ENG-4U
Teacher
Comparison: Hamlet vs. Gladiator Hamlet is a tragic play that was written by William Shakespeare. In this play, it focuses on Hamlet in which he wants to seek revenge as his father murdered by his uncle and now his stepfather, as the murderer married his mother and King Hamlets’ wife named Claudius. Gladiator is a 2000 historical drama film directed by Ridley Scott where a loyal Roman general named Maximus Decimus Meridius betrayed when the Emperor Marcus Aurellus’s ambitious son, Commodus murdered his father and seizes the throne. Between this play and a movie, there are more likely similar but within the character, there are many differences as the character of Hamlet and Gladiator, in terms of both dramas, various elements that makes them similar tragic figures. Within the theme of the story, the guilt that every character feels and the death makes them different from each other. The story has the same theme that most of the readers knew and the theme would be Revenge. In the play, Hamlet didn’t find his true purpose when his father died. In one of the scene, Hamlet encountered a conversation to a ghost in which he believes that he is talking to his father telling him “Thy knotted and combinèd locks to part,
And each particular hair to stand an end,
Like quills upon the fearful porpentine.
But this eternal blazon must not be
To ears of flesh and blood. List, list, O list!” (I.V.24-28).
These line explains that Hamlets father should gave a justice from his death and because of this, Hamlet swears to his father that he would seek for a revenge and this takes the rest of the story finding a way on how to get the revenge the he needs to do. Meanwhile, in the movie Gladiator, Maximus Meridius is a loyal Roman general to the Roman emperor named, Marcus Aurellius. When Marcus was dying, he gave his throne to Maximus instead to his son but this led to his son and Emperor Marcus to be killed. Commodus, the Emperor son ordered his
Cited: Gladiator. Dir. Russel Crowe. 2000. Film. Shakesphere, Harbrace. Hamlet. Toronto: Harcourt Canada, 1998. Print.