Claudius And Hamlet
Claudius & Hamlet, would the inhumane and sick character please step forth.
Upon reading the sampling of "Hamlet" criticisms in John Jump's "Hamlet (Selections)" I disagreed with a few of the critics, but my analysis was the most different from Wilson Knight's interpretation. He labels Hamlet as "a sick, cynical, and inhumane prince" (Jump, 124) who vitiated a Denmark which was "one of healthy and robust life, good-nature, humor, romantic strength, and welfare." In his book, The Wheel of Fire, he continues this line of thought to conclude that Claudius is "a good and gentle king, enmeshed by the chain of causality linking him with his crime. And this chain he might, perhaps, have broken ...
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his mother mourned for "a little month" and then she married a man who was "no more like [his] father/ Than [he] to Hercules" (I, ii, 153-152). These extraordinary events cause him to launch into a state of melancholy and depression in which he desires "that this too too solid flesh would melt" (I, ii, 129). In this melancholy, Hamlet loses becomes disenchanted with life, and to him the world seems "weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable" (I, ii, 133). Later in the most famous of his soliloquy's, Hamlet contemplates committing suicide because he is troubled by "the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune" (III, i, 58). His disinterest for life, and his wishes for death are a definite indications of Hamlet's sickness.
Hamlet's sickness is also shown through his strong relationship, bordering on obsession, with his mother. Throughout the play he constantly worries about her, and becomes angry when thinking of her relationship with Claudius. In his first soliloquy, Hamlet becomes ...
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and he mocks her by putting his head in her lap and bantering with her. Hamlet is also responsible for the death of Ophelia's father, Polonius. In the closet scene, Hamlet mistook her father for the king, and he fatally stabbed him. Gertrude called this "a rash and bloody deed" (III, iii, 27). He later shows that he has no remorse for this inhumane actions when he tells Claudius that Polonius is "at supper…not where he eats, but where he is eaten" (IV, ii, 18-20). Hamlet's harsh and cruel treatment of Ophelia and his murder of her father lead to the madness which eventually overtook her. She became distraught by Hamlet's rejection and the death of her father. This madness caused her to ...
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"Claudius And Hamlet." Essayworld.com. March 24, 2006. Accessed April 25, 2024. http://www.essayworld.com/essays/Claudius-And-Hamlet/43251.
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