Hamlet Identity Essay

Hamlet, considered by most readers and many critics as the best play ever written, is centered around a main character whose identity is highly debated. Although the play is widely considered by many as the greatest play of all time, his is up in the air and most would not look down upon another for having a different interpretation of Hamlet’s identity. The cause of this is the sheer amount of interpretations that can be drawn from the play. These interpretations also cause the question: “Who is Hamlet?” to become one of the hardest questions to answer. An easy assumption of Hamlet's identity is that he is a tragic hero whose back is put up against a wall by his unfortunate circumstances. Although this might be true, diving deeper into the

William Shakespeare’s character Hamlet leaves many in confusion of what to think about the character, he makes the reader want to feel bad for him, but at the same time, not. He makes us debate over what every little word and phrase means in the grand scheme of Hamlet’s true identity, and leaves no hints but that is the words written in the scripts he leaves behind. This is literature at its finest. Schools around the world teach Hamlet, a play written over 400 years ago. How can one man be so important that millions of people should know and learn about him? This man must be great and powerful and very good-looking. Although we know nothing of his looks, Hamlet is neither a great nor powerful figure, rather he is a man in his thirties beaten down by his father's death. How could this man become so ubiquitous? How could his words that no one but himself hear become so familiar that most could recite it: “To be or not to be, that is the question” (Shakespeare 3.1.64-65)? His ubiquitousness has endured and will endure because of his universal feelings such as love, melancholy, betrayal, and hatred experienced that everyone of every culture and age can relate to. To sum Hamlet’s identity up with all the specifics would be impossible, however, a general statement that can be widely agreed upon is that he is a normal man in that he experiences love, anger, sadness, and betrayal just like the rest of us. However, the abnormality comes when he finds out that his uncle killed his father and married his mother. Even considering morbid circumstances, Hamlet’s identity is still characterized by love in the form of melancholy, a desire to escape a morbid world, and his hate in the form of