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Audience's Emotions In Hamlet Essay

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Recommended: Hamlet's character development

Kai Battistoni
Mrs. Teasley
AP Literature
December 6, 2022
How the Story of Hamlet Influenced the Audience's Emotions
“Ay, there’s the rub, / For in that sleep of death what dreams may come, / When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, / Must give us pause.” (285). Hamlet is one of the many iconic plays written by William Shakespeare. Death is a prominent theme throughout the play, starting with King Hamlet’s ghost and ending in mass tragedy. The audience watches as the tragic hero, Hamlet, struggles heavily with the concept of death and exacting revenge. In Hamlet by William Shakespeare, the tragic hero Hamlet evokes the sympathy of the audience through his monologues and actions as he forgoes a mental journey, struggling with bringing justice …show more content…

This is the beginning cause and driving force of Hamlet’s turmoil. The problem brought to light by King Hamlet’s spirit creates a deeper form of injustice in Hamlet’s mind regarding Gertrude’s rapid remarrying to Claudius. “I am thy father’s spirit, / Doomed for a certain term to walk the night / And for the day confined to fast in fires / Till the foul crimes done in my days of nature / Are burnt and purged away” (732). He is shown that his father did not die of natural causes instead being killed by Hamlet’s uncle. Claudius is now, unfortunately, reaping rewards such as King Hamlet’s wife, and King Hamlet’s position as king of Denmark. The struggle in Hamlet’s mind is truly an internal debate on what he should or could do in this situation. Any act against Claudius would be a form of treason, and nobody would believe that he had talked to his father’s spirit. He is forced to stay silent about how he came about the fact that Claudius killed King Hamlet. Hamlet’s indecision adds further tension to his mental struggle, introducing thoughts of suicide and contemplations about the implications of death itself. This becomes very clear at the beginning of Hamlet’s famous ‘To Be, or Not To Be’ …show more content…

Act 5 further shows Hamlet’s displeasure with the previous death of Yorick, King Hamlet’s jester. “Alas, poor / Yorick! I knew him, Horatio–A fellow of infinite / jest, of most excellent fancy. He hath bore me on his / back a thousand times, and now how abhorred in / my imagination it is!” (337). Hamlet now discovers what death truly entails; not meaning a disappearance of a person or their personality, but truly a complete decomposition of their physical self and sudden end to their complete existence, to where they only live on in grand memories. He knew Yorick almost as if he were a part of the royal family during Hamlet’s youth, but now he is shown as decomposed, a point that is indistinguishably identical regardless of what somebody meant to you, or what they meant to the society around them. This is soon followed by the revelation that his love, Ophelia, had died while he was on his trip to England, only cementing the pain of Hamlet’s dearly loved family being stripped away from him. Now with King Hamlet’s, Yorick's, and Ophelia's deaths looming in Hamlet’s mind, the audience sees all this personal injustice pertaining to Hamlet and can’t help to feel anything but immense pity and second-hand regret; Hamlet has yet to take action against any wrongdoing. While he is seen as borderline suicidal, he is heavily questioning who should be the one to decide his fate, what that would mean for the justice of the world

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