PLOVDIV UNIVERSITY

Faculty of Philology
Department of English and American Studies

Individual course project by Literature and Society

Assistant professor D-r Atanas Manchorov

Изготвил: Калин Петров Петров

фак. №: 2103598004
Специалност: Английски език и методика за неспециалисти

Hamlet - The Tragedy of the Renaissance Personality

The Western European Renaissance marks two periods in its development - the first - a period
of bright hopes, of the birth and affirmation of the humanistic ideal, of faith in man and his
qualities and possibilities to transform and harmonize the world, and the second, aptly called
the crisis of humanism, characterized by with disappointment and disbelief of bright minds,
with the lack of perspective for establishing order, harmony and high morality.
A result of this pessimistic age is Shakespeare's tragedy Hamlet. The tragedy of the main
character - the Danish prince Hamlet, arises mainly from the violent clash between the
Renaissance ideal, the bearer of which he is, and the real reality he finds himself in when he
returns to Denmark, in his native Elsinore. An external expression of this conflict is the
motive of madness, realized in the work through the images of Hamlet himself, and of his
beloved Ophelia.
Already at the beginning of the tragedy, Hamlet stands out as a sensitive nature, as a person
with great intellectual endowments. He is a young man with exceptional knowledge, which,
however, subsequently deepens his tragedy. Hamlet has a melancholic temperament, typical
of the representations of Shakespeare's time. His soul is vulnerable and sensitive. His
intelligence is expressed in observing, judging and analyzing. Learning the truth about his
father's death from his ghost, the hero receives the first blow of life. He is cruel not only
because of the personal loss, but also because, in meeting the truth of his father's death,
Hamlet comes face to face with the bitter truth of evil in the world. He is hurt, his soul cannot
come to terms with the present reality.
The Danish prince wants to live in a better and happier world, but the reality is not like that. It
is polluted by dishonesty and venality. The hero cannot come to terms with evil and is looking
for ways to fight it. This discrepancy leads Hamlet to many conflicts. He is betrayed by
everyone he trusts. As a result, he remains alone and misunderstood. The only thing left for
him is to consider how to take revenge, protect his honor and restore justice. Hamlet finds
himself powerless against evil, so he pretends to be mad. His insanity helps him achieve the
revenge he desires more quickly, even though he is lonely and miserable in this struggle.
In the tragedy "Hamlet" is realized as an exponent of the ideas and aspirations of the
Renaissance. In Wittenberg, the Danish prince learned respect for the human person and
responsibility for society. He is a scientist whose knowledge is obtained through analysis and
synthesis, through a research path. Returning to his native Denmark, the noble spirit was
"broken". Here he faces hypocrisy, meanness, ingratitude...
Hamlet's tragedy begins with the death of his father, who personifies bravery, valor, kindness,
justice. Fate dealt heavy blows to the Danish prince, one after another, mercilessly. After his
father's death, the queen married his uncle. Hamlet's fragile and vulnerable soul begins to
suffer. He feels betrayed by his own mother. He disgusts her and wants revenge: "Damn
villain, smiling villain!".
This fact confuses the prince, disappoints him, but his gaze penetrates even deeper into the
life of the Elsinore court. After their meeting and conversation with the spirit of the old king,
in which the reasons are clarified, the participants and the consequences of the heinous
murder committed by the current king are outlined.
For the Renaissance person, human life has a particularly high price, and no mortal has the
right to take it away. Even more so - when it comes to the life of a person, the embodiment of
the Renaissance ideal, which for Hamlet is his father. An expression of the disillusionment
with the human personality raised in a cult until recently is the generalization of the hero that
all this for him is the quintessence of dust, that he will hardly meet another such person in his
life.
The prince's tragic disappointment resulting from the betrayal of his childhood friends
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern grows into anguish at his mother's behavior. Gertrude seems to
have forgotten her recently deceased loving husband. She is right in her place in her Elsinore -
a world of hypocrisy fratricide and vulgarity, a dungeon world. In this world, they are
constantly looking for entertainment and throwing noisy feasts, as if trying to sink into
oblivion, to silence the voice of conscience that brings them back to the truth.
Hamlet is endlessly disappointed in his mother. His attitude towards her at times borders on
cruelty, but as the hero himself says - he is cruel out of love. With his reproaches to Gertrude,
her son seems to be trying to make her conscience rebel, to push her to repentance, to save
herself from the shame and sin of adultery. Such is the purpose of his words especially in the
scene with the portraits.
The hero also gives the other characters a chance to return to a dignified human existence - to
Polonius through his irony and sarcasm towards his chameleonism in the famous dialogue
about the shape of the clouds, and to Ophelia, showing her the way to the monastery...
The main character's attitude towards his beloved girl is controversial. For her, he, the
beloved and expected young man who left Elsinore some time ago, the only one with whom
she sees herself in her dreams and in her dreams, is an ideal of morality and beauty. Seeing
the change that has occurred in him, not being able to explain the reasons that gave rise to it,
Ophelia is deprived of the opportunity to become Hamlet's companion and like-minded
person. Her great love for him, repelled by the prince in every possible way, the blood of her
father, Polonius, the role she herself forcibly assumes in the palace, drive the girl to madness.
Her fate is equally tragic as that of Hamlet. Even more. Because while he has the opportunity
to act, while he is already aware of the true face of society and events, Ophelia, brought up
according to the principles of medieval morality in obedience to parents and superiors, is not
able to reach the truth on her own.
Her madness and her death are in fact confirmation of the idea that in a world of vice and
violence there is no place for pure, innocent individuals. In this way, Shakespeare seems to
save his heroine from the passions of Elsinore. The mask of madness is a salvation for Hamlet
himself, it allows him to act with impunity, and also provides him with the much-needed time
to think and to make the decision so important for the hero regarding revenge. By postponing
the bloody revenge he has sworn to his father's spirit, Hamlet seems to be giving himself a
chance to remain a Renaissance person, regardless of the conditions he finds himself in.
Thus, the hero is left alone and misunderstood to look for a way to fight the rampant evil. The
tragedy is implied by the words of one of the courtiers "There is something rotten in
Denmark". All are blinded by the cunning Claudius. The exception is Hamlet. He knows the
truth about his father's death and is looking for ways to punish those responsible for the evil
done.
Thinking Hamlet decides to pretend to be mad. The motif of feigned madness is common in
Renaissance works. Through it, the heroes reach their goals more easily without being
suspected of anything. But Hamlet's supposed madness makes Claudius doubt him and wish
him dead. She also gives the prince the impunity to speak whatever he thinks, regardless of
the consequences.
"To be or not to be - that is the question. Is it more dignified to bear the arrows of a fierce fate
or a drawn sword, to fight against a sea of torments..." - this is how Hamlet's famous
monologue begins. In it he expresses his hesitation whether to remain humble and suffer the
atrocities of Claudius, or to rebel against him and take revenge. The monologue most clearly
expresses the two conflicts that arise. One is between Hamlet and the world of evil, and the
other conflict is with himself. The Danish prince hesitates whether to avenge his father, as his
filial duty dictates, or to submit to his ideals.
The hero repeatedly has the opportunity to avenge the death of the murderer of his father, the
king of Denmark. But blood revenge can only be a goal for the medieval man, which Hamlet
is not. He wants revenge, not death. Therefore, before reaching for the sword, the prince uses
the weapon of the word, of the theatrical art, which inflicts deeper wounds and brings more
complete satisfaction. His monologues are notable, and especially the famous „To be or
not..“, in which the hero, as if reflecting on the value and meaning of human life, once again
affirms the Renaissance principle of the highest value, which is life.
In the end, Hamlet chooses to do justice. Faced with a "sea of torment", the Danish prince
begins his struggle. Hamlet's scene with the queen shows the son's desperate effort to reason
with his mother. He confronts her before the mirror of her soul and condemns her weakness in
love. He kills Polonius in the same scene. As a true warrior, he engages in a final battle with
Claudius. The King and Polonius perish by Hamlet's sword because of the atmosphere of
poisoning they maintain in the royal court of Denmark. The queen drinks the cup of poison
filled by the king because of her ambiguous role in the conflict and her lack of position.
Ophelia and Laertes die undeservedly, atoning for the guilt of their father Polonius. Having
already served justice, Hamlet dies. His death is tragic according to the laws of drama. The
tragic hero has not lost his faith in goodness, and through Horatio he passes this faith on to
future generations.
"The rest is silence..." - reads his dying remark. It actually leads to death, the realm of the
great unknown. The problem of delayed revenge and of Hamlet's inaction turns out to be
illusory. After all, there is justice.
According to the aesthetes, the death of the bearer of the beautiful, of the ideal, is a supreme
expression of the tragic. And although Shakespeare tries to end his tragedy with some
optimism through the survival of the only one who remained true to Hamlet and the
Renaissance ideal character - Horatio, the viewer cannot free himself from compassion for the
tragic fate of one of the most beautiful characters in the world literature - Prince Hamlet -
grief-stricken, always dressed in black, whose bright Renaissance world is violently shattered
in its tragic conflict with the rotten world of medieval Denmark.
Hamlet is the most tragic of Shakespeare's tragic plays. There is a lot of disappointment,
bitterness, a lot of tragedy and pessimism in it. But this is a pessimism that does not lead to
despair, but is a manly protest and a call to fight against the "sea of disasters". The greatness
of the Danish prince is expressed in the fact that he does not resign himself to the evils of
"that disturbed age", but raises his hand to fight against them, although he knows that he will
perish. This is the truest, sublime and "optimistic" tragedy.
Shakespeare created Hamlet, and Hamlet immortalized Shakespeare - a strong and logical
connection, a testament to the power of Shakespeare's talent. Hamlet is the man ahead of his
time who seeks to find himself as a person, as a creator of life.

Criticism:
A Tragedy of “Hamlet”: intrinsic Analysis Supiah, M.Pd
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/328575497_A_Tragedy_of_Hamlet_intrinsic_Analy
sis
Teaching William Shakespeare from Multiple Critical Perspectives by Douglas Grudzina
https://cpb-ap-se2.wpmucdn.com/global2.vic.edu.au/dist/5/3744/files/2016/12/
Hamlet_Critical_Perspective-14iwloh.pdf
A Relationship to Death: An Examination of William Shakespeare´s Hamlet Cathérina
Kubresli
https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/19566959.pdf