Module Code: ENGL1113

Student Number: 09009031

Assignment sequence: 001

Hamlet: The tragedy of the era

Hamlet is the most popular tragedy written by William Shakespeare, published at the

beginning of the seventeenth century. The purpose of this essay is to show the pessimism of

Renaissance tragedy through close reading of Hamlet’s soliloquy on death, in the third act,

first scene.

Hamlet, the tragic hero in Shakespeare’s play, is introduced in the play as a mourning son

coming back to Elsinore from university in Wittenberg. He is restless and sorrowful because

his father had died in a suspicious way, shortly afterwards his mother married his uncle, and

now the ghost of his father is demanding his revenge. Hamlet wants to leave Elsinore, but

also to revenge his father – he is undecided and does not deeply trust the ghost’s words.

Tormented, when he is mourning he is told by Claudius and his mother to move on, and leave

behind his father’s death, so he adopts another perspective on death – that of means of

escaping from the “burden of life” (Ornstein, 1960, 239).

Hamlet can be considered a tragedy through which Shakespeare managed to depict the

anxieties and torment of the era. Hamlet’s speech on death reflects the pessimism most of the

English people had at a time when there was political instability, the plague made more

victims as the time passed, and the differences between the social classes were perilous to the

common wellbeing.

Starting with the first line of the speech chosen for analysis, the uncertainty is evident: “To

be, or not to be, that is the question”. Hamlet ponders on the choices a man has, either to live
and suffer from misfortunes or to take his life into his own hands and put an end to it.

Unfortunately, both alternatives bring wretchedness. Life is depicted as a long sequence of

tragedies as unappreciated love, justice failures, and contemptuous rejections, which could be

brought to an end through the simple act of suicide; the only problem this option raises is the

fear of the unknown. What if the afterlife is even worse than living? Michael Neill (1997)

points out that death has a dual understanding in the paradigm of Hamlet: it is either finis or

telos, which means it is either an absolute end or a purpose in itself.

In this soliloquy the world is portrayed as doomed without any salvation; the importance of

the individual is nonexistent. It is profoundly pessimistic: either way one chooses to act, there

will be suffering. Life is a struggle and death is damnation. Whatever Hamlet would do, the

world will not change. It is a fix environment which leaves no chance for salvation, bringing

our protagonist on the verge of suicide. This desperation can be found in other tragedies

written in the Elizabethan and Jacobean England mostly because the public of the time were

keen on watching intense melodrama. The intensity is created in these tragedies through

sudden changes which challenge crucially rationality, justice or religion. (McAlindon, 1988,

4)

In conclusion, Hamlet’s pessimistic soliloquy on death can be read as a reflection of the

tribulations of the Renaissance in England or as a characteristic of the plays written in that

period to please their audiences with fierce, passionate and doomed heroes.

Theatre during Renaissance England

 The Renaissance period is defined by the fast growth of knowledge and the speed

this knowledge was spread through trade, pilgrims, artists, humanists, mariners and other

travellers, hence the entire world was going through radical changes. During the same time,

in England, the social context’s main characteristic was tribulation: the monarchy was losing

power, the administration was flawed, the country had no military force organised, the taxes

were small for the rich population, the nobility was no longer implicated in military issues,

and the ruling class was divided (King, 1982, 5).

From the beginning of Elizabeth I’s reign, in 1558, the theatre played an important

role in the social context. As Andrew Hiscock specifies in his essay on Renaissance, literature

during that period (including plays) reflected the politic realities with its “weak, flawed and

tyrannous monarchs” (2008, 135).

As Hopkins and Steggle (2006, 34) write, at the beginning of the sixteenth century,

theatre was viewed in two different ways. First, theatre was largely used in schools (like

London law schools) and universities as teaching means, starting in the Tudor Grammar

Schools and continuing throughout the seventeenth century. Its main role was to teach boys

rhetoric and oratorical skills while they were staging them. Secondly, the theatre was

considered mass entertainment, and “common players were classed with minstrels, jugglers,

peddlers” (Clark, 2007, 24).

Theatre companies all over England had aristocrats as patrons, which were hold as

responsible for the performances. That is, the plays were forbidden to deal with politics or

religion ever since the reign of Queen Elizabeth. Both she and James I were conscious that

the theatre was able to help them in their interests (Clark, 2007, 27), but that did not stop the

plays to put in front of their audiences critiques against the monarchy in subtle ways.
 Theatre as entertainment was played in large inns at the beginning; only in the late

sixteenth century there were built the permanent professional playhouses, attended by the

lower classes, while the nobility enjoyed theatre in the Court. The masques were played at the

Court, and celebrated heroic ideas, while professional staging mocked or dramatised real life

sceneries.

The fact that theatres were very popular and people were willing to pay considerable

amounts of money to see the plays made them a powerful device for expressing people’s

thoughts of the period. The stage was used as the place where the lower classes were able to

make a statement, to put under the scrutiny of the audience the regency’s flaws. Unlike the

scaffold, on the stage the power was in the hands of the common people, as opposed to

aristocrats, but they had the same aim: set an example.

To conclude, the context in which Renaissance takes place in England is that of the

beginning of the decadence of monarchy, which will lead to the Civil War, by the middle of

the seventeenth century. In this context, the theatre played an important role, giving a voice to

the crowd.

Tragedy as a necessary genre in the Renaissance England

The Renaissance was a period when artists were looking back to the ancient Greek

and Latin cultures, but in the same time, they were looking forward, bringing something new

in the culture. Either influenced by discoveries made in that period, by the dynamism of the

time or adapting the ancient cultures to the present realities, culture was flourishing
exponentially. The latter option applies best when talking about tragedy as a genre in

England.

Andrew Hiscock (2008, 166) states that the starting point of English tragedy was the

Aristotelian theory on the genre written in his tract Poetics, as opposed to the study of the

actual Greek plays of Aeschylus, Sophocles or Euripides. In change, they were very familiar

with the works of the Roman dramatist, Seneca, from which they adopted the structure and

plot of the tragic play. Ornstein asserts the fact that the five-act structure was highly

experimental in Jacobean tragedy, the writers trying to adapt the form to new purposes on

stage. Hence, the Renaissance tragedy was not a recycled replica of Seneca’s plays, but

something improved and revelatory for the theatre of the time.

The common structure of the tragedy was based on a grand narrative, revolving

around the tragic hero, a man driven by high principles, but stained with a fatal flaw or

doomed because of one mistake. The unity rule of place, time and action was also an

important characteristic of the tragedy, and although not forgiven by the play-writers, it was

not always respected. Moreover, the focus in the tragedy is on the plot and its effect on the

audience, rather than on the hero. Linda Woodbridge (2003) suggests that in comparison to

Seneca’s bloodthirsty plays, in which the gore was kept off stage and just related by a

messenger, the Renaissance dramatists put the gore right under their audience’s eyes. This

change may be considered as a reflection of the public beheadings and the tolerance formed

for blood-shedding by the English people.

Robert Ornstein (1960) raises a very important question: was the writing of tragic

plays influenced by what was happening in England during the Renaissance? The continuous

state of anxiety created by the shift of power between the classes, the plague making
thousands of victims and being an eternal memento mori, and the social unrest were powerful

enough to leave a mark in the literature written at the time. In addition, it was not only the

depiction of the society’s crisis, but tragedy also fulfilled their desire for melodrama.

In conclusion, tragedy is an imported genre in England but has been tailored to the English

realities during the Renaissance and written for an audience accustomed to the violent and

gory massacres. The writers preserved most of the tragedy’s original structure, coming from

the Greek and Latin plays, but being in a period of change and cultural flourish, they made

their own improvements and distortions to create new and captivating narratives.

Furthermore, the pessimism of the tragedy can also be seen as a consequence to the

tumultuous social context of Renaissance England.