Essay About Prominent Theme And Acting Changed Hamlet

Hamlet
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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 man’s oldest defense
mechanisms for dealing with a constantly changing and violent world. However, there
comes a time when a person’s 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 individual’s
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 Shakespeare’s 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. Hamlet’s 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 father’s 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 Hamlet’s 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