The plot and history of the creation of William Shakespeare's tragedy "Hamlet"
"Hamlet" stands apart even in Shakespeare's brilliant legacy. The main character of the play is a man not only of strong passions, but also of high intelligence, a man who reflects on the meaning of life, on ways to fight evil. This makes the play similar to the dramaturgy of the 20th century.
The pre-Shakespearean play about Hamlet, which belonged to the genre, as they said then, of “the tragedy of thunder and blood,” has not reached us. The story of Hamlet is based on a Danish legend, first recorded at the end of the 12th century by the Danish chronicler Saxo Grammaticus. In the ancient times of paganism - so says Saxo Grammaticus - the ruler of Jutland was killed during a feast by his brother Feng, who then married his widow. The son of the murdered man, young Hamlet, decided to take revenge for the murder of his father. To gain time and appear safe in the eyes of the treacherous Feng. Hamlet pretended to be mad: he rolled around in the mud, waved his arms like wings, and crowed like a rooster.
All his actions spoke of “complete mental stupor,” but his speeches contained “bottomless cunning,” and no one was able to understand the hidden meaning of his words. A friend of Feng (the future Shakespeare's Claudius), “a man more self-confident than reasonable” (the future Shakespeare's Polonius), undertook to check whether Hamlet was truly insane. To eavesdrop on Hamlet's conversation with his mother, this courtier hid under the straw lying in the corner. But Hamlet was careful. Entering his mother, he first searched the room and found the hidden spy. Hamlet killed the courtier, cut his corpse into pieces, boiled them and threw them to be eaten by pigs. Then he returned to his mother, “pierced her heart” for a long time with bitter reproaches and left her crying and grieving. Feng sent Hamlet to England, accompanied by two courtiers (Shakespeare's future Rosencrantz and Guildenstern), secretly handing them a letter to the English king asking him to kill Hamlet. As in Shakespeare's tragedy, Hamlet replaced the letter, and the English king sent two courtiers who accompanied Hamlet to execution instead. The English king kindly received Hamlet, talked with him a lot and marveled at his wisdom. Hamlet married the daughter of the English king. He then returned to Jutland, where during a feast he made Feng and the courtiers drunk and set the palace on fire. The courtiers died in the fire. Hamlet cut off Feng's head. Thus Hamlet triumphed over his enemies.
In 1576, the French writer Belfort retold this ancient legend in his Tragic Tales. In the 1680s, a play about Hamlet, probably written by playwright Thomas Kyd, was staged on the London stage. This play is lost. The ghost of Hamlet's father was brought out in it (that's all we know about this play). These were the sources from which Shakespeare created his Hamlet in 1601.
A huge number of books and articles have been written about this tragedy, many theories have been put forward trying to explain the character of Hamlet and his actions. But researchers are doomed to wander forever in the dark until they turn to the era of Shakespeare, reflected in his tragedy. The point here, of course, is not that Hamlet is supposedly a weak person from birth. After all, he himself says that he has “will and strength.” The question is much deeper. Shakespeare's time gave birth to humanist thinkers who, seeing the surrounding lies and untruths and dreaming of other, fair human relationships, at the same time acutely felt their powerlessness to realize this dream in reality. Thomas More placed his ideal state on an unknown island, but did not and could not indicate the path to this island. He called it Utopia, which in Greek means “the land that does not exist.” And the brighter Utopia shone for More, the darker the surrounding reality became for him. “The whole world is a prison,” wrote More. Shakespeare's Hamlet repeats the same words. We have already mentioned that Hamlet calls man “the beauty of the universe, the crown of all living things.” But around him in the royal castle he sees people who are rude and rigid in their stupid complacency:
...What does a person mean?
When his deepest desires -
Food and sleep? Animal - that's all.
The hero of the tragedy Hamlet is a leading man of his time. He is a student at the University of Wittenberg, which was a leading university in Shakespeare's era. Hamlet's progressive worldview is manifested in his philosophical views. In his reasoning one can feel glimpses of elemental materialism and the overcoming of religious illusions.
Hamlet's reflection and hesitation, which became a hallmark of the character of this hero, was caused by an internal shock from the “sea of disasters,” which entailed doubt in the moral and philosophical principles that seemed unshakable to him.
The case is waiting, but Hamlet hesitates; more than once throughout the play, Hamlet had the opportunity to punish Claudius. Why, for example, does he not strike when Claudius is praying alone? Therefore, the researchers found that in this case, according to ancient beliefs, the soul goes to heaven, and Hamlet needs to send it to hell. In fact of the matter! If Laertes had been Hamlet, he would not have missed the opportunity. “Both worlds are despicable for me,” he says, and this is the tragedy of his situation. The psychological duality of Hamlet's consciousness is of a historical nature: its cause is the dual state of a contemporary, in whose consciousness voices suddenly began to speak and the forces of other times began to act.
Although the death of a person is tragic, yet the tragedy has its content not in death, but in the moral, ethical death of a person, what led him on a fatal path that ends in death.
“In this case, Hamlet’s true tragedy lies in the fact that he, a man of the most beautiful spiritual qualities, broke down. When he saw the terrible sides of life - deceit, betrayal, murder of loved ones, he lost faith in people, love, life lost its value for him. Pretending to be insane, he is actually on the verge of madness from the realization of how monstrous people are - traitors, incestuous people, perjurers, murderers, flatterers and hypocrites. He gains courage to fight, but he can only look at life with sorrow.”
What was the cause of Hamlet's spiritual tragedy? His honesty, intelligence, sensitivity, belief in ideals. If he were like Claudius, Laertes, Polonius, he could live like them, deceiving, pretending, adapting to the world of evil.
But he could not reconcile, and how to fight, and most importantly, how to defeat, destroy evil, he did not know. The cause of Hamlet's tragedy, therefore, is rooted in the nobility of his nature.
“The tragedy of Hamlet is the tragedy of man’s knowledge of evil. For the time being, the existence of the Danish prince was serene: he lived in a family illuminated by the mutual love of his parents, he himself fell in love and enjoyed the reciprocity of a lovely girl, had pleasant friends, was passionate about science, loved the theater, wrote poetry; A great future awaited him - to become a sovereign and rule an entire people.” But suddenly everything began to fall apart. At the dawn of time, my father died. Before Hamlet had time to survive the grief, a second blow befell him: the mother, who seemed to love his father so much, less than two months later married the brother of the deceased and shared the throne with him. And the third blow: Hamlet learned that his father was killed by his own brother in order to take possession of the crown and his wife.
Is it surprising that Hamlet experienced the deepest shock: after all, everything that made life valuable to him collapsed before his eyes. He had never been so naive as to think that there were no misfortunes in life. And yet his thoughts were largely fueled by illusory ideas.
The shock experienced by Hamlet shook his faith in man and gave rise to a duality of his consciousness.
Hamlet sees two betrayals of people connected by family and blood ties: his mother and the king's brother. If people who should be closest to each other violate the laws of kinship, then what can you expect from others? This is the root of the dramatic change in Hamlet's attitude towards Ophelia. “The example of his mother leads him to a sad conclusion: women are too weak to withstand the harsh tests of life. Hamlet renounces Ophelia also because love can distract him from the task of revenge."
Hamlet is ready for action, but the situation turned out to be more difficult than one might imagine. The direct fight against evil becomes an impossible task for some time. The direct conflict with Claudius and other events unfolding in the play are inferior in their significance to the spiritual drama of Hamlet, which is highlighted. It is impossible to understand its meaning if we proceed only from Hamlet’s individual data or keep in mind his desire to avenge the murder of his father. Hamlet's internal drama consists of the fact that he repeatedly torments himself for inaction, understands that words cannot help matters, but does nothing specifically.
Hamlet reveals the moral torment of a person called to action, thirsting for action, but acting impulsively, only under the pressure of circumstances; experiencing a discord between thought and will.
When Hamlet becomes convinced that the king will commit reprisals against him, he talks differently about the discord between will and action. Now he comes to the conclusion that “thinking too much about the outcome” is “bestial oblivion or a pathetic skill.”
Hamlet is certainly irreconcilable to evil, but he does not know how to fight it. Hamlet does not recognize his struggle as a political struggle. It has a predominantly moral meaning for him.
Hamlet is a lonely fighter for justice. He fights against his enemies with their own means. The contradiction in the hero’s behavior is that to achieve his goal he resorts to the same, if you like, immoral methods as his opponents. He pretends, is cunning, seeks to find out the secret of his enemy, deceives and, paradoxically, for the sake of a noble goal, he finds himself guilty of the death of several people. Claudius is responsible for the death of only one former king. Hamlet kills (though unintentionally) Polonius, sends Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to certain death, kills Laertes and, finally, the king; he is also indirectly responsible for Ophelia's death. “But in the eyes of everyone he remains morally pure, for he pursued noble goals and the evil that he committed was always a response to the machinations of his opponents.” Polonius dies at the hands of Hamlet. This means that Hamlet acts as an avenger for the very thing that he does to another.
Hamlet's only friend is the poor student Horatio.
Even before meeting the Ghost, Hamlet looks with disgust at the reality around him:
O abomination! Like an unweeded garden.
Give free rein to the grass and it will become overgrown with weeds.
With the same undividedness the whole world
Rough beginnings filled.
The Ghost's story about the vile murder finally opens Hamlet's eyes to the crime of the world around him. He constantly returns to the idea that everything around him is rushing him to speed up his revenge. Hamlet carries out his personal revenge by killing Claudius. But the big task, which Hamlet himself is only vaguely aware of - the transformation of reality - remains beyond his strength. He does not see the path to this transformation, just as Shakespeare and other humanists of that era did not see this path. And the reason here was, of course, not in their subjective qualities, but in the objectively inevitable and independent of them historical limitations of their consciousness as people of the 16th century. They could only dream of fair human relations.
This discord between dream and reality often gave rise to a feeling of deep sorrow, painful dissatisfaction with oneself, and anxious anxiety. Hamlet is all in confusion, all in search. He is impetuous, easily moves from one mood to another. Each time he appears before us in a new state: either he grieves for his father, then, overcome by despair, he turns to the Phantom with the same insoluble question for him: “What should we do?”, then he warmly greets Horatio, then he mocks Polonius, then (after the “mousetrap” scene) he laughs at the exposed king... At the same time, Hamlet is by no means a reckless “dreamer” looking at life through a “romantic fog.” He sees life with clear eyes: otherwise he would not suffer so much. He is astute in the vigilance of his observations: for example, he immediately guesses that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern were sent to him by Claudius and that Polonius is eavesdropping on his conversation with Ophelia.
Hamlet is extremely sincere. “It “seems” to me to be unknown,” he says to Gertrude. His speech itself is simple and genuine, and there are especially many paraphrased folk proverbs and sayings in it.
Throughout the entire tragedy, Hamlet is a passionate, indignant accuser. “Every word of Hamlet is a sharp arrow doused with poison,” Belinsky wrote in his wonderful article “Hamlet,” Shakespeare’s drama. Mochalov
as Hamlet." Hamlet’s strength lies in the fact that he raised the question of the injustice of the world around him, which he calls a prison, “and an exemplary one at that, with many prison cells, dungeons and dungeons,” and how he could and how he could expose this world.
Having read the tragedy, it is not difficult to notice that the aristocratic castle of Shakespeare’s era clearly emerges through the outlines of the ancient Danish castle. The nephew of the castle owner goes to university, where he gets acquainted with books such as “Utopia” by Thomas More. Returning to the castle, he looks at his surroundings with different eyes and feels like a stranger in the castle. Capital actors come to this castle. The owner of the castle is having fun: “...and dances until he drops, and drinks, and revels until the morning.” There is also the old seneschal of the castle, who once studied at the university and even played in a student amateur performance of Julius Caesar (in one of the “school dramas” of the 16th century), and the seneschal’s daughter, picking flowers in the meadows located near the castle itself . Before us are living people of Shakespeare's England. How typical, for example, is Horatio, one of the “university minds” of the Renaissance, who immersed himself in the study of Roman antiquities: having seen a ghost with his own eyes, Horatio first of all remembers those miracles that supposedly took place in ancient Rome when Julius was killed Caesar; at the end of the tragedy, Horatio calls himself a “Roman.”
To imagine Hamlet more clearly, you need to compare him with other faces of the tragedy, for example, with Laertes. After all, Laertes is a “good fellow” in his own way, and Hamlet personally treats him well. But Laertes is alien to those thoughts and feelings that excite Hamlet. He lives, so to speak, in the old fashioned way, like other young nobles of his time. Nothing can greatly excite his heart except blood feud, for the sake of which he is ready to choose any means. His feelings are not deep. It is not for nothing that Hamlet does not attach much importance to Laertes’ lamentations over Ophelia’s grave. In the overall picture, the works of Hamlet and Laertes are opposed to each other. Gertrude also does not understand Hamlet, although she loves him in her own way. Having listened to Hamlet's reproaches and seemed to agree with him, Gertrude still does not break with Claudius. Gertrude, of course, knew nothing about the murder of her first husband. (“The murder of the king?” - she repeats with bewilderment the words of Hamlet who reproaches her). And only at the end of the tragedy, suddenly realizing the monstrous truth, Gertrude drinks the poisoned wine.
Female images in the tragedy “Hamlet” play a fundamental role.
In this Shakespeare tragedy, the hero's grief is caused by his mother's hasty marriage. The lines spoken by the actor who played the queen are specially intended for her.
Betrayal cannot live in my chest.
The second spouse is a curse and a shame!
The second one is for those who killed the first one...
Those who remarry,
Self-interest alone attracts, not love;
And I will kill the dead again,
When I let someone else hug me.
Critics argue about which sixteen lines Hamlet inserted into The Murder of Gonzago. Most likely those that contain direct reproaches of the mother. But no matter how true this assumption is, Hamlet, after hearing the words of the old play quoted here, asks his mother: “Madam, how do you like this play?” - and hears in response restrained, but quite significant words, corresponding to Gertrude’s current situation: “This woman is too generous with assurances, in my opinion.”
One might ask why Hamlet didn’t tell his mother anything before? He waited for the hour when he would be sure of Claudius' crime. Now, Hamlet reveals to her that she is the wife of the one who killed her husband. When Gertrude reproaches her son for committing a “bloody and crazy act” by killing Polonius, Hamlet responds:
A little worse than the damned sin
After killing the king, marry the king's brother.
But Hamlet cannot blame his mother for the death of her husband, since he knows who the murderer was. However, if earlier Hamlet saw only his mother’s betrayal, now she is tainted by marriage to her husband’s murderer. Hamlet puts his murder of Polonius, the crime of Claudius, and his mother’s betrayal on the same criminal scale.
You should pay attention to how Hamlet pronounces his addresses to his mother. You have to listen to the intonation of his tirades:
Don't break your hands. Quiet! I want
Break your heart; I'll break it
When it is accessible to insight,
When it's a damn habit
Not hardened through and through against feelings.
According to Hamlet, Gertrude did such a thing,
Which stains the face of shame,
Calls innocence a liar, on the forehead
Holy love replaces the rose with pestilence;
Transforms marriage vows
In the player's promises; such a thing.
Which is made of flesh contracts
Takes away the soul, transforms faith
In a confusion of words; the face of heaven is burning;
And this stronghold and dense bulk
With a sad look, as if before a court,
Mourns for him.
The last three lines require clarification: Hamlet calls the Earth “a stronghold and a dense bulk.” At the end of his speech, Hamlet mentions heaven.
Hamlet does not simply shower his mother with reproaches. It's about something more. Here we must remember what was said above about the breadth of Shakespeare’s views, for whom every tragedy is connected with the entire world order.
Accusing his mother, Hamlet says that her betrayal is a direct violation of morality. It is equivalent to other similar violations: disgrace of modesty, hypocritical trampling of innocence; These are the vices of private life, but similar things happen; when treaties are violated and instead of religion they are limited to serving it only in words. Gertrude's behavior is equated by Hamlet to those violations of the world order that make the whole Earth tremble, and the heavens are covered with shame for humanity. This is the truly large-scale meaning of Hamlet’s speeches.
Full of rhetoric, the prince's speech burns with true anger, there is no trace of the weakness usually attributed to him. It is not the son who speaks to the mother, but the judge, accusing her in the name of heaven and all the laws of earthly life.
Hamlet can be reproached for taking on too much. Let us remember, however, his words: he is a scourge and an executor of the highest will. Let us also not forget one of the laws of Shakespearean drama. Hamlet's speeches here are more than his personal opinion. They express an assessment of Gertrude's second marriage from the point of view of the highest laws of natural morality. The playwright, therefore, entrusted Hamlet with the mission of being a defender of the foundations of universal morality.
The entire tone of Hamlet's conversation with his mother is characterized by cruelty. The appearance of the Phantom intensifies his thirst for revenge. But now its implementation is prevented by sending it to England. Suspecting a trick on the part of the king, Hamlet expresses confidence that he can eliminate the danger. The reflective Hamlet gives way to the active Hamlet.
Ophelia occupies a special place in the overall picture of the work. She, without realizing it, becomes a weapon in the hands of the worst enemies of the person she loves. Ophelia's fate is more unfortunate than the fate of Juliet and Desdemona, who nevertheless had their own short period of happiness. Ophelia calls herself “the poorest of women.”
If the image of his mother evokes a feeling of cruelty in Hamlet, then the image of Ophelia evokes a feeling of love in him.
The image of Ophelia is one of the most striking examples of Shakespeare's dramatic skill. She pronounces only 158 lines of poetic and prose text. Shakespeare managed to fit a whole girl’s life into these one and a half hundred lines.
Hamlet loves Ophelia, the meek daughter of the courtier Polonius. This girl differs from other Shakespearean heroines, who are characterized by determination and a willingness to fight for their happiness: obedience to her father remains the main feature of her character. This is partly because she sees her father as an ally: he wanted her to marry the prince.
Ophelia is depicted in her relationship with her brother, father, Hamlet. But the heroine’s personal life from the very beginning turns out to be tightly constrained by the mores of the royal palace.
“I was informed that very often,” Polonius tells his daughter, “Hamlet “began to share his leisure time with you.” Polonius was informed of the prince's meetings with his daughter. He spies on her, as well as on his son, and it is in such an atmosphere that Ophelia’s love for Hamlet arises. They immediately try to prevent this feeling.
Ophelia's love is her misfortune. Although her father is a close associate of the king, his minister, she is nevertheless not of royal blood and therefore is not a match for her lover. Her brother and father repeat this in every possible way.
From the very first appearance of Ophelia, the main conflict of her fate is indicated: her father and brother demand that she renounce her love for Hamlet.
“I will obey you, my lord,” Ophelia answers Polonius. This immediately reveals her lack of will and independence. Ophelia stops accepting Hamlet's letters and does not allow him to visit her. With the same humility, she agrees to meet with Hamlet, knowing that their conversation will be overheard by the king and Polonius.
In the tragedy there is not a single love scene between Hamlet and Ophelia. But there is a scene of their breakup. It is full of amazing drama.
Finishing his thoughts expressed in the monologue “to be or not to be,” Hamlet notices Ophelia praying, he immediately puts on the mask of a madman. Ophelia wants to return to Hamlet the gifts she received from him. Hamlet objects: “I gave you nothing.” Ophelia's response reveals something about their past relationship:
No, my prince, you gave; and words,
Breathed so sweetly that doubly
The gift was valuable...
Ophelia says that Hamlet has ceased to be kind and courteous and has become unfriendly and unkind. Hamlet treats her rudely and embitteredly. He confuses her by admitting: “I loved you once” and immediately refuting himself: “You shouldn’t have believed me... I didn’t love you.”
Hamlet unleashes a stream of accusations against women on Ophelia. Their beauty has nothing to do with virtue - a thought that rejects one of the provisions of humanism, which affirmed the unity of the ethical and aesthetic, goodness and beauty. The world is such that even if a woman is virtuous, she cannot avoid slander. Hamlet also attacks fake beauty: “...God gave you one face, and you make yourself another; you dance, you jump, and chirp, and you give nicknames to God’s creatures, and you pass off your dissipation as ignorance. No, I’ve had enough, it drove me crazy.” The condemnation of women began with the mother.
The attacks against women are not divorced from Hamlet's general negative attitude towards society. Ophelia's persistent advice to go to a monastery is associated with the prince's deep conviction about the depravity of the world. Condemning women, Hamlet does not forget about the stronger sex: “We are all inveterate rogues; Don't trust any of us."
Ophelia is by no means a simpleton. She is not stupid, as can be judged by her witty response to her brother’s advice to abandon Hamlet:
Don't be like a sinful shepherd that others
Points to the sky the thorny path,
And he himself, a carefree and empty reveler,
Success follows a blossoming path.
This is not only a rebuff to his brother, but also a hint of what he himself is like. She understands his nature. The second time she discovers her mind is by remembering what Hamlet was like before he lost his mind. Hamlet's last meeting with Ophelia takes place on the evening of the performance of The Murder of Gonzago. Before the start of the performance, Hamlet sits down at her feet. He speaks harshly to her, to the point of indecency. Ophelia patiently endures everything, confident in his madness.
After this scene we don't see Ophelia for a long time. During this time, Hamlet kills her father. She appears before us having already lost her mind.
The tragedy depicts two types of madness: imaginary in Hamlet and real in Ophelia. This emphasizes once again that Hamlet has by no means lost his mind. Ophelia lost it. She experienced two shocks. The first was the loss of a loved one and his madness, the second was the death of her father, killed by her lover. Her mind could not accommodate the fact that the man she loved so much turned out to be her father's killer.
In Shakespeare's theater, madness served as a reason for the audience to laugh. However, the scene of Ophelia's madness is written in such a way that it is difficult to imagine even the most rude and uneducated audience laughing at the poor girl's misfortune. Ophelia's behavior is pathetic. It seems that the audience at Shakespeare's theater was imbued with sympathy for the unfortunate heroine.
Who cannot feel her grief when she says: “You must be patient; but I can’t help but cry when I think that they put him in the cold ground.”
Ophelia's madness has its own "consistency" of ideas. The first, naturally, is the horror that she lost her father. This sounds in the song she sings:
Oh, he's dead, lady,
He is cold dust;
There is green turf at the heads;
A pebble in my feet.
The second thought is about her trampled love. She sings a song about Valentine's Day, when boys and girls meet and love begins between them; However, she sings not about innocent love, but about how men deceive girls.
The third motive: “the world is evil” and people need to be appeased. For this purpose, she distributes flowers: “Here is rosemary, this is for memories, .. and here is the Trinity color, .. this is for thoughts,” “here is rue for you; and for me too; it is called the grass of grace...”
And as a final chord, thoughts about my father again:
And he won't come back to us?
And he won't come back to us?
No, he's gone.
He left the world...
Just as the memory of the late king hangs over the whole tragedy, so Ophelia does not leave the memory for quite a long time. We hear a poetic account of how she died; It is noteworthy that before her death she continued to sing and passed away in an unusually beautiful way. This final poetic touch is extremely important to complete the poetic image of Ophelia.
Finally, at her open grave we hear Hamlet admit that he loved her as forty thousand brothers cannot love! That is why the scenes where Hamlet rejects Ophelia are imbued with special drama. The cruel words that he says to her are difficult for him, he pronounces them with despair, because, loving her, he realizes that she has become a tool of his enemy against him and to carry out revenge he must give up love. Hamlet suffers because he is forced to hurt Ophelia and, suppressing pity, is merciless in his condemnation of women. It is noteworthy, however, that he personally does not blame her for anything and seriously advises her to leave the vicious world for a monastery.
Let us note that, no matter how different they are in nature, they experience the same shock. For Ophelia, as for Hamlet, the greatest grief is the death, or rather the murder, of her father!
The relationship between Ophelia and Hamlet forms, as it were, an independent drama within the framework of a great tragedy. Before Hamlet, Shakespeare portrayed in Romeo and Juliet a great love that ended tragically due to the fact that the blood feud that separated the Montague and Capulet families prevented the union of two loving hearts. But there was nothing tragic in the relationship between the two Verona lovers. Their relationship was harmonious; in Hamlet, the relationship between lovers is destroyed. Here, too, but in a different way, revenge turns out to be an obstacle to the unity of the prince and the girl he loves. Hamlet depicts the tragedy of giving up love. At the same time, their fathers play a fatal role for lovers. Ophelia's father orders her to break up with Hamlet, Hamlet breaks up with Ophelia in order to devote himself entirely to revenge for his father.
Ophelia's father, Polonius, is two-faced. He likes to pretend to be a chatty simpleton, but no less likes to spy and eavesdrop. Osric's eloquence conceals cunning. It is no coincidence that Claudius sends Osric to challenge Hamlet to a duel, the outcome of which is predetermined. Osric is the judge of the duel, and he knew that Laertes' weapon was poisoned. At the end of the tragedy, Osric, who is ready to serve any master, solemnly announces the approach of Fortinbras. Osric is a typical representative of the court environment.
The criminal Claudius, Hamlet's main enemy, is not an outright "villain" of melodrama. He is cunning and crafty. “You can smile and smile and be a scoundrel,” says Hamlet about him. Claudius managed to bewitch Gertrude; he skillfully guides Laertes for his own purposes. “Playing with complacency, he calls Hamlet his son, probably being ironic in his heart. At times, Claudius finds himself in a “repentant” mood, but not a very deep one.” This is on the one hand.
Claudius is a Machiavellian, a brilliant embodiment of the ideas contained in the treatise “The Prince”, where, for example, it is said: “Those whose course of action corresponds to the peculiarities of the time preserve their well-being.” Claudius is a Renaissance villain, and his “modus operandi” is built on will, energy and cunning and is aimed at preserving the integrity of the state. Hamlet, in his thirst for justice, lost sight of Fortinbras, who wanted to take Denmark into his hands. Fortinbras, the enemy of Hamlet's father, claims Danish territory and, after the death of all the heroes of the tragedy, receives it without any effort. Thus, Claudius, on the other hand, even plays a positive role if we consider him from a state point of view. “Cruelty is used well in those cases<...>when it is manifested immediately and for reasons of safety” - for this, the prototype of Claudius Fengon invented the story of the king’s attempt on the life of his wife. Claudius' words are one thing, actions are another, thoughts are another. Claudius is sweet and kind in words, but in deeds he is cunning. He would have remained a winner if he had remembered another remark of Machiavelli: “anyone who does not value life can make an attempt on the life of the sovereign, so there is no sure way to avoid death at the hands of a possessed person.”
Hamlet was exactly such a person: the desire for retribution acquired such power over him that Claudius had no chance of salvation.
Thus, Shakespeare’s Hamlet is not a primitive “avenger”, which is described in all the interpretations of this plot that preceded his play, and that duality, those complexes, those painful thoughts, that tragic insolubility and hopelessness of his situation (situation-trap, situation-“ mousetraps”, for not only and not so much Claudius falls into the “mousetrap”, but, undoubtedly, first of all, Hamlet himself) that are seen in his fate - they, of course, were laid down, “programmed” by his creator. The strange paradox of this character is that, having described it seemingly extremely reliably, Shakespeare nevertheless, as it turned out over the years, created a wonderful, unique and universal scheme in its own way, a certain model that everyone is “born with intelligence and talent” - is free to fill with your own content. Hence the multiplicity of interpretations, which has no analogues in the entire history of world theater, sometimes mutually exclusive, but still in some important way, as a rule, remaining faithful to the Shakespearean spirit, although sometimes not at all to the “letter”. Hence such multiplicity, such inexhaustibility of “Hamlet’s motifs” in the works of writers and poets of various eras and countries. But this will be discussed in the following chapters, where we will attempt to trace the evolution of the views of critics and actors on Shakespeare’s famous play.
The central image of the tragedy, which was staged in England in 1601-1602, was published in the first edition in 1603 under the title “The Tragic History of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. Works by William Shakespeare. The way it was presented several times by the actors... ... Literary encyclopedia
- (Scand. Amled, English Hamlet, French Hamlet) 1. hero of the Scandinavian tales of the sagas. This is a cunning avenger who for a long time pretended to be crazy in order to avoid the danger that threatened him and achieve his secret goal of taking revenge on his father’s killer. The legend about this... Literary heroes
Hamlet- Hamlet, Hamlet's (incorrectly Hamlet, Hamlet's). In the literary language of the 19th century it is used: Hamlet and Hamlet... Dictionary of difficulties of pronunciation and stress in modern Russian language
Modern encyclopedia
Hamlet- HAMLET, the hero of the tragedy of the same name by William Shakespeare; one of the eternal images, which has become a symbol of a reflective hero who does not dare to take a responsible action due to doubts about the correctness and moral impeccability of his action (one of the common... ... Illustrated Encyclopedic Dictionary
Or Amlet, mentioned in the chronicle of Saxa Grammar, was the son of the vassal Jutland king Horwendil and Queen Geruta, daughter of the Leir king Rorik. Hamlet's paternal uncle, Fenge, killed his brother and the king, took the throne himself and married the widow... ... Encyclopedia of Brockhaus and Efron
Twin, double Dictionary of Russian synonyms ... Synonym dictionary
HAMLET- (lit. character) But you, Ophelia, looked at Hamlet Without happiness, without love, goddess of beauty, (rfm.: poet) AB898 (I,14); Longing and sadness, suffering, hell itself, She transformed everything into beauty. Hamlet Epgrf. AB898 (I,382.1); READING HAMLET... Proper name in Russian poetry of the 20th century: dictionary of personal names
"Hamlet"- HAMLET (Hamlet), ballets based on the same plot. tragedies by W. Shakespeare: 1) Tragiko pantomimich. ballet in 5 acts. Comp. and ballet F. Clerico. 1788, t r San Benedetto, Venice. Ch. party Clerico. Fast. also: 1791, Livorno; 1793, Milan; 1793,… … Ballet. Encyclopedia
- (Hamlet) the hero of the tragedy of the same name by W. Shakespeare (1601, published 1603). Shakespeare portrayed G. as a thinker who questions traditional views. J. W. Goethe saw in G. a man of thought, and not of action, who was unable to bear the responsibility entrusted to him... Great Soviet Encyclopedia
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- Hamlet, Shakespeare W.. Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. Tragedy. Hamlet is the most famous play in the world. The idea of retribution, punishment, conscience, around which the mystical action of the tragedy is built, is almost captivating...
In one of the publications I came across very interesting notes to "Hamlet", several years later I discovered that they were available in electronic libraries (I stole them from lib.ru, www.lib.ru/SHAKESPEARE/hamlet5.txt). The author of the article, if I'm not mistaken, is Alexander Abramovich Anikst. In order to correspond to the theme of the community, we will focus on a fragment directly related to the history of the plot. So...
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This plot was a big deal and was repeatedly processed in
literature already before Shakespeare. The prototype of the hero was the semi-legendary prince
Amlet, whose name appears in one of the Icelandic sagas of Snorri Sturlason.
This suggests that the plot about this prince was probably the subject of a number of
ancient legendary stories.
The first literary monument to tell a saga of revenge
Amleta, written by the medieval Danish chronicler Saxon
Grammar (1150-1220). In his History of the Danes, written about 1200
in Latin, he reports that this story happened back in pagan times
times, that is, until 827, when Christianity was introduced in Denmark.
Thus, already before Saxo Grammar, the history of Amleth had a centuries-old
long ago, and probably no less than half a millennium passed before it
received literary fixation.
The reader will probably be interested to get acquainted with the first of
processing of the hero's story that has come down to us. Here's a summary of the saga
Amlete in Saxo's Grammar.
The Danish feudal lord Gorvendil became famous for his strength and courage. His glory
aroused the envy of the Norwegian king Koller, and he challenged him to a duel.
They agreed that all the wealth of the vanquished would go to the winner.
The duel ended in victory for Gorvendil, who killed Koller and received everything
his property. Then the Danish king Rerik gave his daughter to Gorvendil as a wife.
Gerut. From this marriage Amlet was born.
Gorwendil had a brother, Fengon, who was jealous of his success and had affection for him.
secret enmity against him. They both jointly ruled Jutland. Fengon became
fear that Gorvendil will take advantage of King Rerik's favor and
will seize power over all of Jutland. Despite the fact that for such
there were no sufficient grounds for suspicion, Fengon decided to get rid of
possible opponent. During one feast he openly attacked Gorwendil and
killed him in the presence of all the courtiers. To justify the murder, he stated that
as if he was defending the honor of Geruta, who had been insulted by her husband. Although it was
lies, no one began to refute his explanations. Dominion over Jutland
passed to Fengon, who married Geruta. It should be especially noted that in
in Saxo's story there is no grammar before this between Fengon and Geruta
there was no intimacy.
Amleth was still very young when Gorvendil was killed. However
Fengon feared that, as an adult, Amleth would take revenge on him for the death of his father. Young
the prince was smart and cunning. He guessed his uncle Fengon's fears. A
in order to ward off any suspicion of secret intentions against
Fengona, Amleth decided to pretend to be crazy. He soiled himself with mud and ran
through the streets with wild screams. Then some of the courtiers began to guess
that Amleth is only pretending to be mad. They advised to do so
Amlet met with a beautiful girl sent to him, who
was entrusted with seducing him with your caresses and discovering that he was by no means
gone crazy. But one of the courtiers warned Amleth. Moreover, it turned out
that the girl who was chosen for this purpose was in love with Amleth. She
also made him understand that they wanted to verify the authenticity of his madness. So
Thus, the first attempt to trap Amleth failed.
Then one of the courtiers suggested testing Amleth in this way:
Fengon will tell him that he is leaving, Amleth will be introduced to his mother, and perhaps he will
will reveal his secret plans to her, and Fengon’s adviser will overhear their conversation.
And so they did. However, Amlet guessed that all this was not without reason. Arriving at
mother, he behaved like a madman, crowed the rooster and jumped on the blanket,
flapping his arms like wings. But then he felt that under the blanket
someone is hidden. Drawing his sword, he immediately killed the man under the blanket.
advisor to the king, then cut his corpse into pieces and threw it into a sewer.
having accomplished all this, Amlet returned to his mother and began to reproach her for treason
Gorvendil and marriage with her husband's killer. Geruta repented of her guilt, and then
Amleth revealed to her that he wanted revenge on Fengon. Geruta blessed him
intention.
Since the spy was killed by Amlet, Fengon did not recognize anything and
this time. But Amleth's rampage frightened him, and he decided to get rid of him once and for all.
forever. For this purpose, he sent him, accompanied by two courtiers, to
England. The companions of Amleth were given tablets with a letter that they should
were secretly handed over to the English king. In the letter, Fengon asked to be executed
Amleth as soon as he lands in England. While sailing on a ship, while
his companions were sleeping, Amlet found the tablets and, having read what was there
It is written that he erased his name and replaced it with the names of the courtiers. Above
In addition, he added that allegedly Fengon was asking to marry the daughter of an Englishman to Amleth
king. The letter altered by Amlet had an effect: the courtiers were executed, and
he was betrothed to the daughter of the English king.
A year passed, and Amleth returned to Jutland, where he was considered dead. He
ended up at a funeral feast that was celebrated for him. Not at all embarrassed, Amleth
took part in the feast and gave drink to everyone present. When they are drunk,
collapsed on the floor and fell asleep, he covered everyone with a large carpet and nailed it to
floor so that no one could get out from under it. After that he set fire
the palace, and Fengon burned in the fire, and with him the entire clique of his entourage.
Saxo Grammaticus concluded this part of the story with the following “moral”:
"O brave Amleth, he is worthy of immortal glory! Having cunningly pretended
insane, he hid his mind from everyone, but although he pretended to be stupid, he
in fact, his intelligence surpassed that of ordinary people. It helped him
not only to protect oneself cunningly, but also to find a means of avenging
father. His skillful self-defense from danger and severe revenge for his parent
cause our admiration, and it is difficult to say why it should be more
praise - for intelligence or for courage."
The saga of Amleth does not end here. We learn further from the chronicler,
that he became king and ruled together with his wife, an English princess,
who was a worthy and faithful wife. After her death, Amlet married
warlike Scottish queen Germtrude, who was unfaithful to him and
left her husband in trouble. As ruler of Jutland, Amleth was a vassal
Danish crown. When Wiglet became king of Denmark after Rerik, he did not want
tolerate Amleth's independent behavior. A struggle arose between them, and
Wiglet killed Amleth in battle.
It is not difficult to see that the ancient saga contains all the basic elements
action of Shakespeare's tragedy. The differences concern only minor
details and ending. However, despite all the similarities in the plot, the ideological meaning
Scandinavian legend is completely different from Shakespeare's. The saga laid out
Saxo Grammaticus, quite in the spirit of the medieval robber morality
feudal knighthood. Regarding the character of ancient Amlet and Hamlet
Shakespeare, the only thing they have in common is that they are both men of great intelligence. But the warehouse
Their minds and thoughts are completely different, just as their moral concepts are different.
Seeking revenge for his father, Amleth does not hesitate at all. His whole life
dedicated to this one task only. She doesn't bother him at all, because
naturally follows from the harsh moral laws of the early Middle Ages, in the spirit
which he was raised.
After the invention of printing, a French publisher published
manuscript of the chronicle of Saxo Grammar. This got her attention
French writer Francois Belfort (1530-1583). This happened three s
half a century after the death of Saxo Grammar. History has entered
new period. Europe was experiencing a significant era called
Renaissance. Progressive people of this time, humanists, studied the past for
in order to learn from it lessons for the present and the future. Belfore
set out to create a collection of instructive “Tragic Stories”. In 1565
published the first part of his work, and eleven years later, in the fifth book
his "Tragic Stories" (1576), published in French the saga of
Amlet.
Belfore basically followed the story of the Danish chronicler. But along with
In this way he more expressively presented some of the motives of the plot. Three elements of it
were changed by him. First of all, he introduced the fact that between Fengon
and Geruta had a connection even during the life of her husband. Secondly, he strengthened
Geruta's role as her son's assistant in the matter of revenge. She is at his instigation
prepares everything necessary so that Amlet during the feast
dealt with the courtiers. The massacre itself is depicted somewhat differently. Prince and
in the story, Belforet covers the drunken courtiers with a carpet, but he does not burn them
them, but pierces them with pikes, which Geruta had prepared in advance. King
does not die with the courtiers. Even before the end of the feast, he retires to his
bedchamber. The prince follows him, lifts him out of bed and with one blow
sword cuts off his head, after which he exclaims in evil triumph: “Look!
don't forget to tell your brother, whom you treacherously killed, that you
his son sent him to the next world in order to console him, to give his soul eternal
peace among the blessed spirits and fulfill the duty that obliged me to avenge
him!" Belfore also tells the subsequent story of two marriages and death
Amleta.
An English translation of the story was published in London in 1608.
Belfore - "The History of Hamblet". In the last century it was believed that Shakespeare was
I was familiar with this translation even before it was printed and may have used it
when creating a tragedy. At present, this version is strongly rejected.
First of all, it is known that Shakespeare's tragedy was written years ago.
seven or eight years before this translation appeared, and it hardly lasted that long
would be unpublished. Secondly, Shakespeare made no use of this
translation. According to modern researchers, the English translation of the story
Belfort did not precede Shakespeare's tragedy, but was a consequence of its great
popularity, which prompted the story to be translated and published.
Shakespeare had no need to use Belforet's story in any
original, nor in translation, because there already existed a play based on the plot of “Hamlet”,
written by someone before him. The first mention of the tragedy dedicated to
"Hamlet", dates back to 1589, when Thomas Nash and one of his works
spoke ironically about “a bunch of Hamlets, scattering handfuls of tragic
monologues." In the diary of theater entrepreneur Philip Henslowe there is
record of a performance of the play "Hamlet" in 1594. Henslowe usually noted that there was
whether the staged play is new. And this entry does not have such a mark. Apparently
this was the same play that Thomas Nash mentioned. Finally, in 1596, Thomas
Lodge, in his essay "The Misfortunes of the Mind," described a "pale ghost" that
cried plaintively at the theater, like an oyster woman: “Hamlet, take revenge!”
What play are we talking about here? There is an opinion that it was a tragedy,
written by Shakespeare himself at the beginning of his dramatic career.
However, this assumption is rejected by the overwhelming majority
researchers. The first play about Hamlet was written by someone from
Shakespeare's predecessors. But by whom? The text of this early play has not survived,
therefore, it is not possible to establish its author through language analysis and
style. However, it cannot be said that there is no data to determine
authorship. The strongest evidence is the above review
Lodge. From it it turns out that a motive was introduced into the plot about Hamlet,
completely absent both in the Scandinavian saga and in its retelling by
Belfore. We mean ghost figures. In an ancient saga, the murder of a father
the prince was committed openly, and there was no secret connected with the death of the king.
was. Everyone knew about this, including the son of the murdered man. In pre-Shakespearean
In the English play, the plot was obviously different. We won't make a mistake
suggesting that the murder of the king was secret. This secret was exposed
a ghost that appeared before the prince and demanded that he take revenge
killer.
The introduction of a ghost is a dramatic device characteristic of
Shakespeare's predecessor Thomas Kyd (1557?-1594) belonged to the galaxy
playwrights who reformed English in the late 1580s
theater and in a short time created the artistic foundations of English drama
Renaissance. He was the creator of the genre of revenge tragedy. A striking example
This variety of drama was his "Spanish Tragedy" (c. 1587). This
the play established typical techniques of revenge tragedy, which are repeated in a number of
dramatic works of the era, including Hamlet.
Each dramatic genre has its own specific techniques, over time
acquiring the character of stamps. Tragedies of bloody revenge in their formal
signs had a number of common features. Comparing Kyd's "Spanish Tragedy" with
other works of this type, one can establish the following characteristic
dramatic motives. The plot begins with a treacherous secret murder. ABOUT
it is heralded by the ghost appearing at the beginning of the play. The ghost lays down the task
take revenge on someone close to you. However, the implementation of revenge encounters
obstacles that the avenger has to overcome before he
achieves his goal. His opponent is also not idle, trying to destroy
an avenger whose intentions he suspects. Kid also introduced into tragedy
revenge motive of love. This motive varied in different tragedies of that time,
including the situation where the avenger loves the daughter of the one he must kill (“Antonio
and Mellida" Marston). The same Kid wrote an introduction to drama like this
called "scenes on stage", when during the action some characters
play a play that has a plot related to the theme of the main
actions. Finally, a common technique for revenge tragedy has become
construction of an action in which the villain’s machinations are directed against
noble avenger, are turned against him.
If we now turn to Shakespeare's tragedy, we will see that in it
contains all the typical motives of a revenge tragedy developed in dramaturgy
Renaissance. Let's face it, Shakespeare didn't show any
originality. Most of these dramatic techniques were developed before
him, primarily Thomas Kyd. Comparing those works of Shakespeare,
which were created by him by reworking the plays of his predecessors
(e.g. "King John", "Henry IV", "Henry V", "King Lear"), criticism
discovered that the great playwright always left intact
the plot framework created by his predecessors. Since we know that
there was a tragedy about Hamlet, written before Shakespeare, then we can
there is every reason to assert that the pre-Shakespearean Hamlet already contained
the plot basis of the great tragedy. All that remains is to find out who the author was
pre-Shakespearean Hamlet. Researchers unanimously believe that the author
This tragedy could only be accomplished by Thomas Kyd.
Another one has something to do with the prehistory of Shakespearean tragedy.
play. In 1781, a tragedy was published in Germany called
"Punished fratricide, or Hamlet, Prince of Denmark." We managed to install
that the manuscript of this play dates back to 1710. Research into the question of
The origin of the play led to the following. Since the end of the 16th century, English actors
constantly toured in Germany. Apparently they brought with them
a play about Hamlet, which was subsequently translated into German.
Researchers of the 19th century were convinced that "Punished fratricide"
was a translation and adaptation of the pre-Shakespearean Hamlet. Thought
that this is generally a fairly close reproduction of T. Kyd's play about Hamlet.
A more careful comparison revealed a number of similarities between "Punished"
fratricide" and Shakespeare's text, which forced us to reconsider our opinion
Shakespeare scholars of the last century. "Punished Fratricide" contains both
elements of the pre-Shakespearean work, as well as individual details taken from
Shakespeare. Before us is a very complex text, partly reflecting
the plot as it was in Shakespeare's predecessors, and partially changed to suit
influenced by Shakespeare's tragedy. Currently, researchers do not believe
it is possible to consider “Punished fratricide” as a source of tragedy
Shakespeare, but individual elements of the text allow one to guess, at least
partly, what form tragedy had before Shakespeare. Particularly interesting
is that "Punished Fratricide" is preceded by a prologue. None
There is no prologue in the edition of Shakespeare's Hamlet. Prologue of "Punished"
fratricide" - in the spirit of revenge tragedies and, in particular, makes us remember
that "The Spanish Tragedy" by T. Kyd also opened with a prologue.
We have dwelled in such detail on this range of issues because the facts
indicate the popularity of the plot of Hamlet in the Renaissance theater.
Shakespeare's originality in this case, as in many others, was manifested
not at all in the invention of the plot. The plot was ready before Shakespeare
took over processing it. Despite the paucity of information about pre-Shakespearean
In Hamlet, one can still rightly assert that the early tragedy
was deprived of the philosophical depth that we find in the great
Shakespeare's creations. At the center of pre-Shakespearean tragedy was a moral
a problem embodied in the theme of revenge. In fact, one could even say that barely
Whether the question of revenge was a problem of a philosophical and ethical nature, rather it
stood before the hero simply as a difficult practical task.
Shakespeare, in his interpretation of the plot, greatly expanded its scope. Although
the question of revenge plays an important role in his tragedy, however, here he is not
is the plot motive that suppresses the others. On the contrary, like us
we will see further, questions of a broader philosophical nature in the tragedy
Shakespeare, to a certain extent, even muted the theme of revenge, putting forward other
motives.
Friends, if you don’t have the opportunity to read William Shakespeare’s tragedy “Hamlet,” watch this video. This is a story about revenge and more. Full title: "The Tragic Story of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark." Shakespeare wrote the play at the beginning of the 17th century. Events take place somewhere in Denmark. The play consists of five acts. So... City of Elsinore. Imagine the square in front of the castle. Midnight. Officers Bernardo and Marcellus stand guard. Horatio approaches them. This is a scientist, a friend of Prince Hamlet. Horatio came to check the rumors that the shadow of the murdered king, Hamlet's father, appears at night. Horatio didn't believe this nonsense, but he came. (By the way, the name of the murdered king is also Hamlet) Very soon a ghost appeared. Horatio recognized him as the king. I tried to talk to him, but the ghost was silent and then left. Horatio told Marcellus how the king became king. Once upon a time, the Norwegian king Fortinbras challenged the Danish king to a fight. The Danish king won, and after that all the lands of Fortinbras went to King Hamlet. Only now the son of Fortinbras (also, by the way, Fortinbras) gathered a detachment of Norwegians to return these lands. “The fact that the ghost appeared,” said Horatio, “is not without reason.” Looks like something bad is going to happen. I will tell Hamlet about him. Maybe the ghost will talk to him. In the castle, the new king Claudius says at a meeting that he took as his wife the widow of the deceased king, who was his brother. He also gives instructions to take a letter to the Norwegian king, Fortinbras's uncle, in which he wrote about his nephew's aggression. The son of the nobleman Polonius, Laertes, asked the king for permission to return to France. After all, he came to the coronation and now wants to leave. The king allowed it. Hamlet was also at the meeting here. He was darker than a cloud. The same cannot be said about his mother, Queen Gertrude. She had already forgotten about her husband’s death - now she had a new husband. “Hamlet, stop mourning already,” said the king. “Very commendable, but enough is enough.” Please stay with us, there is no need to return to Germany to study. The queen also asked her son to stay. Hamlet agreed. When he was left on his own, he began to think that his mother had acted very badly when she got married so soon. Just a month after the king's death. Horatio approached Hamlet. - I saw your father here... last night. - My father? At night? Sure? - Yes I am sure. And Horatio told everything. Then Hamlet said that tonight he too would be on guard to see his father. And he asked Horatio and the guards not to tell anyone about all this. Meanwhile, Laertes, leaving, gave instructions to his sister Ophelia. He told her not to let Hamlet come near her, who was trying to get close to her in every possible way. Their father Polonius told his daughter the same thing. At midnight, Hamlet, Horatio and the guard Marcellus stood where the ghost appeared. And soon he appeared. - Father, tell me, why did you come to us? - asked the prince. The ghost beckoned Hamlet to follow him to tell him something in private. The guys tried to dissuade the prince from going after the ghost, but Hamlet went anyway. - So, son, they killed me. You must avenge me. Clear? - How did you kill? - Yes, that's it. The official version: I was bitten by a snake while sleeping in the garden. But the real snake is my brother, your uncle. While I was sleeping, he poured henbane juice into my ear. So, my son, avenge me. Just don't touch your mother. It's starting to get light. The ghost said goodbye and left. Horatio and Marcellus approached Hamlet. - Guys, I have a request. Not a word to anyone about what happened here today. - Sure, not a problem. We will be silent. Royal advisor Polonius gives the servant a letter and money for Laertes' son. - Go to Paris, find out how your son is doing there. Just so he doesn't know about you. Basically, keep an eye on him. The servant leaves and daughter Ophelia appears. She says that she just saw Hamlet. - Father, he’s somehow different. Looks like a psycho. I'm scared. - He must have gone crazy with love for you. I'll tell the king. Meanwhile, the king and queen called Hamlet's former friends Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. “Guys,” said the king, “something has been happening to Hamlet lately, he has become strange.” Please find out from him what is going on. Maybe we can help him. The guys leave, Polonius appears. He tells the king that he knows the reason for Hamlet's strange behavior. - It's out of love. He is in love with my Ophelia, but she does not accept his love. Meanwhile, ambassadors from Norway returned, saying that the king had taken control of the situation, that Fortinbras was no longer dangerous. - They are now planning to go to war against Poland. They have to fight with someone. The ambassadors left, Polonius took out Hamlet’s love letter, which Ophelia had given him, and read it to the king. “To make sure for ourselves, we will organize a meeting with them, and we ourselves will hide and eavesdrop on everything,” Polonius suggested. (Friends, now I will tell you something that they are unlikely to tell you at school). In general, then Polonius meets Hamlet, who was walking aimlessly around the castle. He asked the prince if he recognized him. “Yes, you are a fishmonger,” Hamlet answers. (What does the fishmonger have to do with this? After all, Polonius is a nobleman. But everything falls into place if we take the original play. The word "fishmonger" is written there. The trick is that in Shakespeare's time this word meant "pimp." Those. Hamlet tells Polonius to his face that he is a pimp. Now let’s think about why Ophelia suddenly began to sharply reject Hamlet’s advances, because before the wedding of the new king she did not reject him. The fact is that now Hamlet is out of work. Previously, he was the heir, i.e. future king, but now he is nobody. And Ophelia doesn’t need such a beggar. Polonius also understands this, and now in every possible way dissuades Ophelia from meeting Hamlet. And he didn't do this before. Those. Ophelia is not an innocent creature, but such an advanced lady). (Okay friends, back to the play). Rosencrantz and Guildenstern approach Hamlet. He is glad to see old friends, and at the same time surprised. - Guys, what did you forget in this hole? Why did you come here? - On a visit. - By yourself? Without coercion? On a visit? Well, well... - Yes, you're right. The king and queen sent us to you. The guys also added that on the way they saw actors who were traveling to Elsinore. Hamlet became interested. When the actors arrived, Hamlet greeted them joyfully. He agreed that tomorrow the actors would play one passage about the murder. And in it the actors will slightly change the words to those that Hamlet gives them. - No question, we’ll do it. Hamlet was left alone. He thinks that he is behaving like a woman. After all, he cannot avenge his father’s death. He decides that tomorrow the actors will act out the scene of his father’s murder in front of the king, and he himself will watch his uncle’s reaction and then he will understand everything - whether his uncle is guilty or not. Because I didn’t 100% trust the ghost’s words. After all, the ghost could be a messenger of the devil. Evidence was needed. The next day. At the castle, the king asks Rosencrantz and Guildenstern if they have learned anything about Hamlet. - No, he is silent. But the actors arrived, Hamlet was very happy with them. They'll be performing tonight. The guys left. The king tells the queen that Hamlet will soon meet Ophelia here, and then perhaps they will know better what is on the prince's mind. Only Ophelia remains. (And then Hamlet appears with his famous monologue “To be or not to be, that is the question”). He thinks what to do next. He is so unsure of himself that he constantly doubts. He thinks whether he should leave everything as it is, or muster up the courage and take revenge on the king, or maybe it would be better to die and then nothing will matter at all. And then Ophelia appears. Hamlet tells her to go to a monastery so as not to give birth to sinners. - Or marry a fool. A smart person won't fall for you. Hamlet leaves. Ophelia stands there and doesn’t understand what just happened. - He must have gone crazy. But he used to love me so much, she thought. The king and Polonius, who heard the conversation between Hamlet and Ophelia, approach. - What kind of love is there? - says the king. – Hamlet has something else in his head. And he's not crazy. Okay... Out of harm's way, I'll send him to England. Collect tribute. Polonius says that after the actors' performance, he will arrange a meeting between the prince and the queen, and then he will overhear their conversation. He is still convinced that Hamlet is like this because of unrequited love. A little later, Hamlet tells the actors how they need to play in the evening performance. Then he calls Horatio and tells him to carefully monitor the king’s reaction during the performance. - I will watch too. Then we will share our impressions. The performance begins. Everyone came: the king, the queen, Polonius, Ophelia and others. The actors play the scene with the poisoning of the king. Hamlet constantly comments on what is happening on stage. The king becomes ill. Everyone disperses, except Hamlet and Horatio. They are convinced of the king's guilt. Polonius has arrived. He said that Hamlet’s mother was calling him. Meanwhile, the king tells Rosencrantz and Guildenstern that he will send Hamlet with them to England with an important letter. The guys leave, Polonius approaches the king. “Hamlet went to the queen,” he says. “I’ll go and stand behind the carpet to eavesdrop on their conversation.” The king was left alone. He began to think about his sin - fratricide. He knelt down and began to pray. At this time, Hamlet passed by him, going to his mother. I thought that I could kill the king now. “No, it’s somehow not good during prayer. Another time I’ll kill him,” the prince decided. In her bedroom, the queen communicates with Polonius. He then hides behind the carpet. Hamlet enters: - Mom, what happened? - Why are you insulting your father? - Why did you insult your father? - Yes, you are impudent. - Which one is. The queen was frightened and thought that her son was ready to stab her to death. Polonius immediately called the guards from behind the carpet. And then Hamlet pulled out his sword and pierced the carpet, and with it the person who stood behind it. (Friends, they will tell you at school that Hamlet thought that the king was behind the carpet, that he wanted to kill the king, but it turned out that he killed Polonius. But! We remember that when Hamlet went to his mother, he saw the king praying and already then he could have killed him. But he didn’t. And it is very doubtful that while Hamlet was talking to his mother, the king quietly entered her bedroom and stood behind the carpet. And suddenly Hamlet suddenly wanted to kill him... Somehow illogical. In general, think for yourself what Hamlet was thinking about). Hamlet told his mother everything he thought about her action. And then the ghost appeared again. But the queen didn’t see him. While Hamlet was talking to the ghost, the mother thought that her son was completely crazy. “Son, go easy on your mother,” said the ghost. - Enough. - Well, okay... Mom, they are sending me to England. They probably want to kill you. But it’s okay, I’m ready for this. Let's see who wins. Hamlet calms down and leaves. He takes Polonius' body with him. The Queen tells the King about her meeting with Hamlet. - Well, at least he hasn’t killed us yet. I'll send him to England. The king orders Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to deal with the corpse of Polonius. They went to Hamlet and returned. “We didn’t find the body, the prince already buried it somewhere.” The king called Hamlet. -Where is Polonius? - At dinner. Only he doesn’t eat, but he gets eaten. -Where is Polonius? – the king asked again. - In heaven. - It's clear. Go to England. Immediately, you fucking joker. Hamlet left. The King gives Rosencrantz and Guildenstern a letter and tells them to follow Hamlet everywhere. That letter contains an order to kill Hamlet. Meanwhile, a Norwegian military detachment led by Fortinbras was marching through the territory of Denmark. To Poland. They explained to Hamlet that it was all because of a small piece of land. - What, should we fight for this piece of land? “I don’t understand,” said Hamlet. And then I thought about it. After all, Fortinbras had a goal to which he was going. And he himself had no goal. And at the castle, Horatio tells the queen about Ophelia’s health. - She's very bad. He's worried about his father's death, he says some nonsense. Ophelia enters. The king and queen cannot understand anything of what she is talking about. Ophelia leaves. The king tells the queen that Polonius' son Laertes has returned from Paris. The guy believes the rumors that the king is to blame for his father's death. Ordinary people support him and want to see him as their king. And then the armed Laertes enters, followed by the people. -Who killed my father? - he asks immediately. “It’s not me,” the king answers. The insane Ophelia enters. Laertes looks at his sister with pain in his heart. Meanwhile, a letter from Hamlet is brought for Horatio. The prince wrote that while they were sailing at sea, they were attacked by pirates. During the battle, he was the only prisoner of the pirates. He was treated properly. Hamlet asked Horatio to hurry to him and deliver the enclosed letters to the king. The king privately told Laertes about his father's death. - You see, Hamlet wanted to kill me, but he killed your father. I would execute him, but the people love the prince. That's why I sent him to England. Two letters are brought to the king: one to him, the other to the queen. The king reads his letter: “It is I, Hamlet. I'm back. Wait for tomorrow." - Laertes, do you want to avenge your father’s death? - asked the king. - Want. - Well, go ahead. You know what to do. I heard you are a good fencer. Laertes promised that he would deal with Hamlet. And in addition, he will smear the sword blade with poison. A small scratch will be enough for Hamlet to die. The queen runs in and reports that Ophelia has drowned - she was walking near the river and accidentally fell. Two gravediggers communicate in a cemetery. They dig a hole for Ophelia. Hamlet and Horatio approach them. A gravedigger throws someone's skull out of the ground. Hamlet picks it up. - Damn, but once this man had a tongue, he could sing. Maybe he was an influential man. Hamlet asked who the gravedigger was digging the hole for. - For a person who used to be a woman. The gravedigger showed Hamlet the skull of the former royal buffoon Yorick. “I knew him,” said Hamlet, taking the skull in his hands. - He was a witty guy. He carried me on his back when I was a boy. A funeral procession appeared in the distance. Hamlet and Horatio stepped aside to observe unnoticed. The king, queen, Laertes and his retinue walked. A coffin with Ophelia's body was carried in front of them. Judging by the way everything happened, they were carrying the body of a suicide. The guys didn’t yet know that Ophelia was in the coffin. The priest said that if the king had not intervened, Ophelia would have been buried as a suicide in an unconsecrated place. And then Hamlet realized who they were talking about. Laertes jumped into the grave to hug his sister for the last time. And Hamlet jumped there too. A fight broke out. They were separated. Hamlet said that he loved Ophelia like no one else. Everyone left. A little later, in the castle, Hamlet told Horatio how he secretly took a letter from Rosencrantz and Guildenstern on the ship, which they were taking to England. “I broke the seal and read that I needed to be executed because I represented a danger to Denmark and England. Like this. - And what next? – asked Horatio. - I wrote another letter. Beautiful handwriting. I had my father's royal seal with me. He wrote that the bearers of that letter should be killed on the spot. Cool idea? And the next day we were overtaken by pirates. You know what happened next. And, by the way, it was in vain that I quarreled with Laertes. But I was so enraged that he jumped into his grave. We need to make peace with him. A man came from the king. He asked to be told that the king had bet money on Hamlet’s victory in the battle with Laertes. Hamlet reluctantly agrees to the fight. Soon the king, queen, Laertes and others appear. “Please forgive me, I was wrong,” Hamlet said to Laertes. “It wasn’t me, it was my clouded mind.” - I would like to forgive you, but I can’t. “For battle,” answered Laertes. The guys were given rapiers. The king ordered a poisoned goblet of wine to be brought for Hamlet in case the prince became thirsty. The battle has begun. The queen was thirsty. She took the poisoned cup and drank. The king did not have time to stop her. In the battle, Laertes wounds Hamlet with a poisoned rapier, then they exchange weapons, and Hamlet wounds Laertes. The queen falls and before her death manages to tell her son that the wine was poisoned. Laertes confirms that all this was the king’s plan, and now both Hamlet and Laertes himself will die in half an hour, as they were wounded by poisoned rapiers. “Damn it,” said Hamlet and stabbed the king with a poisoned rapier. The king is dying. Then Laertes dies. Hamlet, dying, asks Horatio to tell everyone his story. You can hear someone shooting on the street. Hamlet is told that it is Fortinbras who is returning from Poland victorious. Then Hamlet manages to say that he wants Fortinbras to become the next king, and dies. Fortinbras and the English ambassadors enter the castle. “And we came to tell the king that his request was fulfilled - Rosencrantz and Guildenstern were executed,” said the ambassadors. Horatio says that he will tell the true story of what happened in the Danish kingdom. “Okay, tell me,” said Fortinbras. - It will be interesting to me. After all, now I am a contender for this kingdom. He orders Hamlet to be buried with honors as a warrior. This is the story, friends!
Shakespeare is the creator of an entire artistic universe, he had incomparable imagination and knowledge of life, knowledge of people, therefore 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 its translations into Russian - there are over forty of them. Using this tragedy as an example, let us consider what new Shakespeare contributed to the understanding of the world and man in the late Renaissance.
Let's begin with plot of "Hamlet", like virtually all of Shakespeare's other works, is borrowed from a previous literary tradition. Thomas Kidd's tragedy Hamlet, presented in London in 1589, has not reached 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", tells an episode from the Danish history of the "dark time". The feudal lord Khorwendil had a wife, Geruta, and a son, Amleth. Horwendil's brother, Fengo, with whom he shared power over Jutland, was jealous of 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, and there he married an English princess. Amlet was subsequently 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 takes place in Denmark only in name; its problematics go far beyond the scope of 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 a 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, Earl of Essex, took his people to the streets of London in an attempt to rebel against the queen, was captured and beheaded. Historians regard his speech as the last manifestation of medieval feudal freemen, as a rebellion of the nobility against the absolutism that limited its rights, which was not supported by the people. On the eve of the performance, the Essex envoys paid the Globe actors to perform an old Shakespearean chronicle, which, in their opinion, could provoke discontent with the queen, instead of the play scheduled in the repertoire. The owner of Globus later had to give unpleasant explanations to the authorities. Along with Essex, the young nobles who followed him were thrown into the Tower, in particular the Earl of Southampton, Shakespeare's patron, to whom his cycle of sonnets is believed to be dedicated. Southampton was later pardoned, but while Essex's trial was going on, Shakespeare's mind must have been particularly 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 Horatio, Hamlet's friend, about the appearance of the Ghost. This is the ghost of Hamlet’s late father, who in 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? To gain time and not be discovered, Hamlet pretends to be crazy; the incredulous Claudius conspires with his courtier Polonius to use his daughter Ophelia, with whom Hamlet is in love, to check whether Hamlet has actually lost his mind. For the same purpose, Hamlet's old friends, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, are called to Elsinore, and they 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 came to Elsinore to perform a performance that exactly depicts what the Ghost told him about, and by Claudia’s confused reaction he is convinced of his guilt. After this, Hamlet kills Polonius, who overhears his conversation with his mother, in the belief that Claudius is hiding behind the carpets in her bedroom; Claudius, sensing danger, sends Hamlet to England, where he is to be executed by the English king, but on board the ship Hamlet manages to replace the letter, and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, who accompanied him, are executed instead. Returning to Elsinore, Hamlet learns of the death of Ophelia, who has gone mad, and becomes a victim of Claudius's latest intrigue. The king persuades the son of the late Polonius and Ophelia's brother 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 limitless personal development, and at the same time, unlike Montaigne, who valued measure and harmony, these artistic images, as is typical in Renaissance literature, embody great passions, extreme degrees of development of one side of the personality. Don Quixote's extreme was idealism; Hamlet's extreme is reflection, introspection, which paralyzes a person's ability to act. He performs many actions throughout the tragedy: he kills Polonius, Laertes, Claudius, sends Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to their deaths, but since he hesitates with his main task - revenge, the impression of his inactivity is created.
From the moment he learns the secret of the Ghost, Hamlet's past life collapses. What he was like before the start of 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 sparkles with wit - until the moment when the friends admit that Claudius summoned them. The indecently quick 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 correct the general state of affairs, because everyone in Denmark quickly consigned Hamlet Sr. to oblivion and quickly got used to slavery. The era of ideal people is in the past, and the motif of Denmark-prison runs through the whole tragedy, 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 his duty is to punish evil, but his idea of evil no longer corresponds to the straightforward laws of family revenge. Evil for him is not limited to the crime of Claudius, whom he ultimately punishes; Evil is spread throughout the world around him, and Hamlet realizes that one person cannot resist 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 revenge tragedy 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 introspection is akin to Montaigne's close introspection. But Montaigne called for introducing human life into proportionate boundaries and depicted a person occupying a middle position in life. Shakespeare draws not only the prince, that is, a person standing at the highest level of society, on whom the fate of his country depends; Shakespeare, in accordance with literary tradition, depicts an extraordinary character, large in all its manifestations. Hamlet is a hero born of the spirit of the Renaissance, but his tragedy indicates that at its later stage the ideology of the Renaissance is experiencing a crisis. Hamlet takes upon himself the work of revising and revaluing not only medieval values, but also the values of humanism, and the illusory nature of humanistic ideas about the world as a kingdom of boundless freedom and direct action is revealed.
Hamlet's central storyline is reflected in a kind of mirror: the lines of two more young heroes, each of which sheds 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 everyone’s opinion, is a “worthy young man,” he takes the lessons of Polonius’s common sense and acts as the bearer of established morality; he takes revenge on his father's murderer, not disdaining an agreement with Claudius. The second is the line of Fortinbras; Despite the fact that he has a small place on the stage, his significance for the play is very great. Fortinbras is the prince who occupied the empty Danish throne, Hamlet's hereditary throne; he is a man of action, a decisive politician and military leader; he realized himself after the death of his father, the Norwegian king, precisely in those areas that remain inaccessible to Hamlet. All the characteristics of Fortinbras are directly opposite to the characteristics of Laertes, and we can say 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 exceptionality of Hamlet’s behavior, because the tragedy depicts precisely the exceptional, the great, the sublime.
Since the Elizabethan theater was poor in decorations and external effects of theatrical spectacle, the strength of its impact on the viewer depended mainly on the word. Shakespeare is the greatest poet in the history of the English language and its greatest reformer; Shakespeare's word 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 in prose. Shakespeare uses metaphors especially subtly to create the general atmosphere of tragedy. Critics note the presence of three groups of leitmotifs in the play. Firstly, these are images of illness, an ulcer that wears away a healthy body - the speeches of all the characters contain images of rotting, decomposition, decay, working to create the theme of death. Secondly, images of female debauchery, fornication, fickle Fortune, reinforcing the theme of female infidelity running 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 effective side of Hamlet’s character in the tragedy. The entire arsenal of artistic means of the tragedy was used to create its numerous images, to embody the main tragic conflict - the loneliness of a humanistic personality in the desert of a society in which there is no place for justice, reason, and dignity. Hamlet is the first reflective hero in world literature, the first hero experiencing a state of alienation, and the roots of his tragedy were perceived differently in different eras.
For the first time, naive audience interest in Hamlet as a theatrical spectacle gave way to attention to the characters at the turn of the 18th-19th centuries. I.V. Goethe, an ardent admirer of Shakespeare, in his novel Wilhelm Meister (1795) interpreted Hamlet as “a beautiful, noble, highly moral creature, deprived of the power of feeling that makes a hero, he perishes under a burden that he could neither bear nor throw off.” . U I.V. Goethe's Hamlet is a sentimental-elegiac nature, a thinker who cannot handle great deeds.
The romantics explained the inactivity of the first in a series of “superfluous people” (they were later “lost”, “angry”) by the excessiveness of reflection, the disintegration 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 back by reason, which forces him to turn his effective forces to the search for a speculative solution.” As a result, the romantics presented Hamlet as the first literary hero in tune with modern man in his preoccupation with introspection, which means that this image is the prototype of modern man in general.
G. Hegel wrote about Hamlet’s ability - like other most lively Shakespearean characters - to look at himself from the outside, to treat himself objectively, as an artistic character, and to act as an artist.
Don Quixote and Hamlet were the most important "eternal images" for Russian culture of the 19th century. V.G. Belinsky believed that Hamlet's idea consists "in weakness of will, but only as a result of decay, and not by its nature. By nature, Hamlet is a strong man... He is great and strong in his weakness, because a strong-spirited man and in his very fall is higher than a weak man, in his very fall his uprising." 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 is a hero rich in intelligence that is of no use to anyone.
Psychologist L.S. Vygotsky, bringing to the fore the final act of the tragedy in his analysis, emphasized Hamlet’s connection with the other world: “Hamlet is a mystic, this determines not only his mental state on the threshold of double existence, two worlds, but also his will in all its manifestations.”
English writers B. Shaw and M. Murray explained Hamlet's slowness by unconscious resistance to the barbaric law of family revenge. 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's Hamlet is a "everyman", an ordinary person, depressed by the idea of original sin. In literary criticism there has been a whole gallery of mutually exclusive Hamlets: an egoist and a 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 comprehending the tragedy, Hamlet, like Don Quixote, broke away from the text of the work and acquired the meaning of a “supertype” (Yu. M. Lotman’s term), that is, it became a socio-psychological generalization of such a wide scope that its right to timeless existence was recognized.
Today in Western Shakespeare studies the focus is not on “Hamlet”, but on other plays of Shakespeare - “Measure for Measure”, “King Lear”, “Macbeth”, “Othello”, also, each in its own way, consonant with modernity, since in each Shakespeare's play poses eternal questions of human existence. And each play contains something that determines the exclusivity of Shakespeare's influence on all subsequent literature. American literary critic H. Bloom defines his author’s position as “disinterest”, “freedom from any ideology”: “He has no theology, no metaphysics, no ethics, and less political theory than modern critics “read” into him. Based on the sonnets it is clear that, unlike his character Falstaff, he had a superego; unlike Hamlet of the final act, he did not cross the boundaries of earthly existence; unlike Rosalind, he did not have the ability to manage his own life at will. But since he invented them, we can assume that he deliberately set certain boundaries for himself. Fortunately, he was not King Lear and refused to go mad, 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 considered a sage"; "You cannot limit Shakespeare to the English Renaissance any more than you can limit the Prince of Denmark to his play."