Hamlet Essay Holly Silm
Hamlet Essay
Holly Silm
‘Explore how time and place are used in Shakespeare’s Hamlet to shape the audience’s understanding of corruption’
The attribution of universality to a particular text is a prerogative of literary criticism that is fraught with the responsibility of contriving reconciliatory persuasions in preservation of the fundamental textual integrity of that text. William Shakespeare’s Hamlet has inspired diverse interpretations regarding its authorial preoccupations, structure and language choices, peculiar to the ideological, historical and cultural lenses of its commentators. The consequent reception and significance assigned to this text over the centuries simultaneously betrays the polyspersectivity of critical interpretation and the expedient perspicacity of social commentators. Asserting that Shakespeare and his work reflects the philosophical, moral and religious tensions of the Renaissance society; Shakespeare clearly refines the responders’ perception of fraudulency in light of his own context. In conjunction, Shakespeare utilizes the character of Hamlet and his struggle in attempting to restore stability in his context as a tool to define the complexities of humanity and question the conflict between filial duty and Christian morality in the execution of vengeance.
Hamlet’s struggle to successfully restore stability to his own context in the tainted world of Denmark through the act of murder reveals him to hastily reconcile his Renaissance values within the depraved medieval place. The Renaissance period consisted of a widely followed concept known as ‘The Great Chain of Being’, thereby Claudius’ Machiavellian act of regicide brings great upheaval and schisms between the two bodies of kingship as natural and politic. This is signified by the appearance of King Hamlet’s ghost in the first scene, instigating Marcellus’ claim ‘something is rotten in the State of Denmark’. His words introduce the extended metaphor of Denmark as a symbolic
Holly Silm
‘Explore how time and place are used in Shakespeare’s Hamlet to shape the audience’s understanding of corruption’
The attribution of universality to a particular text is a prerogative of literary criticism that is fraught with the responsibility of contriving reconciliatory persuasions in preservation of the fundamental textual integrity of that text. William Shakespeare’s Hamlet has inspired diverse interpretations regarding its authorial preoccupations, structure and language choices, peculiar to the ideological, historical and cultural lenses of its commentators. The consequent reception and significance assigned to this text over the centuries simultaneously betrays the polyspersectivity of critical interpretation and the expedient perspicacity of social commentators. Asserting that Shakespeare and his work reflects the philosophical, moral and religious tensions of the Renaissance society; Shakespeare clearly refines the responders’ perception of fraudulency in light of his own context. In conjunction, Shakespeare utilizes the character of Hamlet and his struggle in attempting to restore stability in his context as a tool to define the complexities of humanity and question the conflict between filial duty and Christian morality in the execution of vengeance.
Hamlet’s struggle to successfully restore stability to his own context in the tainted world of Denmark through the act of murder reveals him to hastily reconcile his Renaissance values within the depraved medieval place. The Renaissance period consisted of a widely followed concept known as ‘The Great Chain of Being’, thereby Claudius’ Machiavellian act of regicide brings great upheaval and schisms between the two bodies of kingship as natural and politic. This is signified by the appearance of King Hamlet’s ghost in the first scene, instigating Marcellus’ claim ‘something is rotten in the State of Denmark’. His words introduce the extended metaphor of Denmark as a symbolic