Essay About Acting Changed Hamlet And Prominent Theme

A Change over Time: How Acting Changed Hamlet, Why He Did It, and How It Caused His Downfall
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Ambrelyne Harriston
Alix Williams
APAC English lll
23 April 2007
A Change Over Time: How Acting Changed Hamlet, Why He Did It, and How It Caused
His Downfall
The depth and capability of the human imagination is endless. Its ability to
fabricate tales and offer sanctuary from a difficult reality is one of mans oldest defense
mechanisms for dealing with a constantly changing and violent world. However, there
comes a time when a persons pretending to be something that he or she is not or
pretending that something else is something that it is not has dire consequences to the
individual and their environment. It alters it so much to the point where the individuals
ability to decipher between reality and fantasy is dulled or completely destroyed. This is
most often followed by the incontrovertible eradication of the individual and other
persons the individual is directly connected to. This concept of deceit begets destruction
is a prominent theme in Shakespeares Hamlet : Prince of Denmark . Hamlet deceives to
draw out truth; in the process the line between what is fact and what is fiction is erased.
As a result, Hamlet loses himself and plunges into oblivion because he has lost the ability
to know reality for what it really is and because he meddles with the minds of others.
Prince Hamlet is by nature a benign character. He is like any other child who is
born innocent but also born into a world of lies and corruption. However he is not
tainted in the common that most people are tainted. Most people are tainted with a lust
for power and the ability to know all, see all, and control all. Hamlets character flaws
are more noble although some are more faulted than others. While Hamlet most definite
has an overdeveloped sense of revenge and need for retribution he is also truly
concerned about the moral state of others and has and initially has an obvious respect for
the wishes of God. William Richardson elaborates on this idea in his critical essay The
Character of Hamlet, “He is moved by finer principles, by an exquisite sense of virtue,
of moral beauty and turpitude…” (149). Unlike most princes who would be enraged at
being denied the birth of their throne and plotting a coup to get it back. Hamlet is more
concerned about his mother marrying so soon after his fathers death and the fact that his
mother married his uncle. He is not upset with Claudius because he stole his throne from
him, but because he married his mother. He is also dealing with the human emotion of
bereavement over the untimely death of his father, which he does not yet know was a
murder. His suffering becomes so great that he even considers taking his own life, but
does not because God has Forbidden it. All of these feeling of betrayal, hurt, and
mourning is evident in Hamlets first soliloquy.
… Or that the everlasting had not fixed
his cannon against self slaughter! O God! O God!/ But not two months dead-nay,
not so much, not two!/ So excellent a king that was to this/Hyperion to a satyr/
Must I remember? Why , she would hang on him/ As if increase of appetite has
grown…/ She married. O, most wicked speed to post/ With such dexterity to
incestuous sheets!/ It is not nor can it come to any good./ But break my heart I
must hold my tongue!” (16).
Hamlet is having to deal with all these emotions at once and refuses to speak of them to
anyone, thus only intensifying his suffering and putting in motion the beginning of the
end.
All of Hamlets suffering is increased when he is visited by the ghost of his father.
It is at this point that he learns the supposed circumstances of his untimely death. This is
when the evil nature of Hamlet begins to surface and develop as elaborated on by G.
Wilson Knight in his essay The Embassy of Death: An Essay on Hamlet,
“… It was the devil of the knowledge of death, which possesses Hamlet and
drives him from misery and pain into increasing bitterness cynicism and
madness. He has indeed brought converse with his fathers spirit at the price of
enduring and spreading Hell on earth.”
At this point in the play, Hamlet is now aware that his father was murdered, by the man
that his mother is now married to. However, Hamlet being a just man decides that he will