Paranoiac Anxieties In Hamlet

Hamlet, one of Shakespeare's greatest and most well known tragedies. Now, Shakespeare did not create the concept of revenge and crazy princes but he did write in such a way that makes the reader question everything. However, as Michael Neill states “… it barely glances at the ethical argument raised by a hero’s taking justice into his own hands…” Shakespeare then “goes on to discover a quite different kind of political interest in his plot…help explain the paranoiac anxieties…capable of arousing in a dictator…” Neill has a statement that he follows for the rest of “The Cheer and Comfort of Our Eye”, “… Shakespeare used Saxo’s story of Hamlet’s pretended madness and delayed revenges to explore the brutal facts about survival in an authoritarian state.”
When Shakespeare was alive, he lived in and when Queen Elizabeth I was in reign.
He lived in a time when you could be killed for anything by the monarchy. Everyone was watched by her “inside people” so it made sense that Claudius always had people watching. “… nothing and no one in Claudius’s Denmark is allowed to do ‘unwatched’ …” The dead King always listened into conversations and so did Polonius. Hamlet even starts with anxious watchers even, “ … begin with a group of anxious watchers on the battlements walls of the castle….” It exposed the “... the wholesale corruption of social relationships…” Hamlet even describes Denmark as “a prison” because no matter where you go anyone can be watched, corrupted, and even “locked in” just like Ophelia and Gertrude, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, and even
Laertes.
Hamlet at one point as the hero, as Neill states “… once sets him apart from this prison-house world and yet leads him to become increasingly entangled in its web of surveillance.”, him avenging and getting revenge for his father makes him a very large target to be watched upon. Even Ophelia believes that “ Th’ observed of all observers” is Hamlet. His madness is a disguise and a revelation and though he is observed day and night, he as well observes others while trying to unmask secrets.
“ The Mousetrap” is where the climax of Hamlet begins because of its suspension of surveillance. The play inside Hamlet only mimics what has already happened such as the death of the dead King. It became a play of ironies that allows Hamlet finally getting his revenge on his uncle. However, Hamlet becomes lost after his triumph and the sense of always being watched has now left because Claudius is dead by him.
By, killing his uncle he has forced the feeling of observing and being observed to leaves because Hamlet has final “unmasked” the killer and disposed of it. It left Hamlet empty because the observation has left because there is nothing left to watch and figured out. It was exactly like when Queen Elizabeth I left her reign, no had to watch or be watched anymore because there was no reason too.