Hamlet Essay

Hamlet, written by playwright William Shakespeare, is a tragedy that reveals many personal aspects of the characters’ lives. Shakespeare was successful in bringing together the negatives and the positives of important problems with humanity and displaying them in his characters. One of the most significant aspects of this play is the concept of love and how it affects the characters. Details from the play show how love is a very powerful feeling that can change a person’s world, leaving their thoughts and actions uncontrollable. Love causes characters’ downfalls because it blinds them to dangers, makes them indecisive, and clouds their better judgements. Love is a theme that is brought up at the very beginning of the play. Hamlet, the main

1. 127-129). “If thou dost marry, I’ll give thee this plague for thy dowry: be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as snow, thou shalt not escape calumny. Get thee to a nunnery, go: farewell.” (3. 1. 146-149) Hamlet insults Ophelia, telling her to go to a nunnery which, during this time, was slang for a brothel (British Library, “First use of…”). This comment is offensive to Ophelia and no doubt is misogynistic in the way she understood it. However, Hamlet’s intentions for telling Ophelia this were to protect her. Hamlet intends to kill King Claudius and doesn’t want Ophelia to be a target of his. By pushing her away, Hamlet is hoping the King wouldn’t use her against him. Hamlet clearly loved Ophelia because when she died, he stated, “I loved Ophelia: forty thousand brothers, Could not, with all their quantity of love, Make up my sum,” (5. 1. 254-256) During this scene, he jumped into Ophelia’s grave and fought with her brother over who loved her more, expressing how he is stricken with grief from her death and angry at his decisions that led her to this. Hamlet’s love for Ophelia clouded his judgment on what would be a better way to protect her from danger and interact with the people around