Elizabethan attitudes to revenge were divided; honour demanded it, religion forbad it. How does Shakespeare create powerful drama from such a division?
During the age of Elizabeth the first, religion was at its strongest. People’s views where dictated by the policies and beliefs of the protestant ideal, which where firmly upheld by the ruling monarchy. Due to this strong religious influence forced upon the daily lives of the public, many poets, authors and playwrights contained many references to religious ideals within there works. Shakespeare was no different in this sense, with many of his works containing strong religious connotations referencing to the common beliefs of the people of the day. One ideal in which Shakespeare explores in his plays, and especially focuses on in Hamlet, is revenge, and the moral confrontations surrounding it. In the play Shakespeare examines the conflict between human instinct and religious values when it come to revenge and the effects it can have on the human psyche. He portrays his views on the subject, through three characters in the play, Hamlet, Laertes and young Fortinbras whose paths become connected in the quest to avenge the deaths of their fathers.
Revenge: take revenge on behalf of someone else or for a wrong. [Oxford English dictionary] Or as Francis Bacon puts it, “Revenge is a kind of wild justice”.
Revenge can enable one to act irrationally through anger or rage, rather than sensibility and reason. It is founded on the principal of “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth”, [Bible, Matthew 5:38] which was ironically first recorded in the bible, however illustrates the purpose of revenge as a tool used to retaliate against another person, so to take back what they took from you. Elizabethan views towards revenge where intricate, as the protestant belief encourage its followers to love and forgive those who acted against you, as long as they where willing to admit there sins (which is a contradiction to what is stated in the bible). However religion being as dominant a factor in peoples lives as it was, influencing everything from their daily routine to there moral values, the majority people did not follow certain ideas in which it enforced, with revenge being one of them. At the time it was seen widely by the public as there right, and a matter of honor to acquire vengeance for crimes done against them by another man, be it resulting in physical or metal scaring from the confrontation. The monarchy, like the church strongly opposed this train of thought, as they presumed it would cause mass out brakes of vigilante type acts, in which they feared would start gangs violence, potentially ending in civil was. The official way the government felt that issues that could cause vengeful actions should be dealt with was, through the law courts, or by a figure in authority. Those who went against this, and took justice into there own hands, would be severely punished. In Hamlet Shakespeare attempts to address this conflict of ideals, by portraying both sides of the argument within the plot, emphasizing the point of moral justice, however inevitably acknowledging that revenge is not the proper path to take, and in the end leaving those who tried to seek revenge either dead, or feeling morally bankrupt. There are three main families in Shakespeare’s play, the family of King Hamlet, the family Polonius and the family of king Fortinbras, with each of the heads of the families dead, due to being murdered by a member of a different family. Hamlet, Laertes and young Fortinbras all seek vengeance for the murder of there fathers, which in one way or another can be linked to one of the two other men. Hamlet lost his father due to his scheming uncle Claudius, who murdered the king to take his place on the thrown of denmark, and claim queen as his own. "My offense is rank, it smells to heaven; A brother's murder." Hamlet therefore seeks to end the life of his uncle, in order to repair his father’s honour, by reaping his vengeance beyond the grave.
