The tragedy of William Shakespeare "Hamlet" was written in 1600 - 1601 and is one of the most famous works world literature. The plot of the tragedy is based on the legend of the ruler of Denmark, dedicated to the story of the protagonist's revenge for the death of his father. In "Hamlet" Shakespeare raises a number of important themes concerning the issues of morality, honor and duty of the characters. The author pays special attention to the philosophical theme of life and death.
main characters
Hamlet – prince of danish, son of the former and nephew of the present king, was killed by Laertes.
Claudius- Danish king, killed Hamlet's father and married Gertrude, was killed by Hamlet.
Polonium- the chief royal adviser, the father of Laertes and Ophelia, was killed by Hamlet.
Laertes- the son of Polonius, brother of Ophelia, a skilled swordsman, was killed by Hamlet.
Horatio close friend of Hamlet.
Other characters
Ophelia- the daughter of Polonia, sister of Laertes, after the death of her father went crazy, drowned in the river.
Gertrude- The Danish queen, mother of Hamlet, wife of Claudius, died after drinking wine poisoned by the king.
The Ghost of Hamlet's Father
Rosencrantz, Guildenstern - former university comrades of Hamlet.
Fortinbras- Norwegian prince.
Marcellus, Bernardo - officers.
Act 1
Scene 1
Elsinore. Square in front of the castle. Midnight. Officer Bernardo relieves soldier Fernardo, who is on duty. Officer Marcellus and Hamlet's friend Horatio appear on the square. Marcellus asks Bernardo if he has seen a ghost, which the castle guards have already noticed twice. Horatio finds this to be just a figment of the imagination.
Suddenly, a ghost resembling the deceased king appears. Horatio asks the spirit who he is, but he, offended by the question, disappears. Horatio believes that the appearance of a ghost is "a sign of the upheavals threatening the state."
Marcellus asks Horatio why the kingdom has been actively preparing for war lately. Horatio says that Hamlet killed the “ruler of the Norwegians Fortinbras” in battle and, under the agreement, received the lands of the vanquished. However, the "younger Fortinbras" decided to recapture the lost lands, and this is precisely the "pretext for confusion and turmoil in the region."
Suddenly, the ghost reappears, but disappears with the crowing of a rooster. Horatio decides to tell Hamlet about what he saw.
Scene 2
Hall for receptions in the castle. The king announces his decision to marry his late brother's sister Gertrude. Outraged by the attempts of the prince Fortinbras to regain power in the lost lands, Claudius sends courtiers with a letter to his uncle, the king of the Norwegians, to nip his nephew's plans in the bud.
Laertes asks the king for permission to leave for France, Claudius allows. The Queen advises Hamlet to stop mourning for his father: “This is how the world was created: what is alive will die / And after life it will depart into eternity.” Claudius informs that he and the queen are against the return of Hamlet for teaching in Wittenberg.
Left alone, Hamlet is outraged that his mother, a month after the death of her husband, stopped mourning and married Claudius: “O women, your name is treachery!” .
Horatio informs Hamlet that for two nights in a row he, Marcellus and Bernardo saw the ghost of his father in armor. The prince asks to keep this news a secret.
Scene 3
A room in Polonius' house. Saying goodbye to Ophelia, Laertes asks his sister to avoid Hamlet, not to take his advances seriously. Polonius blesses his son on the road, instructing him how to behave in France. Ophelia tells her father about Hamlet's courtship. Polonius forbids his daughter to see the prince.
Scene 4
Midnight, Hamlet and Horatio and Marcellus are on the platform in front of the castle. A ghost appears. Hamlet addresses him, but the spirit, without answering, beckons the prince to follow him.
Scene 5
The ghost informs Hamlet that he is the spirit of his deceased father, reveals the secret of his death and asks his son to avenge his murder. Contrary to popular belief, the former king did not die from a snakebite. His brother Claudius killed him by pouring henbane infusion into the king's ear when he was sleeping in the garden. In addition, even before the death of the former king, Claudius "led the queen into a shameful cohabitation."
Hamlet warns Horatio and Marcellus that he will deliberately behave like a madman and asks them to swear that they will not tell anyone about their conversation and that they saw the ghost of Hamlet's father.
Act 2
Scene 1
Polonius sends his close associate Reynaldo to Paris to deliver a letter to Laertes. He asks to find out as much as possible about his son - about how he behaves and who is in his circle of friends.
A frightened Ophelia tells Polonius about Hamlet's insane behavior. The councilor decides that the prince has gone mad with love for his daughter.
Scene 2
The king and queen invite Rosencrantz and Guildenstern (former university friends of Hamlet) to find out the reason for the prince's madness. Ambassador Voltimand reports the answer of the Norwegian - having learned about the actions of Fortinbras' nephew, the king of Norway forbade him to fight with Denmark and sent the heir on a campaign against Poland. Polonius shares with the king and queen the assumption that the reason for Hamlet's madness is his love for Ophelia.
Conversing with Hamlet, Polonius is amazed at the accuracy of the prince's statements: "If this is madness, then it is consistent in its own way."
In a conversation between Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, Hamlet calls Denmark a prison. The prince realizes that they did not come of their own accord, but on the orders of the king and queen.
Actors invited by Rosencrantz and Guildenstern arrive in Elsinore. Hamlet welcomes them kindly. The prince asks to read Aeneas's monologue to Dido, which refers to the murder of Priam by Pyrrhus, and also to play at tomorrow's performance "The Murder of Gonzago", adding a small passage written by Hamlet.
Left alone, Hamlet admires the skill of the actor, blaming himself for impotence. Fearing that the Devil appeared to him in the form of a ghost, the prince decides to first follow his uncle and check his guilt.
Act 3
Scene 1
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern report to the king and queen that they could not find out from Hamlet the reason for his strange behavior. Having set up a meeting between Ophelia and Hamlet, the king and Polonius hide, watching them.
Hamlet enters the room, pondering what stops a person from committing suicide:
“To be or not to be, that is the question.
Is it worthy
Humble under the blows of fate
I must resist
And in mortal combat with a whole sea of troubles
Do away with them? Die. Forget it."
Ophelia wants to return Hamlet's gifts. The prince, realizing that they are being overheard, continues to behave like a madman, telling the girl that he never loved her and no matter how much virtue they instilled in her, “the sinful spirit cannot be smoked out of her.” Hamlet advises Ophelia to go to a monastery so as not to produce sinners.
Hearing Hamlet's speeches, the king understands that the reason for the prince's madness is different: "he is not cherishing / In the dark corners of his soul, / Hatching something more dangerous." Claudius decides to protect himself by sending his nephew to England.
Scene 2
Preparations for the play. Hamlet asks Horatio to look carefully at the king when the actors play a scene similar to the episode of his father's death.
Before the play begins, Hamlet places Ophelia's head on her knees. Beginning with pantomime, the actors imitate the scene of the poisoning of the former king. During the performance, Hamlet informs Claudius that the play is called The Mousetrap and comments on what is happening on the stage. At the moment when the actor on the stage was about to poison the sleeping man, Claudius abruptly got up and left the hall with his retinue, thereby betraying his guilt in the death of Hamlet's father.
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern tell Hamlet that the king and queen are very upset about what happened. The prince, holding a flute in his hand, replied: “Look at what dirt you have mixed me with. You are going to play me." "Declare me any instrument you want, you can upset me, but you can't play me."
Scene 3
The king tries to atone for the sin of fratricide by prayer. Seeing Claudius praying, the prince hesitates, because he can avenge his father's murder right now. However, Hamlet decides to delay the punishment so that the king's soul does not go to heaven.
Scene 4
Queen's room. Gertrude called Hamlet to her for a conversation. Polonius, eavesdropping, hides in her bedroom behind the carpet. Hamlet is rude to his mother, accusing the queen of insulting his father's memory. Frightened, Gertrude decides that her son wants to kill her. Polonius calls the guards from behind the carpet. The prince, thinking he is the king, stabs the carpet and kills the royal adviser.
Hamlet accuses the mother of the fall. Suddenly, a ghost appears, which only the prince can see and hear. Gertrude is convinced of the madness of her son. Dragging the body of Polonius, Hamlet leaves.
Act 4
Scene 1
Gertrude informs Claudius that Hamlet killed Polonius. The king orders to find the prince and take the body of the murdered adviser to the chapel.
Scene 2
Hamlet tells Rosencrantz and Guildenstern that he "mixed the body of Polonius with the earth, to which the corpse is akin." The prince compares Rosencrantz "with a sponge that lives with the juices of royal favors."
Scene 3
Amusingly, Hamlet tells the king that Polonius is at dinner - "on the one where he does not dine, but eats him himself", but after that he admits that he hid the adviser's body near the gallery stairs. The king orders that Hamlet be immediately lured onto a ship and taken to England, accompanied by Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Claudius decides that the Briton should repay his debt by killing the prince.
Scene 4
Plain in Denmark. The Norwegian army is passing through local lands. They explain to Hamlet that the military are going to "tear away a place that is not noticeable by anything." Hamlet reflects on the fact that the “resolute prince” is “glad to sacrifice his life”, for the sake of a cause that is “not worth a damn”, but he still did not dare to take revenge.
Scene 5
Upon learning of the death of Polonius, Ophelia goes crazy. The girl grieves for her father, sings strange songs. Horatio shares his fears and fears with the queen - “the people grumble”, “all the dregs have surfaced from the bottom”.
Secretly returned from France, Laertes breaks into the castle with a crowd of rebels who proclaim him king. The young man wants to avenge the death of his father, but the king pacifies his ardor, promising to compensate for the loss and help "to achieve the truth in alliance." Seeing the insane Ophelia, Laertes burns even more with a thirst for revenge.
Scene 6
Horatio receives a letter from Hamlet from the sailors. The prince informs that he came to the pirates, asks to convey the letters sent by him to the king and rush to his aid as soon as possible.
Scene 7
The king finds an ally in Laertes, pointing out to him that they have a common enemy. Letters from Hamlet are delivered to Claudius - the prince writes that he was landed naked on Danish soil and asks the king to receive him tomorrow.
Laertes is waiting for a meeting with Hamlet. Claudius offers to direct the actions of the young man so that Hamlet would die "of his own free will." Laertes agrees, deciding to be sure before the battle with the prince to smear the tip of the rapier with a poisonous ointment.
Suddenly, the queen appears with the news that Ophelia has drowned in the river:
“She wanted to entwine willow with herbs,
I took hold of the bitch, and he broke down,
And, as it was, with a shock of colored trophies,
She fell into the stream.
Act 5
Scene 1
Elsinore. Cemetery. The gravediggers are digging a grave for Ophelia, discussing whether it is possible to bury a suicide in a Christian way. Seeing the skulls thrown out by the gravedigger, Hamlet ponders who these people were. The gravedigger shows the prince the skull of Yorick, the king's coward. Taking it in his hands, Hamlet turns to Horatio: “Poor Yorick! “I knew him, Horatio. He was a man of infinite wit, "and now this very disgust and nausea rises to the throat."
Ophelia is buried. Wishing in last time to say goodbye to his sister, Laertes jumps into her grave, asking to be buried with his sister. Outraged by the falsity of what is happening, the prince standing aside jumps into the grave into the ice behind Laertes and they fight. By order of the king, they are separated. Hamlet announces that he wants to "resolve the rivalry" with Laertes in a fight. The king asks Laertes not to take any action for the time being - “pat it. Everything is coming to an end."
Scene 2
Hamlet tells Horatio that he found a letter from Claudius on the ship, in which the king ordered the prince to be killed upon arrival in England. Hamlet changed its content, ordering the immediate death of the bearers of the letter. The prince realizes that he sent Rosencrantz and Guildestern to their deaths, but his conscience does not bother him.
Hamlet confesses to Horatio that he regrets the quarrel with Laertes and wants to make peace with him. Ozdric, an associate of the king, reports that Claudius bet Laertes with six Arabian horses that the prince would win the battle. Hamlet has a strange premonition, but he brushes it off.
Before the duel, Hamlet asks Laertes for forgiveness, saying that he did not wish him harm. Unnoticed, the king throws poison into the prince's glass of wine. In the midst of the battle, Laertes wounds Hamlet, after which they exchange rapiers and Hamlet wounds Laertes. Laertes realizes that he himself is "caught in the net" of his deceit.
The Queen accidentally drinks from Hamlet's glass and dies. Hamlet orders to find the culprit. Laertes reports that the rapier and drink were poisoned and the king is to blame for everything. Hamlet kills the king with a poisoned rapier. Dying, Laertes forgives Hamlet. Horatio wants to drink the rest of the poison from the glass, but Hamlet takes the cup from his friend, asking him to tell the uninitiated "the truth about him."
Shots are heard in the distance and a march - Fortinbras returns victorious from Poland. Dying, Hamlet recognizes the right of Fortinbras to the Danish throne. Fortinbras orders the prince to be buried with honor. Cannon fire is heard.
Conclusion
In Hamlet, using the example of the Danish prince, Shakespeare portrays the personality of the new time, whose strength and weakness lie in his morality and sharp mind. Being a philosopher and humanist by nature, Hamlet finds himself in circumstances that force him to revenge and bloodshed. This is the tragedy of the hero's position - having seen the gloomy side of life, fratricide, treason, he became disillusioned with life, lost an understanding of its value. Shakespeare does not give in his work a definite answer to the eternal question "To be or not to be?", leaving it to the reader.
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Shakespeare's great Hamlet.
William Shakespeare an outstanding English singer and playwright. Many biographers and historians call him "national English poet". He mainly wrote plays for the theater, which brought him fame during his lifetime. During his lifetime, Shakespeare's plays were not taken seriously. This hurt the author's pride, because he put his soul into these plays, rightly considering them the work of his life.
Shakespeare's plays have become the hallmark of the UK.
Hamlet or "The Tragic Story of the Prince of Denmark", is a tragedy, deep meaning. This is Shakespeare's most famous play. It was written at the beginning of the seventeenth century in London. By right it is considered immortal not only in English, but also in world literature.
The historical basis for its writing was the old legend about the Danish prince Amlet, according to the legend, Amlet wants revenge for the death of his father (king). The first performance staged in 1601
year was a success, even Shakespeare himself played there (the shadow of the murdered father of Hamlet), a tragic and fatal role, no less than the role of the Prince of Denmark.
However, performances with the same title were already running in London theaters long before the premiere of Shakespeare's Hamlet.
There is evidence that the play "Hamlet" was still in 1594
year, that is, seven years before the official premiere. There is evidence of this in the diary entries of the entrepreneur (production manager).
Many historians believe that there was another play, even before Shakespeare, written on the basis of the legend of Amlet. It was written by Thomas Kidd, the author of The Spanish Tragedy, similar in plot to Shakespeare's Hamlet.
The plot of "Hamlet" is very emotional and well thought out. It reveals in detail the essence of the personality of the protagonist. A young man looking for answers to the eternal questions of human existence. The play shows deceit, love, hypocrisy. The betrayal of the mother, who, in less than two months, becomes engaged to the brother of her late husband (he is also the killer of the king). In this extremely confusing situation, the author shows how, among the general dirt, intrigues, duplicity and meanness, main character remains honest and punishes evil, unfortunately at the cost of his own life. In this there is a merciless realism and fatalism of life. This is what makes Shakespeare's play immortal. She already over 400 hundred years but it is still relevant and interesting.
This play is the largest of all Shakespeare's plays.
The very date of Shakespeare's writing and publication of Hamlet has not been precisely established.
One of the publishers, an acquaintance of Shakespeare, at the end of the sixteenth century published a list in which the works already published by the author were listed, there was no Hamlet.
IN 1602
another acquaintance of Shakespeare, Roberts filed a material for publication with a book publisher entitled “The book called: the revenge of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, in the form in which it had already been performed by the servants of the Lord Chamberlain.” With a high degree of probability, it can be argued that Shakespeare's "Hamlet" was written either at the beginning of 1602 or in 1601. This version is most common among authors, publicists and historians.
After the death of William Shakespeare, 1623
year, a collection of works of his works was published, among them there is Hamlet. Then there were other reprints, of which there are about a million by now.
“That strange world in which he lives is, after all, our world. He is the gloomy one that we can all become under a certain set of circumstances ... He embodies the dissatisfaction of the soul with life, where there is no harmony it needs.
Victor Hugo
creation. Hamlet (1600-1601) is one of the most striking examples of world drama. Ivan Franko emphasized that this one is rightfully considered the most brilliant work of Shakespeare. It should be noted that, as a rule, he borrowed plots for his plays from other authors. The tragedy in question was no exception. The source of the story was a legend first recorded by the Danish chronicler of the 12th century, Saxo Grammatik. It tells about the young prince Amlet, who lived in pagan times in Jutland (Denmark). His father, together with his younger brother, ruled the country. Deciding to completely seize power, Amlet's uncle kills the king and marries his widow. The prince yearns to avenge his father's death and, in order to keep his enemies on guard, pretends to be insane. He manages to deal with the murderer and the courtiers who betrayed his father. He rules Jutland happily for a long time, but fate does not give him the opportunity to die a natural death: Amlet dies on the battlefield at the hands of his other uncle.
This chronicle legend was reworked in his Tragic Stories (1876) by the French Francois de Belfort. And an unknown English playwright wrote the play "Hamlet", which was in London in the 80s. 16th century Shakespeare's tragedy was created on the basis of these sources. Plot. The events of the play take place in the city of Elsinore, in the residence of the Danish kings. A Ghost appears on the territory of the royal castle, "just like the deceased king was." Prince Hamlet, the son of the recently deceased ruler, learns about this news. He meets with the Ghost, and he tells him about the terrible events:
... Listen, Hamlet:
There is a rumor that I, having fallen asleep in the garden,
Stung by a snake; so ear denmark
A fake fable about my demise
Deceived; but know that my son is worthy:
The serpent that struck your father
Put on his crown. So the prince learns that his father was killed by his own uncle, who soon after the funeral married his mother. The ghost asks for revenge for the crime. Hamlet, struck by what happened, decides to make sure of the authenticity of what he heard at all costs. In order not to arouse suspicion among the newly-minted king and his retinue, he pretends to be insane.
At this time, a traveling theater comes to the castle. Hamlet asks the actors to act out a murder scene based on the events told by the Ghost. He assumes that during the performance, Claudius will somehow definitely give himself away. Hamlet is tormented by the question: what to do in this difficult situation, whether he has the right to take the life of this person:
To be not to be is the question;
What is nobler in spirit - to submit
Slings and arrows of a furious fate
Or, taking up arms against the sea of troubles, slay them
Confrontation? Die, sleep
Only; and say you end up sleeping
Longing and a thousand natural torments,
Legacy of the flesh - how such a denouement
Don't crave? Die, sleep. - Fall asleep!
And dream, maybe? That's the difficulty;
What dreams will dream in a death dream,
When we drop this mortal noise
That's what brings us down; that's where the reason
The text of the tragedy "Hamlet" is given in the translation of Mikhail Lozinsky.
That calamities are so enduring; Who would take down the whips and mockery of the century, The oppression of the strong, the mockery of the proud, The pain of contemptible love, the judges of untruth, The arrogance of the authorities and the insults Inflicted by meek merit, If he himself could give himself a calculation With a simple dagger? Who would trudge with a burden, To groan and sweat under a tedious life, Whenever the fear of something after death, An unknown land from which there is no return to Earthly wanderers, would not embarrass the will, Inspiring us to endure our hardships And not rush to others, from us hidden? Thus thought makes us cowards, And thus the natural color of determination Weakens under the veneer of thought, pale, And undertakings, rising powerfully, Turning their course aside, Lose the name of action. But be quiet! ? - In your prayers, nymph, May my sins be remembered.
The king carefully watches the play and, unable to withstand the test of the “mousetrap” prepared for him, leaves immediately after the murder scene. Hamlet understands that this fact proves the guilt of Claudius. In desperation, he reproaches his mother for having offended the honor of the late king by marrying a murderer. Fearing Hamlet's actions, Claudius sends him to England. There he sends a letter with an order to kill his nephew. The prince still manages to escape and return to his homeland. But an insidious relative brings him a cup of poisoned wine. Dying, Hamlet manages to mortally wound the king. The Danish throne goes to the Norwegian prince Fortinbras. Why did Hamlet think so long and painfully over the question: to avenge or not to avenge the death of his father? What stopped him, a man who lived in the Middle Ages, when blood feud was considered commonplace?
Nor is Hamlet an inactive person. Is it possible to call spiritual quests inaction? After all, thought is also a form of human activity, and Hamlet, as we know, is endowed with this ability to a particularly large extent. However, we do not want to say by this that Hamlet's activity occurs only in the intellectual sphere. It operates continuously. Each of his encounters with other persons, with the exception of Horatio, is a duel of views and feelings.
Finally, Hamlet acts in the most direct sense of the word. One can only wonder that he deserved the fame of a man incapable of action. After all, before our eyes, he kills Polonius, sends Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to certain death, defeats Laertes in a duel and finishes off Claudius. Not to mention that indirectly Hamlet is responsible for the madness and death of Ophelia. Is it possible, after all this, to consider that Hamlet does nothing and throughout the whole tragedy only indulges in reflections?
Although we see that Hamlet committed more murders than his enemy Claudius, nevertheless, as a rule, no one notices and does not take into account. We ourselves are more interested and excited about what Hamlet thinks than what he does, and therefore we do not notice the active character of the hero. Shakespeare's skill was manifested in that he directed our attention not so much to external events as to the emotional experiences of the hero, and they are full of tragedy. The tragedy for Hamlet lies not only in the fact that the world is terrible, but also in the fact that he must rush into the abyss of evil in order to fight it. He realizes that he himself is far from perfect, and, indeed, his behavior reveals that the evil that reigns in life, to some extent, stains him too. tragic irony life circumstances leads Hamlet to the fact that he, acting as an avenger for the murdered father, himself also kills the father of Laertes and Ophelia, and the son of Polonius takes revenge on him.
This story was first recorded by the chronicler Saxo Grammatik in 1200 in Latin. During the Renaissance, the French writer Belforet retold it with significant changes in his Tragic Stories (1576). One of Shakespeare's predecessors, apparently Thomas Kyd (1558-1594), using the Belforet plot, wrote the tragedy Hamlet, which was played on the stage in 1589 and 1594. Its text, unfortunately, has not been preserved. In creating his tragedy, Shakespeare used Kid's play.
Most of Shakespeare's plays are characterized by writing dating problems. Hamlet is no exception:
- · In 1598, Francis Meres published a list of Shakespeare's works. There is no Hamlet in it. Therefore, the tragedy was created after 1598.
- On July 26, 1602, the publisher Roberts, associated with the Shakespeare group, registered in the register of the House of Booksellers, where all the books intended for publication were registered, “The book called The Revenge of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, in the form in which it was recently performed by the servants of the Lord Chamberlain ". Therefore, the tragedy was written before the middle of 1602.
- Finally, among the papers of Shakespeare's contemporary Gabriel Harvey, a sheet was found with an inscription made between 1598-1601, where Harvey mentions Shakespeare's tragedy in the following context: Hamlet, Prince of Denmark.
According to E.-C. Chambers, "Hamlet" was created and first staged on stage in 1600-1601. This dating of the play is the most generally accepted.
1603 quarto (Q1);
1604 quarto (Q2);
Quarto of 1611 (Q3) -- reprint of text from 1604;
After Shakespeare's death, Hamlet was published in his first collected works -
Folio 1623 (F1);
Also noteworthy:
1622 quarto (Q4), approximate date;
1637 quarto (Q5) -- like Q3, a reprint of the 1604 text.
Accordingly, three editions are of interest to textual critics: Q1, Q2 and F1. Q2 and F1 are mostly the same, while the 1603 edition is half the size of the second quarto.
Text F1 basically corresponds to text Q2. The main difference between these two benign texts is that the folio contains those lines that are missing in the quarto, but the 230 lines that are in the 1604 quarto are missing from the folio. Five lines, apparently, were simply omitted due to an oversight compositor, while the rest of the cuts, that is, 225 lines, according to J. Dover Wilson, indicate that the text of the play was cut for presentation on the stage, and these cuts were made by Shakespeare himself. In any case, as he writes, "Shakespeare himself could hardly have treated his own poetry more carefully." Be that as it may, even this reduction of more than two hundred lines from a total of almost four thousand lines of text is insignificant. It does not cause any damage to the plot, and only in one case the ideological side of the play suffers from this reduction, for the monologue turned out to be released (“How everything around me exposes ...”), in which Hamlet speaks of the appointment of a person, arguing the need to use reason not only for reflections on life, but also in order to make decisions and act.
According to modern scholars, the F1 texts are close to Shakespeare's manuscript. Even the abbreviations in the folio do not allow us to consider that we have a stage version. Omissions in the text only slightly reduce the play, and in this form, as in the quarto of 1604, it was too large for the performance. As you know, a performance in a Shakespearean theater lasted two to two and a half hours. If you quickly read aloud only one text Q2 or F1 in the original, then it will take longer. Therefore, it is assumed that on the stage of Shakespeare's theater "Hamlet" was hardly played in its entirety in the form in which it is given in the second quarto or in the folio.
The text that is printed in modern editions of Hamlet is a summary text that reproduces everything that is given in Q2 and F1. In other words, the reader of our time has before him a much more complete text than the one by which Shakespeare's contemporaries got acquainted with Hamlet. They read at best one of two editions - either the second quarto or the folio, or they heard an abridged text from the stage.
The modern reader is in a much better position. He has access to a text containing everything written by Shakespeare about the history of the Danish prince. The only thing that science cannot tell the reader is the exact form in which the play was performed on the stage of Shakespeare's theatre.
The division of the text of a play into acts and scenes does not belong to Shakespeare. Both lifetime quartos, 1603 and 1604, do not contain any divisions at all. This was due to the practice of the English theater of the late 16th-early 17th century, when the performance went on continuously.
The first attempt to divide the action into parts was made in the folio of 1623. At this time, the custom had already arisen, if not in the practice of the theater, then when printing plays, to divide them into five acts, according to the dramatic theory of classicism. This was strongly introduced by Shakespeare's contemporary Ben Jonson. The publishers of the 1623 Folio are inconsistent in this respect. In some plays they made a complete division into acts and scenes, in others a partial division, and in others they left everything without any division into separate parts. In Hamlet, as printed in the folio, the division was made only before the beginning of the second act. The rest of the text goes without indications of acts and scenes.
For the first time, the entire text of Hamlet was divided into acts 60 years after Shakespeare's death in the so-called "actor's quarto" of Hamlet in 1676. The division of tragedies into five acts accepted in modern editions, followed by the division of acts into separate scenes, was established by the editor of Shakespeare's works N. Rowe in his edition of 1709.
Thus, although we retain the division of the text of Hamlet into acts and scenes that has become traditional, we must remember that it does not belong to Shakespeare and was not used in staging the tragedy, as it was during the author's lifetime on the stage of his theater.
Shakespeare is the creator of an entire artistic universe, he possessed an incomparable imagination and knowledge of life, knowledge of people, so the analysis of any of his plays is extremely interesting and instructive. However, for Russian culture, of all Shakespeare's plays, the first in importance was "Hamlet", which can be seen at least by the number of his translations into Russian - there are over forty of them. On the example of this tragedy, let's consider what new Shakespeare brought to the understanding of the world and man in the late Renaissance.
Let's begin with plot of Hamlet, like almost all other works of Shakespeare, is borrowed from the previous literary tradition. Thomas Kidd's tragedy Hamlet, presented in London in 1589, has not come down to us, but it can be assumed that Shakespeare relied on it, giving his version of the story, first told in the Icelandic chronicle of the 12th century. Saxo Grammaticus, author of The History of the Danes, relates an episode from the Danish history of the "dark time". The feudal lord Horvendil had a wife Gerut and a son Amlet. Horvendil's brother, Fengo, with whom he shared power over Jutland, envied his courage and glory. Fengo killed his brother in front of the courtiers and married his widow. Amlet pretended to be crazy, deceived everyone and took revenge on his uncle. Even before that, he was exiled to England for the murder of one of the courtiers, where he married an English princess. Subsequently, Amlet was killed in battle by his other uncle, King Wiglet of Denmark. The similarity of this story with the plot of Shakespeare's "Hamlet" is obvious, but Shakespeare's tragedy unfolds in Denmark only in name; its problematic goes far beyond the tragedy of revenge, and the types of characters are very different from the solid medieval heroes.
Premiere of "Hamlet" at the Globe Theater took place in 1601, and this is the year of well-known upheavals in the history of England, which directly affected both the Globe troupe and Shakespeare personally. The fact is that 1601 is the year of the Essex Conspiracy, when the young favorite of the aging Elizabeth, the Earl of Essex, led his people into the streets of London in an attempt to raise a rebellion against the queen, was captured and beheaded. Historians regard his speech as the last manifestation of the medieval feudal freemen, as a rebellion of the nobility against the absolutism that limited its rights, not supported by the people. On the eve of the performance, Essex's messengers paid the actors of the Globe to perform an old Shakespearean chronicle instead of the play planned in the repertoire, which, in their opinion, could provoke discontent with the queen. The owner of the "Globe" then had to give unpleasant explanations to the authorities. Together with Essex, young nobles who followed him were thrown into the Tower, in particular, the Earl of Southampton, the patron of Shakespeare, to whom, as it is believed, the cycle of his sonnets is dedicated. Southampton was later pardoned, but while Essex's trial was going on, Shakespeare's heart must have been especially dark. All these circumstances could further thicken the general atmosphere of the tragedy.
Its action begins in Elsinore, the castle of the Danish kings. The night watch informs Hamlet's friend Horatio about the appearance of the Phantom. This is the ghost of Hamlet's late father, who at the "dead hour of the night" tells his son that he did not die a natural death, as everyone believes, but was killed by his brother Claudius, who took the throne and married Hamlet's mother, Queen Gertrude. The ghost demands revenge from Hamlet, but the prince must first make sure of what has been said: what if the ghost is a messenger from hell? In order to gain time and not reveal himself, Hamlet pretends to be crazy; incredulous Claudius conspires with his courtier Polonius to use his daughter Ophelia, with whom Hamlet is in love, to check whether Hamlet has really lost his mind. For the same purpose, Hamlet's old friends, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, are summoned to Elsinore, who willingly agree to help the king. Exactly in the middle of the play is the famous "Mousetrap": a scene in which Hamlet persuades the actors who have arrived in Elsinore to play a performance that accurately depicts what the Ghost told him about, and Claudius is convinced of his guilt by the confused reaction. After that, Hamlet kills Polonius, who is eavesdropping on his conversation with his mother, in the belief that Claudius is hiding behind the carpets in her bedroom; Sensing danger, Claudius sends Hamlet to England, where he is to be executed. English king, but on board the ship Hamlet manages to replace the letter, and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern accompanying him are executed instead. Returning to Elsinore, Hamlet learns of the death of Ophelia, who has gone mad, and becomes the victim of Claudius' last intrigue. The king persuades the son of the late Polonius and brother of Ophelia Laertes to take revenge on Hamlet and hands Laertes a poisoned sword for a court duel with the prince. During this duel, Gertrude dies after drinking a cup of poisoned wine intended for Hamlet; Claudius and Laertes are killed, Hamlet dies, and the troops of the Norwegian prince Fortinbras enter Elsinore.
Hamlet- the same as Don Quixote, the "eternal image" that arose at the end of the Renaissance almost simultaneously with other images of the great individualists (Don Quixote, Don Juan, Faust). All of them embody the Renaissance idea of the unlimited development of the personality, and at the same time, unlike Montaigne, who valued measure and harmony, in these artistic images, as is typical of Renaissance literature, great passions are embodied, extreme degrees of development of one side of the personality. The extreme of Don Quixote was idealism; Hamlet's extreme is reflection, introspection, which paralyzes a person's ability to act. He does many things throughout the tragedy: he kills Polonius, Laertes, Claudius, sends Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to death, but since he delays with his main task - revenge, one gets the impression of his inactivity.
From the moment he learns the secret of the Phantom, for Hamlet collapses past life. What he was like before the action in the tragedy can be judged by Horatio, his friend at the University of Wittenberg, and by the scene of the meeting with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, when he shines with wit - until the moment when friends admit that Claudius called them. The indecently fast wedding of his mother, the loss of Hamlet Sr., in whom the prince saw not just a father, but an ideal person, explain his gloomy mood at the beginning of the play. And when Hamlet is faced with the task of revenge, he begins to understand that the death of Claudius will not improve the general state of affairs, because everyone in Denmark quickly consigned Hamlet Sr. to oblivion and quickly got used to slavery. Epoch ideal people in the past, and through the whole tragedy, the motif of Denmark-prison passes, set by the words of the honest officer Marcellus in the first act of the tragedy: "Something has rotted in the Danish kingdom" (act I, scene IV). The prince comes to realize the hostility, the "dislocation" of the world around him: "The century has been shaken - and worst of all, / That I was born to restore it" (act I, scene V). Hamlet knows that it is his duty to punish evil, but his idea of evil no longer corresponds to the straightforward laws of tribal revenge. Evil for him is not reduced to the crime of Claudius, whom he ultimately punishes; evil is spilled in the world around, and Hamlet realizes that one person is not capable of confronting the whole world. This internal conflict leads him to think about the futility of life, about suicide.
The fundamental difference between Hamlet from the heroes of the previous tragedy of revenge in that he is able to look at himself from the outside, to think about the consequences of his actions. Hamlet's main sphere of activity is thought, and the sharpness of his self-analysis is akin to Montaigne's close self-observation. But Montaigne called for the introduction human life in proportionate boundaries and painted a person occupying a middle position in life. Shakespeare paints not only a prince, that is, a person standing at the highest level of society, on which the fate of his country depends; Shakespeare, in accordance with the literary tradition, draws an outstanding nature, large in all its manifestations. Hamlet is a hero born of the spirit of the Renaissance, but his tragedy testifies to the fact that at its late stage the ideology of the Renaissance is in crisis. Hamlet undertakes the work of revising and reevaluating not only medieval values, but also the values of humanism, and the illusory nature of humanistic ideas about the world as a kingdom of unlimited freedom and direct action is revealed.
Central story line Hamlet is reflected in a kind of mirror: the lines of two more young heroes, each of which sheds a new light on Hamlet's situation. The first is the line of Laertes, who, after the death of his father, finds himself in the same position as Hamlet after the appearance of the Ghost. Laertes, in the general opinion, is a "worthy young man", he perceives the lessons of Polonius's common sense and acts as the bearer of established morality; he takes revenge on the murderer of his father, not disdaining collusion with Claudius. The second is the line of Fortinbras; despite the fact that he owns a small place on the stage, his significance for the play is very great. Fortinbras - the prince who occupied the empty Danish throne, the hereditary throne of Hamlet; this is a man of action, a decisive politician and military leader, he realized himself after the death of his father, the Norwegian king, in precisely those areas that remain inaccessible to Hamlet. All the characteristics of Fortinbras are directly opposed to those of Laertes, and it can be said that the image of Hamlet is placed between them. Laertes and Fortinbras are normal, ordinary avengers, and the contrast with them makes the reader feel the exceptional behavior of Hamlet, because the tragedy depicts precisely the exceptional, the great, the sublime.
Since the Elizabethan theater was poor in scenery and external effects of the theatrical spectacle, the strength of its impact on the audience depended mainly on the word. Shakespeare is the greatest poet in history in English and his greatest reformer; the word in Shakespeare is fresh and succinct, and in Hamlet it is striking stylistic richness of the play. It is mostly written in blank verse, but in a number of scenes the characters speak prose. Shakespeare uses metaphors especially subtly to create a general atmosphere of tragedy. Critics note the presence of three groups of leitmotifs in the play. Firstly, these are images of a disease, an ulcer that wears away a healthy body - the speech of all actors contain images of decay, decay, decay, working to create the theme of death. Secondly, the images of female debauchery, fornication, fickle Fortune, reinforcing the theme of female infidelity passing through the tragedy and at the same time pointing to the main philosophical problem of the tragedy - the contrast between appearance and the true essence of the phenomenon. Thirdly, these are numerous images of weapons and military equipment associated with war and violence - they emphasize the active side of Hamlet's character in the tragedy. The entire arsenal of artistic means of tragedy is used to create its numerous images, to embody the main tragic conflict - the loneliness of a humanistic person in the desert of a society in which there is no place for justice, reason, dignity. Hamlet is the first reflecting hero in world literature, the first hero who experiences a state of alienation, and the roots of his tragedy are in different eras were perceived differently.
For the first time, the naive audience interest in Hamlet as a theatrical spectacle was replaced by attention to the characters at the turn of the 18th-19th centuries. I.V. Goethe, a zealous admirer of Shakespeare, in the novel "Wilhelm Meister" (1795) interpreted Hamlet as "a beautiful, noble, highly moral being, devoid of the strength of feeling that makes a hero, he perishes under a burden that he could neither bear nor throw off" . I.V. Goethe Hamlet is a sentimental-elegiac nature, a thinker who is not up to the task of great deeds.
Romantics explained the inactivity of the first in a series of "superfluous people" (they were later "lost", "angry") by excessive thinking, the collapse of the unity of thought and will. S. T. Coleridge in Shakespeare's Lectures (1811-1812) writes: "Hamlet hesitates due to natural sensitivity and hesitates, held by reason, which makes him turn effective forces in search of a speculative solution." As a result, the Romantics presented Hamlet as the first literary hero, consonant with modern man in his preoccupation with introspection, which means that this image is a prototype. modern man at all.
G. Hegel wrote about the ability of Hamlet - as well as other most vivid Shakespearean characters - to look at oneself from the outside, treat oneself objectively, as an artistic character, and act as an artist.
Don Quixote and Hamlet were the most important "eternal images" for the Russian culture XIX century. V.G. Belinsky believed that Hamlet's idea consists "in the weakness of the will, but only as a result of disintegration, and not by its nature. By nature, Hamlet is a strong man ... He is great and strong in his weakness, because a strong man in his revolt." V.G. Belinsky and A.I. Herzen saw in Hamlet a helpless but stern judge of his society, a potential revolutionary; I.S. Turgenev and L.N. Tolstoy - a hero, rich in mind, of no use to anyone.
Psychologist L.S. Vygotsky, bringing the final act of the tragedy to the fore in his analysis, emphasized the connection between Hamlet and other world: "Hamlet is a mystic, this determines not only his state of mind on the threshold of a double being, two worlds, but also his will in all its manifestations."
The English writers B. Shaw and M. Murray explained Hamlet's slowness by unconscious resistance to the barbaric law of tribal vengeance. Psychoanalyst E. Jones showed that Hamlet is a victim of the Oedipus complex. Marxist criticism saw him as an anti-Machiavellian, a fighter for the ideals of bourgeois humanism. For Catholic K.S. Lewis Hamlet - "Evrimen", an ordinary person, suppressed by the idea of original sin. In literary criticism, a whole gallery of mutually exclusive Hamlets: an egoist and pacifist, a misogynist, a brave hero, a melancholic incapable of action, the highest embodiment of the Renaissance ideal and an expression of the crisis of humanistic consciousness - all this is a Shakespearean hero. In the process of understanding the tragedy, Hamlet, like Don Quixote, broke away from the text of the work and acquired the meaning of a "supertype" (Yu.
Today, in Western Shakespeare studies, the focus is not on "Hamlet", but on other plays by Shakespeare - "Measure for Measure", "King Lear", "Macbeth", "Othello", also, each in its own way, consonant with modernity, since in each Shakespeare's play poses the eternal questions of human existence. And each play contains something that determines the exclusivity of Shakespeare's influence on all subsequent literature. The American literary critic H. Bloom defines his author's position as "disinterest", "freedom from any ideology": "He has neither theology, nor metaphysics, nor ethics, and less political theory than modern critics "read" into him. According to sonnets it can be seen that, unlike his character Falstaff, he had a superego, unlike the Hamlet of the final act, he did not cross the boundaries of earthly existence, unlike Rosalind, he did not have the ability to control his own life at will. invented them, we can assume that he deliberately set certain limits for himself. Fortunately, he was not King Lear and refused to go crazy, although he could perfectly imagine madness, like everything else. His wisdom is endlessly reproduced in our sages from Goethe to Freud, although Shakespeare himself refused to be known as a sage"; "You can't confine Shakespeare to the English Renaissance, just as you can't confine the Prince of Denmark to his play."
