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Hades was the Greek god of the underworld, the ruler of the dead. Hades is known in the Greek world as “the god of the Underworld,” “the Invisible One,” “the god of wealth” or “god of Death,” and “the god of the Death Realm”. Greek also know hades as different names like Dis, Pluto, or Orcus. A god feared so deeply that often his name was not used in speech by the Greeks and Romans for fear of the dire consequences of attracting his attention. The Greeks would instead use the name Pluto which is where some believe the Romans got their use of this name. Hades names Pluto mean wealth.
Get original essayThe underworld, also called just Hades, was a region where souls went after separating from their bodies. They took a shape of the former bodies and were transported to an entrance of the underworld. The Underworld was made up of three parts: the Asphodel Fields, Tartarus and the Elysian Fields. The entrance to the Underworld is guarded by Cerberus, the three-headed dog.Hade Life He was the son of Cronus and Rhea, and brother of Zeus and Poseidon, and sister are demeter, Hestia and hera. Hades and his brothers Zeus and Poseidon defeated their father and the Titans to end their reign, claiming ruler ship over the cosmos. They agreed to split their rule with Zeus becoming god of the skies, Poseidon god of the sea and Hades god of the underworld.
He was from the first generation of Olympian gods. His brother Zeus ruled the skies and his other brother Poseidon ruled the sea, which left Hades with the underworld. Hades ruled the underworld alone until he fell in love with the goddess Persephone. Here he ruled with his wife Persephone over the other powers below and over the dead. His helmet, given to him by the Cyclops after their release from Tartarus, made him invisible. The helmet of darkness or the cap of invisibility was a magical piece of armor that the Cyclops had made specifically for Hades. Hades children are Macaria, Melinoe and Zagreus.
In conclusion Hades can be called the god of the afterlife or the underworld. Hades had two brothers named Poseidon and Zeus. Hades had a Helmet of Darkness which made him invisible. Hades looked old and burned with a three headed dog named Cerberus. Hades was very selfish and persuasive. Hades might be gloomy but have fun on his on term. Being one of the top three most powerful god to one of the most hated god. Hades is important in certain way. Just in case anyone get the wrong idea Hades is not the god of death that Thanatos.
Hadoop is an open source, Java-based programming framework that supports the processing and storage of extremely large data sets in a distributed computing environment.
Get original essayHadoop makes it possible to run applications on systems with thousands of commodity hardware nodes, and to handle thousands of terabytes of data. Its distributed file system facilitates rapid data transfer rates among nodes and allows the system to continue operating in case of a node failure. This approach lowers the risk of catastrophic system failure and unexpected data loss, even if a significant number of nodes become inoperative. Consequently, Hadoop quickly emerged as a foundation for big data processing tasks, such as scientific analytics, business and sales planning, and processing enormous volumes of sensor data, including from internet of things sensors.
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Richard II, like most of Shakespeare's history plays (though, notably, unlike his comedies and tragedies), establishes a theatrical world dominated by men and masculinity. Female characters are few, and those that appear on the stage tend to say little and have less agency. But, as critic Graham Holderness notes, "women may not be much in evidence in the play, but femininity is" (173). Holderness' article "A Woman's War: A Feminist Reading of Richard II" attempts to reinsert femininity into history and historicity into feminist criticism, but his insightful argument does not examine fully enough the most powerful way in which femininity is in evidence in Richard II: in the imagery, metaphors, and explicit comments about motherhood, maternity, and childbirth that appear at various important moments throughout the play. Maternity not only reinserts femininity into the history play but indeed constructs femininity as the site of an uncanny, incomprehensible experience (of emotion, of power, of pain) that haunts both male and female characters and makes women far from a silent presence in Richard II. From John of Gaunt's searing elegy to his threatened motherland to Queen Isabella's prophetic fantasy of the birth of sorrow to the Duchess York's impassioned plea on behalf of her traitorous son Aumerle, maternity, and the mother-child relationship, are represented as traumatic - painful and ineffaceable - sources of knowledge and power that resonate throughout not only individual life but (through metaphor and rhetoric) the life of the nation and, thus, in a sense, structure the way history is created and experienced within the play.
Get original essayQueen Isabella is certainly the most tragic female character in Richard II; for most of the play (most saliently in scene 2.1) she is, as Holderness notes, "a virtually silent, self-effacing character, who is also ignored by everyone else in the room, virtually as an absence, a non-existence" (170). When she speaks, her words often seem as vague and unfocused as the sense of sorrow that haunts her; entering the garden with her attendants and asking "What sport shall we devise here in this garden/To drive away the heavy tough of care" (3.4.1-2), then stubbornly refusing every "sport," the Queen seems silly and childlike if not altogether mad, a pathetic Ophelia-like creature addled by grief. The Queen's speech in 2.2, though, is both eloquent and thematically significant, and its engagement with the issue of maternity is fascinating. Haunted by a sadness that has no obvious cause, the Queen says that "Yet again, methinks,/Some unborn sorrow, ripe in fortune's womb/Is coming towards me, and my inward soul/With nothing trembles. At something it grieves/More than with parting from my lord the king" (2.1.9-13). Queen Isabella's voice is not only melancholy but prophetic; with what might be somewhat crudely called a particularly feminine kind of knowledge (insight denied to, or ignored by, men), she anticipates the play's impending tragedy and puts the fall of a King - a moment of national, historic crisis - into the language of pregnancy and maternity, envisioning a "fortune" that might be broadly defined as the narrative shape of history or of the play as a pregnant woman, a mother.
Refusing Bushy's reassurance that "'Tis nothing but conceit, my gracious lady" (2.2.33), the historically childless Isabella (Holderness 177) continues to imagine herself as involved, in a complicated fashion, in the birth of tragedy. Holderness claims that "Isabella naturally uses the imagery of pregnancy and birth, but displaces such possibilities from her own body, envisaging the birth of nothing but misfortune" (176). I am not convinced, however, that Isabella's rhetoric is so far removed from her body: "nothing" was a commonly recognized Elizabethan euphemism for vagina, and the Queen's repeated use of the word ("my inward soul/with nothing trembles" [2.2.12]; "As, though on thinking on no thought I think,/Makes me with heavy nothing faint and shrink" [2.2.31-32]; "'Tis nothing less.../For nothing hath begot my something grief,/Or something hath the nothing that I grieve" [2.1.34-37]) in speeches that deal explicitly with pregnancy and childbirth suggest that this meaning is being consciously referenced here. The female genitals, literally the site of reproduction and birth, metaphorically (and through worldplay) become the site of premonition and tragedy; Isabella implies, in fact, that her portentous melancholy is a fatherless child, a pure product only of the female genitals: "Conceit is still derived/From some forefather grief. Mine is not so,/For nothing hath begot my something grief" (2.2.34-36). Her next line - "Or something hath the nothing that I grieve" (2.2.37) might be read as mourning the loss of that moment of purity or as claiming further agency for the female body, the location of a physicalized, embodied knowledge (and thus power) derived from the experience of maternity, one that becomes more closely tied to Isabella's own body when she says "So, Green, thou art the midwife to my woe,/Bolingbroke my sorrow's dismal heir./Now hath my soul brought forth her prodigy;/And I, a gasping new-delivered mother,/Have woe to woe, sorrow to sorrow joined" (2.1.62-66). The female experience of the traumatic pain of childbirth - as the "prodigy" or monstrous omen (which is, of course, now justified and proved not "nothing" at all) is transmitted through Isabella's soul and conflated with her body or genitals - becomes explicitly tied to the workings of the state and of history: not only are Isabella's personal "woe" and "sorrow" joined to those of England, but it is through the woman's suffering that the sufferings of the King and the nation are both dramatically anticipated and rhetorically represented.
The play's most explicit representation of the power of motherhood is its last: against the wishes of her husband, who turns against their son Aumerle for his treasonous plot, the Duchess of York begs King Henry for pardon on behalf of her son. Holderness argues that, in contrast to the Queen and the Duchess of Gloucester, "the Duchess of York offers what is in effect a contrasting success-story, precisely because she accepts and embraces the subjected and marginal role of women...the prospect of losing her son would rob her of her very existence" (178), exemplifying Holderness' thesis that women's identities in the play are constituted solely through their relationships to men, that "their only function in this masculine world is that of bearing sons for their powerful husbands" (177). Holderness reads the Duchess' passionate plea for her son, first to her husband and then - against that husband's will - to the King as yet one more example of female subjugation to male power, finding in her begging on her knees to the King and her self-effacing appeal to paternal pride ("He is as like thee as a man may be,/Not like to me, or any of my kin" [5.2.108-109]) evidence that "to save her son the Duchess is not only prepared to humiliate herself...but even to sacrifice from her boy the personal traces of her maternal inheritance..." (178).
I would propose that the Duchess of York's scenes with her husband and with King Henry display a much more profound engagement with issues of gender, maternity, paternity, and power than Holderness gives them credit for. To begin with, the Duchess of York does, as Holderness acknowledges, represent a "contrasting success-story" in that she succeeds in bending the will of the king to save the life of her son; perhaps she does so through a kind of subjugation - "For ever will I walk upon my knees/And never see day that the happy sees,/Till thou give joy.../By pardoning Rutland, my transgressing boy" (5.3.94-97) - but it is a subjugation so literal as to seem highly self-conscious: this is a woman who, in perhaps inappropriate post-feminist terms, knows what she wants and what she has to do to get it, even - especially - if that means a performative reenactment of the rhetoric and structures of patriarchy. Brilliantly manipulating those structures, the Duchess begs the king to "Say 'pardon' first, and afterwards 'stand up.'/And if I were thy nurse, thy tongue to teach,/'Pardon should be the first word of they speech/.../Say 'pardon' king; let pity teach thee how./The word is short, but not so short as sweet;/No word like 'pardon' for kings' mouths so meet" (5.3.112-118). On her knees, she subtly inverts power structures not through nearly forcing the king to say "pardon" through her insistent, rhythmic, alliterative speech, but suggesting that the figure of the "nurse" (whom for the sake of this argument I would conflate with that of the "mother" as women charged with the responsibilities of child-rearing, though it is worth noting that historically the nurse is even more marginalized than the mother) is invested with the power, through teaching, of controlling what men say, of controlling the inheritance of language, of deciding what words are "for kings' mouths so meet." This strange female authority over language is also suggested in Mowbray's lament over his banishment: "The language I have learnt these forty years,/My native English, now I must forgo.../I am too old to fawn upon a nurse,/Too far in years to be a pupil now" (1.3.159-171). Leaving his motherland and without access to a new source of maternal teaching, Mowbray conceives of himself as robbed of the power of speech, radically disassociated from language itself. The Duchess' inversion remains ambivalent and the triumph incomplete, since the oppressive workings of patriarchy cannot be denied both in society and in language itself (the speech being taught by the nurse is an inherently masculinist one), but the moment is nonetheless a profound one: the scene, I would argue, suggests that even when most fully entrenched within patriarchal domination (in what Holderness calls an "embrace" and I would call a performative and thus destabilizing enactment), the woman, as the figure charged with the responsibility of passing language on to (male) children, exerts a kind of control over that very language and thus over its uses.
In the scene prior to her appeal to the King, the Duchess refuses to indict her son for his participation in the treasonous conspiracy though her husband orders her to do so, disavowing fatherly affection and accusing his wife of overly emotional feminine weakness: "Thou fond mad woman,/Wilt thou conceal this dark conspiracy.../Away, fond woman! Were he twenty times/My son, I would appeach him" (5.2.95-102). The Duchess argues eloquently for the placement of familial bonds over political loyalties (a vexed issue throughout the play, as evidenced by the bond of blood shared by Richard and Bolingbroke that torments both men) and for the supremacy of maternal experience: "Hadst thou groaned for/him/As I have done, though wouldst be more pitiful" (5.2.103). Holdnerness recognizes that here "the Duchess does at least suggest that femininity may have its own peculiar experiences and values, in some ways quite separate from the world of masculine ideology" (178) but, again, I would argue that the Duchess' words suggest something more meaningful than that: the traumatically painful ordeal of childbirth (the Duchess' term "groan," which in Shakespearean usage often directly or indirectly references the pains of labor, resonates throughout the play, as in Richard's potentially transgendering injunction to the Queen: "Go, count thy way with sighs; I mine with groans/.../Twice for one stop I'll groan, the way being short..." [5.1.88-91]), an ordeal that at once ruptures and strengthens the primal bond between mother and child, gives the woman access to a realm of physical and psychic experience not only "separate from the world of masculine ideology," not only at odds with it, but exerting an uncanny power over it while remaining incomprehensible to it. Though tied to Linda Bamber's psychoanalytic concept of feminine Otherness, "female principle apart from history" (quoted in Holderness 167), this evocation of maternal experience claims authority and power not only against history but within it - or even over it: the profound original bond between mother and child, the traumatic (because painful and ineffaceable) ordeal of childbirth, alters the shape of history (or history as written within the history play). "His words come from his mouth, ours from our breast" (5.2.102) the Duchess says of her husband to the King, claiming once again the primal authority and uncanny knowledge of maternity and locating it, like Isabella's prophecy does, in the body (specifically the breast, the son's first source of food), in a place beyond and deeper than language but also (recall the image of the nurse) exerting control over language and over action. The scene of Oedipal struggle is played out between father and son but, as the King himself (symbolically the ultimate Father) cedes to the demands of the Duchess, it is the Mother who triumphs.
Mothers are, of course, intimately tied to nations in the (largely masculinist) rhetoric of patriotic sentiment, as the term "motherland" and the traditional gendering of countries as female makes clear. The rhetoric of England-as-mother occurs throughout Richard II: "Then England's ground, farewell; sweet soil, adieu,/My mother, and my nurse, that bears me yet!" (1.4.306-309) says the banished Bolingbroke, and King Richard speaks of "our peace, which in our country's cradle/Draws the sweet infant breath of gentle sleep" (1.3.132-133), conceiving of the political situation ("our peace") and thus, in a sense, of history as the child sleeping in the mother-country's cradle. Most significant, of course, is the famous speech in which John of Gaunt laments the state of his beloved nation, his motherland: "This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England,/This nurse, this teeming womb of royal kings,/Feared by their breed and famous by their birth,/Renownd for their deeds as far from home,/For Christian service and true chivalry,/As is the sepulcher in stubborn Jewry/Of the world's ransom, blessed Mary's son..." (2.1.50-56). Holderness argues: "In Gaunt's feudal and aristocratic perspective, women appear as the passive vehicles by means of which the patriarchal seed is procreated...Even the femininity of his metaphorical 'England' is ultimately spurious, since that maternal symbol is so completely a construction of the kings and warriors who have served their country" (185). Yes, but: I would suggest that my analysis of the other moments of intersection of maternity and politics in the play might allow a re-reading of Gaunt's speech and of how the sentiment expressed within it functions in the play. Though his perspective is undoubtedly "feudal and aristocratic" and steeped in the rhetoric and ideology of patriarchy, I would propose that considerably more agency can be granted to the abstract femininity represented here by England than Holderness allows; as he acknowledges, "You cannot really talk about nurses, and wombs, and birth, and breeding, without bringing into play a feminine dimension of meaning...[that] proves remarkably hard to expel" (174). England is represented as both mother and nurse, both woman who gives birth and woman who breeds and teaches (the parallel structure of likes 51-52 emphasizes this point), and as a "teeming womb" (a woman before birth) filled with unborn children, unachieved potential, unlived history. The womb, as in Queen Isabella's speech, is rhetorically imagined as a vessel of kings and of history, but not only as a "passive vehicle." As we have seen, the figure of the Mother (and of the Motherland) retains a kind of control, even if it is a control planted firmly within patriarchal structures, over the actions, words, and thoughts of the sons - the warriors, the knights, the kings - who create history. This is why the image of a woman's body - a womb - is so appropriate in the middle of a movingly patriotic monologue and at the same time so jarring: the authority granted by maternity, the knowledge/power of the womb, the insertion of female meaning into male speech (and male history), is deeply troubled and ambivalent but - like the relationship of mother to son - inexorable.
In Richard II, the incomprehensible (to men) physical and psychic pains of pregnancy and childbirth, the traumatically disrupted but never fully shattered primal bond of child to mother, the authority of mother/nurse to teach language to the son and thus to in a sense control the way that knowledge is transmitted, grant to women an uncanny, ambivalent, but surprisingly strong control over the way that history is structured and spoken about. History, or at least history as dramatized and given narrative arc within the history play, can be envisaged as a kind of endless Oedipal battle between Father and Sons, as an older king (and generation) is deposed by a younger one. King Henry is haunted at the end by guilt over his historically ordained murder of the father-figure King Richard: "Lords, I protest my soul is full of woe/That blood should sprinkle me to make me grow" (5.6.45-46). As in every Oedipal battle, though, the figure of the Mother looms large, and this is no exception: in Isabella's prophetic knowledge, in the Duchess of Gloucester's linguistic power, in John of Gaunt's patriotic rhetoric, maternity exerts its uncanny force within history.
Works Cited
Holderness, Graham. "'A Woman's War': A Feminist Reading of Richard II." Shakespeare Left and Right. Ed. Ivo Kamps. New York: Routledge.
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Get custom essayShakespeare, William. The Tragedy of King Richard the Second. New York: Penguin Books, 2000.
In highly globalized era, current world population observed as 7.6 billion, it is projected to reach 8.6 billion in 2030 and 9.8 billion in 2050. The rate of increase in Muslim’s population is higher than rate of increase in world’s population. Muslim population has been increased 18 percent as compares to world population which increased 11 percent (Euromonitor, 2018).Consumption of food and other halal related products increasing 10.8 percent each year and its worth will be $3.7 trillion worldwide. Halal concept is not just a Islamic concept, it is in the realm of business and trade, becoming a global symbol for assurance of quality and most favorable choice due to its truthiness, trustworthiness, pureness and significance. Halal brand is emerging prominently among other brands. There is much literary work found which shows that halal food’s demand has been increasing among non-Muslim countries. Halal, a central concept of Islam, refers to any object or action which is permissible to use or engage in according to Islamic principles and practices. A Muslim who strictly adheres to the faith is expected to do what is deemed halal and avoid what is ‘‘haram’’ or forbidden. This categorization plays a significant role in defining the food consumption norms of Muslims. Pork, for example, is considered haram and most Muslims, whether practicing or not, avoid any foods that contain any pork ingredients or its derivatives, such as lard. Over one-fifth of the world’s population is Muslim and that proportion is projected to rise from 1.7 billion in 2014 to 2.7 billion by 2030. Globally, Muslim spending on food and beverages was estimated at $1,292 billion in 2013, or 17.76% of the global food and beverages expenditures, and is projected to grow to $2,537 billion by 2019, or 21.2% of global expenditures.
Get original essayDespite the clearly rising Muslim demand, the market for halal products is undeveloped in many non-Muslim majority regions, including the U.S., where the disposable income of the Muslim population was estimated at $98 billion in 2013. Islam is the fastest growing religion in the U.S. and is projected to become the largest non-Christian religion by 2050 (Pew Research Center 2015). Many companies worldwide, including in the U.S., continue to ignore the importance of offering halal foods, significantly losing out on the opportunity to cater to the substantial and growing numbers of Muslims (Thomson Reuters 2014). The immature market for halal products, particularly halal meat, in the U.S. means that online interactions and websites can play an important mediating role in the religion-market nexus. This research uses netnographic analysis to examine the mechanisms through which social media and virtual communities provide unobtrusive, natural and intrinsic explorations of consumer behavior and word-of-mouth. Most of the researchers found netnography as a method to explore hidden dimensions and unobtrusive response because consumers show their real and natural opinion in virtual platforms. There is plenty of researches on muslims regarding halal food perceptions. But there is scarcity of qualitative studies to explore the perceptions of non-Muslims.
Food selection and its corresponding decision-making process are often shaped by the prevailing social norms and practices, with religion serving as a major foundation in the approach. The word “halal” is derived from Arabic language that means permission in law (Wilson and Liu, 2010). More specifically, halal refers to acceptable activities based on the Holy Qur’an. In relation with this word in English, most of the people has the perception that halal is only related with foods which are acceptable to consume by the Muslims. However, according to Rehman and Shahbaz Shabbir (2010), halal concept obeys the Shariah rules which clearly specify what Muslims can and cannot accept. Based on the halal point of view, one must not use harmful ingredients, exploitation of labor and environment for unlawful use. Therefore, the term is not subjected to only food and encompasses the whole spectrum of a Muslim’s conduct, highlighting what a Muslim should and should not do to receive mercy from Allah. Halal concept instructs that food producers must ensure good nutrition with permitted ingredients.
Haque et al. (2015) found that positive attitudes like good understanding towards halal concept, awareness and self-concept plays an important role towards halal food consumption. Halal food considered safe, healthier, animal friendly and environment friendly. Social influence is another important factor which significantly effects consumer behavior. Worldwide, food choices and consumption pattern and preferences vary across country. Different people with different ethnicity and religion have different way of life and belief. Religions can influence consumer attitude and behavior particularly in food purchasing decision and eating habits. According to Dindyal (2003), most societies in the world indicated that religions are the one of the most influential roles when it comes to shaping food choice among societies member. However, study done by Ernest Cyril De Run et al., (2010) argued that religion is not the only factor that matters the most in consumption world, instead, the intensity of one’s religious affiliations known as religiosity (the degree of being religious) is crucial in molding one’s purchase behavior.
In the study, done by Mejova et al. (2017) using Instagram (social media platform) found strong linkage between halal food and healthy life and also founds that live animals sold for slaughter, due to westernization of halal food it causes obesity and people are more likely to eat out. In addition, halal food considered as clean, contains less blood, environment friendly and hygienic. However some of the non-Muslims thought that halal process of animal slaughtering is animal cruelty.
Although, non-Muslim consume halal food, but due to unauthentic information, misconceptions and rumors in virtual and real places, they have many negative perceptions and evaluations towards halal food. These scenarios would severely hinder the growth of halal food in non-Muslim’s cultures and countries.
The main objective of this study is to:
Research Questions
Although previous empirical studies have confirmed significant relationships among service attributes, satisfaction, and experience-sharing, but there is still need to find the perceptions and understandings of consumers unobtrusively and qualitatively. To fill in this gap, a qualitative methodology was utilized in this study. Netnography, an ethnographic form of research that is conducted online, is an open-ended practice and an inductive method for generating a theory by analyzing qualitative data. This study will follow the five steps of netnographic research suggested by Kozinets (2010) as defining the research questions or topics, community identification and selection, data collection, data analysis and iterative interpretation of the findings, and reporting the research findings and theoretical policy implications. The data will analyze following the two sequential analytical processes of analytic coding and hermeneutic interpretation, which requires that ‘‘the interpretation must be coherent and free of contradiction”. Themes will be documented. Observations should be supported with relevant examples. A command of the relevant literature will be evident. Tradition must be acknowledged. The interpretation should be comprehensible to the reading audience, given their pre-understanding. The interpretation should ‘enlighten.’ It is ‘fruitful’ in revealing new dimensions of the problem at hand. It yields insight that leads to revision of [pre-] understanding. This revision should be made quite explicit’’. A relevant online community was selected for its popularity, accessibility, and reliability. Data will be collected from the review threads posted by individuals from UK, Canada and USA. Thread which shows the perceptions and commonly posted by “insiders” and “Mangers” as these individuals shows more social and relational response in online communities, will be considered for data interpretation.
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Get custom essayAt the end of the research, new themes will be emerged which was undiscovered until now and a conceptual framework will be verified through qualitative technique.
The renaissance was an era of great change in philosophical thought and morality. Before the 15th century, monastic scholasticism had dominated European thinking. Monasticism’s emphasis on a black and white system of morality, which relied on a dogmatic and narrow interpretation of Christian theology, created a system that valued rules and regulations over inherent understandings of right and wrong. Yet as Greek and Latin texts began to surface in Italy during the 15th century, a fundamental shift in thinking began to occur. The idea that the human experience should be studied to advance and develop moral understanding began to take form. Yet as the shackles of a rule based morality system began to be overthrown, philosophers and writers were faced with a new danger, moral nihilism. In England, William Shakespeare tackled the evolving social and moral changes introduced by the renaissance in his play, Hamlet. William Shakespeare’s Hamlet character is a personification of the evolution of philosophical humanism into moral nihilism, and this is shown through Hamlet's initial quest for revenge, his inner search for the truth of his father's murder, and his eventual hollow revenge over Claudius.
Get original essayHamlet's initial response to his father's death can be seen as a representation of the Middle age's scholastic mindset. Hamlet is fully a part of the religious and chivalrous thinking of the time at the beginning of the play. He is devastated by his father's death. When describing his grief to his mother, Hamlet says, “Together with all forms, moods, shapes of grief, That can denote me truly. These indeed “seem,”For they are actions that a man might play. But I have that within which passeth show, These but the trappings and the suits of woe” (Act 1:V 82-87). His pain is beyond the trappings of grief, his very soul aches for his father's death. Hamlet wishes nothing more to join his father in the great beyond, but curses that he is forbidden to do so. He says in anguish, “Oh, that this too, too sullied flesh would melt, Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew, Or that the Everlasting had not fixed His canon 'gainst self-slaughter! O God, God!” (Act 1: V 129-132). This is important, as at this point Hamlet is a firm believer in the rules based morality of the middle ages. He wishes to commit suicide, but he cannot because it is forbidden by a divine decree.
Hamlet's rule based morality is further reinforced when he meets the apparition of his dead father. Hamlet takes the command for vengeance to heart, declaring, “And thy commandment all alone shall live Within the book and volume of my brain, Unmixed with baser matter” (Act 1: V 103-105). This quest reinvigorates Hamlet, as it gives his suffering a purpose and a reason. His father killed Claudius, and thus Claudius must then be killed in return. This is the most basic assertion of the middle age's moral precept of an “eye for an eye.” This pre-apparition Hamlet is the representation of the Scholastic rule based morality system. As other facts and realities are brought to light concerning the murder of his father, Hamlet is made to question the black and white morality of the apparition's commands.
Hamlet's quest for revenge, which represented the beginning of the humanistic philosopher's quest for knowledge, would then evolve into an ambiguous inner search for truth that would cast doubt on Hamlet's previous moral system. One of the major themes that is present through out the play, is the ambiguity that is present in all human affairs. When the apparition later appeared before Hamlet, he questioned himself, “the spirit that I have seen may be a devil” (Act II: V 560). He was unsure if what the spirit said was true, and feared the consequences of carrying out its deadly orders. It is rather unclear through out the play whether Claudius did indeed murder the king, and Hamlet constantly postpones his scheme to gather more and more evidence. He is torn between the burning desire for vengeance and his inner yearning for truth and righteous action. In his soliloquy in Act II, Hamlet mourns, “Does it not, think thee, stand me now upon - He that hath killed my king and whored my mother, Popped in between th' election and my hopes, Thrown out his angle for my proper life, And with such cozenage - is't not perfect conscience To quit him with this arm? And is't not to be damned To let this canker of our nature come In further evil? (Act II V. 63-70). Even when Claudius's midnight prayer establishes his guilt in murdering the previous King of Denmark, the reader is still made to feel apprehensive of Hamlet's desire for revenge. Claudius proves to be an effectual leader who suffers from guilt in his past misdeeds. He even prays to God hoping that one day he can seek forgiveness.
The reader is thrown into a world of shades of gray, where murders can repent and heroes cause more damage than might otherwise have been wrought. This second portion is in stark contract to the black and white morality presented earlier. When Hamlet applies his critical humanistic thinking, he finds the complexities inherent in moral reasoning and action. Does Claudius’s evil deserve the ultimate pain of death? How can Hamlet truly take action that is meaningful and will achieve a positive end? Hamlet yearns for divine directive, but in the silent humanistic universe, there are no simple black and white answers. These are humanistic questions that delve deep into Hamlet's character. How can he effectively deal with Claudius and his actions without becoming like him? This philosophical reasoning eventually proves ineffectual, and Hamlet is forced to action.
Hamlet's humanistic quest for truth eventually leaves the realm of philosophy and enters the arena of moral nihilism when he begins to put his plan into action. The beginning of Hamlet's descent away from humanism begins with the confrontation between him and his mother. While Hamlet and his mother are in a deeply heated argument, Hamlet hears a cry for help from a tapestry. Without even thinking, Hamlet thrusts his sword into the tapestry, stabbing an eavesdropping Polonius dead. When asked if he knows what he has done by his mother, Hamlet responds, “Nay, I know not. Is it the king?” (Act III. V 24). When she replies that he has done a barbaric thing, Hamlet replies that it is almost as barbaric as killing a king and marrying his brother. At this point Hamlet is consumed, and his inner philosophical discourse has been silenced. With no rules based morality to guide his actions and philosophical inquiry yearning no results, the young prince instead begins to act impulsively and rashly. He is consumed by revenge, and the right or wrong of his actions is lost on him. Ironically, at this point he becomes no different than Claudius. Just as Hamlet is a son who seeks to punish a man who murdered his father, Hamlet has now deprived a son of a father. At this point Hamlet is consumed by bloodlust. The ghostly apparition of his father appears again to remind him of his deadly quest to kill Claudius. There is no hint of justice, simply vengeance.
When Hamlet confronts Claudius and is finally able to achieve his revenge, the hollowness and folly of his quest is revealed. Hamlet is mortally wounded, and most of the royal family lays dead at the conclusion of their confrontation. At that moment Fortinbras simply steps onto the scene and sees the entire royal family lay in waste. He then proceeds to conquer the entire kingdom in a bloodless coup. So thustly the reader must ask themselves, was justice truly served? Was justice even possible? In the end, with no divine direction or clear cut philosophical answers, Hamlet gave in to moral nihilism. His quest, which started as a search for justice, ended in untold bloodshed, the deaths of loved ones, and the fall of Denmark to foreign invaders. Thus the renaissance humanist comes full circle into moral nihilism. In the end Hamlet became the thing that he despised most, a senseless murderer.
Shakespeare's Hamlet is a metaphorical representation of the renaissance era's evolving moral and ethical framework, first beginning in a rule based God centered morality, then evolving into humanism, and finally culminating in moral nihilism. At the beginning of the play Hamlet is devastated by the loss of his father, and is given a sense of purpose through the commands of the apparition to seek revenge on Claudius. As Hamlet begins to truly think about his grisly mission, he begins to question the authenticity of his mission. Did Claudius truly kill his father? Was the apparition a devil? What would be accomplished by killing the King? Philosophical inquiry gives Hamlet no answers, and he becomes driven by a rash and impulsive bloodlust for revenge. His descent into moral nihilism begins with the murder of the relatively innocent Polonius, and culminates in the gruesome murder of the King. In the end, nothing of value was achieved, the entire royal family was killed and Denmark was conquered by foreign invaders. Hamlet's quest for justice was in the end futile, and a good representation of the philosophical evolution of renaissance era England.
Hamlet was first performed in the beginning of 17th century. At that time, Europe had just experienced a 'rebirth' of culture, art, economy and politics - the Renaissance. The Renaissance was the first bourgeois ideological liberation movement in history. It promoted the development of world culture, liberated people’s minds, and laid a solid foundation for the beginning of the bourgeois revolution. The reason for the outbreak of the Renaissance is very simple: Due to the invasion of the Ottoman Empire, which believed in Islam, capitalism was very dissatisfied with the Church's oppression of people's minds. This situation seems to be greatly consistent with the plot in Hamlet, that the prince discovered the conspiracy of King Claudius and finally avenged him. This prompts the question: Was Shakespeare inspired to write 'Hamlet' because of the Renaissance? Based on the information and analysis of Hamlet and the history of the Renaissance, it is certain that Hamlet was created by Shakespeare because of the existence of the Renaissance.
First of all, Hamlet was created by Shakespeare during the European Renaissance period. In the Middle Ages in Europe, the Christian doctrine was that the birth of mankind was a sin. Therefore, in order to atone for sins, mankind had to endure suffering for life and death. Only when people are content with this endurance can they enter heaven after death. Under the confinement of this kind of thinking, the cultural, artistic and technological civilization of the European people has developed much slower than before. However, the Renaissance took humanism as its guiding ideology, advocating human rights and opposing theocracy; advocating humanity and opposing divinity, and completely negated the existence of the feudal ruling class from the cultural perspective. Because of the special era, Shakespeare had the source of inspiration. Between 1599 and 1602, Shakespeare created the tragic Hamlet, and the end of the Renaissance was exactly 17th century. Therefore, in terms of time, Hamlet was created and presented after the Renaissance. Since Hamlet comes from that era, it is impossible not to be affected by the history background at that time.
Secondly, Hamlet's life's fate and experience are very consistent with the events that happened in Renaissance. If take the plots of the story of Hamlet and some examples during Renaissance to make a comparison, it is very easy to recognize that these two are very much alike. For instance, 'the last poet of the Middle Ages' Dante expressed his aversion to the Catholic Church in the early time of the Renaissance and wrote the 'Divine Comedy'. Later he was imprisoned by the government, and finally passed away due to poverty. Just like Hamlet said: 'To be, or not to be: that is the question'. Perhaps before Dante chose to do this, he already knew that the final answer was 'not to be', but he still chose to stand on the side of truth. Just like what Dante did, in the script of Hamlet, Hamlet must have known what he was going to experience in order to avengehis father. In the sword competition against Laertes, he was stabbed by a poisonous sword prepared by Claudius and lost his life. However, he eventually killed Claudius and avenged his father. Furthermore, the biggest conflict in the script is definitely the clash between Hamlet and Claudius. If the story of Hamlet is brought into the history of the Renaissance, Hamlet can be compared to the growing capitalism, then there is no doubt that Claudius represents the feudal church. The Renaissance broke out because the church oppressed people, and Hamlet's revenge was also because of King Claudius's misconduct, murdering Hamlet's father for the throne. From then on, as more people sacrificed, Hamlet's determination to get revenge became stronger and stronger.
Because of such a firm belief and the sacrifices of so many people, Hamlet's ultimate revenge was achieved. It was the same for the Renaissance. Without the sacrifice of leaders like Dante and the firm belief of the revolutionaries, the Renaissance would not have successfully erupted and penetrated into the hearts of the people.
Finally, Hamlet and the Renaissance both have a tremendous impact on later generations, and their influences are very similar. The Renaissance Movement, as a movement to promote the ideological emancipation of the emerging bourgeoisie, allowed capitalist industry and commerce to develop rapidly. It provided the necessary conditions for the future bourgeois revolutions and reforms. Gradually, people's intelligence and power started to be valued, and many people no longer worshipped and believed in religion blindly. Many works of art and scientific achievements have come out for this reason. For example, Michelangelo’s The Pietà, Galileo proposed Law of Conservation of Momentum, and Raffaello Sanzio drew The Madonna of Foligno…. Hamlet also has far-reaching significance and influence. As the earliest and longest-length script released in Shakespeare's tragedies, it is still world-renowned more than 400 years later. It has been made into a large number of types of adaptations, such as movies, operas, and so on. Because the classic of this script has aroused more and more people's thoughts, some are about Hamlet's fate, and some are about the background of the Renaissance. . . Perhaps 'to be or not to be' (Shakespeare 74) is a question that people should think about in any era and anywhere.
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Get custom essayIn conclusion, Hamlet created by Shakespeare has an inseparable connection with the Renaissance. Shakespeare created Hamlet at the epilogue of the Renaissance and let it appear in the early 17th century when the Renaissance had just ended. The background of Hamlet's story and the events of the European Renaissance are highly consistent. Additionally, both Hamlet and Renaissance had an enormous impact on the world. Therefore, it can be concluded that Hamlet was produced because of the Renaissance.
The most common distinction between a tragedy and a comedy is the arc of plot development. Generally speaking, a comedy moves from a world of disorder into a world in which everything is put back together again. A tragedy, on the other hand, typically begins with everything as it should be before unraveling into chaos (Cahn 1). Consider that at the beginning of straight tragedies such as King Lear or Macbeth the world is in a state of order, but quickly deteriorates into death and madness.
Get original essayA subgenre of the tragedy is the revenge tragedy which differs somewhat in that the universe by definition has already been upset right from the beginning. Revenge, of course, requires that the protagonist of this tragedy engage in a series of actions designed to rebalance the order in the universe (Frye 68). The normal course of events in a revenge tragedy follow the line of plot development in which the revenger must carry out the actions that bring order back to a world of disorder.
William Shakespeare's Hamlet comfortably fits into the genre of the revenge tragedy as it opens with the melancholy Dane in the depths of human misery, at the center of a topsy-turvy world where his uncle is now his father (Gardner 218). And yet, at the heart of Hamlet's story of revenge, there is a noticeable difference that presents itself as perhaps the central theme of the play. Most protagonists of the revenge drama face obstacles to carrying out their vengeance from the outside (Frye 68). This, in turn, affords for the purely literary concerns of drawing out the story to a necessary length.
Some might argue that Hamlet goes to unnecessary lengths and does so not as a result of external obstacles to Hamlet's sealing his uncle's doom, but rather as a result of interior obstacles. Perhaps the primary criticism of most readers is: why does Hamlet take so long to make up his mind? He is presented several times with opportunities to run his sword through Claudius, yet instead of doing so it seems he would rather talk to himself about why he should or shouldn't do it.
The revenge play in its purest form makes it plain that the act of revenge is just. Ghostly appearances, apparitions and other supernatural devices are introduced to hammer home the point that an act justifying revenge has been committed (Baker 148). One of the great ironies at work in Hamlet is that even though these elements are introduced in the form of the ghost of Hamlet's father assuring him of the truth of his death, Hamlet still questions himself.
From the initial encounter with the ghostly figure of his father, Hamlet is moved to question appearances and the perception of pure truth. His doubting of the reality that the ghost is in fact his murdered father's ghost quite often leads to questions of Hamlet's motivations. Is he merely a coward? Is he insane? His questioning and contemplating every aspect of life moves to the point of compulsion. Hamlet becomes an obsessive questioner of reality and as such remains static for most for most of the play.
Hamlet belongs to the sub-genre of revenge tragedy, but it is his unwillingness to commit to tracking down the object of his revenge that separates this play from the pack. Throughout the story, Hamlet will be moved to obsessively reflect upon the much larger significance of revenge, suicide, love and even the very purpose of existence. As irritating as Hamlet's long-winded meditations may be, they are the heart of the play and what allow it to stand out from other revenge tragedies. Moreover, those penetrating insights into life ultimately reveal the answer to why Hamlet waits so long to decide to kill his father's murderer.
The delay between Hamlet's discovery of his father's ghost and Claudius' culpability and Hamlet finally carrying out his revenge results in one of the biggest bloodbaths in literary history. Between the time of the elder Hamlet's death and his son's death, the cast of corpses reads like a who's who of the play: the entire family of Polonius, Ophelia and Laertes, both Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, Hamlet's mother Gertrude and his uncle Claudius. Ironically, for a man who spends so much time contemplating murder, Hamlet winds up with blood on his hands for the deaths of many of these characters.
In fact, some critics have even suggested that Hamlet be considered a sociopath because of his role-either direct or indirect-in the deaths of so many people (Wilson 166). Regardless of whether Hamlet is directly responsible for the murder of Polonius or indirectly in the form of a puppet master pulling strings, as in the case of sending Rosencrantz and Guildenstern off to their deaths, there is little question that a whole host of people meet their end at his beck. And then, of course, there is the argument that the deaths of Ophelia and Laertes are Hamlet's responsibility because had he only immediately set upon revenge their lives would have been spared. The argument goes that all of these characters and friends of Hamlet's met their doom as a result of his procrastination. Had Hamlet killed Claudius when he was praying, or any time prior to that, Claudius would not have killed Polonius, and is it that murder that truly sets about the course of tragedy in which the play ends.
Hamlet's delay in exacting revenge upon Claudius ultimately results in the death of Gertrude as well. Polonius' eavesdropping results in his death and Polonius' death set in motion the events that leads to Ophelia's suicide, which in turn causes Laertes to join in with Claudius in his murderous designs on Hamlet which, of course, ironically spins about to kill just about everyone left. Hamlet's mother's death could have been avoided had Hamlet only not spent so much time talking but acting out the revenge asked upon him by his dead father.
Ultimately, of course, the final result of Hamlet's procrastination is his own demise. Hamlet's refusal to instantly go about revenge causes Laertes to want to take revenge for his father's unnecessary and vicious murder. To view the story of Hamlet in this way, Laertes becomes something of a hero. He can be looked upon as the thing that Hamlet is not; the thing that Hamlet should be. Upon discovering that his own father has been murdered, Laertes does not simply sit around and talk to himself ad infinitum about revenge and suicide and the deeper mysteries of life, but he quickly takes action.
He plots with King Claudius to kill Hamlet in a fencing match by poisoning the tip of his sword. Laertes views the world in black and white, with no confusing shades of grey to color his decision-making process. To some people there is a word that aptly describes the difference between someone who sees things only in black and white; for whom the answer to any question comes down to yes or no. Hamlet himself uses that word in one of the most famous quotes in a play that is overflowing with famous quotes.
Unlike his friend Laertes, Hamlet is incapable of viewing the world through a lens that lets in only black and white. He is never less than fully cognizant of the fact that he must seek revenge, but he remains troubled by the actual act of murdering Claudius. In fact, Hamlet is so confused and torn over doing what he knows is right while at the same time questioning whether he has the right to commit that act that he contemplates self-murder as an answer to his dilemma (Mack 257). Hamlet, all too aware that ghostly apparitions can just as easily be the result of melancholy in the heart must be presented with evidence that corroborates the story of his dead father.
To those readers who instantly term Hamlet a coward, Shakespeare provides an answer, though an answer that usually remains mistakenly interpreted. It is beyond reason to suspect that Laertes would ever speak the line that Hamlet speaks in considering himself less than manly. As Hamlet is debating whether to seek revenge on Claudius or commit suicide, he whispers the words, "Thus conscience does make cowards of us all" (Shakespeare 688). No one who sees the world in black and white would speak those words; in fact, most would quickly fasten onto the word coward and overlook the true meaning of that phrase. For that phrase contains the answer to the question not only of whether Hamlet is a coward, but also why he waits so long to enact his revenge.
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Get custom essayThe typical "revenger" in a revenge play has little trouble carrying out his mission because there is little doubt that his is a just mission. For most of the play, all Hamlet has to go on is the word of a ghost. And even when he finds out from Claudius' own lips, he holds back. Why? Because Hamlet possesses something that Claudius does not, and that even Laertes possesses in short supply. Hamlet has a conscience (Joseph 135). When he sees Claudius praying, Hamlet puts off the murder because he cannot in good conscience stab a man in the back while he is kneeling in prayer. Hamlet is a revenge tragedy, but it is unique to the genre. The obstacles in place of Hamlet carrying out his revenge are of his own making. And, the reason that he places those obstacles there is because Hamlet, unlike most revenge play protagonists, has a conscience.
Shakespeare's Hamlet is not simply a morality play surrounding a grief-mad prince; it is a complex study of political maneuvers as described by Machiavelli. "The rules of this politics, Machiavelli's political science, then, are the choreographed moves, countermoves, and tricks that bring to life the actions of the successful new prince and others."(Tarlton, 8) Many literary critics approach Machiavelli from the perspective of good versus evil. Machiavelli was neither; he was a realist. Machiavelli recorded his analysis of events that he studied or observed, and thus derived his principles of political science. In this paper, the reader will explore Shakespeare's use of Machiavellian politics (as described in The Prince) within the script of Hamlet. Hamlet's world involves jealousy, murder, familial relationships (and their internal struggles), and political scheming. "All the world's a stage," wrote Shakespeare; what we see in the theatre is simply a truer reflection of our lives. "Being within the field of action and never above it, there is only so much an actor seeking lo stato [the state, referring to the creation of a state by the prince] can ever discover. The fiction of il principe nuovo [the new prince] is a device to project one's own position as actor into political situations." (Breiner, 3, 30) We shall observe the following Machiavellian principles in Hamlet:
Get original essayAlthough Hamlet begins the play as a somewhat nave prince, he soon gains political astuteness and thespian skill that rivals even the actor who plays the part of Hamlet. Hamlet must walk a razor-thin line between deceit and truth, action and inaction, and love and hate. His agonizing journey along the edge of this razor crystallizes his purpose: to avenge the death of his father. Shakespeare sets the stage with a classic example from Machiavelli's political philosophy. In Act I, Scene 2, we learn of the death of the King of Denmark and the subsequent marriage of the queen to his brother, Claudius (1638:1-15). The old king, who came to power by right of succession, is replaced by Claudius. Claudius moves quickly to consolidate power by marrying the queen. "Because men are won over by the present more than the past," it is logical for him to do so. (Tarlton, 3) The wedding takes place within two months of the King's death, "But two months dead! Nay, not so much, not two," says Hamlet (1641: 138). Claudius continues the Danish tradition of a wedding feast followed by a night of drunken revelry (1641:125). The political moves of the new king serve to highlight the Machiavellian aspects of the play: "Machiavelli becomes truly interested when the hereditary prince is overthrown, the new prince is born, and the new political world, full of danger, comes to life." (Tarlton, 2)
Claudius, as the new king, has already created a fearsome enemy for himself Prince Hamlet. The quick remarriage of Hamlet's mother, the queen, is a moral outrage to Hamlet, and violates Machiavelli's stricture in chapter 17 of The Prince, "He [the prince] can endure very well being feared, whilst he is not hated, which will always be as long as he abstains from the property of his citizens and subjects and from their women." (1494) By taking his brother's wife as his own, Claudius has given Hamlet a potent reason to hate him, on top of Hamlet's all-consuming grief (1640:85). "The very situation that gives him [Claudius] the occasion to act also provides his opponents with a new occasion to take his stato [state] away." (Breiner, 2) In Act I, Scene 5, Hamlet learns from his father's ghost, "The serpent that did sting thy father's life now wears his crown." The ghost reveals what Hamlet already felt to be true: the murder of the former king by his brother, Claudius (1651:38). Hamlet, seeing the truth of the "wrongness" he has felt, is convinced that he should avenge his father's death. "Haste me to know it, that I, with wings as swift as meditation or the thoughts of love, may sweep to my revenge...O my prophetic soul! My uncle!" (1651:30-40)
The reader is now drawn into a complex Machiavellian conspiracy, in which Shakespeare makes extensive use of Machiavelli's precept, "He who seeks to deceive will always find someone who will allow himself to be deceived. " (1496) Hamlet's realization of the deception employed by his uncle jades him, however, to the ghost's message. Hamlet no longer trusts appearances; knowing that his uncle is playing out a large deception, he is unsure if the ghost is honest or not. In fact, Hamlet no longer trusts anyone even Polonius, the chief advisor. Hamlet tells Polonius, "to be honest, as this world goes, is to be one man picked out of ten thousand." (1662:174) Hamlet distrusts his friends as well, "My two schoolfellows, whom I will trust as I will adders fanged..." (1692:203) In the Danish court, Claudius managed to deceive his brother, concealing his lust for power (and his lust for the queen) behind a smiling face and lying lips. Claudius also manages to deceive the entire court concerning the death of his brother; Hamlet is the only courtier that senses something wrong: "I doubt [perceive] some foul play; I would the night would come! Foul deeds will rise, though all the earth overwhelm them, to men's eyes." (1644:260)
"The third phase of princely action requires the prince to feint; a moving or invisible target is hardest to hit." (Tarlton, 7) The importance of this skill to Hamlet is found in chapter 18 of The Prince, where Machiavelli writes, "everyone sees what you appear to be; few experience what you really are." (1497) The art of the successful feint must be taught to nobles, especially within the realm of fencing. Fencing was a required skill for nobility in the pre-firearm era; those who wished to avoid the assassin's blade were as skilled in the salle as they were in the council chamber. Hamlet elects to use his own deceptive ploy to discover the truth about his father's death. Additionally, he plans to use his affected insanity as an excuse for his eventual revenge upon Claudius. (1647:170) Hamlet knows "the actions of friends and enemies alike will be based on what they take the prince to be." (Tarlton, 7) What better defense for his actions than that the grief-stricken prince lost his mind and, in a fit of rage, murdered his uncle?
Hamlet expands and intensifies his deception with the arrival of the theatre troupe he creates a play within his own play, within the overall play. "The play's the thing, wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king," said Hamlet (1671:552). The action within Hamlet's play reflects the actual events of the former king's death; the words he wrote to accompany the action scene are designed to provoke a response from Claudius' guilty conscience. "For murder, though it have no tongue, will speak...I'll have the players play something like the murder of my father before mine uncle; I'll observe his looks; if he but blench, I know my course," (1671:540-552) says Hamlet. Hamlet and the other characters in this tragedy are all actors within the context of the play, in the physical world of the theatre, and within the schemes that the characters develop to further their own interests. "The prince as literary fiction becomes the prince as exemplary actor, teaching us how to discover the various entries for action...in the field of political conflict." (Breiner, 35)
Even the casual reader of Hamlet will notice the various motivations and hidden machinations that absorb the main characters. The king, Claudius, is busy trying to figure out Hamlet's behavior at the start of the play; later, after Polonius is killed, he plots Hamlet's death with Laertes, Polonius' son. Claudius even hopes that Hamlet will commit some offense that results in his death while he is gone to England. Hamlet of course, is focused on his vengeful plot and the play-acting that is making everyone at court think he has really gone mad with grief over his father's death. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern play their part in trying to draw Hamlet out of his "madness," but Hamlet discerns their intent as well as their purpose in coming to Denmark in the beginning of the play. He knows that the king and queen have sent for his friends; he dismisses their efforts as insincere and motivated by reward rather than by friendship. Hamlet tells them later, "Though you can fret me, yet you cannot play upon me." (1684:335) Polonius, until his death, is pushing his daughter forward as a possible match for Hamlet, while trying his best not to seem to be involved in their romance. "The brilliance of this strategy is that there is no strategy at all in the eyes of anyone watching." (Corum, 4)
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Get custom essayThe interplay of competing interests and the undercurrent of punnery that is rampant throughout the play are the driving forces behind Hamlet's popularity throughout the world. Hamlet, in one sense or another, is acted out in each of our lives every day. We all use Machiavelli's principles to accomplish our goals and to protect our achievements. People in the business world engage in "honest" deception in order to protect their interests. Academics and smart-alecks alike use their knowledge of the English language to make fun of and to criticize other people. We learn the art of deceit at a young age; how many times did you trick your friends or siblings into giving up that coveted toy so that you could have a turn with it? We learn this art from the examples that are set before us. In Machiavelli's view, the good of the state was the driving moral code. Machiavelli observed that an effective leader should not be limited by a religious or moral code, as good governance sometimes requires the use of religiously or morally unacceptable behavior. The key to effective leadership for Machiavelli was that the prince appears to have all the positive qualities -- while quietly reserving the negative qualities for use as needed. Shakespeare's plays, especially Hamlet, include situations and characters that seem to be torn directly from Machiavelli's manuscript. The literary union of these two authors gives us a potent demonstration of the power of language within the political world, and yields a script for our leaders (both political and literary) to follow.
Harold Bloom asserts that "Our ideas as to what makes the self authentically human owe more to Shakespeare than ought be possible..." (15). If this is true, then the Prince of Denmark himself in Shakespeare's Hamlet is the epitome of humanity in his perceptions of mankind and mankind's unavoidable perversion of nature, and in his representation of the vast uncertainties within the human mind.
Get original essayHamlet ponders - or, in Bloom's view, invents - the concept and definition of man; his fundamental impression of the natural being of man is "noble in reason ... in action how/like an angel, in apprehension how like a god..." (II, ii, 327-330) Yet in the same soliloquy, Hamlet exhibits ungrateful discontent with his "express and admirable" (II, ii, 329) fellow men, a contradiction which bears neither noble reason nor godlike apprehension. Shakespeare projects one definition of man through Hamlet's words and another through the man himself. These two ideas, which exist at opposite poles from each other, must be assumed to include all positions in between, for the person who is fully angelic or invariably dissatisfied is rare, if he exits at all. By implying this vague spectrum the gauge of a being's mind, Shakespeare defines man as indefinable. The first of these human conditions, that which describes man as angelic, has been carried from Shakespearian times to modern philosophy through the work and legacy of John Locke; Hamlet's slightly contradictory yet firm vision of man as basically good trigger an immediate connection to Locke in current Western thought. Trust in the "noble reason" and "infinite faculties" of man are also the basis of the democratic American government, established my men influenced by Locke, whose main philosophical platform closely parallels Hamlet's reflections.
Hamlet's mental and familial situations are perversions of the natural human condition he describes: contrary to "noble reason," Hamlet displays insanity; he is more goal obsessed than "infinite in faculties"; his lust for bloody revenge and his Uncle's incestuous, murderous tendencies oppose Hamlet's idealized notion of man as "in action how like an angel" (II, ii, 329). In a far greater quantity than he praises humankind, Shakespeare examines the extent to which the natural, good state of human beings is tragically corruptible. Hamlet chides his mother's "incestuous" acts: "O, such a deed/As from the body of contraction plucks/The very soul, and sweet religion makes/a rhapsody of words!" (III, iv, 54-57). Hamlet is pressing what he perceives as the moral argument upon his mother, the Queen. He sees her as a perversion of natural being yet later, when she declares the aside "Alas, he is mad" (III, iv, 121) of Hamlet, Shakespeare plunges into uncertainty: does the Queen truly deserve this blame, or has the audience blindly assumed a treacherous mispreaching by the insane Hamlet to be true? In the same scene, Hamlet murders Polonius; the spectacle becomes a bastion of incest, insanity, and death, all combining to display a blatant perversion of Hamlet's supposedly "noble" purpose of revenge. Shakespeare reveals not only that moral and psychological flaws are as prevalent in royalty as they are elsewhere, but also - on a more universal scale - the fragility of meticulously conceived moral structures under the blows of evil snares. Hamlet commits the ultimate sin of taking life for what he convinces himself is a necessary purpose, thus serving as a warning against self-delusion which inevitably perverts the holiest, most natural intentions.
Upon creating components of man - nature and perversion, definition and uncertainty - Shakespeare uses Hamlet as a model portraying that the true essence of humanity lies in man's struggle to reach peace within and between these components. Hamlet has a history of love and courtship with Ophelia, yet when he sees her he demands: "Go thee to a nunnery. Why wouldst thou be/a breeder of sinners?" (III, 131-132). Later, after her death, he once again proclaims his love. This ebbing and flowing of one set of values to make way for another gives Hamlet indecision and internal conflict - it challenges him to pick one truth from an assortment offered by his surroundings. This theoretical freedom represents man's liberty to wade between challenging and embracing all ideas, actions, and processes; this philosophy has become a cherished rationale for modern poets and philosophers. Walt Whitman said, "Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes." The multitudes that Whitman contains are the same as those within Hamlet and the same as those struggling within anyone who Shakespeare has taught, according to Bloom, "to think too well" (10).
Though today the origins of the physical human are hotly debated, the psychology with which men view themselves and each other can be traced back further than America's founding fathers, even further than John Locke, to William Shakespeare. Through Hamlet, Shakespeare was the first to add the components of natural goods with perverse evils to create the ultimate literary depiction of the struggles which are the essence and core of humanity.
In Shakespeare's Hamlet, Polonius puts forth a simple explanation of insanity, stating that "to define true madness, what is it to be nothing else but mad?" Such a diagnosis is necessary in the court of Denmark, in which the perspective of reality shared by the courtiers cannot accommodate Hamlet's reactions to a distinctly different reality. The entire world is caught up in a massive charade of nobility and honor created to shield its players from the cruel realities of their circumstance and protect them from the schism between emotion and expectation. It is Hamlet's inability to act and his intolerance for actors that cause him to be labeled as mad. Similarly, he is unable to avenge his father's murder because he knows that to do so would be merely to act out his role in a meaningless drama in which the players lie about their parts. Not only is the society in which he lives artificial, but the terrible sins that he knows have occurred has caused his view of reality to be one utterly void of justice and salvation. While madness is usually thought of as an inability for the individual to accept reality or society, Hamlet's madness is instead the reaction of an acutely sane mind to a society that cannot accept reality and a reality that is essentially flawed.
Get original essayHamlet's position can be best understood when seen in light of his foil, Laertes. The fathers' of both men have been killed. Hamlet had a loving relationship with his father, seeing him as a God among men. Instead of using the knowledge of his father's murder as an opportunity for revenge, the information only worsens his situation. While he acknowledges his duty to the deceased king, he declares, "The time is out of joint. O cursed spite, that ever I was born to set it right." (1.5.188) The truth does not give Hamlet clarity and conviction as to the path he must take, instead it casts a shadow of doubt on the notion that anything he can do will set the universe right. Similarly, he declares "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio than are dreamt of in your philosophy." (1.5.166-168) The terrible sins that he has encountered have cast a shadow on a world that would give birth to them, and as a result they have sucked the meaning out of life. Laertes, on the other hand, reacts to grief in the exact fashion that would be expected by Danish society. He is completely ignorant of anything except for the social context of the events that have transpired, and masks his cold-blooded plot to murder Hamlet using trickery with the façade of honor and a fair duel in which he even gives Hamlet a handicap. Perhaps the most ironic aspect of the duel is that while it results in the death of nearly every major character it is never thought of as anything other than "play." Before they begin Hamlet states that he will "this brother's wager frankly play." (5.2.253) All of the stage directions indicate that Laertes and Hamlet "play." (5.2) They never actually fight, although they play to the death. In this fashion the nobles of Denmark die as actors recreating a duel, not as people who live and die.
By commissioning the players to re-enact his reality, Hamlet adds both an element of realism to the play and a perspective on his situation. The play that is shown in the court of Denmark is the one in which the universe has not gone so terribly askew. In the murder of Priam and the Mousetrap, the act of revenge and the notion of justice and morality maintain some degree of value and meaning because the universe in which they take place was created and given value by the playwright and the players. As a result the contrast that is created between the plays within a play and the play itself elevates Hamlet to a reality. At the same time, the fact that there are actors within the reality of Hamlet erodes the barrier between what is play and what is reality. Hamlet declares that a man's expression of grief are merely "actions the a man might play." (1.2.84) Perhaps there is no difference between the enactment of grief of a man on stage and the expressions of grief of a man in the world. To Hamlet, who can not muster as much passion about the terrible realities of his universe as the player can while enacting the fictitious mourning of Hecuba, it would probably seem as though the player's speech were more real than the deceit and emptiness he perpetually encounters in the world around him.
Hamlet fights in a battle that is far more than a mock duel between with Laertes or the pursuit of revenge. He and everyone close to him are locked in a struggle between the two forces that would control his sanity. On one side is Claudius, whose goal is maintain the play that is being put on in the court of Denmark. Those who oppose Hamlet are the subjects who refuse to placidly submit themselves to the play written for them by Claudius and Danish moral precedents. The insanity of Ophelia is an excellent example of this. She finds herself constantly tossed between these two conflicting perceptions of the world. On the one hand she is courted by Hamlet who does not hold anything back in his interaction with her. On the other hand she is advised by Claudius, Polonius, and Laertes to conduct her affairs in a manner appropriate to her class, rank, and all of the other elements of the system that controls Danish nobility. Finally, the force of Hamlet's reality is too much for her to bear. When she experiences the death of her father as Hamlet did, she reacts in a way similar to her brother by retreating to the world of play. In the same way that Hamlet created a nicer reality for himself by asking the player to recite the "Death of Hecuba" for him, Ophelia attempts to shield herself from the cruel nature of reality by singing songs.
Hamlet deals with nothing less than an existential crisis. All of the systems he may have conceived of prove to be part of a much larger universe that lacks any governing force, meaning, or innate sense of justice that can only be dealt with by acting out one's life and ignoring the nuance of truth that dwells in the corner of the human psyche. That is the real tragedy of Hamlet, that great minds are condemned to suffer because they can penetrate the façade that plays itself out all around him, and the only escape is death.
Hamlet is a play about a young man’s journey to self-discovery through an intense examination of his spirituality, morality, and purpose on earth. Prince Hamlet’s encounter with the ghost of his murdered father prompts this path to self-enlightenment. Hamlet’s crusade to find meaning in his life is reconciled in his spirituality. Hamlet finds his purpose on earth as a truly moral man following the principles that govern his religion. His duties as a devoutly religious man include avenging his father’s death. The violence required for adequate revenge is justified by the Christian “eye-for-an-eye” concept as well as Hamlet’s filial duty to release his father’s soul from purgatory. While on his quest for revenge, Hamlet reaches important spiritual conclusions that put his soul at ease and fulfill his life’s purpose; therefore, his death in the final scene is not a tragedy but a fitting conclusion to a heroic life.
Get original essayHamlet’s personal enlightenment begins in the first scene when he encounters the ghost of his father. Initially it seems as though the ghost’s sole purpose is to incite Hamlet to retaliate against his father’s murderer. However, as the play progresses, the ghost’s role as Hamlet’s spiritual guide becomes more apparent. The ghost facilitates Hamlet’s self-discovery and pushes Hamlet to avenge his father’s death. In doing so, he inspires Hamlet to examine his religious beliefs and how they apply to his duties. The concept of death inspires Hamlet to also contemplate his fate and how his morality will determine his destiny.
Act One establishes Hamlet’s duty to his father. King Hamlet’s soul is stuck in purgatory, between heaven and hell, until the sins committed against him are vindicated. When they first meet, King Hamlet says to his bewildered son, “I am thy father’s spirit, / Doomed for a certain term to walk the night, / And for the day confined to fast in fires, / Till the foul crimes done in my days of nature/ Are burnt and purged away” (1.5.10-14). Evident in his response, “O God!,” Hamlet did not in truly suspect foul play in his father’s death prior to his father’s shocking revelation (1.5.25). Wasting no time, King Hamlet explicitly instructs his son to “revenge his foul and most unnatural murder” (1.5.26).
Hamlet, loaded with a clear mission, leaves the ghost of his father and commences his quest for revenge. However, after the ghost of his father departs, Hamlet seems to lose strength in his convictions and struggles with his mission. Praying for strength he says, “O all you host of heaven! O earth! What else? / And shall I couple hell? O fie! Hold, hold, my heart, / And you, my sinews, grow not instant old, / But bear me stiffly up” (1.5.93-96). Not only does this soliloquy establish Hamlet’s faith in God, but it also reveals his nature; he is not mentally stable enough to complete this mission independently. He relies on several outside forces to assist him in the completion of his task. In the third scene, the ghost of his father returns to “whet [his] almost blunted purpose” (3.4.115). The ghost’s physical existence is debatable. He may instead be, or at least represent, Hamlet’s faith in God and the strength he derives from his faith. The ghost undeniably represents Hamlet’s belief in a supernatural world separate from life on earth.
Aside from the ghost’s obvious significance as Hamlet’s motivation to execute revenge, he also provokes Hamlet to become meditative and spiritual. After the ghost leaves, Hamlet’s demeanor changes noticeably. His friends and family believe he has gone mad. However, after learning the true nature of his father’s death and what he must do to avenge it, Hamlet has simply becomes very introspective. His spirituality becomes extremely important to him and important to his search for meaning in his life. In the midst of his introspection and simultaneous revenge mission, Hamlet arrives at several highly significant conclusions. Death as a recurrent theme in his life causes Hamlet to reflect on his spirituality. He realizes that death is inevitable and indifferent to social status. His acknowledgment that death is inevitable leads to his affirmation of God’s existence, as well as his examination of God’s interaction with humanity, humanity’s singularity from the rest of God’s creatures, and humanity’s purpose on earth.
Death is a repeated, and thus highly significant, theme in Hamlet’s story. After his encounter with the ghost of his father, Hamlet becomes obsessed with death. When his university friends come to visit and to secretly evaluate his mental condition, he describes the depression that had descended upon him since his father’s death in a strange and melancholic monologue. Hamlet says:
I have of late–but wherefore I know not– lost all my mirth, foregone all custom of exercises; and indeed it goes so heavily with my disposition that this goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory; this most excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave o’erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire, why it appeareth nothing to me but a foul and pestilent congregation of vapors. What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god! The beauty of the world, the paragon of animals! And yet, to met, what is this quintessence of dust? (2.2.296-309)
After speaking with his father, Hamlet has fallen out of his usual routines; he is no longer able to live his life normally. He now has a very distinct quest and that quest has resulted in a drastic change in his mentality. He is consumed by melancholy. His life on earth seems meaningless. He is resentful of humanity as a whole and its complete disregard for the unique gift of reason from God, a complaint he repeats in a final soliloquy. He says “capability and godlike reason/ To fust in us unused” is a blatant denial of God’s benevolence (4.4.39-40). Hamlet’s preoccupation with death resulting from his frightening encounter with his father has incited his desire to meditate on abstract ideas about spirituality, morality, and human responsibility. His contemplation becomes cyclically destructive. The more Hamlet contemplates his spirituality, his morality, and his duties, the more depressed he becomes and the more frequently ideas about suicide enter his mind. Hamlet contemplates his responsibilities to his father as well as the misdeeds of his mother and resolves that suicide seems to be the only viable solution to his problems. Hamlet mournfully says:
To be, or not to be, that is the question
Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles
And by opposing them. To die, to sleep–
No more–
(3.1.57-62)
Hamlet’s obsession with death and subsequent obsession with spirituality has locked him in a terrible position: he cannot escape his pain without violating his morals, but his contemplation of his morality is causing him enormous pain. He finally resolves that his uncertainty about afterlife is too significant to risk eternal damnation. This particular episode of contemplation actually yields an optimistic conclusion for Hamlet, unlike his other meditations. Hamlet firmly establishes his belief in God and an afterlife. He resolves that no human would bear such horrible pain if he or she was not afraid that they would be punished for escaping it. Hamlet says that humans would “rather bear those ills we have/ Than fly to others that we know not of” (3.1.82-83). He continues, “Thus conscience does make cowards of us all; / And thus the native hue of resolution/ Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought” (3.1.84-86). Hamlet finally decides that the only way he will escape his pain is if he takes action in his plot for revenge. Either he or uncle must die for the sins committed against his father and Hamlet is not willing to die for the atonement of his uncle’s sins. Following this soliloquy, Hamlet truly begins his journey towards self-discovery. He is no longer caught on a wheel of melancholy. His newly discovered strength allows him to free his mind and begin to find meaning in his life. After resolving to take action, Hamlet’s thoughts become very religious in nature. He preaches about sin, repentance, and virtue to everyone around him. He is finally secure in his own morality and he believes that with God behind him he will successfully complete his mission and adequately avenge his father’s death.
Hamlet and his uncle’s roles begin to switch in the third act when Claudius is praying for forgiveness for his sins and Hamlet is scheming to take action. Claudius is weakened by guilt and is terrified of his impending consequences from higher forces. Claudius’ weakening position against his vengeful nephew is apparent when he says, “Pray can I not, / Through inclination be as sharp as will; / My stronger guilt defeats my strong intent” (3.3.38-41). Claudius’ immoral behavior is destroying his power. It seems as though Hamlet, with his consistently moral behavior, is stealing Claudius’ strength and power. In one of his first significant confrontations with his uncle, Hamlet affirms his faith in God and asserts that his will is guided by divinity. Hamlet walks in on Claudius praying and declares his knowledge of his uncle’s deeds and asserts that he is going to take revenge. Hamlet says about his uncle, “his soul may be as damned and black as hell, whereto it goes,” again reaffirming his convictions in God and his belief that immoral behavior leads to eternal afterlife in hell and vice versa.
Hamlet finds strength in his beliefs in God as well as a clear conscience. The queen and the king lack comparable faith to Hamlet or clean moral slates. Hamlet recognizes his advantage over his mother and uses it against her. He outlines her sins and essentially tells her that she and her lover are going to hell. She pleads with him to stop preaching against her, saying “O Hamlet, speak no more! / Thou turn’st my eyes into my very soul, / And there I see such black and grained spots “(3.4.90-92). He has caused both the king and the queen to look into their souls and see their misdeeds. In doing so, he has virtually accomplished his task of revenge. The king and the queen are tortured by their conflicted morality issues and plead for mercy from God’s wrath. Hamlet’s quest for revenge and subsequent attainment of confidence resulting from his faith in God and knowledge of his true moral behavior allowed him to take revenge on his uncle and mother in a way that exceeded killing them. Both the king and the queen were tortured as they considered their spiritual afterlives.
However, because Hamlet’s duties included filial duties, he still felt he had to kill Claudius. In the final scene, Hamlet and his cousin Laertes fought in a duel which resulted in both of their deaths. Claudius was of course a spectator of the duel because he expected his rebellious nephew to be killed. Instead, Hamlet killed Claudius easily with no regrets. Prior to his death, Claudius, still practicing immoral behavior, attempted to poison Hamlet in case Laertes was unable to defeat him in the duel. Hamlet’s mother accidentally drank the poison intended for Hamlet and died. Although Hamlet knew what that it was poison, he drank it and cursed his mother and uncle one last time before he died. Hamlet drank the poison because he had fulfilled his duties on earth and was spiritually prepared to continue on into the afterlife.
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Get custom essayBecause he completed all of his missions, Hamlet’s death was not a tragedy. He completed his duties to his father as well as to his God. He also completed his journey to self and spiritual enlightenment. Hamlet overcame his melancholy with a reaffirmation of his faith in God and good morals. His morality and faith saved his life and made him a hero.