"How does Shakespeare represent the development of Hamlet's revenge during the first three acts of the Play?"

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Arun Kothari 10E

“How does Shakespeare represent the development of Hamlet’s revenge during the first three acts of the Play?”

Shakespeare’s Hamlet, written in 1601, is a play on the subject of revenge and tragedy. Hamlet’s father is murdered by Claudius; Hamlet’s uncle and subsequently father. Hamlet refuses to believe his father’s death was an accident and his suspicion falls on Claudius and Hamlets mother Gertrude who subsequently marries Claudius. Throughout the first three acts of the play Hamlet wills himself to carry out his revenge yet falters at the last moment by making excuses. The visitations from Old Hamlet’s Ghost pressurises Hamlet into the Roman ideology of revenge, where the son must act if the state does not take action against the murderer and not the Christian moral code where revenge and justice must be left for God only. The development of Hamlet’s revenge is one which is diverse and will be explored in detail.

        In I ii Hamlet feels himself to be segregated from society as he appears to be the only person still in mourning  as everyone else seems to have forgotten that they have recently lost a King. This isolation is compounded by the fact that his mother has married within a few months of her “bereavement.” This betrayal that Hamlet feels leads him to suspect that she may have had a hand in her husband’s death. Distrust is placed on Claudius by Hamlet and this becomes apparent after Claudius has delivered his speech in I i when Hamlet is exceedingly impervious to his ideas. Hamlet refuses to be called Claudius’s son and in response to his declaration of unity Hamlet replies, “Little more than kin and less than kind.” This quote is a pun describing how Hamlet feels that they are not of the same “kin” and of an entirely different “kind”. This is one of the first signs of his dislike and apprehension of Claudius. In public Hamlet feels that he needs to hide the true meaning of his words but in private it is an entirely different story. In I ii 129-159 Hamlet unleashes his pent-up anger against both the Queen and Claudius. From this soliloquy Hamlet talks about suicide and this clearly shows his depression: “Or that the Everlasting had not fix’d/ His canon against self-slaughter. O God. O God.” From this quote it can be inferred that although Hamlet appears to be mourning, he is now in fact becoming depressed and the target of his depression seems to be Claudius. He describes Claudius’s reign as “an unweeded garden/ That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature.” It is clear that he is illustrating Claudius’s marriage as something “rank and gross in nature.” Hamlet may be saying this because in his view this marrage is on of incest and because he believes that they had been having an affair whilst Old Hamlet was still alive. This idea is confirmed by the following quote taken near the end of the soliloquy: “She married - O most wicked speed! To post with such dexterity to incestuous sheets. It is not, or it cannot come to good.” It is obvious that many questions are plaguing Hamlet’s mind: how much does Gertrude know and could she actually be involved in murder? At this stage in the play Hamlet has an instinct that his father’s death was not an accident yet has no clear evidence supporting his feelings. He is resentful towards both his Uncle and mother for appearing to have forgotten about the king and this hate seems to be escalating.

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        In I iv Hamlet hears about the sightings of his father’s Ghost and meets his spirit for the first time. Here he learns that it was Claudius who had indeed slain his father. Hamlet reacts to this in anguish and swears to avenge his father however Hamlet is notorious for making promises and not actually acting on his words. “Haste me to know’t, that I with wings as swift/ As meditation or the thoughts of love/ May sweep to my revenge.”(Iv 29) This is a pivotal point in the play due to the fact that Hamlet has effectively damned himself ...

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