In What Way Is Hamlet Relevant in Our World Today?
In what way is Hamlet relevant in our world today?
In that question, the word Hamlet is not underlined because the play itself is not nearly as relevant as a whole as Hamlet the person is. The play is full of allusions, jokes, and implications that is difficult for a modern audience to pick up on and understand their significance to the overall work. After all, Shakespeare wrote this as a performance piece that was to help pay the bills as much as it was to be a work of art. This is in no way to suggest that Shakespeare was just trying to make a quick buck and did not say anything profound through his play. This is to merely clarify that exactly how the events happen and the minor details and nuances of their telling are less important than the character of Hamlet himself. Hamlet’s growth in his view and philosophy about life is the most significant aspect of this work.
Hamlet is facing what any young person faces. True, not everyone loses his father via murder, has a mother that remarries his father’s murderer, murders their ex-girlfriend’s father shortly before she herself dies (commits suicide?), kills his girlfriend’s brother, and murders his stepfather as he dies of poisoned drink and blade both. In fact, those events in isolation aren’t particularly common, but to have even two or three in conjunction is more than unfortunate, and all of them to fall on a single young man is downright unfair to say the least. Even before he discovers his father’s death is murder by Claudius, he remarks, “How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable/Seem to me all the uses of this world!”, indicating how he already feels at a loss for what to do with himself. This is just after he’s been told he won’t be able to return to college as he’d planned to do. Young people today still have their future plans disrupted by tragedy; whether it is personal, such is the case with Hamlet, or financial in nature.
As the play moves on, Hamlet meets the Ghost, Ophelia stops speaking with
In that question, the word Hamlet is not underlined because the play itself is not nearly as relevant as a whole as Hamlet the person is. The play is full of allusions, jokes, and implications that is difficult for a modern audience to pick up on and understand their significance to the overall work. After all, Shakespeare wrote this as a performance piece that was to help pay the bills as much as it was to be a work of art. This is in no way to suggest that Shakespeare was just trying to make a quick buck and did not say anything profound through his play. This is to merely clarify that exactly how the events happen and the minor details and nuances of their telling are less important than the character of Hamlet himself. Hamlet’s growth in his view and philosophy about life is the most significant aspect of this work.
Hamlet is facing what any young person faces. True, not everyone loses his father via murder, has a mother that remarries his father’s murderer, murders their ex-girlfriend’s father shortly before she herself dies (commits suicide?), kills his girlfriend’s brother, and murders his stepfather as he dies of poisoned drink and blade both. In fact, those events in isolation aren’t particularly common, but to have even two or three in conjunction is more than unfortunate, and all of them to fall on a single young man is downright unfair to say the least. Even before he discovers his father’s death is murder by Claudius, he remarks, “How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable/Seem to me all the uses of this world!”, indicating how he already feels at a loss for what to do with himself. This is just after he’s been told he won’t be able to return to college as he’d planned to do. Young people today still have their future plans disrupted by tragedy; whether it is personal, such is the case with Hamlet, or financial in nature.
As the play moves on, Hamlet meets the Ghost, Ophelia stops speaking with