: the king guesses that Hamlet knows his secret, and from here everything further follows (III, 3). But the action of Shakespeare's tragedies is rare and difficult to give in to various dogmatic definitions. The opinion of Martin Holmes looks convincing: “This entire third act of the play is like a sea stream, irresistibly striving towards its terrible goal... The mousetrap was invented, prepared and worked, Hamlet finally gained confidence that he had grounds for action, but at the same time he betrayed and his secret and thereby lost no less than one move in the game. His attempt to act resulted in him killing the wrong person; before he can strike again, he will be sent to England."
The culmination of the tragedy, its three scenes have the following meaning: 1) Hamlet is finally convinced of Claudius’s guilt, 2) Claudius himself realizes that his secret is known to Hamlet and 3) Hamlet finally “opens Gertrude’s eyes” to the true state of affairs - she has become his wife the one who killed her husband!
Two moments are decisive in the scenes of the climax: the fact that the king guesses that Hamlet knows the secret of his father’s death, and that during a conversation with his mother, Hamlet kills Polonius, who is eavesdropping on them. Now the king has no doubt that Hamlet intends to kill him too.
4) Freitag’s definition of “decline” is in no way applicable to the beginning of the fourth stage of action. On the contrary, new events arise with increasing tension: Hamlet’s sending to England (IV, 3), the passage of Fortinbras’s troops to Poland (IV, 4), Ophelia’s madness and the return of Laertes, breaking into the palace at the head of the rioters (IV, 5), the news about the return of Hamlet (IV, 6), the king’s agreement with Laertes, the death of Ophelia (IV, 7), Ophelia’s funeral and the first fight between Laertes and Hamlet (V, 1).
All these incident-filled scenes lead to the final part of the tragedy - its denouement (V, 2).
Freitag limited the development of the plot of a well-constructed drama to three “exciting moments.” But Shakespeare’s tragedy, so to speak, is constructed “wrongly,” or rather, not according to the rules. In the first two parts there is only one such moment - the story of the Ghost (I, 5). During the climax, as already noted, there are three moments of acute tension. If Shakespeare followed any rule, it was to increase the tension as the action progressed, introducing more and more events so that the viewer's attention did not weaken. This is exactly what happens in Hamlet. At the fourth stage, much more significant and dramatic events happen than at the beginning. As for the denouement, as the reader knows, four deaths occur in it one after another - the queen, Laertes, the king, Hamlet. It is noteworthy that it is not only the blows of the sword, but the poison that is primarily responsible for the death of all four. Let us remember that Hamlet’s father also died from poison. This is one of the cross-cutting details connecting the beginning and end of the tragedy.
Another similar circumstance: the first person about whom we hear a detailed story from Horatio is Fortinbras. He appears at the very end of the tragedy, and the last words in it belong to him. Shakespeare loved this “ring” construction. These are a kind of “hoops” with which he fastened the broad action of his plays.
It is impossible not to pay attention to the fact that throughout the tragedy the entire royal court and all the main characters appear before the audience three times. This happens in the beginning (I, 2), at the climax of the tragedy during the court performance (III, 2) and at the denouement (V, 2). Let us note, however, that neither in the second scene of the first act, nor in the second scene of the fifth act is Ophelia. This grouping of characters was, of course, intentional.
It is estimated that the central event of the play is the “mousetrap”, and this is confirmed by the following figures:
The court performance thus falls approximately in the middle of the tragedy.
Readers and spectators are so, one might say, accustomed to Hamlet that everything that happens in the tragedy seems natural and self-evident. Sometimes we are too prone to forget that the action of a tragedy is built and developed down to the details. “Hamlet” is one of those masterpieces of world art in which the highest degree of artistic perfection has been achieved, when the skill is hidden from the superficial eye.
We remember, however, that the play contains some inconsistencies, inconsistencies, even absurdities. We will talk about them later. Now our task was to show that, for all its complexity, Hamlet is not chaotic, but a deeply thought-out artistic creation, achieving effect precisely because its individual parts are carefully adjusted to each other, forming an artistic whole.
"Hamlet" by W. Shakespeare has long been dismantled into aphorisms. Thanks to the intense plot, acute political and love conflicts, the tragedy has remained popular for several centuries. Each generation finds in it problems inherent in its era. The philosophical component of the work invariably attracts attention - deep reflections on life and death. She pushes each reader to her own conclusions. The study of the play is also included in the school curriculum. Students are introduced to Hamlet in 8th grade. Parsing it is not always easy. We suggest making your work easier by reading the analysis of the work.
Brief Analysis
Year of writing - 1600-1601
History of creation- Researchers believe that W. Shakespeare borrowed the plot of Hamlet from a play by Thomas Kyd, which has not survived to this day. Some scholars suggest that the source was the legend of a Danish prince recorded by Saxo Grammaticus.
Subject- The main theme of the work is crime for the sake of power. In its context, the themes of betrayal and unhappy love develop.
Composition- The play is organized in such a way as to fully reveal the fate of Prince Hamlet. It consists of five acts, each of which represents certain components of the plot. This composition allows you to consistently reveal the main topic and focus on the most important issues.
Genre- A play. Tragedy.
Direction- Baroque.
History of creation
W. Shakespeare created the analyzed work in 1600-1601. There are two main versions of the story of the creation of Hamlet. According to the first, the source of the plot was the play by Thomas Kyd, author of The Spanish Tragedy. Kid's work has not survived to this day.
Many literary scholars are inclined to believe that the plot of Shakespeare’s tragedy goes back to the legend of the King of Jutland, recorded by the Danish chronicler Saxo Grammaticus in the book “The Acts of the Danes.” The main character of this legend is Amleth. His father was killed by his brother, jealous of his wealth. After committing the murder, he married Amleth's mother. The prince learned about the cause of his father's death and decided to take revenge on his uncle. Shakespeare reproduced these events in detail, but in comparison with the original source, he paid more attention to the psychology of the characters.
William Shakespeare's play was staged in the year it was written at the Globe Theater.
Subject
In Hamlet, her analysis should begin with the characterization main problem.
Motives of betrayal, crime, and love have always been common in literature. W. Shakespeare knew how to notice the internal vibrations of people and vividly convey them with the help of words, so he could not stay away from the listed problems. main topic Hamlet is a crime committed for the sake of wealth and power.
The main events of the work develop in a castle owned by Hamlet's family. At the beginning of the play, the reader learns that a ghost is wandering around the castle. Hamlet decides to meet the gloomy guest. He turns out to be his father's ghost. The ghost tells his son who killed him and asks for revenge. Hamlet thinks he has gone mad. The prince’s friend Horace insists that what he saw is true. After much thought and observation of the new ruler, and he became Hamlet’s uncle Claudius, who killed his brother, the young man decides to take revenge. A plan is gradually maturing in his head.
The king guesses that his nephew knows about the cause of his father's death. He sends his friends to the prince to find out everything, but Hamlet guesses about this betrayal. The hero pretends to be crazy. The brightest thing in all these events is Hamlet’s love for Ophelia, but this too is not destined to come true.
As soon as the opportunity arises, the prince, with the help of the corpses of actors, exposes the killer. The play “The Murder of Gonzago” is performed in the palace, to which Hamlet adds lines demonstrating to the king that his crime has been solved. Claudius becomes ill and leaves the hall. Hamlet wants to talk to his mother, but accidentally kills the king's close nobleman, Polonius.
Claudius wants to exile his nephew to England. But Hamlet finds out about this, returns to the castle by cunning and kills the king. Having taken revenge, Hamlet dies from poison.
Observing the events of the tragedy, it is easy to notice that it presents an internal and external conflict. External - Hamlet's relationship with the inhabitants of his parents' courtyard, internal - the prince's experiences, his doubts.
The work develops idea that every lie is revealed sooner or later. The main idea is that human life is too short, so there is no point in wasting time entangling it with lies and intrigue. This is what the play teaches the reader and viewer.
Composition
The features of the composition are dictated by the laws of drama organization. The work consists of five acts. The plot is revealed sequentially, it can be divided into six parts: exposition - introduction to the characters, plot - Hamlet's meeting with the ghost, development of events - the prince's path to revenge, climax - observations of the king during the play, they are trying to exile Hamlet to England, denouement - death heroes.
The event outline is interrupted by Hamlet's philosophical reflections on the meaning of life and death.
Main characters
Genre
The genre of Hamlet is a play written as a tragedy, as all the events are centered around the issues of murder, death and revenge. The ending of the work is tragic. The direction of Shakespeare's play "Hamlet" is Baroque, so the work is characterized by an abundance of comparisons and metaphors.
Work test
Rating analysis
Average rating: 4.6. Total ratings received: 453.
The tragedy "Hamlet, Prince of Denmark" is one of the greatest works. It is based on the ancient legend of the Jutlandic prince Amleth, told in the history of Denmark and, possibly, used in some of the plays that preceded this work of Shakespeare. The tragedy was created at the turn of the 16th and 17th centuries, that is, its appearance symbolically marks the boundary of two eras: the end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of the New Age, the birth of the modern man. The tragedy was written hardly later than 1601: it was played on various stages for several years, and then was published in 1603. Since that time, Shakespeare's Hamlet has entered world literature and theater history.
Every artist dreams of playing the role of Hamlet on stage. The reason for this desire, not least of all, is that Hamlet is an eternal hero, because the situation of a fundamental choice, on which future life depends, faces every person.
The plot of Shakespeare's tragedy is based on a hopeless situation in which Prince Hamlet finds himself. He returns home to the Danish court and finds a terrible situation: his father, King Hamlet, is treacherously killed by his brother, the prince’s uncle; Hamlet's mother is married to a murderer; the hero finds himself in a circle of cowardly and deceitful courtiers. Hamlet suffers, struggles, trying to reveal lies and awaken people's conscience.
In order to expose the murderer of his father, King Claudius, Hamlet puts on the court stage the play he wrote, “The Mousetrap,” which depicts a villainous murder. The very word “mousetrap” is repeated several times in the tragedy; by this Shakespeare wants to say that a person often finds himself captive of life’s circumstances and his choice determines both him as a person and the possibility of the existence of truth in the world. Hamlet pretends to be crazy, loses his beloved Ophelia, but remains undefeated, no one understands him, and he finds himself almost completely alone. The tragedy ends with general death: Hamlet’s father’s unfaithful wife, Gertrude, dies, the villain King Claudius is stabbed to death by the prince, other characters die, and Prince Hamlet himself dies from a poisoned wound.
On the Russian stage, the tragedy “Hamlet” has become popular since the end of the 18th century. In the 19th century, the role of Hamlet was played with great skill by the famous tragedian P.S. Mochalov, in the 20th century the most successful performance of this role is considered to be the play of the outstanding artist I.M. Smoktunovsky in a two-part film directed by G.M. Kozintseva.
Thousands of studies have been written about the tragedy “Hamlet”; many writers and poets have turned to the image of the hero. The tragedy had a great influence on Russian literature, including the work of A.S. Pushkina, M.Yu. Lermontov and others. For example, I.S. Turgenev wrote an article “Hamlet and Don Quixote” and a story in which he calls the hero by this name - “Hamlet of the Shchigrovsky District”, and the poet Boris Pasternak, the best translator of the tragedy into Russian, wrote a poem called “Hamlet” in the 20th century.
Composition
In the first scene, Hamlet meets the ghost of his father and learns from him the secret of the king's death. This scene is the beginning of the plot, in which the prince is given a choice: to accept the Phantom as an obsession or to avenge his father. The words of the Ghost: “Farewell, farewell! And remember me” become for Hamlet the order of the deceased king. Hamlet must take an oath to avenge his father. The appearance of the Ghost means a call to restore the honor and power of the clan, to stop the crime, washing it away with the blood of the enemy.
In the second scene, which represents the most famous monologue in the history of the theater “To be or not to be...”, Hamlet’s choice becomes more complicated and reaches a new level. Now it does not consist in the usual revenge on the villain and the punishment of apostates: Hamlet must make a choice between a miserable existence, which means non-existence, if he humbles himself and is obediently inactive, and true life - existence, which is achieved only in an honest and fearless struggle. Hamlet makes a choice in favor of being; this is the hero’s choice, which determines the essence of man in the New Age, in our era.
The third scene in the same Act III marks the transition from choice and determination to action. Hamlet challenges King Claudius and reproaches his mother for betraying his father's memory by performing in front of them the play "The Mousetrap", which includes a murder scene and false assurances from the queen. This play is scary for the king and queen because it shows the truth. Hamlet does not choose revenge and murder, but punishment with truth, blinding like a bright light.
The denouement of the tragedy occurs in the fourth scene. Hamlet's play did not awaken conscience in King Claudius, but aroused fear and the intention to get rid of Hamlet, to kill him. He prepares a cup of poisoned wine for his nephew and orders the rapier blade of Hamlet’s rival, Laertes, to be poisoned. This insidious plan turns out to be disastrous for all participants in the scene. It should be noted that Hamlet does not take revenge by killing the king, he repays him for his criminal intention. Hamlet's mother, Queen Gertrude, seems to be punishing herself by drinking from a poisoned cup, Laertes dies in repentance, Hamlet leaves, bequeathing to tell his descendants his story in order to warn people against greed and crime.
