Othello is a man of action. Hamlet is a man of inaction. If Hamlet were placed in Othello's world and vice versa one could assume that both would function well in those circumstances. Othello is a man of action in a play that demands his...

This is that Hamlet the Dane whom we read of in our youth, and whom we may be said almost to remember in our after years; he who made that famous soliloquy on life, who gavethe advice to the players, who thought "this goodly frame, the earth," a...

Hamlet is the most baffling of the great plays. It is the tragedy of a man and an action continually baffled by wisdom. The man is too wise. The dual action, pressing in both cases to complete an event, cannot get past his wisdom into the world....

T.S. Eliot's famous poem The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock shares many correlating themes with William Shakespeare's Hamlet. Despite their evident similarities in style, Eliot criticizes Shakespeare's Hamlet in his essay Hamlet and His Problems,...

"The hallmark of the psychopath is the inability to recognize others as worthy of compassion."

-Shirley Lynn Scott, What Makes Serial Killers Tick?

"They are not near my conscience."

Hamlet, after condemning childhood friends to death.

Most readers...

William Shakespeare’s Hamlet is a product of late 16th- early 17th century England. The Renaissance period was one of change within the worlds of politics, art, culture, societal hierarchy and many other things. Many of the features of the play...

"This above all, to thine own self be true" (1.3.88). As Polonius offers this advice to his departing son Laertes, he also states one of the defining principles of the philosophical branch known collectively as existentialism. A paradigm firmly...

Unholy Mothers: Mothers as Negative Characters in Richard III, Cymbeline, Hamlet, Macbeth and The Tempest

by, Barret Buchholz

April 15, 2005

The mothers presented in Shakespeare's plays encompass a broad range of social positions, personalities,...

How does Stoppard's Transformation of Hamlet reveal a shift in ideology?

Stoppard's transformation of Shakespeare's Hamlet shifts in values and world-view from the original. These changes are a result of the change in context between the two texts....

"Hamlet is a tragedy without catharsis, a tragedy in which everything noble and heroic is smothered under ferocious revenge codes, treachery, spying and the consequences of weak actions by broken wills." In truth, this statement is not a...

Critic Northrup Frye has evaluated Hamlet as a play without catharsis, Ã,ÂÃÂÃÂa tragedy in which everything noble and heroic is smothered under ferocious revenge codes, treachery, spying and the consequences of weak actions by broken wills.Ã,ÂÃÂÃÂ...

Shakespeare's Hamlet and King Lear both contain a multitude of driving forces at work behind the actions of the main characters, but common to both works exists an obvious Freudian interpretation of what is driving two of the most interesting...

Shakespeare's Hamlet is a play rife with moral dilemmas. Religious codes often clash with desires and instinctual feelings in the minds of the characters, calling into question which courses of action are truly the righteous paths. In Hamlet's...

In Hamlet, the philosophy and ideas of Stoicism make their appearance onstage and shape the themes and dialogue of the play. Stoicism, which praises the superiority of reason and civilization over the more base element of emotion, is the backbone...

Charles Forker argues that Marcus Andronicus, upon discovering the maimed, raped and mutilated Lavinia, "erects a barrier of fanciful language between himself and the object of his contemplation." It is an interesting question: does Marcus create...

Shakespeare's Hamlet has often been considered one of the most intriguing and problematic plays of the English language. Among the many questions that Hamlet raises, lies the subject of whether or not Hamlet actually becomes insane. Using...

Hamlet challenges the conventions of revenge tragedy by deviating from them.

- Sydney Bolt, 1985

The typical Elizabethan theatre-goer attending the first production of Hamlet in 1604 would have had clear expectations. The conventions of Elizabethan...

Explore the ways in which Shakespeare uses metatheatre in his plays

All the world's a stage

And all the men and women merely players;

They have their exits and their entrances,

And one man in his time plays many parts

~ Jacques, As You Like It, Act II,...

The author Izaak Walton noted, "The person that loses their conscience has nothing left worth keeping." The characters in Hamlet constantly struggle with the power of their consciences, as they are tempted to satiate their innermost desires....

In the plays of Shakespeare, readers can find several issues of human nature addressed. In Othello, Shakespeare addresses jealously and racism. In King Lear, he addresses pride and love. In Romeo and Juliet, he examines fate. In The Tempest and...

Among the various definitions of tragedy, the one most commonly proffered is: a play that treats - at the most uncompromising level - human suffering, or pathos, with death being the usual conclusion. According to Aristotle's Poetics, the purpose...

Elizabeth Fowler

Drama Essay / Eng 113-700

April 28, 2006

In William Shakespeare's "Hamlet," Queen Gertrude's culpability of King Hamlet's death has been the subject of much debate. Although her guilt or innocence in this matter is arguable, her...

"Hamlet challenges the conventions of revenge tragedy by deviating from them" (Sydney Bolt, 1985)

The typical Elizabethan theatre-goer attending the first production of 'Hamlet' in 1604 would have had clear expectations. The conventions of...

Alone in his childhood home, his father buried and his mother married to another man, Hamlet laments, "O that this too too sullied flesh would melt, thaw and resolve itself into dew" (1.2.129-30). Hamlet brings up suicide early in Act I and...