Hamlet (Encyclopedie Britannica)
Shakespeare's telling of the story of Prince Hamlet, who after much indecision avenges the murder of his father, derives from several sources, notably from books 3 and 4 of Saxo Grammaticus' 12th-century Gesta Danorum, and from volume 5 (1570) of Histoires tragiques, a free translation of Saxo by François de Belleforest. It is possible that Saxo drew on a (lost) Icelandic saga of Amló:i, mentioned by a 10th-century Icelandic poet, for his information. It also has been argued that Saxo's Amleth was originally a product of Geatish tradition as it developed in Jutland. One scholar has suggested that the Hamlet story has its origins in the East, being similar toa tale in the 11th-century Sh(h-n(meh (“Book of Kings”) by the Persian poet FerdowsY. Others have posited a Celtic origin, pointing to the warrior Amhlaide, who is named as the slayer of King Niall Glúndub in the Irish Annals under the year 917.
Shakespeare's play was evidently preceded by another play of Hamlet, now lost, and usually referred to as the Ur-Hamlet, of which Thomas Kyd is a conjectured author. TheHystorie of Hamblet, an English version of Belleforest's work, was published in Londonin 1608. The trait that characterizes Shakespeare's Hamlet, however, is unique to the author.
As Shakespeare's play opens, Hamlet is mourning his father, who has been killed, andlamenting the behaviour of his mother, Gertrude, who married his uncle Claudius within a month of his father's death. The ghost of his father appears to Hamlet, informs him that he was poisoned by Claudius, and asks Hamlet to avenge his death. Hamlet hesitates, desiring further evidence of foul play. His uncertainty and inability to act makehim increasingly melancholy, and to everyone around him Hamlet seems to be going mad.
Driven by a guilty conscience, Claudius attempts to ascertain the cause of Hamlet's odd behaviour by hiring Hamlet's friends Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to spy on him. Hamlet quickly sees through the scheme and begins to act the part of a madman in front of them. To the pompous old courtier Polonius, it appears that Hamlet is lovesick over Polonius' daughter Ophelia. Despite Ophelia's loyalty to him, Hamlet thinks that she, like everyone else, is turning against him; he feigns madness with her also and treats her cruelly as if she were representative, like his own mother, of her treacherous sex.
Hamlet contrives a plan to test the ghost's accusation. With a group of visiting actors, Hamlet arranges the performance of a story representing circumstances similar to those described by the ghost, under which Claudius poisoned Hamlet's father. When the play is presented as planned, the performance clearly unnerves Claudius.
Despite Claudius' evident guilt, Hamlet still is unable to act, to avenge his father's wrongful murder. He nevertheless confronts his mother and kills the eavesdropping Polonius. Justly fearing for his own life, Claudius sends Hamlet to England with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, who carry secret orders to have Hamlet killed. When Hamlet discovers the orders, he alters them to make his two friends the victims instead.
Upon his return to Denmark, Hamlet hears that Ophelia has killed herself and that her brother Laertes seeks to avenge Polonius' murder. Claudius is only too eager to arrange the duel. Carnage ensues. Both Hamlet and Laertes are struck by the sword that Claudius has had dipped in poison. Gertrude, also present at the duel, drinks fromthe cup of poison that Claudius has had placed near Hamlet to ensure his death. Before Hamlet himself dies, he manages to stab Claudius and to entrust the clearing of his honour to his friend Horatio.
Judged by its reception, Hamlet must be regarded as Shakespeare's most successful play. It has unceasing theatrical vitality, and the character of Hamlet himself has become a figure of literary mythology. For a time during the 20th century, many critics argued that in Hamlet Shakespeare did not make a psychologically consistent play out of a plot that retained much of the crudity of an earlier kind of “revenge” drama—that he was trying to transform a barbaric “revenge” hero into a subtle Renaissance prince but did not succeed.
Even if this opinion has become unacceptable, it nevertheless taught critics to search out elements such as Shakespeare's artistic balance in presenting the play's moral problems. It is likely that an artist will make his work more interesting if he leaves a dilemma morally ambiguous rather than explicit. The revenge situation in Hamlet, moreover, is one charged with emotional excitement as well as moral interest. Simply put, the good man (Hamlet) is weak, and the bad man (Claudius) is strong. The good man has suffered a deep injury from the bad man, and he cannot obtain justice because justice is in the hand of the strong bad man. Therefore the weak good man must go around and around in order to achieve a kind of natural justice; and the audience watches in suspense while the weak good man by subtlety attacks and gets his own back upon the strong bad man and the strong bad man spends his time evading the weak good man. Hamlet is given a formidable opponent: Claudius is a hypocrite, but he is a successful one. He achieves his desired effect on everybody. His hypocrisy is that of a skilled politician. He is not dramatically shown as being in any wayunworthy of his station—he upholds his part with dignity. He is a “smiling villain” and is not exposed until the final catastrophe. The jealous Hamlet heaps abuse upon him, butShakespeare makes Claudius the murderer self-controlled. Thus, theatrically, the situation is much more exciting.