Problems raised in the work Hamlet. The great tragedies of Shakespeare
Issues
Problem moral choice
One of the most striking problems of the work is the problem of choice, which can be considered a reflection of the main conflict of the tragedy. For a thinking person, the problem of choice, especially when it comes to moral choice, is always difficult and responsible. Undoubtedly, the final result is determined by a number of reasons and, first of all, by the value system of each individual. If in his life a person is guided by higher, noble impulses, he most likely will not decide on an inhumane and criminal step, will not violate the well-known Christian commandments: do not kill, do not steal, do not commit adultery, etc. However, in Shakespeare's tragedy "Hamlet" we are witnessing a somewhat different process. The protagonist, in a fit of revenge, kills several people, his actions cause ambiguous feelings, but condemnation in this series is in last place.
Having learned that his father fell at the hands of the villain Claudius, Hamlet faces the most difficult problem of choice. The famous monologue "To be or not to be?" embodies the spiritual doubts of the prince, making a difficult moral choice. Life or death? Strength or impotence? Unequal struggle or shame of cowardice? Hamlet tries to resolve such complex questions.
Hamlet's famous monologue shows the devastating mental struggle between idealistic ideas and harsh reality. The insidious murder of the father, the indecent marriage of the mother, the betrayal of friends, the weakness and frivolity of the beloved, the meanness of the courtiers - all this fills the soul of the prince with exorbitant suffering. Hamlet understands that "Denmark is a prison" and "the age is shaken". From now on main character remains alone with the hypocritical world, which is ruled by lust, cruelty and hatred.
Hamlet constantly feels a contradiction: his consciousness clearly says what he must do, but he lacks will, determination. On the other hand, it can be assumed that it is not the lack of will that leaves Hamlet inactive for a long time. No wonder the theme of death constantly arises in his reasoning: it is in direct relationship with the awareness of the frailty of being.
Finally, Hamlet makes a decision. He is truly close to madness, since the sight of evil that triumphs and rules is unbearable. Hamlet takes responsibility for the world's evil, all the misunderstandings of life, for all the suffering of people. The protagonist acutely feels his loneliness and, realizing his powerlessness, nevertheless goes into battle and dies like a wrestler.
Finding the meaning of life and death
The monologue "To be or not to be" shows us that a huge internal struggle is going on in Hamlet's soul. Everything that happens around him is so burdensome for him that he would commit suicide if it were not considered a sin. The hero is concerned about the very mystery of death: what is it - a dream or a continuation of the same torments with which earthly life is full?
“Here is the difficulty;
What dreams will dream in a death dream,
When we drop this mortal noise, -
That's what brings us down; that's where the reason
That calamities are so enduring;
Who would take down the whips and mockery of the century,
The oppression of the strong, the mockery of the proud,
The pain of despicable love, judges slowness,
The arrogance of the authorities and insults,
Made to meek merit,
When he himself could give himself the calculation
With a simple dagger? (5, p.44)
Fear of the unknown, of this country, from where not a single traveler has ever returned, often makes people return to reality and not think about the "unknown land from which there is no return."
Unhappy love
The relationship between Ophelia and Hamlet forms an independent drama within the framework of the great tragedy. Why can't people who love each other be happy? In Hamlet, the relationship between lovers is destroyed. Revenge turns out to be an obstacle to the unity of the prince and the girl he loves. Hamlet depicts the tragedy of the rejection of love. Wherein fatal role for those who love, their fathers play. Ophelia's father orders to break with Hamlet, Hamlet breaks with Ophelia in order to devote himself entirely to revenge for his father. Hamlet suffers from the fact that he is forced to hurt Ophelia and, suppressing pity, is merciless in his condemnation of women.
Ideological basis
"To be or not to be"
the amlet is filled with faith and love for people, life and the world in general. The prince is surrounded by true friends, the love of his parents. But all his ideas about the world dissipate like smoke when they collide with reality. Returning to Elsinore, Hamlet learns of the sudden death of his father and the betrayal of his mother. A doubting thought arose in Hamlet's soul next to faith. And both of these forces - faith and reason - are constantly fighting in it. Hamlet is in deep pain, shocked by the death of his beloved father, who was in many ways an example for the prince. Hamlet is disappointed in the world around him, the true meaning of life becomes incomprehensible to him:
“How tiresome, dull and unnecessary
It seems to me everything that is in the world!” (5, p. 11)
Hamlet hates Claudius, for whom there were no laws of kinship, who, together with his mother, betrayed the honor of his late brother and took possession of the crown. Hamlet is deeply disappointed in his mother, who was once his ideal woman. The meaning of life for Hamlet is revenge on the murderer of his father and the restoration of justice. “But, how would this matter be led, so as not to tarnish oneself.” Faced with a contradiction between dreams of life and life itself, Hamlet is faced with a difficult choice, “to be or not to be, to submit to the slings and arrows of a furious fate, or, taking up arms against the sea of troubles, slay them with confrontation, die, fall asleep.”
To be - for Hamlet it means to think, to believe in a person and to act in accordance with one's convictions and faith. But the deeper he gets to know people, life, the more clearly he sees triumphant evil and realizes that he is powerless to crush it with such a lonely struggle. Discord with the world is accompanied by internal discord. Hamlet's former faith in man, his former ideals are crushed, broken in a collision with reality, but he cannot completely renounce them, otherwise he would cease to be himself.
“The century has been shaken - and the worst thing is that I was born to restore it!”
As the son of his father, Hamlet must avenge the honor of the family by killing Claudius, who poisoned the king. The fratricide breeds evil around him. Hamlet's trouble is that he does not want to be the successor of evil - after all, in order to eradicate evil, Hamlet will have to apply that same evil. It's hard for him to take that path. The hero is torn apart by duality: the spirit of the father calls for revenge, while the inner voice stops the "action of evil."
The tragedy for Hamlet lies not only in the fact that the world is terrible, but also in the fact that he must rush into the abyss of evil in order to fight it. He realizes that he himself is far from perfect, and, indeed, his behavior reveals that the evil that reigns in life, to some extent, stains him too. The tragic irony of life circumstances leads Hamlet to the fact that he, acting as an avenger for the murdered father, himself also kills the father of Laertes and Ophelia, and the son of Polonius takes revenge on him.
In general, the circumstances develop in such a way that Hamlet, carrying out revenge, is forced to strike right and left. He, for whom there is nothing more precious than life, has to become the squire of death.
Hamlet, wearing the mask of a jester, enters into single combat with the world filled with evil. The prince kills the courtier Polonius, who is watching him, reveals the betrayal of his university comrades, refuses Ophelia, who could not resist the evil influence, and is drawn into an intrigue against Hamlet.
“The century was shaken and the worst of all,
That I was born to restore it” (5, p.28)
The prince dreams not only of revenge for his murdered father. Hamlet's soul is haunted by thoughts about the need to fight the injustice of the world. The protagonist asks a rhetorical question: why should he fix the world, which is completely shaken? Does he have the right to do so? Evil lives in him, and to himself he confesses to pomposity, ambition and revenge. How to overcome evil in such a situation? How to help a person to defend the truth? Hamlet is forced to suffer under the weight of inhuman torments. It is then that he sets himself main question"to be or not to be?" The denouement of this question is the essence of the tragedy of Hamlet - the tragedy of a thinking person who came to a disordered world too early, the first of the people to see the amazing imperfection of the world.
Having decided to avenge their fathers, to respond with evil to evil, the noble sons committed retribution, but only what was the result - Ophelia went crazy and died tragically, her mother became an unwitting victim of a vile conspiracy, drinking the "poisoned cup", Laertes, Hamlet and Claudius are dead.
"..Death!
Oh, what kind of underground feast are you preparing,
Haughty that there are so many powerful people in the world
Killed at once? (5, p. 94)
“Something has rotted in our Danish state”
Already at the beginning of the tragedy, Marcellus, as if in passing, remarks: “Something has rotted in the Danish state,” and, as the action develops, we are more and more convinced that “rot” has really started in Denmark. Betrayal and meanness reigns everywhere. Treason comes to replace fidelity, insidious atrocity - to replace brotherly love. Revenge, intrigues and conspiracies, that's what the people of the Danish state live.
Hamlet speaks of the corruption of morals. He notices the insincerity of people, flattery and sycophancy, degrading human dignity: “Here is my uncle, the King of Denmark, and those who made faces at him while my father was alive pay twenty, forty, fifty and one hundred ducats for his portrait in miniature. Damn it, there is something supernatural in this, if only philosophy could find out” (5, p.32).
Hamlet sees that there is no humanity, and scoundrels triumph everywhere, corrupting everyone and everything around, who "keep thought away from language, and thoughtless thought from actions."
When Rosencrantz asked Hamlet: "What's the news?" replies that there is no news, "except perhaps that the world has become honest," the prince remarks: "So, it means that judgment day is near, but only your news is wrong."
"World - theater"
The figure of the jester and the clown, on the one hand, and the figure of the king, on the other, embody the idea of the theatricality of real life and express the hidden metaphor "world-theater". Hamlet's remark, permeated with theatrical terms in the context of the stage and the entire tragedy, appears as a vivid, but elusive for a cursory glance, example of the hidden metaphor "world-stage". The parallel drawn in the work between Hamlet and the First Actor makes it possible to reveal the hidden metaphor "world-stage" at the level of the deep subtext of the tragedy and to trace how masterfully one reality in Shakespeare passes into another, forming parallel semantic series. "A performance within a performance" "the murder of Gonzago" is the paradigm of the structure of the entire "Hamlet" and the key to understanding the deep ideas hidden in the subtext of the tragedy (6, p. 63). The "Murder of Gonzago" is one big metaphor "the world is a stage", realized in the form of a theatrical device "scene on stage".
Seminar lesson number 4.
Shakespeare's tragedy "Hamlet"
1. What was the basis of the tragedy "Hamlet" by Shakespeare? Why is the plot about the Danish prince Amlet known only to specialists, while Shakespeare's Hamlet is known to the whole world?
It's no secret that Shakespeare often wrote his books, inspired by old stories already told by someone. For example, the story of Romeo and Juliet was told before Shakespeare in Arthur Brooke's poem. Someone unknown long before Shakespeare wrote a primitive dramatic story "King Lear and the Three Daughters". The tradition of Hamlet is also centuries old. His story was told by Saxo Grammaticus in his History of the Danes (c. 1200). It described the life of the Jutland prince Amlet, who lived in pagan times, that is, until 827, when Christianity was introduced into Denmark.
Subsequently, this story was retold several times by different authors, and in 1589. the Prince's story even ran on the London stage.
These traditions and legends, with their inherent simplicity and naivety, would continue to exist, as many legendary and fairy-tale plots still exist, retaining all the charm of their primitiveness. But it is to Shakespeare that they owe the acquisition of an extraordinary depth of comprehension of life, a huge poetic power. Who would have known Romeo and Juliet, Lear, Macbeth, Othello, Hamlet, if Shakespeare had not depicted their fate? These and many other stories Shakespeare raised to the height of such an understanding of life, which was not in art before him.
2. Why did every post-Shakespeare century see in Hamlet a work consonant with its search? What is the mystery of the Prince of Denmark?
Shakespeare's tragedy "Hamlet" is the most famous of the plays of the English playwright. According to many highly respected connoisseurs of art, this is one of the most thoughtful creations of human genius, a great philosophical tragedy. It concerns the most important issues of life and death, which cannot but excite every person, and are of truly universal significance. In addition, the tragedy poses acute moral problems; that is why "Hamlet" attracts many generations of people. Life changes, new interests and concepts arise, but each new generation finds something close to itself in the tragedy.
However, everyone sees Prince Hamlet in their own way.
For example, Goethe considered him "a beautiful, pure, noble, highly moral being," although he noted in him "weakness of will with a high consciousness of duty."
German researcher August Schlegel comes to the conclusion that an excessive tendency to reasoning, reflection kills determination, the will to act. Thus the tragedy of Hamlet begins to be regarded as the eternal tragedy of the intelligentsia.
To Turgenev, he seemed to be an egoist: “He lives all for himself ... He is a skeptic and always fiddles and rushes about with himself.” He contrasts the indecisive, skeptical, incapable of captivating Hamlet with Don Quixote as a man of action.
claims that Hamlet at different stages shows both strength, and weakness, and indecision, and lightning-fast determination; and that it is only in this way, in evolution, in motion, that the multifaceted image of Hamlet should be considered.
Hence the paradox of the perception of the great tragedy. Precisely because it touches everyone very personally, it gives rise to completely different, sometimes contradictory interpretations.
3. What is the tragedy of Hamlet?
"He was a man in everything" (Character of Hamlet, its content and ways of its disclosure).
To prove, by analyzing the texts, that Hamlet is a man of thought, a philosopher.
Hamlet is the bearer of the humanistic worldview of his era and at the same time a critic of the ideas of the Renaissance.
The problem of Hamlet's will.
Tragedy is a rare guest in world art. There are whole eras spiritual development deprived of a developed tragic consciousness. The reason for this lies in the nature of the dominant ideology. Tragedy can arise in a crisis of religious ideology, as happened in ancient greece and during the Renaissance.
Shakespeare was contemporary great era in the history of mankind, called the Renaissance, which was born at the turn of the XIII-XIV centuries. That was a long period of social and spiritual development of Europe, when the centuries-old feudal system was broken and the bourgeois system was born. It started in Italy. A new worldview was formed in connection with the growth of cities, the development of commodity production, the formation of a world market, geographical discoveries ... An end was put to the spiritual domination of the church, the beginnings of new sciences appeared.
Separately, it must be said about the birth and formation of a new humanistic culture. In sculpture and painting, a cult of antiquity arose, they saw in it the prototype of free humanity.
At first, humanism meant only the study of the languages and writings of the Greco-Roman world. This new science was opposed to the dominant church doctrine of the feudal Middle Ages, the bearer of which was theology. Over time, humanism has taken on a broader meaning. It took shape in an extensive system of views covering all branches of knowledge - philosophy, politics, morality, natural history.
Humanists by no means rejected Christianity as such. His moral teaching, the ethics of goodness, was not alien to them. But humanists rejected the Christian idea of renunciation of the blessings of life and, on the contrary, argued that earthly existence was given to man in order to fully use his strength.
For humanists, man is the center of the universe. The ideal of the humanists was a comprehensively developed person, equally manifesting himself in the field of thought and practical activity. Having broken the old morality of obedience to the existing order, the supporters of the new outlook on life rejected all kinds of restrictions on human activity.
Shakespeare reflected all aspects of this complex process. In his works we see people who are still inclined to live the old fashioned way, as well as those who have thrown off the shackles of obsolete morality, and those who understand that human freedom does not at all mean the right to build one's well-being on the misfortunes of others.
The heroes of Shakespeare's plays are people of just such a warehouse. They have great passions, a powerful will, immeasurable desires. All of them are outstanding people. The character of each is manifested with extraordinary clarity and completeness. Everyone determines his own destiny, choosing one way or another in life.
Hamlet is the foremost man of his time. He is a student at Wittenberg University, which was advanced in the era of Shakespeare. The progressive outlook of Hamlet is also manifested in his philosophical views. In his reasoning, one can feel glimpses of spontaneous materialism, the overcoming of religious illusions. True, the misfortunes with which he encountered brought discord in his worldview. On the one hand, Hamlet repeats the teachings of the humanists about the greatness and dignity of man, which he had mastered well: “What a masterful creation man is! How noble of mind! How boundless in his abilities, shapes and movements! How precise and marvelous in action! How like an angel he is in deep insight! How like a god he is! The beauty of the universe! The crown of all living! (II, 2). This high appraisal of a person is opposed by an unexpected conclusion immediately pronounced by Hamlet: “And what is this quintessence of dust for me? Not one of the people makes me happy ... ”(II 2). With these statements, he both confirms the ideas of the Renaissance and criticizes them.
Based on the text, we can safely assume that before the terrible incidents that disturbed his spiritual peace, Hamlet was a whole person, and this is especially evident in the combination of thought, will and ability to act. The shocked consciousness led to the disintegration of the unity of these qualities.
The very first monologue of Hamlet reveals his tendency to make the broadest generalizations from a single fact. The mother's behavior leads Hamlet to a negative judgment about all women: "Frailty, you are called a woman!"
With the death of his father and the betrayal of his mother, Hamlet experienced a complete collapse of the world in which he had lived until then. He sees the whole world in black:
How tiresome, dull and unnecessary
It seems to me everything that is in the world!
O abomination! This lush garden, fertile
Only one seed; wild and evil
It dominates.
Shakespeare portrays his hero as a nature endowed with great sensitivity, deeply perceiving the terrible phenomena that affect them. Hamlet is a man of hot blood, a big heart capable of strong feelings. He is by no means the cold rationalist and analyst he is sometimes imagined to be. His thought is excited not by the abstract observation of facts, but by their deep experience. If we feel from the very beginning that Hamlet rises above those around him, then this is not the elevation of a person above the circumstances of life. On the contrary, one of the highest personal virtues of Hamlet lies in the fullness of sensations of life, his connection with it, in the consciousness that everything that happens around is significant and requires a person to determine his attitude to things, events, people. Hamlet is distinguished by an acute, intense and even painful reaction to his surroundings.
In Hamlet, more than anywhere else, Shakespeare reveals the variability of personality. For example, at first Hamlet accepts the task of revenge for his father with somewhat unexpected fervor. After all, quite recently we heard from him complaints about the horrors of life and the recognition that he would like to commit suicide, just not to see the surrounding abomination. Now he is imbued with indignation, gathering strength for the task ahead. A little time later, it is already painful for him that such a huge task fell on his shoulders, he does not look at her as a curse, she is a heavy burden for him:
The century was shaken - and worst of all,
That I was born to restore it!
He curses the age in which he was born, curses that he is destined to live in a world where evil reigns and where, instead of surrendering to truly human interests and aspirations, he must devote all his strength, mind and soul to the struggle against the world of evil.
The problem of Hamlet's will is the problem of his choice. In his most famous monologue, "To be or not to be?" Hamlet doubts like never before. This is the highest point of his doubts:
What is nobler in spirit - to submit
Slings and arrows of a furious fate
Or, taking up arms against the sea of troubles, slay them
Confrontation?
In this monologue, Hamlet appears as a deep philosopher, a thinker appears in him, asking new questions: what is death:
Die, sleep
And only: and say that you end up sleeping
Longing and a thousand natural torments,
Legacy of the flesh - how such a denouement
Don't crave?
Monologue "To be or not to be?" from beginning to end is permeated with a heavy consciousness of the sorrows of being. This is the apogee of his thoughts. The point is, will Hamlet stop at these reflections, or are they a transitional step to the next?
But in Act III, Scene 5, Hamlet, after much thought, in yet another monologue, finds his final determination.
I don't know myself
Why do I live, repeating: "This is how it should be done,"
Since there is reason, will, power and means,
To do it.
Before Shakespeare, no writer conveyed such deep moral torments, did not describe such deep reflections.
4. What is the heroism of Hamlet's deeds and the greatness of his feat (to prove by analyzing the main monologues of Hamlet)? Assess your attitude to Hamlet and the methods of fighting evil that he chooses.
Hamlet is irreconcilable to evil, but he does not know how to fight it. His heroism lies in the fact that, having gone through hellish circles of doubt, reflection, torment, he nevertheless brings his revenge to the end.
An interesting detail: when Laertes suspects that Claudius killed his father, he raises the people to revolt against the king. Hamlet in exactly the same situation does not resort to the help of the people, although the people love him. Why doesn't Hamlet act like Laertes? Hamlet does not even think of such a way to settle scores with the king. His struggle with Claudius has exclusively moral meaning for him. Hamlet is a lonely fighter for justice. But it is interesting that he fights against his enemies with their own methods - he pretends, cunning, seeks to find out the secret of his enemy, deceives and - paradoxically - for the sake of a noble goal, he is guilty of the death of several people. Claudius is to blame for the death of only one former king. Hamlet kills (though not intentionally) Polonius, sends Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to certain death, kills Laertes and, finally, the king; he is the direct cause of Ophelia's insanity and is indirectly responsible for her death. But in the eyes of all, he remains morally pure, for he pursued noble goals and the evil that he committed was always a response to the intrigues of his opponents.
In our time, one can only be horrified by the methods that Hamlet chose. But you need to know the history of the bloody revenge of the era when there was a special sophistication of retribution to the enemy, and then Hamlet's tactics will become clear. He needs Claudius to be imbued with the consciousness of his criminality, he wants to punish the enemy first with internal torments, pangs of conscience, if he has one, and only then deliver a fatal blow so that he knows that he is punished not only by Hamlet, but by the moral law, universal justice.
Monologues - question number 3.
5. Breadth and fullness of Shakespearean characters (images of Polonius, Claudius, Gertrude, Laertes, Ophelia, etc.) Episodic characters.
Claudius pleasant, courteous, and perhaps even seductive in some eyes. (Hamlet: "Smiling scoundrel, damned scoundrel.")
Claudius, unlike Richard III, for example, having committed one atrocity, was ready to stop at it. Having achieved the goal, he, as his throne speech shows, sought to strengthen his position by peaceful means: firstly, to secure the country from a possible raid by Fortinbrass, and secondly, to make peace with Hamlet. Understanding perfectly well that he took the throne from him, Claudius, compensating for this loss, declares him his heir, we ask you to see him as your father. The only thing he requires of Hamlet is not to leave the Danish court, so that it would be more convenient to watch him (Hamlet: “Denmark is a prison for me”).
He realizes that he committed a grave sin - fratricide. But he prays out of repentance, not because he deeply believes, he just wants to wash away his guilt, in the hope of begging for forgiveness. He himself admits that he is "unrepentant." His baseness is also manifested in the fact that he twice secretly plots to kill Hamlet, although he is married to his mother! As a result, he unwittingly poisons her. In addition, he killed the former king, turns out to be the culprit in the death of the crown prince - he exterminated the entire royal family and therefore, according to Shakespeare's plan, is worthy of death.
Gertrude. Hamlet is sure that Gertrude sincerely loved his father, and her marriage to Claudius was prompted by an exceptionally base sensuality, which disgusted him. Hamlet reproaches and even bitterly condemns Gertrude not only in this, but also in incest, which in those days was considered a grave sin. She was so blindly indulged in her desire for happiness, marrying a second time, that she did not recognize true character the one in whose hands she gave her fate. Nevertheless, Gertrude knows that Hamlet's madness is imaginary, but she does not betray this to anyone.
During the duel between Hamlet and Laertes, she openly takes the side of her son. The insidious conspiracy of the king with Laertes is unknown to her. She calmly drinks the goblet of poison prepared for Hamlet. The fact that she drinks the poison intended for her son has symbolic meaning. She, like Hamlet, falls victim to the cunning of Claudius, and this at least partly atones for her moral guilt.
Polonium. He probably held a high position under the old king. The new king favors him with his favors and is ready to give them to him first. This suggests that after the death of the former monarch, Polonius played an important role in the election of Claudius as king. Worshiping before the reigning persons, in his house he is an unlimited ruler, requiring unconditional obedience. He needs to know everything that is going on in the palace. He is always in a hurry to tell all the news to the king and immediately runs to announce to him, for example, that the reason for Hamlet's insanity is rejected love. The main means of extracting information from him is surveillance. He dies, eavesdropping on Hamlet's conversation with his mother.
There is not a word about sympathy or helping other people in his speeches. Polonius knows by himself: "I myself know when the blood is on fire, how generous the tongue is for oaths." He recommends caution in dealing with others and almost every one of his instructions is imbued with distrust of people, even sending a man to spy on his own son to check whether Laertes in Paris is fulfilling his precepts.
The wisdom of Polonius is the wisdom of a courtier, sophisticated in intrigues, not going to the goal in direct ways, able to act secretly, hiding true intentions.
Laertes. If Hamlet bowed to his father, then Laertes wanted to get rid of his guardianship as soon as possible. After the death of his father, his suspicion instantly falls on the king. From this we can conclude what opinion he has about his sovereign. Without hesitation, Laertes raises the people to rebellion, bursts into the palace and is going to kill the king. So he considers himself equal to the king. Revenge for his father is a matter of honor for him, but he has his own concept of it. For example, he is outraged that the ashes of his father and sister were not given due honors, but at the same time he is going to cut Hamlet's throat in the church. For the sake of revenge, he is ready even for sacrilege
But his contempt for true honor is fully manifested in the fact that he agrees to the cunning plan of Claudius to kill Hamlet by fraudulent means, fighting him with a poisoned rapier against Hamlet's ordinary rapier for fencing exercises. He behaves not like a knight, but like an insidious killer. Before his death, Laertes, however, repents. Belatedly, his nobility of spirit returns to him and he confesses his crime; he understands now: "I myself am punished by my treachery."
Hamlet forgives him: "Be pure before heaven!" Why? He is the brother of Ophelia and Hamlet is convinced of the nobility of Laertes, that he should have the same high notions of honor as he himself. If we recall everything that Hamlet was to blame for in relation to the Polonius family, then the relationship between them may well be characterized by Shakespeare's formula - "measure for measure".
Ophelia. She pronounces only 158 lines of text, but Shakespeare was able to invest his whole life in these lines.
Ophelia's love is her trouble. Although her father is close to the king, his minister, nevertheless she is not of royal blood and therefore no match for her lover. From the very first appearance of Ophelia, it is clearly marked main conflict her fate - her father and brother require her to give up her love for Hamlet. Obeying them, we see in her a complete lack of howl and independence.
There is not a single love scene between Hamlet and Ophelia in the tragedy. But there is a scene of their breakup. It is full of amazing drama.
The words that Hamlet utters over the grave of Ophelia finally convince us that his feeling for her was genuine. That is why the scenes where Hamlet rejects Ophelia are imbued with a special drama - all the cruel words that he says to her are given to him with difficulty, he utters them with despair, because, loving her, he realizes that she has become an instrument of his enemy against him and for the implementation of revenge must give up love. Hamlet suffers from being forced to hurt Ophelia, and, suppressing pity, is merciless in his condemnation of women. It is noteworthy, however, that he personally does not blame her for anything and seriously advises her to leave this vicious world for a monastery.
Horatio. Hamlet's university friend. A completely inactive character, Horatio is assigned to ideological concept important role. It serves Shakespeare to reveal the ideal of man. Hamlet completely trusts him with his plan of revenge. He is not a slave of passions; Horatio is a calm, balanced person, rationalism is inherent in him. But the main thing that Hamlet emphasizes in him is his philosophical outlook on life. Horatio, with all his wise calmness, passionately loves Hamlet. Seeing a hundred prince dying, he wants to share his fate with him and is ready to drink poison from a poisoned goblet. Hamlet stops him.
Horatio is a man of humanistic culture, an ardent admirer of antiquity. Before attempting to drink poison and commit suicide, he exclaims: "I am a Roman, not a Dane in soul."
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. They are quiet habits, servility and evasiveness, assent, flattery and flattery, pretense, groveling, goodness and insignificance.
The peculiar drama of their fate is that they are pawns in someone else's game. Accustomed to please and obey, they do not know anything about the essence of what is happening, even about what they are directly involved in. Voluntary servants of evil, they die, like Polonius, when hit by one of two powerful opponents.
Prince Fortinbrass and his father.
The role of Fortinbrass is perhaps the smallest in the tragedy. The princes never meet in person, they judge each other by hearsay, but both hold each other in high regard.
Fortinbrass goes to fight driven by ambition. Hamlet would not have raised his sword for this. With chivalrous militancy, the Norwegian prince follows his father, who did not like to sit idle. He languished in peace and, without any reason, challenged Hamlet's father to a duel, himself putting forward the condition that the vanquished give his lands to the winner, and lost.
Hamlet gives Fortinbrass a vote for the possession of Denmark, because, unlike Claudius, but despite his certain limitations, he acts with an open visor, honestly, without malice and deceit. Not being an ideal knight, he is, one might say, the lesser evil.
Hamlet's father. Without him there would be no tragedy. From beginning to end, his image hovers over her. Bequeathing to the prince to take revenge on Claudius, the Phantom warns Hamlet not to do any harm to his mother, the punishment for which should be her own mental anguish and not tarnish her honor.
6. Are the ideas of Hamlet relevant today?
Problems of moral choice will always be relevant. The deeper the reader thinks about the great work of Shakespeare, the more he will find in it. The meaning of the work is revealed not only in characters and situations. There is something in tragedy that is not specifically expressed. This is a very special feeling, as if, reading or watching a play on stage, we join the very roots of life. This cannot be expressed in words. But after all that we have learned about the people who appeared in the tragedy, after the fate of each of them has come true, there is a feeling that the poet has led us to that central point where the greatness, beauty and tragedy of being are concentrated. It is in vain to look in Shakespeare's work for clear and precise answers to the questions raised by it. The more fully we can imagine the diversity of characters, the complexity of the dramatic action, the deeper we feel into tragic fates heroes, the closer we will come to that vast world that the genius of Shakespeare was able to embody in the relatively small volume of his great tragedy.
This is one of those works that surprisingly stimulates thinking. For the majority, it becomes that personal property that everyone feels entitled to judge. Having understood Hamlet, imbued with the spirit of the great tragedy, we not only comprehend the thoughts of one of the best minds; "Hamlet" is one of those works that expresses the self-consciousness of mankind, its consciousness of contradictions, the desire to overcome them, the desire for improvement, implacability towards everything that is hostile to humanity.
Gorokhov P.A.
Orenburg State University
OUR CONTEMPORARY PRINCE OF DANISH (philosophical problems of the tragedy "Hamlet")
The article deals with the main philosophical problems raised by the great playwright and thinker in the immortal tragedy "Hamlet". The author comes to the conclusion that Shakespeare in "Hamlet" acts as the greatest philosopher-anthropologist. He reflects on the essence of nature, space and time only in close connection with reflections on human life.
We Russians celebrate the memory of Shakespeare, and we have the right to celebrate it. For us, Shakespeare is not only one huge, bright name: he has become our property, he has entered into our flesh and blood.
I.S. TURGENEV
It has been four centuries since Shakespeare (1564-1614) wrote the tragedy Hamlet. Meticulous scientists, it would seem, have explored everything in this play. The time of writing the tragedy is determined with greater or lesser accuracy. This is 1600-1601. - the very beginning of the 17th century, which will bring such deep shocks to England. It is estimated that the play has 4,042 lines and a vocabulary of 29,551 words. Thus, "Hamlet" is the playwright's most voluminous play, running on stage without cuts for more than four hours.
The work of Shakespeare in general and Hamlet in particular is one of those topics that are sweet to address to any researcher. On the other hand, such an appeal is justified only in case of emergency, because the chance to say something really new is unusually small. Everything seems to be explored in the play. Philologists and literary historians have done a great job. This tragedy has long been, with the light hand of the great Goethe, called philosophical. But there are very few studies devoted specifically to the philosophical content of Shakespeare's masterpiece, not only in the domestic, but also in the world. philosophical literature. Moreover, in reputable encyclopedias and dictionaries on philosophy there are no articles covering Shakespeare precisely as a thinker who created an original and enduring philosophical concept, the riddles of which have not been solved to this day. Goethe said this beautifully: “All his plays revolve around a hidden point (which no philosopher has seen or defined yet), where all the originality of our “I” and the daring freedom of our will collide with the inevitable course of the whole ... ".
It is by finding this "hidden point" that one can try to solve the riddle of genius. But our
the task is more modest: to solve some of the philosophical mysteries of the great tragedy, and most importantly, to understand how the protagonist of the play can be close and interesting to a person of the emerging 21st century.
For us, modern Russian people, Shakespeare's work is especially relevant. We can, like Hamlet, state with all fairness: “There is some rot in the Danish state,” because our country is rotting alive. In the epoch we are living through, for Russia, the connection of times has again “disintegrated”. Shakespeare lived and worked at a time that entered Russian history under the epithet "vague". The coils of the historical spiral have their own mystical tendency to repeat themselves, and the Time of Troubles has come again in Russia. The new False Dmitrys made their way to the Kremlin and opened the way to the very heart of Russia for new
Now to the American - to the gentry. Shakespeare is close to us precisely because the time in which he lived is similar to our terrible time and in many ways resembles the horrors of the recent history of our country. Terror, internecine strife, a merciless struggle for power, self-destruction, the "enclosure" of England in the 17th century are similar to the Russian "great turning point", "perestroika", the recent Gaidar-Chubais transition to the era of primitive accumulation. Shakespeare was a poet who wrote the eternal passions of man. Shakespeare is timelessness and ahistoricality: past, present and future are one for him. For this reason, it does not and cannot become obsolete.
Shakespeare wrote Hamlet at a turning point in his work. Researchers have long noticed that after 1600, Shakespeare's former optimism was replaced by harsh criticism, an in-depth analysis of the tragic contradictions in the soul and life of a person. During-
For ten years, the playwright creates the greatest tragedies in which he solves the most burning questions of human existence and gives deep and formidable answers to them. The tragedy of the Prince of Denmark is particularly revealing in this respect.
For four centuries now, Hamlet has attracted attention so much that you involuntarily forget that the Prince of Denmark - literary character, and not a once-living man of flesh and blood. True, he had a prototype - Prince Amlet, who lived in the 9th century, avenged the murder of his father and eventually reigned on the throne. The Danish chronicler of the 12th century Saxo Grammatik told about him, whose work “History of Denmark” was published in Paris in 1514. This story subsequently appeared several times in various adaptations, and 15 years before the appearance of Shakespeare's tragedy, the famous playwright Kid wrote a play about Hamlet. It has long been noted that the name Hamlet is one of the spellings of the name Gamnet, and that was the name of Shakespeare's son, who died at the age of 11.
Shakespeare deliberately abandoned in his play many of the stable stereotypes in the presentation old history. It was said about Amlet that he was "higher than Hercules" in his physical qualities and appearance. Hamlet in Shakespeare emphasizes precisely his dissimilarity with Hercules (Hercules) when he compares his father, the late king, and his brother Claudius (“My father, s brother, but no more like my father Than I to Hercules”). Thus, he hints at the ordinaryness of his appearance and the lack of eccentricity in it. Since we are talking about this, let's say a few words about the appearance of the Danish prince.
Traditionally, on the stage and in the cinema, Hamlet is portrayed as a handsome man, if not very young, then at least middle-aged. But to make a forty-year-old man out of Hamlet is not always reasonable, because then the question arises: how old is his mother, Gertrude, then, and how could King Claudius be seduced by the old woman? Hamlet was played by great actors. Our Innokenty Smoktunovsky played him in the cinema when he himself was already over forty. Vladimir Vysotsky played Hamlet from the age of thirty until his death. Sir Laurence Olivier played Hamlet for the first time in 1937 at the age of 30 years, and at the age of forty directed the film, where he performed leading role. Sir John Gielgud, perhaps the greatest Hamlet of the XX
century, first played this role in 1930 at the age of 26. Of today's outstanding actors, it is worth noting Mel Gibson, who played this role in the film of the great Franco Zeffirelli, and Kenneth Branaud, who played Hamlet for the first time at the age of 32 on stage, and then staged the full film version of the play.
All the mentioned performers of this role represented Hamlet as a lean man in the prime of his life. But he himself says about himself: “Oh that this too too sallied flesh would melt, Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew!” (Literally: “Oh, if this too salty meat could melt and dissolve with dew!”). And Gertrude, during a deadly duel, gives her son a handkerchief and says about him: "He's fat, and scant of breath". Consequently, Hamlet is a man of a rather dense physique, if the mother herself says about her own son: "He is fat and suffocating."
Yes, most likely, Shakespeare did not imagine his hero as beautiful in appearance. But Hamlet, not being a hero in the medieval sense, that is, beautiful on the outside, is beautiful on the inside. This - great person New time. His strength and weakness originate in the world of morality, his weapon is thought, but it is also the source of his misfortunes.
The tragedy "Hamlet" is Shakespeare's attempt to capture the whole picture of human life with a single glance, to answer the sacramental question about its meaning, to approach a person from the position of God. No wonder G.V.F. Hegel believed that Shakespeare, by means of artistic creativity, provided unsurpassed examples of the analysis of fundamental philosophical problems: a person's free choice of actions and goals in life, his independence in the implementation of decisions.
Shakespeare in his plays skillfully exposed human souls, forcing his characters to confess to the audience. A brilliant reader of Shakespeare and one of the first researchers of the figure of Hamlet - Goethe - once said: “There is no pleasure more sublime and pure than, closing your eyes, listening to how a natural and true voice does not recite, but reads Shakespeare. So it is best to follow the harsh threads from which he weaves events. Everything that is in the air when great world events are taking place, everything that timidly closes up and hides in the soul, here comes to light freely and naturally; we learn the truth of life without knowing how.
Let us follow the example of the great German and read the text of the immortal tragedy, for the most correct judgment about the character of Hamlet and other heroes of the play can only be deduced from what they say, and from what others say about them. Shakespeare sometimes remains silent about certain circumstances, but in this case we will not allow ourselves to guess, but will rely on the text. It seems that Shakespeare in one way or another said everything that was needed both by contemporaries and future generations of researchers.
As soon as the researchers of the brilliant play did not interpret the image of the Prince of Denmark! Gilbert Keith Chesterton, not without irony, noted the following about the attempts of various scientists: “Shakespeare, without a doubt, believed in the struggle between duty and feeling. But if you have a scientist, then for some reason the situation is different. The scientist does not want to admit that this struggle tormented Hamlet, and replaces it with a struggle between the consciousness and the subconscious. He endows Hamlet with complexes, so as not to endow him with a conscience. And all because he, a scientist, refuses to take seriously the simple, if you will, primitive morality on which Shakespeare's tragedy rests. This morality includes three premises from which the modern morbid subconscious flees like a ghost. First, we must do what is right, even if we hate to; secondly, justice may require that we punish a person, as a rule, a strong one; thirdly, the punishment itself can take the form of a struggle and even murder.”
Tragedy begins with murder and ends with murder. Claudius kills his brother in his sleep by pouring a poisonous infusion of henbane into his ear. Hamlet imagines the terrible picture of his father's death in this way:
Father died with a bloated belly
All swollen, like May, from sinful juices. God knows what else for this demand,
But all around, probably a lot.
(Translated by B. Pasternak) The ghost of Hamlet's father appeared to Marcello and Bernardo, and they called Horatio precisely as an educated person, capable of, if not explaining this phenomenon, then at least explaining himself to the ghost. Horatio is a friend and close associate of Prince Hamlet, which is why the heir to the Danish throne, and not King Claudius, learns from him about the ghost's visits.
Hamlet's first monologue reveals his tendency to make the broadest generalizations on the basis of a single fact. The shameful behavior of the mother, who threw herself on the “bed of incest,” leads Hamlet to an unfavorable assessment of the entire beautiful half of humanity. No wonder he says: “Frailty, you are called: a woman!”. Original: frailty - frailty, weakness, instability. It is this quality for Hamlet that is now decisive for the entire feminine gender. Mother was for Hamlet the ideal of a woman, and it was all the more terrible for him to contemplate her fall. The death of his father and the betrayal of his mother in memory of the late husband and monarch mean for Hamlet the complete collapse of the world in which he had happily existed until then. The father's house, which he remembered with longing in Wittenberg, collapsed. This family drama makes his impressionable and sensitive soul come to such a pessimistic conclusion: How, stale, flat, and unprofitable Seem to me all the uses of this world!
Fie on't, ah fie! 'tis an unweeded garden
That grows to seed, things rank and gross in nature
Possess it only.
Boris Pasternak perfectly conveyed the meaning of these lines:
How insignificant, flat and stupid The whole world seems to me in its strivings!
O abomination! Like an unweeded garden
Give free rein to the herbs - overgrown with weeds.
With the same indivisibility, the whole world was filled with rough beginnings.
Hamlet is not a cold rationalist and analyst. He is a man with a large heart capable of strong feelings. His blood is hot, and his senses are sharpened and unable to dull. From reflections on his own life collisions, he extracts truly philosophical generalizations concerning human nature as a whole. His painful reaction to his surroundings is not surprising. Put yourself in his place: your father died, your mother hurriedly jumped out to marry an uncle, and this uncle, whom he once loved and respected, turns out to be the murderer of his father! Brother killed brother! Cain's sin is terrible and testifies to irreversible changes in human nature itself. Ghost is absolutely right:
Murder is vile in itself; but this is more vile than all and more inhuman than all.
(Translated by M. Lozinsky)
Fratricide testifies that the very foundations of humanity have rotted away. Everywhere - treason and enmity, lust and meanness. No one, not even the closest person, can be trusted. This torments Hamlet the most, who is forced to stop looking at the world through rose-colored glasses. The terrible crime of Claudius and the lustful behavior of his mother (typical, however, for many aging women) look in his eyes only manifestations of universal corruption, evidence of the existence and triumph of world evil.
Many researchers reproached Hamlet with indecision and even cowardice. In their opinion, he should have slaughtered him as soon as he found out about his uncle's crime. Even the term "Hamletism" appeared, which began to denote weak-willedness prone to reflection. But Hamlet wants to make sure that the spirit that came from hell told the truth, that the father's ghost is really an "honest spirit". After all, if Claudius is innocent, then Hamlet himself will become a criminal and will be doomed to hellish torment. That is why the prince comes up with a "mousetrap" for Claudius. Only after the performance, having seen the uncle's reaction to the villainy committed on the stage, Hamlet receives real earthly proof of the revealing news from the other world. Hamlet almost kills Claudius, but he is saved only by the state of immersion in prayer. The prince does not want to send his uncle's soul cleansed of sins to heaven. That is why Claudius is spared until a more favorable moment.
Hamlet seeks not just to avenge his murdered father. The crimes of the uncle and mother only testify to the general corruption of morals, the death of human nature. No wonder he says the famous words:
The time is out of joint - o cursed spite.
That ever I was born to set it right!
Here is a fairly accurate translation of M. Lozinsky:
The century was shaken - and worst of all,
That I was born to restore it!
Hamlet understands the viciousness not of individual people, but of all mankind, of the entire era, of which he is a contemporary. In an effort to take revenge on the killer of his father, Hamlet wants to restore the natural course of things, revives the destroyed order of the universe. Hamlet is offended by the crime of Claudius, not only as the son of his father, but also as a person. In the eyes of Hamlet
the king and all the court brethren are by no means isolated random grains of sand on the human shore. They are representatives of the human race. Despising them, the prince tends to think that the whole human race is worthy of contempt, absolutizing particular cases. Queen Gertrude and Ophelia, for all their love for the prince, are unable to understand him. Therefore, Hamlet sends curses to love itself. Horatio, as a scientist, cannot understand the mysteries of the other world, and Hamlet pronounces a sentence on learning in general. Probably, even in the silence of his Wittenberg existence, Hamlet experienced the hopeless torment of doubt, the drama of abstract critical thought. After returning to Denmark, things escalated. He is bitter from the consciousness of his impotence, he is aware of all the treacherous fragility of the idealization of the human mind and the unreliability of human attempts to think the world according to abstract formulas.
Hamlet faced reality as it is. He experienced all the bitterness of disappointment in people, and this pushes his soul to a turning point. Not for every person, the comprehension of reality is accompanied by such upheavals that fell to Shakespeare's hero. But it is precisely when faced with the contradictions of reality that people get rid of illusions and begin to see true life. Shakespeare chose an atypical situation for his hero, an extreme case. The once harmonious inner world of the hero is collapsing, and then recreated before our eyes again. It is precisely in the dynamism of the image of the protagonist, in the absence of static in his character, that the reason for the diversity of such contradictory assessments of the Danish prince lies.
The spiritual development of Hamlet can be reduced to three dialectical stages: harmony, its collapse and restoration in a new quality. V. Belinsky wrote about this when he argued that the so-called indecision of the prince is “disintegration, the transition from infantile, unconscious harmony and self-enjoyment of the spirit into disharmony and struggle, which are a necessary condition for the transition to courageous and conscious harmony and self-pleasure of the spirit.
The famous monologue "To be or not to be" is pronounced at the peak of Hamlet's doubts, at the turning point of his mental and spiritual development. There is no strict logic in the monologue, because it is pronounced at the moment of the highest discord in his
consciousness. But these 33 Shakespearean lines are one of the pinnacles not only of world literature, but also of philosophy. Fight against the forces of evil or avoid this battle? - this is the main question of the monologue. It is he who entails all other thoughts of Hamlet, including those about the eternal hardships of mankind:
Who would take down the whips and mockery of the century,
The oppression of the strong, the mockery of the proud,
Pain of contemptible love, slowness of judges, Arrogance of authorities and insults,
Made to meek merit,
If he himself could give himself a calculation with a simple dagger ....
(Translated by M. Lozinsky) All these problems do not belong to Hamlet, but here he again speaks on behalf of humanity, for these problems will accompany the human race until the end of time, for the golden age will never come. All this is “human, too human,” as Friedrich Nietzsche would later say.
Hamlet reflects on the nature of the human tendency to think. The hero analyzes not only the present being and his position in it, but also the nature of his own thoughts. In the literature of the Late Renaissance, characters often turned to the analysis of human thought. Hamlet also carries out his own critique of the human "faculty of judgment" and comes to the conclusion that excessive thinking paralyzes the will. So thinking makes us cowards,
And so the natural color of determination grows weak under a touch of pale thought,
And undertakings, ascending powerfully,
Turning aside your move,
Lose the action name.
(Translated by M. Lozinsky) The whole monologue "To be or not to be" is permeated with a heavy awareness of the hardships of being. Arthur Schopenhauer, in his thoroughly pessimistic Aphorisms of Worldly Wisdom, often follows the milestones that Shakespeare left in this heartfelt monologue of the prince. I do not want to live in the world that appears in the hero's speech. But it is necessary to live, because it is not known what awaits a person after death - perhaps even worse horrors. “Fear of a country from which no one has returned” makes a person drag out an existence on this mortal earth - sometimes the most miserable. Note that Hamlet is convinced of the existence of the afterlife, for the ghost of his unfortunate father appeared to him from hell.
Death is one of the main characters not only of the monologue "To be or not to be", but of the entire play. She collects a generous harvest in Hamlet: nine people die in that very mysterious country that the Prince of Denmark reflects on. About this famous monologue of Hamlet our great poet and the translator B. Pasternak said: “These are the most tremulous and crazy lines ever written about the longing of the unknown on the eve of death, rising with the power of feeling to the bitterness of the Gethsemane note.”
Shakespeare was one of the first in the world philosophy of modern times to think about suicide. After him, this topic was developed by the greatest minds: I.V. Goethe, F.M. Dostoevsky, N.A. Berdyaev, E. Durkheim. Hamlet reflects on the problem of suicide at a turning point in his life, when the “connection of times” broke up for him. For him, the struggle began to mean life, being, and the departure from life becomes a symbol of defeat, physical and moral death.
Hamlet's instinct for life is stronger than the timid sprouts of thoughts about suicide, although his indignation against the injustices and hardships of life often turns back on himself. Let us see with what choice curses he heaps upon himself! "Stupid and cowardly fool", "rotozey", "coward", "donkey", "woman", "dishwasher". The internal energy that overwhelms Hamlet, all his anger falls for the time being into his own personality. Criticizing the human race, Hamlet does not forget about himself. But, reproaching himself for slowness, he never for a moment forgets the suffering of his father, who suffered a terrible death at the hands of his brother.
Hamlet is by no means slow to take revenge. He wants Claudius, dying, to know why he died. In his mother's bedroom, he kills the lurking Polonius in full confidence that he has committed revenge and Claudius is already dead. The more terrible his disappointment:
As for him
(points to the corpse of Polonius)
Then I mourn; but heaven said
They punished me and me him,
So that I become their scourge and servant.
(Translated by M. Lozinsky) Hamlet sees in chance a manifestation of the higher will of heaven. It was heaven that entrusted him with the mission of being a "scorge and minister" - a servant
goy and the executor of their will. This is how Hamlet views the matter of revenge.
Claudius is enraged by Hamlet's "bloody trick", for he understands who the sword of his nephew was really aimed at. Only by chance does the “fidgety, stupid troublemaker” Polonius die. It is difficult to say what were the plans of Claudius in relation to Hamlet. Whether he planned its destruction from the very beginning, or whether he was forced to commit new atrocities by the very behavior of Hamlet, hinting to the king that he was aware of his secrets, Shakespeare does not answer these questions. It has long been noticed that the villains of Shakespeare, unlike the villains of ancient drama, are by no means just schemes, but living people, not devoid of sprouts of goodness. But these sprouts wither away with each new crime, and evil flourishes in the soul of these people. Such is Claudius, who is losing the remnants of humanity before our eyes. In the duel scene, he actually does not prevent the death of the queen drinking poisoned wine, although he tells her: "Do not drink wine, Gertrude." But his own interests are above all, and he sacrifices his newly found spouse. But it was precisely the passion for Gertrude that became one of the causes of Cain's sin of Claudius!
I would like to note that in the tragedy Shakespeare collides two understandings of death: religious and realistic. The scenes in the cemetery are indicative in this respect. Preparing the grave for Ophelia, the gravediggers unfold before the viewer a whole philosophy of life.
The real, and not the poetic image of death is terrible and vile. No wonder Hamlet, holding in his hands the skull of his once beloved jester Yorick, reflects: “Where are your jokes? Your foolishness? your singing? Nothing left to poke fun at your own antics? Jaw dropped completely? Now go into the room to some lady and tell her that even if she puts on a whole inch of makeup, she will still end up with such a face ... ”(translated by M. Lozinsky). Everyone is equal before death: “Alexander died, Alexander was buried, Alexander turns to dust; dust is earth; clay is made from the earth; and why can't they plug a beer barrel with this clay into which he has turned?
Yes, Hamlet is a tragedy about death. That is why it is extremely relevant for us, citizens of dying Russia, modern Russians.
sky people, whose brains have not yet completely become dull from watching endless serials that lull consciousness. The once great country perished, as did the once glorious state of Alexander the Great and the Roman Empire. We, once its citizens, are left to drag out a miserable existence in the backyards of world civilization and endure the bullying of all kinds of Shylocks.
The historical triumph of "Hamlet" is natural - after all, it is the quintessence of Shakespearean dramaturgy. Here, as in a gene, Troilus and Cressida, King Lear, Othello, Timon of Athens were already in the bundle. After all, all these things show the contrast of the world and man, the clash between human life and the principle of negation.
There are more and more stage and film versions of the great tragedy, sometimes extremely modernized. Probably, "Hamlet" is so easily modernized because it is all-human. And although the modernization of Hamlet is a violation of the historical perspective, there is no escape from this. In addition, the historical perspective, like the horizon, is unattainable and therefore fundamentally inviolable: how many epochs
So many perspectives.
Hamlet, for the most part, is Shakespeare himself, it reflects the soul of the poet himself. Through his lips, wrote Ivan Franko, the poet expressed many things that burned his own soul. It has long been noted that Shakespeare's 66th sonnet coincides strikingly with the thoughts of the Danish prince. Probably, of all the heroes of Shakespeare, only Hamlet could write Shakespearean works. No wonder Bernard Shaw's friend and biographer Frank Garrick considered Hamlet to be a spiritual portrait of Shakespeare. We find the same in Joyce: "And, perhaps, Hamlet is the spiritual son of Shakespeare, who lost his Hamnet." He says: "If you want to destroy my conviction that Shakespeare is Hamlet, you have a difficult task ahead of you."
There can be nothing in creation that was not in the creator himself. Shakespeare might have met Rosencrantz and Guildenstern on the streets of London, but Hamlet was born from the depths of his soul, and Romeo grew out of his passion. A man is least of all himself when he speaks for himself. Give him a mask and he will become truthful. The actor William Shakespeare knew this well.
The essence of Hamlet lies in the infinity of the spiritual quest of Shakespeare himself, all his “to be or not to be?”, the search for the meaning of life in the middle
di its impurities, awareness of the absurdity of being and the thirst to overcome it with the greatness of the spirit. With Hamlet, Shakespeare expressed his own attitude to the world, and, judging by Hamlet, this attitude was by no means rosy. In Hamlet, for the first time, a motif characteristic of Shakespeare “after 1601” will sound: “Not one of the people pleases me; no, not even one."
The closeness of Hamlet to Shakespeare is confirmed by numerous variations on the theme of the Prince of Denmark: Romeo, Macbeth, Vincent (“Measure for measure”), Jacques (“How do you like it?”), Postumus (“Cymbeline”) are peculiar twins of Hamlet.
The power of inspiration and the power of the stroke testify that Hamlet has become an expression of some personal tragedy of Shakespeare, some of the poet's experiences at the time of writing the play. In addition, Hamlet expresses the tragedy of an actor who asks himself which role is more important - the one he plays on stage or the one he plays in real life. Apparently, under the influence of his own creation, the poet also thought about which part of his life is more real and complete - a poet or a person.
Shakespeare in "Hamlet" appears as the greatest philosopher-anthropologist. Man is always at the center of his thoughts. He reflects on the essence of nature, space and time only in close connection with reflections on human life.
Very often, miserable and ignorant people tried to try on the tragedy of Hamlet. No civilized country has probably escaped this. In Russia, many people loved and still love to pull on Hamlet's cloak. This is especially the fault of various politicians and some representatives of the vociferous and stupid tribe, which in Soviet times was called the "creative intel-
ligence." It was not for nothing that Ilf and Petrov in The Golden Calf created their Vasisual Lokhankin - a terrible and terrible in its veracity parody of the Russian intelligentsia, posing truly Hamletian questions, but forgetting to turn off the light in the communal closet, for which he receives a cane from the indignant masses of the people. soft places. It is precisely such intellectuals A.I. Solzhenitsyn will call "education", and N.K. Mikhailovsky is still in late XIX century aptly dubbed them "hamletized piglets." The "Hamletized Piglet" is a pseudo-Hamlet, a selfish nonentity, inclined to "poeticize and hamletize himself." Mikhailovsky writes: “The Hamletized pig must ... convince himself and others of the presence of enormous virtues that give him the right to a hat with a feather and black velvet clothes.” But Mikhailovsky does not give him this right, as well as the right to tragedy: “The only tragic feature that can, without betraying artistic truth, complicate their death is dehamletization, the consciousness at the solemn moment of death that Hamlet is in itself, and the piglet also on its own."
But the real Hamlet is a living embodiment of the eternal world drama of the Thinking Man. This drama is close to the hearts of all who have experienced the ascetic passion to think and strive for lofty goals. This passion is the true purpose of man, which contains both the highest power of human nature and the source of inescapable suffering. And as long as man lives as a thinking being, this passion will fill human soul energy for ever new accomplishments of the spirit. This is precisely the guarantee of the immortality of the great tragedy of Shakespeare and its protagonist, in whose wreath the most luxurious flowers of thought and stage art will never wither.
List of used literature:
1. Goethe I. V. Collected works in 10 volumes. T. 10. M., 1980. S. 263.
3. Ibid. P. 1184.
4. Hegel G. V. F. Aesthetics: In 4 vols. M., 1968 - 1973. T. 1. S. 239.
5. Goethe I. V. Collected works in 10 volumes. T. 10. M., 1980. S. 307 - 308.
6. Shakespeare V. Tragedies translated by B. Pasternak. M., 1993. S. 441.
8. Shakespeare V. Complete works in 8 volumes. T. 6. M., 1960. S. 34.
9. Shakespeare V. Complete works in 8 volumes. T. 6. S. 40.
10. Belinsky VG Complete Works. T. II. M., 1953. S. 285-286.
11. Shakespeare V. Complete works in 8 volumes. T. 6. S. 71.
12. Pasternak B. L. Favorites. In 2 vols. T.11. M., 1985. S. 309.
13. Shakespeare V. Complete works in 8 volumes. T. 6. S. 100.
14. Shakespeare V. Complete works in 8 volumes. T. 6. S. 135-136.
15. N. K. Mikhailovsky. Works, vol. 5. St. Petersburg, 1897. pp. 688, 703-704.
Natalia BELYAEVA
Shakespeare. "Hamlet": problems of the hero and the genre
Hamlet is the most difficult of all Shakespeare's tragedies to interpret because of the extreme complexity of its concept. Not a single work of world literature has caused so many conflicting explanations. Hamlet, the Danish prince, learns that his father did not die of natural causes, but was treacherously killed by Claudius, who married the widow of the deceased and inherited his throne. Hamlet vows to devote his whole life to the cause of revenge for his father - and instead, for four acts, he reflects, reproaches himself and others, philosophizes, without doing anything decisive, until at the end of the fifth act he finally kills the villain purely impulsively, when he finds out that he poisoned him. What is the reason for such passivity and apparent lack of will of Hamlet? Critics saw it in the natural gentleness of Hamlet's soul, in his excessive "intellectualism", which allegedly kills the ability to act, in his Christian meekness and inclination to forgiveness. All these explanations contradict the clearest indications in the text of the tragedy. By nature, Hamlet is not at all weak-willed and passive: he boldly rushes after the spirit of his father, without hesitation, kills Polonius, who hid behind a carpet, shows extraordinary resourcefulness and courage during the voyage to England. The point is not so much in the nature of Hamlet, but in the special position in which he finds himself.
A student at the University of Wittenberg, who was completely absorbed in science and reflection, keeping away from court life, Hamlet suddenly discovers aspects of life that he had never "dreamed of" before. A veil is lifted from his eyes. Even before he was convinced of the villainous murder of his father, he discovers the horror of the inconstancy of his mother, who remarried, "before having time to wear out the shoes" in which she buried her first husband, the horror of the incredible falsehood and depravity of the entire Danish court (Polonius, Guildenstern and Rosencrantz , Osric and others). In the light of his mother's moral weakness, it also becomes clear to him the moral impotence of Ophelia, who, with all her spiritual purity and love for Hamlet, is not able to understand him and help him, because she believes in everything and obeys the miserable intriguer - her father.
All this is generalized by Hamlet into a picture of the corruption of the world, which seems to him "a garden overgrown with weeds." He says: "The whole world is a prison, with many locks, dungeons and dungeons, and Denmark is one of the worst." Hamlet understands that the point is not in the very fact of his father's murder, but in the fact that this murder could be carried out, go unpunished and bear fruit to the killer only thanks to the indifference, connivance and servility of all those around him. Thus, the whole court and all of Denmark are participants in this murder, and Hamlet would have to take up arms against the whole world in order to take revenge. On the other hand, Hamlet understands that he was not the only one who suffered from the evil poured around him. In the monologue "To be or not to be?" he lists the scourges tormenting humanity: "... the whip and mockery of the age, the oppression of the strong, the mockery of the proud, the pain of contemptible love, the judges of untruth, the arrogance of the authorities and insults inflicted on uncomplaining merit." If Hamlet were an egoist pursuing exclusively personal goals, he would quickly deal with Claudius and regain the throne. But he is a thinker and a humanist, concerned about the common good and feeling himself responsible for everyone. Hamlet therefore must fight against the untruths of the whole world, speaking in defense of all the oppressed. This is the meaning of his exclamation (at the end of the first act):
The century was shaken; and worst of all
That I was born to restore it!
But such a task, according to Hamlet, is unbearable even for the most powerful person, and therefore Hamlet retreats before it, going into his thoughts and plunging into the depths of his despair. However, showing the inevitability of such a position of Hamlet and his deep reasons, Shakespeare by no means justifies his inactivity and considers it a painful phenomenon. This is precisely the spiritual tragedy of Hamlet (what was called "Hamletism" by the critics of the 19th century).
Shakespeare very clearly expressed his attitude to Hamlet's experiences by the fact that Hamlet himself laments his state of mind and reproaches himself for inaction. He sets himself as an example of the young Fortinbras, who "because of a blade of grass, when honor is hurt," leads twenty thousand people to a mortal battle, or an actor who, while reading a monologue about Hecuba, was so imbued with "fictitious passion" that "the whole became pale "while he, Hamlet, like a coward, "takes away the soul with words." Hamlet's thought expanded so much that it made direct action impossible, since the object of Hamlet's aspirations became elusive. This is the root of Hamlet's skepticism and his visible pessimism. But at the same time, such a position of Hamlet unusually sharpens his thoughts, making him a sharp-sighted and impartial judge of life. The expansion and deepening of the knowledge of reality and the essence of human relations becomes, as it were, Hamlet's life's work. He unmasks all the liars and hypocrites he meets, exposes all old prejudices. Often Hamlet's utterances are full of bitter sarcasm and, as it may seem, gloomy misanthropy; for example, when he says to Ophelia: “If you are virtuous and beautiful, your virtue should not allow conversations with your beauty ... Go to a monastery: why do you produce sinners?”, Or when he declares to Polonius: “If you take everyone according to their deserts then who will escape the whip?" However, the very passion and hyperbolism of his expressions testify to the ardor of his heart, suffering and sympathetic. Hamlet, as shown by his relationship to Horatio, is capable of deep and faithful friendship; he passionately loved Ophelia, and the impulse with which he rushes to her coffin is deeply sincere; he loves his mother, and in a nightly conversation, when he torments her, traits of touching filial tenderness slip through him; he is genuinely delicate (before the fatal rapier match) with Laertes, of whom he frankly asks for forgiveness for his recent harshness; his last words before his death are a greeting to Fortinbras, to whom he bequeaths the throne for the good of his homeland. It is especially characteristic that, taking care of his good name, he instructs Horatio to tell everyone the truth about him. Thanks to this, while expressing thoughts of exceptional depth, Hamlet is not a philosophical symbol, not a mouthpiece for the ideas of Shakespeare himself or his era, but a specific person whose words, expressing his deep personal feelings, acquire special persuasiveness through this.
What features of the revenge tragedy genre can be found in Hamlet? How and why does this play transcend this genre?
Hamlet's revenge is not decided by a simple blow of a dagger. Even its practical implementation encounters serious obstacles. Claudius is heavily guarded and cannot be approached. But the external obstacle is less significant than the moral and political task facing the hero. To carry out revenge, he must commit murder, that is, the same crime that lies on the soul of Claudius. Hamlet's revenge cannot be a secret murder, it must become a public punishment for the criminal. To do this, it is necessary to make it obvious to everyone that Claudius is a vile murderer.
Hamlet has a second task - to convince the mother that she committed a serious moral violation by entering into an incestuous marriage. Hamlet's revenge must be not only a personal, but also a state act, and he is aware of this. Such is the outer side of the dramatic conflict.
Hamlet has his own ethics of revenge. He wants Claudius to know what punishment awaits him for. For Hamlet, true revenge is not physical murder. He seeks to arouse in Claudius the consciousness of his guilt. All the hero's actions are devoted to this goal, up to the "mousetrap" scene. Hamlet strives to make Claudius imbued with the consciousness of his crime, he wants to punish the enemy first with internal torments, pangs of conscience, and only then strike a blow so that he knows that he is punished not only by Hamlet, but by the moral law, universal justice.
Having struck down Polonius, who was hiding behind a curtain, with his sword, Hamlet says:
As for him
Then I mourn; but heaven said
They punished me and me him,
So that I become their scourge and servant.
In what seems to be an accident, Hamlet sees the manifestation of a higher will. Heaven has entrusted him with the mission to be the scourge and the executor of their destiny. This is how Hamlet looks at the matter of revenge.
A variety of tonality of tragedies has long been noticed, a mixture of the tragic with the comic in them. Usually in Shakespeare, the carriers of the comic are low-ranking characters and jesters. There is no such jester in Hamlet. True, there are third-rate comic figures of Osric and the second nobleman at the beginning of the second scene of the fifth act. The comical Polonius. They are all ridiculed and laughable themselves. Serious and funny interspersed in "Hamlet", and sometimes merge. When Hamlet describes to the king that all people are food for worms, the joke is at the same time a threat to the enemy in the struggle that takes place between them. Shakespeare constructs the action in such a way that the tragic tension is replaced by calm and mocking scenes. The fact that the serious is interspersed with the funny, the tragic with the comic, the sublime with the everyday and base, creates the impression of a genuine vitality of the action of his plays.
Mixing the serious with the funny, the tragic with the comic is a long-noted feature of Shakespeare's dramaturgy. In Hamlet, you can see this principle in action. Suffice it to recall at least the beginning of the scene in the cemetery. Comic figures of gravediggers appear before the audience; both roles are played by jesters, but even here the clowning is different. The first gravedigger belongs to the witty jesters, who know how to amuse the audience with clever remarks, the second jester is one of those comic characters who serve as the subject of ridicule. The first gravedigger shows before our eyes that this simpleton is easily fooled.
Before the final catastrophe, Shakespeare again introduces a comic episode: Hamlet makes fun of Osric's excessive court gloss. But in a few minutes there will be a catastrophe in which the entire royal family will die!
How relevant is the content of the play today?
Hamlet's monologues evoke in readers and viewers the impression of the universal significance of everything that happens in the tragedy.
"Hamlet" is a tragedy, the deepest meaning of which lies in the awareness of evil, in the desire to comprehend its roots, understand its various forms of manifestation and find means of fighting against it. The artist created the image of a hero, shocked to the core by the discovery of evil. The pathos of tragedy is indignation against the omnipotence of evil.
Love, friendship, marriage, relations between children and parents, external war and rebellion within the country - such is the range of topics directly touched upon in the play. And next to them are the philosophical and psychological problems over which Hamlet's thought struggles: the meaning of life and the purpose of man, death and immortality, spiritual strength and weakness, vice and crime, the right to revenge and murder.
The content of the tragedy has eternal value and will always be relevant, regardless of time and place. The play poses eternal questions that have always worried and worried all of humanity: how to fight evil, by what means and is it possible to defeat it? Is it worth living at all if life is full of evil and it is impossible to defeat it? What is true in life and what is false? How can true feelings be distinguished from false ones? Can love be eternal? What is the meaning of human life?
Hamlet is one of Shakespeare's greatest tragedies. The eternal questions raised in the text are still worrying mankind. Love conflicts, political themes, reflections on religion: all the main intentions of the human spirit are collected in this tragedy. Shakespeare's plays are both tragic and realistic, and images have long become eternal in world literature. Perhaps this is where their greatness lies.
The famous English author was not the first to write the story of Hamlet. Before him, there was the "Spanish Tragedy", written by Thomas Kidd. Researchers and literary scholars suggest that Shakespeare borrowed the plot from him. However, Thomas Kyd himself probably referred to earlier sources. Most likely, these were short stories of the early Middle Ages.
Saxo Grammaticus, in his History of the Danes, described real story the ruler of Jutland, who had a son named Amlet (eng. Amlet) and wife Gerut. The ruler had a brother who was jealous of his wealth and decided to kill, and then married his wife. Amlet did not submit to the new ruler, and, having learned about the bloody murder of his father, decides to take revenge. The stories coincide down to the smallest detail, but Shakespeare interprets the events in a different way and penetrates deeper into the psychology of each character.
essence
Hamlet returns to his native castle of Elsinore for his father's funeral. From the soldiers who served at the court, he learns about a ghost that comes to them at night and resembles the deceased king in outline. Hamlet decides to go to a meeting with an unknown phenomenon, a further meeting terrifies him. The ghost reveals to him true reason his death and inclines his son to revenge. Danish prince confused and on the verge of insanity. He does not understand whether he really saw the spirit of his father, or did the devil come to him from the depths of hell?
The hero reflects on what happened for a long time and eventually decides to find out on his own whether Claudius is really guilty. To do this, he asks a troupe of actors to play the play "The Murder of Gonzago" to see the king's reaction. During a key moment in the play, Claudius becomes ill and leaves, at which point an ominous truth is revealed. All this time, Hamlet pretends to be crazy, and even Rosencrantz and Guildenstern sent to him could not find out from him the true motives of his behavior. Hamlet intends to speak to the Queen in her quarters and accidentally kills Polonius, who has hidden behind a curtain to eavesdrop. He sees in this accident the manifestation of the will of heaven. Claudius understands the criticality of the situation and tries to send Hamlet to England, where he is to be executed. But this does not happen, and the dangerous nephew returns to the castle, where he kills his uncle and dies from poison himself. The kingdom passes into the hands of the Norwegian ruler Fortinbras.
Genre and direction
"Hamlet" is written in the genre of tragedy, but the "theatricality" of the work should be taken into account. Indeed, in the understanding of Shakespeare, the world is a stage, and life is a theater. This is a kind of specific attitude, a creative look at the phenomena surrounding a person.
Shakespeare's dramas are traditionally referred to. It is characterized by pessimism, gloominess and aestheticization of death. These features can be found in the work of the great English playwright.
Conflict
The main conflict in the play is divided into external and internal. Its external manifestation lies in Hamlet's attitude towards the inhabitants of the Danish court. He considers them all base creatures, devoid of reason, 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.
Composition
The main compositional outline of the tragedy consists of a story about the fate of Hamlet. Each separate layer of the play serves to fully reveal his personality and is accompanied by constant changes in the thoughts and behavior of the hero. Events gradually unfold in such a way that the reader begins to feel a constant tension that does not stop even after the death of Hamlet.
The action can be divided into five parts:
- First part - plot. Here Hamlet meets the ghost of his dead father, who bequeaths him to avenge his death. In this part, the prince first encounters human betrayal and meanness. This is where his mental anguish begins, which does not let him go until his death. Life becomes meaningless for him.
- The second part - action development. The prince decides to pretend to be crazy in order to deceive Claudius and find out the truth about his act. He also accidentally kills the royal adviser - Polonius. At this moment, the realization comes to him that he is the executor of the highest will of heaven.
- The third part - climax. Here Hamlet, with the help of the trick of showing the play, is finally convinced of the guilt of the ruling king. Claudius realizes how dangerous his nephew is and decides to get rid of him.
- The fourth part - the Prince is sent to England to be executed there. At the same moment, Ophelia goes crazy and tragically dies.
- Fifth part - denouement. Hamlet escapes execution, but he has to fight Laertes. In this part, all the main participants in the action die: Gertrude, Claudius, Laertes and Hamlet himself.
Main characters and their characteristics
- Hamlet- from the very beginning of the play, the reader's interest focuses on the personality of this character. This "book" boy, as Shakespeare himself wrote about him, suffers from the disease of the approaching age - melancholy. In essence, he is the first reflective hero of world literature. Someone might think that he is a weak, incapable person. But in fact, we see that he is strong in spirit and is not going to submit to the problems that have befallen him. His perception of the world is changing, particles of past illusions turn into dust. From this comes the very "Hamletism" - internal discord in the soul of the hero. By nature, he is a dreamer, a philosopher, but life forced him to become an avenger. The character of Hamlet can be called "Byronic", because he is maximally focused on his own internal state and quite skeptical about the world around him. He, like all romantics, is prone to constant self-doubt and tossing between good and evil.
- Gertrude mother of Hamlet. A woman in whom we see the makings of a mind, but a complete lack of will. She is not alone in her loss, but for some reason she does not try to get closer to her son at the moment when grief happened in the family. Without the slightest remorse, Gertrude betrays the memory of her late husband and agrees to marry his brother. Throughout the action, she constantly tries to justify herself. Dying, the queen realizes how wrong her behavior was, and how wise and fearless her son turned out to be.
- Ophelia Daughter of Polonius and beloved of Hamlet. A meek girl who loved the prince until her death. She also faced trials that she could not endure. Her madness is not a feigned move invented by someone. This is the same madness that comes at the moment of true suffering, it cannot be stopped. There are some hidden indications in the work that Ophelia was pregnant from Hamlet, and from this the realization of her fate becomes doubly difficult.
- Claudius- a man who killed his own brother in order to achieve his own goals. Hypocritical and vile, he still bears a heavy burden. Pangs of conscience daily devour him and do not allow him to fully enjoy the reign to which he came in such a terrible way.
- Rosencrantz And Guildenstern- the so-called "friends" of Hamlet, who betrayed him at the first opportunity to make good money. Without delay, they agree to deliver a message announcing the death of the prince. But fate has prepared for them a worthy punishment: as a result, they die instead of Hamlet.
- Horatio- an example of a true and faithful friend. The only person the prince can trust. Together they go through all the problems, and Horatio is ready to share even death with a friend. It is to him that Hamlet trusts to tell his story and asks him to "breathe more in this world."
Themes
- Revenge of Hamlet. The prince was destined to bear the heavy burden of revenge. He cannot coldly and prudently deal with Claudius and regain the throne. His humanistic attitudes make you think about the common good. 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 all of Denmark, which carelessly turned a blind eye to the circumstances of the death of the old king. He knows that in order to commit revenge, he needs to become an enemy to the entire environment. His ideal of reality does not coincide with real picture of the world, the "shattered age" causes hostility in Hamlet. The prince realizes that he cannot restore the world alone. Such thoughts plunge him into even greater despair.
- Love of Hamlet. Before all those terrible events in the life of the hero, there was love. But, unfortunately, she is unhappy. He was madly in love with Ophelia, and there is no doubt about the sincerity of his feelings. But the young man is forced to refuse happiness. After all, the offer to share sorrows together would be too selfish. To finally break the bond, he has to hurt and be merciless. Trying to save Ophelia, he could not even imagine how great her suffering would be. The impulse with which he rushes to her coffin was deeply sincere.
- Friendship of Hamlet. The hero values friendship very much and is not used to choosing his friends 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 treats Rosencrantz and Guildenstern so cruelly.
Problems
The issues covered in Hamlet are very broad. Here are the themes of love and hate, the meaning of life and the purpose of a person in this world, strength and weakness, the right to revenge and murder.
One of the main - problem of choice faced by the protagonist. There is a lot of uncertainty in his soul, he alone thinks for a long time and analyzes everything that happens in his life. There is no one next to 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 understood 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 worry more and more about the topic of death and its mystery. What's next? Eternal darkness or the continuation of the suffering that he endures during his lifetime?
Meaning
The main idea of tragedy is the search for the meaning of being. Shakespeare shows an educated person, always searching, having a deep sense of empathy for everything that surrounds him. But life forces him to face true evil in various manifestations. Hamlet is aware of it, trying to figure out exactly how it arose and why. He is shocked by the fact that one place can turn into hell on Earth so quickly. And the act of his revenge is to destroy the evil that has penetrated his world.
The fundamental idea in the tragedy is that behind all these royal showdowns there is a great turning point in the whole of European culture. And at the tip of this turning point, Hamlet appears - a new type of hero. Together with the death of all the main characters, the system of worldview that has developed over the centuries collapses.
Criticism
Belinsky in 1837 writes an article on Hamlet, in which he calls the tragedy a "brilliant diamond" in the "radiant crown of the king of dramatic poets", "crowned by the whole of humanity and neither before nor after himself has no rival."
In the image of Hamlet, there are all the universal features "<…>it’s me, it’s each of us, more or less…,” Belinsky writes about him.
S. T. Coleridge, in Shakespeare's Lectures (1811-1812), writes: "Hamlet hesitates because of natural sensitivity and lingers, held by reason, which makes him turn effective forces in search of a speculative solution."
Psychologist L.S. Vygotsky focused on the connection of Hamlet with the other world: "Hamlet is a mystic, this determines not only his state of mind on the threshold of a double existence, two worlds, but also his will in all its manifestations."
And the literary critic V.K. Kantor considered the tragedy from a different angle and in his article “Hamlet as a “Christian warrior”” he pointed out: “The tragedy “Hamlet” is a system of temptations. He is tempted by a ghost (this is the main temptation), and the task of the prince is to check whether the devil is trying to lead him into sin. Hence the trap theatre. But at the same time, he is tempted by love for Ophelia. Temptation is a constant Christian problem."
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