The inevitable tensions between the individual and society are the foundations for the most engaging moments in Hamlet.
Consider YOUR understanding of Hamlet and how this statement affirms or challenges YOUR response to the play.
The most engaging moments within Hamlet have been founded by the inevitable tensions encountered between the individual and society. Hamlet explores the tragic consequences of attempting to unite the two opposing forces of personal morality and societal corruption. The deception and political corruption within Denmark has detrimental effects upon an individual’s sense of self. Due to the corruption of the society around him, Hamlet’s values of integrity, loyalty, trust and honesty are destabilised, thus showing the vulnerability of the human character. Hamlet is a universal play as it transcends through both time and context with Hamlet resinating with modern audiences due to Hamlet’s confusion, he faces a struggle when asserting his morality against the disease and deceit inherent in Denmark.
Shakespeare’s exploration of Hamlet’s consciousness of his own mortality and questions of his identity haunting him throughout the play lead to his inevitable death at the closing of the play. Hamlet’s loss of identity is due to his mother’s incestuous relationship with Claudius and also by the death of his father, a man he saw as an idol, with his distress and grief being demonstrated through his actions and the response of characters towards his actions. Hamlet explains to Claudius and Gertrude “together with all forms, moods, shapes of grief, that can denote me truly… but I have that within which passes show” that his feelings of melancholy are exceeding his mere display of grief. The traumatic events encountered by Hamlet have damaged him psychologically “or that the Everlasting had not fixed his canon ‘gainst self-slaughter” leaving him