How Does Shakespeare Present Conflict In Hamlet

Hamlet, a play by William Shakespeare is a tragedy focusing on a character’s long for revenge, and how factors played into his journey which led to his doom. Shakespeare uses conflict to develop the main character through the use of characterization, which connects seamlessly to the overall theme. Summed up, the play is about a young prince named Hamlet, and his quest for revenge after finding out who murdered his father, the former king. Hamlet displaying many characteristics of insanity throughout the play, along with Shakespeare's process of deconstructing his character as conflicts arose allows for the play to alluringly display the overall theme to it’s audience as they are reading/watching it. Hamlets attribute slowly unravel throughout

The play starts out with a conflict when the readers learns of Hamlet’s extreme sorrow. Many things were revealed to distress Hamlet during this time; his father passed recently, his mother, Gertrude, married his uncle, Claudius less than 2 months after his father’s death, and he was awfully upset with God, for he made suicide a sin. Act I scene V of the play is when the audience actually starts getting some type of action, when Hamlet sees the ghost of his father that the officers initially saw, and told Hamlet about. Hamlet’s father explained to him it was Claudius who killed him in an endeavor to steal his throne, and it was Hamlet’s duty to seek revenge on him. Another example of Shakespeare using conflict to display the theme was in Act III scene IV, during Hamlet’s conversation with Gertrude. Gertrude and Polonius plan this meeting with Hamlet, and Polonius taught it would be a good idea to hide behind a curtain to eavesdrop on Hamlet. Unfortunately, Polonius’s plan was foiled when he makes noise behind the curtain,

Upon first glance, it is easy to tell that Hamlet doesn’t have all of his wits about him; depression and hatred run deep in his character, and the whole play proves to be a journey for Hamlet to defeat these demons inside of him by getting revenge for his father. The conflicts directly tie in with the characterization of Hamlet, as they are was reveal his traits. We can first see Shakespeare developing Hamlet’s character when he gets the order from his father to get revenge on Claudius. Him delaying the murder of Claudius, and going into an even deeper state of madness than before proves how intelligent he is, and how this treat weakens him at times because of his tendency to overthink. This same trait pops up again when he’s in the perfect scenario to kill Claudius, but he doesn’t because Claudius was currently praying, and Hamlet came to the conclusion that Claudius would go to heaven if he killed him while he was praying to God. When Hamlet killed Polonius during his conversation with Gertrude, he revealed his paranoia, as he had no way of knowing who was really behind the curtain, he just assumed it was Claudius for some reason. Lastly, Hamlet’s death shows how truly devoted he was to get revenge for his father. This shows how insane he really was, but it also shows how much he loved his father, and how he would do anything. Overall, Hamlet was a very bright