Analysis of Shakespeare's Hamlet. Composition “The mastery of the dramatic composition of the tragedy“ Hamlet Features of the composition of the tragedy parallelism doubling

Shakespeare wrote plays not only for the inner but also for the outer eye. He always had in mind the spectators who crowded around the stage and greedily demanded an entertaining spectacle. This need was met by an interesting plot chosen by the playwright, which unfolded before the eyes of the audience throughout the performance.

It is naive, however, to think that the action of the play was, as it were, given in advance by the narration chosen for staging. The epic story had to be turned into a drama, and this required a special skill - the ability to build an action. It has already been said above about some aspects of Shakespeare's compositional skill, but far from everything has been noted. Now we return to the question of how the tragedy is constructed in terms of the development of its action.

Shakespeare wrote the play without dividing it into acts and scenes, for the performance in his theater went on uninterruptedly. Both the quarto of 1603 and the quarto of 1604 did not have any divisions of the text into acts. The publishers of the 1623 Folio decided to give his plays the most learned air possible. To this end, they applied to Shakespeare the principle of dividing plays into five acts, recommended by the ancient Roman poet Horace and developed by Renaissance humanists. However, they did not apply this principle consistently in all the plays in the Folio. In particular, in "Hamlet" the division is carried out only up to the second scene of the second act. Further the text goes without division into acts and scenes. The playwright Nicholas Rowe first made a complete division of Hamlet in his edition of Shakespeare in 1709. Thus, the division into acts and scenes that exists in all subsequent editions does not belong to Shakespeare. However, it is firmly established and we will also adhere to it.

Carried away by the mystery of Hamlet's character, many readers involuntarily forget about the play as a whole and measure everything only by what significance this or that circumstance has for understanding the hero. Of course, while recognizing the central importance of Hamlet in tragedy, one cannot, however, reduce its content to only one of his personality. This is evident from the whole course of action, during which the fate of many people is decided.

The composition of "Hamlet" was carefully studied by researchers, and their conclusions were far from the same. Modern English critic Emrys Jones believes that this tragedy, as, indeed, the rest of Shakespeare's plays, is divided into only two parts. The first is the whole action from the beginning, when the Phantom entrusts the prince with the task of revenge, until the murder of Polonius, after which Hamlet is urgently sent to England (IV, 4). The second phase begins with the return of Laertes (IV, 5). If in the first part the central content was Hamlet's desire to find out the guilt of Claudius and avenge him for the murder of his father, then the second part of the tragedy is centered on Laertes' revenge on Hamlet for the murder of Polonius.

The outstanding English director X. Granville-Barker believes that the tragedy is divided into three phases: the first is the plot, which occupies the entire first act, when Hamlet finds out about the murder of his father; the second occupies the second, third and fourth acts until the scene of Hamlet's departure to England; the third phase of Granville-Barker coincides with the second phase of E. Jones.

Finally, there is a division of the action into five parts, which does not quite coincide with the division of the tragedy into five acts. It's more traditional. Its merit is the division of the action into parts, reflecting the complex growth of events and, most importantly, the various states of mind of the hero.

For the first time, the division of tragedies into five acts was established by the ancient Roman poet Horace. It was recognized as obligatory by the theorists of the Renaissance drama, but only in the era of classicism of the 17th century began to be applied everywhere. In the middle of the 19th century, the German writer Gustav Freitag, in his Drama Technique (1863), concluded that the traditional division into five acts had a reasonable basis. Dramatic action, according to Freitag, passes through five stages. A well-constructed drama has: a) an introduction (outset), b) an increase in the action, c) a peak of events, d) a fall in the action, e) a denouement. The scheme of action is a pyramid. Its lower end is the tie, the action that occurs after it goes along an ascending line and reaches the top, after which a decline occurs in the development of the action, culminating in a denouement.

Freitag's terms may give grounds for the incorrect conclusion that with the development of the action and after the climax, there is a weakening of tension and, accordingly, a decline in the interest of the audience, which the German writer did not have in mind. He added three more dramatic moments to his pyramid.

The first moment is the initial excitement, the second is the ups and downs, or the tragic moment at the peak of the action, the third is the moment of the last tension.

Many Shakespeare scholars of the late 19th and early 20th centuries used Freytag's pyramid to analyze Hamlet. Let us point out how the action of our tragedy is divided accordingly.

1) The plot consists of all five scenes of the first act, and it is clear that the moment of the highest excitement is the meeting of Hamlet with the Phantom. When Hamlet learns the secret of his father's death and the task of revenge is entrusted to him, then the plot of the tragedy is clearly defined.

2) Starting from the first scene of the second act, the action develops, which follows from the plot: the strange behavior of Hamlet, causing fear of the king, upsetting Ophelia, bewilderment of the others. The King takes steps to find out the reason for Hamlet's unusual behavior. This part of the action can be defined as a complication, an "elevation", in a word, the development of a dramatic conflict.

3) Where does this part of the tragedy end? Opinions differ on this point. Rudolf Franz includes in the second stage of the action the monologue "To be or not to be?", and Hamlet's conversation with Ophelia, and the presentation of the "mousetrap". For him, the turning point is the third scene of the third act, when all this has already happened and the king decides to get rid of Hamlet. N. Hudson recognizes the climax of the scene when Hamlet can kill the king, but does not lower his sword on his head (III, 3, 73-98). It seems to me more correct the idea of ​​Herman Conrad that the top of the action covers three important scenes - the performance of the "mousetrap" (III, 2), the king at prayer (III, 3) and the explanation of Hamlet with his mother (III, 4).

Isn't that too much for a punch line? Of course, one can confine oneself to one thing, for example, by exposing the king: the king guesses that Hamlet knows his secret, and from this follows everything that follows (III, 3). But the action of Shakespeare's tragedies is rare and hardly lends itself to various dogmatic definitions. The opinion of Martin Holmes looks convincing: “This whole third act of the play is like a sea stream, irresistibly striving towards its terrible goal ... The mousetrap was invented, prepared and worked, Hamlet finally gained confidence that he had grounds for action, but at the same time he betrayed and his secret, and thereby lost no less than one move in the game. His attempt to act resulted in him killing the wrong person; before he has time to strike again, he will be sent to England.

The culmination of the tragedy, its three scenes have the following meaning: 1) Hamlet finally becomes convinced of Claudius's guilt, 2) Claudius himself realizes that Hamlet knows his secret and 3) Hamlet finally "opens her eyes" to Gertrude to the true state of things - she became a wife the one who killed her husband!

Two moments are decisive in the scenes of the climax: the fact that the king guesses that Hamlet knows the secret of his father's death, and the fact that during a conversation with his mother, Hamlet kills Polonius, who is eavesdropping on them. Now the king has no doubt that Hamlet intends to kill him too.

4) Freitag's definition of "decline" is in no way applicable to the beginning of the fourth stage of action. On the contrary, new events arise with increasing tension: the dispatch of Hamlet to England (IV, 3), the passage of Fortinbras' troops to Poland (IV, 4), the madness of Ophelia and the return of Laertes, breaking into the palace at the head of the rebels (IV, 5), the news about the return of Hamlet (IV, 6), the conspiracy of the king with Laertes, the death of Ophelia (IV, 7), the funeral of Ophelia and the first fight between Laertes and Hamlet (V, 1).

All these scenes filled with incidents lead to the final part of the tragedy - its denouement (V, 2).

Freitag limited the development of the plot of a well-formed drama to three "exciting moments". But Shakespeare's tragedy, so to speak, is built "incorrectly", more precisely, not according to the rules. In the first two parts there is only one such moment - the story of the Ghost (I, 5). During the climax, as already noted, there are three moments of acute tension. If Shakespeare followed any rule, it was to increase the tension as the action developed, introducing new events so that the viewer's attention was not weakened. This is exactly what happens in Hamlet. In the fourth stage, significant and dramatic events take place much more than at the beginning. As for the denouement, as the reader knows, four deaths occur one after another - the queen, Laertes, the king, Hamlet. It is noteworthy that not only the blows of the sword, but the poison in the first place is the cause of the death of all four. Let us recall that Hamlet's father also died of poison. This is one of the cross-cutting details that connect the beginning and end of the tragedy.

Another similar circumstance: the first person about whom we hear a detailed account of Horatio is Fortinbras. He appears at the very end of the tragedy, and he owns the last words in it. Shakespeare loved this "ring" construction. These are a kind of "hoops" with which he fastened the wide action of his plays.

It is impossible not to pay attention to the fact that throughout the tragedy the entire royal court and all the main characters appear before the audience three times. This happens in the plot (I, 2), at the climax of the tragedy during the court performance (III, 2) and at the moment of the denouement (V, 2). Note, however, that neither in the second scene of the first act, nor in the second scene of the fifth act is Ophelia. This grouping of characters was, of course, intentional.

It has been calculated that the central event of the play is the "mousetrap", and this is confirmed by the following numbers:

The court spectacle thus falls roughly in the middle of the tragedy.

Readers and viewers are so, one might say, accustomed to Hamlet that everything that happens in the tragedy seems natural and self-evident. Sometimes one is too inclined to forget that the action of a tragedy is built and worked out to the last detail. "Hamlet" is one of those masterpieces of world art in which the highest degree of artistic perfection has been achieved, when the skill is hidden from the superficial eye.

We remember, however, that there are some inconsistencies, inconsistencies, even absurdities in the play. They will be discussed further. Now our task was to show that, for all its complexity, Hamlet is not a chaotic, but a deeply thought-out artistic creation, which achieves an effect precisely because its individual parts are carefully fitted to each other, forming an artistic whole.

The tragedy "Hamlet, Prince of Denmark" is one of the greatest works. It is written on the basis of an ancient legend about the Jutland prince Amleth, set forth in the history of Denmark and, possibly, used in some plays that preceded this work by Shakespeare. The tragedy was created at the turn of the 16th and 17th centuries, that is, its appearance symbolically marks the border of two eras: the end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of the New Age, the birth of a man of the New Age. The tragedy was written hardly later than 1601: for several years it was played on various stages, and then was published in 1603. Since that time, Shakespeare's Hamlet has entered the world literature and theater history.

Every artist dreams of playing the role of Hamlet on stage. The reason for this desire, not least, is that Hamlet is an eternal hero, because the situation of a fundamental choice, on which the future life depends, confronts every person.

The plot of Shakespeare's tragedy is built on a hopeless situation in which Prince Hamlet finds himself. He returns home to the Danish court, and finds himself in a terrible situation: his father, King Hamlet, is treacherously killed by his brother, the prince's uncle; Hamlet's mother is married to a murderer; the hero finds himself in a circle of cowardly and deceitful courtiers. Hamlet suffers, struggles, trying to reveal lies and awaken conscience in people.

In order to expose the murderer of his father - King Claudius - Hamlet puts on the court stage the play "The Mousetrap" written by him, which depicts a villainous murder. The very word "mousetrap" is repeated in the tragedy more than once, by which Shakespeare wants to say that a person often finds himself in captivity of life circumstances and his choice determines both himself as a person and the possibility of the existence of truth in the world. Hamlet pretends to be crazy, loses his beloved Ophelia, but remains undefeated, no one understands him, he finds himself almost completely alone. The tragedy ends in universal death: the unfaithful wife of Hamlet's father, Gertrude, dies, the villain King Claudius is stabbed to death by the prince, other characters die, and Prince Hamlet himself dies from a poisoned wound.

On the Russian stage, the tragedy "Hamlet" has become popular since the end of the 18th century. In the 19th century, the role of Hamlet was played with great skill by the famous tragedian P.S. Mochalov, in the 20th century, the most successful performance of this role is considered to be the performance of the outstanding artist I.M. Smoktunovsky in a two-part film directed by G.M. Kozintsev.

Thousands of studies have been written about the tragedy "Hamlet", many writers and poets have addressed the image of the hero. The tragedy had a great influence on Russian literature, including the work of A.S. Pushkin, M.Yu. Lermontov and others. For example, I.S. Turgenev wrote an article "Hamlet and Don Quixote" and a story in which he calls the hero by this name - "Hamlet of the Shchigrovsky district", and the poet Boris Pasternak, the best translator of the tragedy into Russian, wrote a poem called "Hamlet" in the 20th century.

Composition

In the first scene, Hamlet meets with the ghost of his father and learns from him the secret of the death of the king. This scene is the beginning of the plot, in which the prince is given a choice: take the Ghost for an obsession or avenge his father. Words of the Ghost: "Farewell, farewell! And remember me ”become for Hamlet the mandate of the deceased king. Hamlet must take an oath to avenge his father. The appearance of the Ghost means a call to restore the honor and power of the clan, to stop the crime, washing it away with the blood of the enemy.

In the second scene, which represents the most famous monologue in the history of the theater, "To be or not to be...", Hamlet's choice becomes more complicated, moves to a new level. Now it does not consist in the usual revenge on the villain and the punishment of apostates: Hamlet must make a choice between a miserable existence, which means non-existence, if he humbles himself and will obediently do nothing, and true life - being, which is achieved only in an honest and fearless struggle. Hamlet makes a choice in favor of being, this is the hero's choice, which determines the essence of the man of the New Age, our era.

The third scene in the same act III signifies the transition from choice and determination to action. Hamlet challenges King Claudius and reproaches his mother for betraying her father's memory by playing the play "The Mousetrap" in front of them, in which there is a murder scene and false assurances from the queen. This play is terrible for the king and queen because it shows the truth. Hamlet chooses not revenge and murder, but punishment with the truth, blinding like a bright light.

The denouement of the tragedy occurs in the fourth scene. The play of Hamlet did not awaken conscience in King Claudius, but caused fear and the intention to get rid of Hamlet, to kill him. He prepares a cup of poisoned wine for his nephew and orders to poison the rapier blade of Hamlet's opponent, Laertes, with poison. This insidious plan turns out to be disastrous for all participants in the scene. It should be noted that Hamlet does not take revenge by killing the king, he rewards him for his criminal intent. Hamlet's mother, Queen Gertrude, seems to punish herself by drinking from a poisoned cup, Laertes dies in repentance, Hamlet leaves, bequeathing to tell his descendants his story in order to warn people from greed and atrocity.

1) The story of the plot of "Hamlet" and "King Lear". The prototype is Prince Amlet (the name is known from the Icelandic sagas of Snorri Sturluson). 1 lit. a monument in which this plot is - "History of the Danes" by Saxo Grammar (1200). Differences of the plot from “G”: the murder of King Gorvendil by brother Fengon takes place openly, at a feast, before that F. had nothing with Queen Gerutha. Amlet takes revenge like this: returning from England (see Hamlet) for a feast on the occasion of his own death (they still thought that he was killed), he makes everyone drunk, covers them with a carpet, nailed him to the floor and set fire to it. Gerutha blesses him, because she repented that she married F. In 1576, fr. writer François Belforet published this story in French. language. Changes: The connection between F. and Gerutha before the murder, the strengthening of the role of Gerutha as an assistant in the cause of revenge.

Then (before 1589) another play was written, which reached, but the author did not reach (most likely it was Thomas Kidd, from whom the “Spanish Tragedy” remained). The tragedy of bloody revenge, the ancestor of which was just Kid. Secret assassination of the king, reported by a ghost. + motive of love. The intrigues of the villain, directed against the noble avenger, turn against himself. Sh. left the whole plot.

From tragedy "Hamlet" (1601) a new stage in Shakespeare's creative development begins. W. lost faith in the ideal monarch. He reflected on the disorder of the world, on the tragedy of a person living in a transitional era, when "the connection of times broke up" and "time dislocated the joints." The world of Elizabethan England was fading into the past, replaced by the world of cynical predators, making their way through crimes, regardless of morality. Time moved inexorably. And the heroes of Shakespeare's tragedies cannot stop him. Hamlet cannot correct "time that has come out of the joints."

The tragic consciousness of the playwright reaches its culmination in the play "G". Dramatic events unfold behind the heavy stone walls of the royal castle in Elsinore. Plot tragedy goes back to the medieval legend of the Danish prince Hamlet, who avenges the treacherous murder of his father. (…) But Shakespeare's Hamlet- a complex personality, deeply thinking, striving to understand people's lives. The conflict between the humanist Hamlet and the immoral world of Claudius, who is so unlike his brother, Hamlet's father. From a ghost, young Hamlet learned that his father was killed while sleeping by his brother Claudius, who seized the Danish throne and married the widow of the murdered Gertrude, Hamlet's mother. Endowed with insight and an all-encompassing mind, Hamlet sees in this single event a disturbing sign of the times. Elsinore became a reserve of hypocrisy, deceit, evil. Hamlet calls Denmark a prison. Crimes, lies, hypocrisy, reigning in Elsinore, G. perceives as the state of the whole world. An insightful person, Hamlet feels his tragic loneliness. His beloved mother became the wife of the main villain, dear Ophelia does not find the strength to resist the will of her father, childhood friends Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are ready to serve the tyrant, only Horatio is faithful to Hamlet and understands him.

Hamlet is a man of the new time, a man of thought. Reflection is his natural need. His disappointment is deep. He reproaches himself for inaction and despises himself for not knowing what to do. In the famous monologue "To be or not to be" Hamlet seems to settle scores with his own thought. The eternal question, Reconcile or fight? G does not want and cannot submit to evil. He is ready to fight, although he knows that he will die. He doubts the effectiveness of those methods of struggle that the cat can use, doubting - hesitating; thinking, it is inactive (thus thinking makes us cowards). Suicide is not an option, it will not destroy evil. He hesitates, because he wants to make sure and convince everyone of the guilt of Claudius. The arrival of wandering actors in Elsinore helps him find out the truth. Hamlet instructs the actors to play the play "The Murder of Gonzago", in which the circumstances in detail resemble the murder of Hamlet's father. Claudius can't stand it and leaves the auditorium in agitation. Now Hamlet knows for sure that Claudius is a murderer. To mislead him, Hamlet puts on the guise of a madman. It's easier to tell the truth. His ideal is a beautiful human personality, although “not a single person pleases me” in Elsinore.

An important role in the development of the plot is tragic accidents. In the finale, there are especially many of them: they accidentally change rapiers, a glass with a poisoned drink accidentally falls into the queen. The tragic outcome is approaching with inevitability. As a heroic personality, Hamlet manifests himself in the finale. At the cost of his life, he affirms the truth, he is ready for it. Before his death, he asks Horatio to reveal to the world the cause of the tragic events, the truth about the Prince of Denmark.

The fatal blow strikes Claudius when he, full of deceit, is ready to commit a new villainy. At the end of the tragedy, the young Norwegian prince Fortinbras orders military honors to be paid to the deceased Hamlet. Hamlet is a hero. Only for the viewer, he is no longer the hero of an old legend, who lived back in pagan times, but a hero of the new time, educated, intelligent, who rose to fight against the dark kingdom of selfishness and deceit.

The text of the tragedy expresses thoughts close to Shakespeare himself about art and its tasks. In a conversation with actors, G talks about art as a reflection of life.

Tragedy has been addressed at all times and the hero has been interpreted in different ways. Goethe: the weakness of the will of Hamlet. Belinsky: G is by nature a strong personality, the fact that he does not kill his father is the greatness of his spirit. Contradiction m / ideals G and reality. Turgenev: G is an egoist and a skeptic, he doubts everything, does not believe in anything; procrastination is weakness, not greatness. You can't love him because he doesn't love himself. Intransigence with evil.

The main conflict is the violation of harmony and the desire to restore it.

2) The history of the study of the tragedy "G". At the expense of G. there were 2 concepts - subjectivist and objectivist. Subjectivist t.z.: Thomas Hammer in the 18th century. was the first to draw attention to G.'s slowness, but said that G. was bold and resolute, but if he had acted immediately, there would have been no play. Objectivist tz: They believed that G. does not take revenge, but creates retribution, and for this it is necessary that everything looks fair, otherwise G. will kill justice itself: “The century has been shaken - And the worst thing is that I was born to restore it.” That is, he administers the highest court, and not just takes revenge.

Another concept: the problem of G. is connected with the problem of interpreting time. A sharp shift in chronological perspective: the clash of the heroic time and the time of the absolutist courts. The symbols are King Hamlet and King Claudius. Both of them are characterized by Hamlet - "the chivalrous king of exploits" and "the smiling king of intrigues." 2 fights: King Hamlet and the Norwegian king (in the spirit of the epic, “honor and law”), 2 – Prince Hamlet and Laertes in the spirit of the policy of secret murders. When G. finds himself in the face of irreversible time, Hamletism begins.

4) The image of the protagonist. The hero is a highly significant and interesting nature. The tragic situation is his lot. The protagonist is endowed with a “fatal” nature, rushing against fate. Everyone, except G., starts with illusions, he has illusions in the past. For him, the tragedy of knowledge, for others - knowledge.

5) The image of the antagonist. Antagonists are various interpretations of the concept of "valor". Claudius - The energy of the mind and will, the ability to adapt to circumstances. Strives to “seem” (imaginary love for the nephew).

7) Features of the composition. Hamlet: the plot is a conversation with a ghost. The climax is the “mousetrap” scene (“The Killing of Gonzago”). The connection is understandable.

8) The motive of madness and the motive of life-theatre. For G. and L. madness is the highest wisdom. They in madness understand the essence of the world. True, G.'s madness is fake, L.'s is real. The image of the theater world conveys Shakespeare's view of life. This is also manifested in the vocabulary of the characters: “scene”, “jester”, “actor” are not just metaphors, but words-images-ideas (“My mind had not yet composed a prologue, when I started the game” - Hamlet, V, 2, etc.). d.). The tragedy of the hero is that he has to play, but the hero does not want to, but is forced (Hamlet). This polysemic image expresses the humiliation of a person by life, the lack of freedom of the individual in a society unworthy of a person. Hamlet's words: "The goal of acting was and is - to hold, as it were, a mirror in front of nature, to show its likeness and imprint to every time and estate" - has a retroactive effect: life is acting, the theatricality of art is a small resemblance to the big theater of life.

Hamlet is one of Shakespeare's greatest tragedies. The eternal questions raised in the text are still worrying mankind. Love conflicts, political themes, reflections on religion: all the main intentions of the human spirit are collected in this tragedy. Shakespeare's plays are both tragic and realistic, and images have long become eternal in world literature. Perhaps this is where their greatness lies.

The famous English author was not the first to write the story of Hamlet. Before him, there was the "Spanish Tragedy", written by Thomas Kidd. Researchers and literary scholars suggest that Shakespeare borrowed the plot from him. However, Thomas Kyd himself probably referred to earlier sources. Most likely, these were short stories of the early Middle Ages.

Saxo Grammatik in his book "History of the Danes" described the real story of the ruler of Jutland, who had a son named Amlet (Eng. Amlet) and wife Gerut. The ruler had a brother who was jealous of his wealth and decided to kill, and then married his wife. Amlet did not submit to the new ruler, and, having learned about the bloody murder of his father, decides to take revenge. The stories coincide down to the smallest detail, but Shakespeare interprets the events in a different way and penetrates deeper into the psychology of each character.

essence

Hamlet returns to his native castle of Elsinore for his father's funeral. From the soldiers who served at the court, he learns about a ghost that comes to them at night and resembles the deceased king in outline. Hamlet decides to go to a meeting with an unknown phenomenon, a further meeting terrifies him. The ghost reveals to him the true cause of his death and inclines his son to revenge. The Danish prince is confused and on the verge of insanity. He does not understand whether he really saw the spirit of his father, or did the devil come to him from the depths of hell?

The hero reflects on what happened for a long time and eventually decides to find out on his own whether Claudius is really guilty. To do this, he asks a troupe of actors to play the play "The Murder of Gonzago" to see the king's reaction. During a key moment in the play, Claudius becomes ill and leaves, at which point an ominous truth is revealed. All this time, Hamlet pretends to be crazy, and even Rosencrantz and Guildenstern sent to him could not find out from him the true motives of his behavior. Hamlet intends to speak to the Queen in her quarters and accidentally kills Polonius, who has hidden behind a curtain to eavesdrop. He sees in this accident the manifestation of the will of heaven. Claudius understands the criticality of the situation and tries to send Hamlet to England, where he is to be executed. But this does not happen, and the dangerous nephew returns to the castle, where he kills his uncle and dies from poison himself. The kingdom passes into the hands of the Norwegian ruler Fortinbras.

Genre and direction

"Hamlet" is written in the genre of tragedy, but the "theatricality" of the work should be taken into account. Indeed, in the understanding of Shakespeare, the world is a stage, and life is a theater. This is a kind of specific attitude, a creative look at the phenomena surrounding a person.

Shakespeare's dramas are traditionally referred to. It is characterized by pessimism, gloominess and aestheticization of death. These features can be found in the work of the great English playwright.

Conflict

The main conflict in the play is divided into external and internal. Its external manifestation lies in Hamlet's attitude towards the inhabitants of the Danish court. He considers them all base creatures, devoid of reason, pride and dignity.

The internal conflict is very well expressed in the emotional experiences of the hero, his struggle with himself. Hamlet chooses between two behavioral types: new (Renaissance) and old (feudal). He is formed as a fighter, not wanting to perceive reality as it is. Shocked by the evil that surrounded him from all sides, the prince is going to fight him, despite all the difficulties.

Composition

The main compositional outline of the tragedy consists of a story about the fate of Hamlet. Each separate layer of the play serves to fully reveal his personality and is accompanied by constant changes in the thoughts and behavior of the hero. Events gradually unfold in such a way that the reader begins to feel a constant tension that does not stop even after the death of Hamlet.

The action can be divided into five parts:

1. First part - plot. Here Hamlet meets the ghost of his dead father, who bequeaths him to avenge his death. In this part, the prince first encounters human betrayal and meanness. This is where his mental anguish begins, which does not let him go until his death. Life becomes meaningless for him.
2. The second part - action development. The prince decides to pretend to be crazy in order to deceive Claudius and find out the truth about his act. He also accidentally kills the royal adviser - Polonius. At this moment, the realization comes to him that he is the executor of the highest will of heaven.
3. The third part - climax. Here Hamlet, with the help of the trick of showing the play, is finally convinced of the guilt of the ruling king. Claudius realizes how dangerous his nephew is and decides to get rid of him.
4. The fourth part - the Prince is sent to England to be executed there. At the same moment, Ophelia goes crazy and tragically dies.
5. Fifth part - denouement. Hamlet escapes execution, but he has to fight Laertes. In this part, all the main participants in the action die: Gertrude, Claudius, Laertes and Hamlet himself.

Main characters and their characteristics

• Hamlet- from the very beginning of the play, the reader's interest focuses on the personality of this character. This "book" boy, as Shakespeare himself wrote about him, suffers from the disease of the approaching age - melancholy. In essence, he is the first reflective hero of world literature. Someone might think that he is a weak, incapable person. But in fact, we see that he is strong in spirit and is not going to submit to the problems that have befallen him. His perception of the world is changing, particles of past illusions turn into dust. From this comes the very "Hamletism" - internal discord in the soul of the hero. By nature, he is a dreamer, a philosopher, but life forced him to become an avenger. The character of Hamlet can be called "Byronic", because he is maximally focused on his inner state and is rather skeptical about the world around him. He, like all romantics, is prone to constant self-doubt and tossing between good and evil.
• Gertrude mother of Hamlet. A woman in whom we see the makings of a mind, but a complete lack of will. She is not alone in her loss, but for some reason she does not try to get closer to her son at the moment when grief happened in the family. Without the slightest remorse, Gertrude betrays the memory of her late husband and agrees to marry his brother. Throughout the action, she constantly tries to justify herself. Dying, the queen realizes how wrong her behavior was, and how wise and fearless her son turned out to be.
• Ophelia Daughter of Polonius and beloved of Hamlet. A meek girl who loved the prince until her death. She also faced trials that she could not endure. Her madness is not a feigned move invented by someone. This is the same madness that comes at the moment of true suffering, it cannot be stopped. There are some hidden indications in the work that Ophelia was pregnant from Hamlet, and from this the realization of her fate becomes doubly difficult.
• Claudius- a man who killed his own brother in order to achieve his own goals. Hypocritical and vile, he still bears a heavy burden. Pangs of conscience daily devour him and do not allow him to fully enjoy the reign to which he came in such a terrible way.
• Rosencrantz And Guildenstern- the so-called "friends" of Hamlet, who betrayed him at the first opportunity to make good money. Without delay, they agree to deliver a message announcing the death of the prince. But fate has prepared for them a worthy punishment: as a result, they die instead of Hamlet.
• Horatio- an example of a true and faithful friend. The only person the prince can trust. Together they go through all the problems, and Horatio is ready to share even death with a friend. It is to him that Hamlet trusts to tell his story and asks him to "breathe more in this world."

Themes

1. Revenge of Hamlet. The prince was destined to bear the heavy burden of revenge. He cannot coldly and prudently deal with Claudius and regain the throne. His humanistic attitudes make you think about the common good. The hero feels his responsibility for those who suffered from the evil spread around. He sees that not only Claudius is to blame for the death of his father, but all of Denmark, which carelessly turned a blind eye to the circumstances of the death of the old king. He knows that in order to commit revenge, he needs to become an enemy to the entire environment. His ideal of reality does not coincide with the real picture of the world, the "shattered age" causes dislike in Hamlet. The prince realizes that he cannot restore the world alone. Such thoughts plunge him into even greater despair.
2. Love of Hamlet. Before all those terrible events in the life of the hero, there was love. But, unfortunately, she is unhappy. He was madly in love with Ophelia, and there is no doubt about the sincerity of his feelings. But the young man is forced to refuse happiness. After all, the offer to share sorrows together would be too selfish. To finally break the bond, he has to hurt and be merciless. Trying to save Ophelia, he could not even imagine how great her suffering would be. The impulse with which he rushes to her coffin was deeply sincere.
3. Friendship of Hamlet. The hero values ​​friendship very much and is not used to choosing his friends based on their position in society. His only true friend is the poor student Horatio. At the same time, the prince is contemptuous of betrayal, which is why he treats Rosencrantz and Guildenstern so cruelly.

Problems

The issues covered in Hamlet are very broad. Here are the themes of love and hate, the meaning of life and the purpose of a person in this world, strength and weakness, the right to revenge and murder.

One of the main - problem of choice faced by the protagonist. There is a lot of uncertainty in his soul, he alone thinks for a long time and analyzes everything that happens in his life. There is no one next to Hamlet who could help him make a decision. Therefore, he is guided only by his own moral principles and personal experience. His consciousness is divided into two halves. In one lives a philosopher and humanist, and in the other, a man who understood the essence of a rotten world.

His key monologue "To be or not to be" reflects all the pain in the hero's soul, the tragedy of thought. This incredible internal struggle exhausts Hamlet, imposes thoughts of suicide on him, but he is stopped by his unwillingness to commit another sin. He began to worry more and more about the topic of death and its mystery. What's next? Eternal darkness or the continuation of the suffering that he endures during his lifetime?

Meaning

The main idea of ​​tragedy is the search for the meaning of being. Shakespeare shows an educated person, always searching, having a deep sense of empathy for everything that surrounds him. But life forces him to face true evil in various manifestations. Hamlet is aware of it, trying to figure out exactly how it arose and why. He is shocked by the fact that one place can turn into hell on Earth so quickly. And the act of his revenge is to destroy the evil that has penetrated his world.

The fundamental idea in the tragedy is that behind all these royal showdowns there is a great turning point in the whole of European culture. And at the tip of this turning point, Hamlet appears - a new type of hero. Together with the death of all the main characters, the system of worldview that has developed over the centuries collapses.

Criticism

Belinsky in 1837 writes an article on Hamlet, in which he calls the tragedy a "brilliant diamond" in the "radiant crown of the king of dramatic poets", "crowned by the whole of humanity and neither before nor after himself has no rival."

In the image of Hamlet, there are all the universal features "<…>it’s me, it’s each of us, more or less…,” Belinsky writes about him.

S. T. Coleridge, in Shakespeare's Lectures (1811-1812), writes: "Hamlet hesitates because of natural sensitivity and lingers, held by reason, which makes him turn effective forces in search of a speculative solution."

Psychologist L.S. Vygotsky focused on the connection of Hamlet with the other world: "Hamlet is a mystic, this determines not only his state of mind on the threshold of a double existence, two worlds, but also his will in all its manifestations."

And the literary critic V.K. Kantor considered the tragedy from a different angle and in his article “Hamlet as a “Christian warrior”” he pointed out: “The tragedy “Hamlet” is a system of temptations. He is tempted by a ghost (this is the main temptation), and the task of the prince is to check whether the devil is trying to lead him into sin. Hence the trap theatre. But at the same time, he is tempted by love for Ophelia. Temptation is a constant Christian problem."

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