Hamlet Act 4 Essay

It’s first important to note that the premise of Act 4 isn’t to provide “filler”, although in tragedies, the idea that there need to be events to tie the ‘deaths’ in ACT 3 [Polonius] and the major climatic turners [The Mouse Trap, Claudius praying, Hamlet’s encounter with Gertrude and the reappearance of the Ghost] provides a means for Act 4 to provide the mechanism of “jointure for dramatically altered events to take shape” (Frye)
Additionally, the methodology of Act 4 is often rife with awfully “unfortunate tragedies, not necessarily tragedies themselves”(McKillop).
When Laertes returns to Elisnore and Denmark, he exists as an outsider, now looking in, and culturally and dramatically unprepared for what he finds.
Ophelia’s madness is a two-fold
As an audience, it is almost impossible to keep up with watching the inside of the play without making a connection with outside events- this is totally normal, and to be honest, I think one of the great struggles of both reading and studying the play itself.
These events all occur simultaneously- while it seems maybe too convenient, it is designed to be so. Laertes now emerges as Hamlet’s foil, rather than the distant figure of Young Fortinbras, Ophelia’s purity is compromised and destroyed by the grotesque nature of Denmark that “whores those who cannot grow within the ‘garden rank to seed’, essentially robbing them of purity, idealism and naivety” (Frye)- they are brought into, or literally laid into death(Ophelia’s death occurs in Act 4-5)- a further cause to Laertes’ rage.
Hamlet’s conversation with the grave-digger, his reflection on Osric, the former court jester ix more evidence of Shakespeare’s “pen being mightier than the sword”- It’s a good idea to take a moment and consider when this play was actually being written- and- upon the historical and social era which marked not only the end of Shakespeare’s life [he died about 10 years after the play was written], but also the social context of England- Elizabeth I was to die only 2 years after the play was
Hyperbolized characters like Laertes are not uncommon [think of MacDuff in MacBeth], both in age, gender, and emotional construction. Laertes’ rage, Frye noted, is not so much about himself “but about Hamlet’s indecision- Polonius’ death is a result of gross inability on Hamlet’s part to be outside of the picture, the action and the plot. Cemented to his own mind, Hamlet has no ability to interact with others, only himself.”
Finally, the death of Ophelia, possibly the most noted and written about event in the play. Her death brings to light three thematic or motif-driven elements:
1) Virginity: While Ophelia dies as a “virgin”, her questionable death “searching for her own salvation” has us wondering about the obsession of Polonius and Laertes with the issue of her ‘virgin mind, as well as body’ (Rutherford). The tendency to obsess over the state of her body, is as many feminists have noted, part of the male need for self-affirmation [in other words, both Hamlet and Laertes jumping into her grave is each man’s desire to be ‘close to her body’, even in death in order to prove their manhood, not necessarily honor her character]
2) Sex: Not in the physical way, rather ‘her sex’ (Rutherford), which also seems to be a disposable product. Like Gertrude, the feminine in Ophelia is at its best in death- she casts