In William Shakespeare's play Hamlet, the concept of cultural identity is explored through Hamlet's isolation which is created by the conflict between his duty to his father, and his duties to the monarchy and society. Hamlet is isolated from his...

"Understanding kills action." With these three simple words, Nietzsche explains the idea behind Shakespeare's development of the acting of thought as inaction, and also the reason that Hamlet hesitates for over 3000 lines of blank verse and prose...

Shakespeare has always been able to create characters richly dichotomous in nature. In "Hamlet, Prince of Denmark," the portrayal of the ghost of Hamlet's father vacillates through the play from Hamlet's uncertainty of whether "it is an honest...

Literary techniques evoke images, emotion and in the case of Shakespeare's "Hamlet" teach a lesson. The dominant literary technique ongoing throughout "Hamlet" is the presence of foils. A foil is a character who, through strong contrast and...

Though the identity of the "editor" responsible for deleting Hamlet's final soliloquy from the 1623 Folio edition of Hamlet may be lost to history, the possible reasons for his omission of the Quarto's fifty-eight lines are as relevant and...

Within Hamlet and 1 Henry the Fourth are examples of Shakespeare including the trade of acting within the text as a central theme. Hamlet certainly shows us his skill as an actor throughout the play, but there is a more blatant preference to...

William Shakespeare's Hamlet, says renowned pundit of literature, Harold Bloom, "is unsurpassed in the West's imaginative literature" (Bloom 384). Surely, its story, style, and many famous lines have transcended time and place to such an extent...

William Shakespeare's Hamlet (1600-01), regarded by many scholars and critics as his finest play, is based on the story of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, which first appeared in the Historia Danica, a Latin text by the twelfth-century historian Saxo...

"Hamlet is no abstract thinker and dreamer. As his imagery betrays to us, he is rather a man gifted with greater powers of observation than the others. He is capable of scanning reality with a keener eye of penetrating... to the very core of...

Many questions surround the idea of Hamlet's inability to act through the course of Shakespeare's Hamlet. E. E. Stoll makes one of the most audacious arguments simply stating "It is both the traditional form and the natural procedure; obviously,...

Shakespeare's tragedy Hamlet is actually a conglomeration of many subtragedies. One of these smaller tragedies within the story of Hamlet is the mental evolution of Prince Hamlet, to the point where he acted king-like and would have made a great...

Both William Shakespeare, likely the greatest English playwright of all time, and Henrik Ibsen, arguably one of the most brilliant and influential modern dramatists, are known not only for the power of their tragedies but also for their memorable...

The act of revenge never fails to gather an audience, due to the simple fact that revenge raises one of the great questions in regards to human life: how does one seek justice when the law ceases to function properly? William Shakespeare tapped...

In his powerful play, "Hamlet," William Shakespeare utilizes the theme of playacting as a medium through which Hamlet can make political statements, as well as shield himself in supposed madness. Hamlet uses plays to not only inform Claudius that...

According to the conventional plot formula, the forces of good are clearly arrayed against the forces of evil. Good and evil fight; good eventually triumphs. In Hamlet, William Shakespeare created an excellent cast of distasteful characters. The...

Beginning with Hamlet's encounter with his father's ghost, Shakespeare introduces a line of "action" which his hero then follows throughout the narrative. From missed opportunities to sporadic bursts of movement and progression, Hamlet initially...

In the tragedy Hamlet and the comedy A Midsummer Night's Dream, Shakespeare presents two plays that are very different in context but quite similar in foundation. Both plays examine reality throughout the narrative structure. In Hamlet, reality is...

Women living in Elizabethan times, although more liberated than medieval women, were still expected to do their husband's will and obey at all times. In William Shakespeare's Hamlet, Queen Gertrude begins the play acting as a typical Elizabethan...

Shakespeare's Hamlet is not simply a morality play surrounding a grief-mad prince; it is a complex study of political maneuvers as described by Machiavelli. "The rules of this politics, Machiavelli's political science, then, are the choreographed...

The central conflict in Shakespeare's Hamlet is between the title character's high moral standards and his quest for the truth. Arising from this conflict is what many would agree is the quintessential problem of the play: Why does Hamlet delay in...

In Greek tragedy, inevitability plays an important role, portraying the protagonists as pawns of the fates, whose roles in the tragedy are distributed arbitrarily and without justice. The outcomes of these roles are decided before the play even...

Othello is a man of action. Hamlet is a man of inaction. If Hamlet were placed in Othello's world and vice versa one could assume that both would function well in those circumstances. Othello is a man of action in a play that demands his...

This is that Hamlet the Dane whom we read of in our youth, and whom we may be said almost to remember in our after years; he who made that famous soliloquy on life, who gavethe advice to the players, who thought "this goodly frame, the earth," a...

Hamlet is the most baffling of the great plays. It is the tragedy of a man and an action continually baffled by wisdom. The man is too wise. The dual action, pressing in both cases to complete an event, cannot get past his wisdom into the world....