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Revenge in Hamlet

Revenge is the process of seeking retribution for an individual’s wrong, done to oneself or unto other individuals. It always leads an individual down to a path of obliteration as it is an awful trait for one to keep and it also triggers a lot of various emotions which influences a person to behave and act blindly. Throughout Hamlet revenge can be vividly seen, whereby the entire conflict is revolving around revenge primarily starting with Claudius and ending with Laertes pursuing some revenge. The play exhibits some revenge rendering to the self-fulfilling foresight and as it demonstrated in the play, seeking revenge can result in thorough tragedy within the above foremost characters who shared a common goal (Berger, p.83). The goalmouth of these characters was to retaliate the demises of their fathers, and hence revenge was their core motive. This paper discusses and elaborates in in-depth the vicious nature of revenge in Hamlet showing the extent to which revenge destroys more than its likely target.

Firstly, Claudius who was the king during that time was envious of his brother who was seeking to overhaul his rule, and upon learning this, he had no option but to kill him. He is regarded as the critical target of Hamlet’s vengeance as he fuels Laertes in his retaliation. This is evident when King Claudius advised Laertes that “Revenge ought to have no bonds. But my dear Laertes will you do this” (Shakespeare, 2018). In this incidence; he was activating as well as encouraging Laertes to do some revenge which according to him was the only remedy.

In Hamlet, the full of the act of the play is centered on the task which was allocated by the ghost to Hamlet towards avenging his father’s killing. However, Hamlet has to answer some questions: is revenge necessary or malicious? Is the ghost existent? Is Claudius remorseful? Therefore these questions obscure Hamlet’s decision as well as his insightful, intelligent nature plus the revenge obligations of Laertes besides Fortinbras which parallel the primary plan. He is tasked with retaliating his father’s cruel and unusual murder, but he is faced with a lot of dilemmas: should he trust in the uprightness of the ghost or maybe the ghost might be a devil? (Berger, p.79). Therefore he is mandated with a hard task of evaluating the fact about ghost’s command. Nonetheless, this self-examination leads to the delay of taking revenge.

The incapability of Hamlet to retaliate the killing of his father activates the plot, and thus this leads to the demises of the foremost protagonists in the play including Polonius, Gertrude, Guildenstern, Laertes, Rosencrantz, and Ophelia. Moreover, Hamlet is tortured due to his indecisiveness plus the failure of killing his father’s murderer, Claudius in the play. Afterward, after a lot of pressure from the outside to revenge, Hamlet kills Claudia. However, it seems too late for him to stem any gratification from it because he is immediately executed after he performs the killing by Laertes who stuck him with a foil which was poisoned (Bowers and Fredson, p.1634). Thayer. Hence the saying “before you decide to have some revenge towards someone or something, dig two graves.” This shows how Hamlet was obsessed with the revenge, but he is eventually consumed by his lust for it and could not perceive the consequences.

In highlighting Hamlet’s incapability to take action, there are other characters who Shakespeare includes in the play who have the capability of the captivating firm and impulsive revenge as they are mandated to do. For example, Fortinbras decides to travel several miles towards taking his revenge where he eventually succeeds in defeating Denmark. Consequently, Laertes conspiracies to execute Hamlet to retaliate the demise of his father, Polonius and when his sister committed suicide. He faults Hamlet for all the atrocities which had occurred on him and thus conspired with Claudius to execute Hamlet. However, they reconciled in the end, but it is too late since both of them die. Therefore, it is evident from the play that Hamlet’s actions finally contribute towards the death of the entire members of the royal family and this demonstrates how revenge destroys a lot than its intended target.

Comparing Hamlet to these other characters, it is apparent that his revenge is incompetent as when he decides to take some firm action, he seems to delay to take any action up to the completion of the play. However, it is remarkable that this type of delay is not rare in the Elizabethan vengeance tragedies. Hamlet character is entirely different from other contemporary works due to the manner in which Shakespeare applies the delay in building Hamlet’s expressive besides psychological complexity. Hamlet was right to hesitate before rushing out to murder Claudius, and this was sensible as well as ethical to take some good time gathering enough evidence before killing another individual (McEvoy, 2006). It is manifest from the play that both Claudius and Laertes share some common characters in the fact that both are hungry of power. Laertes is complimented by Claudius’s persistent praise whereby he finally falls into his trap and offers Claudius the impression that he is impartial as resentful, resolute and also irritated in having some retaliation on Polonius demise for his open concern for Laertes.

In conclusion, the different stages of the play culminate into one direction which eventually leads to the disintegration as well as the fall of the kingdom of Denmark. The central point behind this is revenge among rulers which is a result of the lust to lead. As it is evident from the above discussion, there is a lot of destructive revenge which destroys more than its intended target, and hence revenge is not good at all.

Works cited

Berger, Arthur Asa. “Texts: Hamlet.” Applied Discourse Analysis. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham, 2016. 77-89.

Bowers, Fredson Thayer. Elizabethan revenge tragedy, 1587-1642. Princeton University Press, 2015.

McEvoy, Sean, ed. William Shakespeare’s Hamlet: a sourcebook. Psychology Press, 2006.

Shakespeare, William. The tragedy of Hamlet, prince of Denmark. Мультимедийное издательство Стрельбицкого, 2018.