William Shakespeare's Hamlet: Trapped Within the Past Some people desire to live in a time period much sooner than what they live in today, believing to fit in better and give them their ideal life. However each time period has its own flaws, overlooked by those wanderlusters. For example, while some wish to live in the fifties because of the economic prosperity as well as their cars, while ignoring the true reality of such factors as repression of one's sexual orientation and extreme racism. The play, Hamlet, by William Shakespeare encapsulates a modern man placed within an inferior time. Through a historical lens, one can see how the time period, religious views, historical events, and the author’s background reveals why looking back on …show more content…
This play follows the dramatic conventions of revenge in Elizabethan theater. All revenge tragedies originally stemmed from the Greeks, who wrote and performed the first plays. After the Greeks came Seneca, who was very influential to all Elizabethan tragedy writers. Another play being a major inspiration would be Ur-Hamlet, a play which William Shakespeare’s play company, the Chamberlain's Men, purchased and performed. The word “Ur,” in Ur-Hamlet, is a German prefix which means "primordial" or, in other words, the earliest Hamlet. (Ryan). In his play, Wits Miserie (1596), Thomas Lodge describes a theatrical ghost “which cried … Hamlet, revenge.” Some scholars see this as a reference to a lost Hamlet play that appeared before Shakespeare’s. Published by the Cranach-Presse (1930), one can see Shakespeare’s sources, Saxo and Belleforest, written in the margins. Danish history (). Today Denmark is a quit peaceful nation, but in Shakespeare day it was a warlike Viking nation (Walthall). “Something is rotten in the state of Denmark” (Line (). Historical Figure parallels …show more content…
Proving how Hamlet is closer to morals to an Elizabethan man than one of the dark ages. Religion is a large factor which sets Hamlet apart from the other characters; his place of study is located in the future place of the 99 theses which combat the church's practices (Ronson). When Queen Gertrude states “Let not thy mother lose her prayers, Hamlet. I pray thee, stay with us. Go not to Wittenberg” (Shakespeare 13-14) referring to Wittenberge, the place in which the beginning of the reformation occurred in 1517 by Martin Luther; information that the audience would be aware of in the time period this play was