Shakespeare wrote Hamlet at a turning point in his work. Researchers have long noticed that after 1600, Shakespeare's former optimism was replaced by harsh criticism, an in-depth analysis of the tragic contradictions in the soul and life of a person. For ten years, the playwright creates the greatest tragedies, in which he solves the most burning questions of human existence and gives deep and formidable answers to them. The tragedy of the Prince of Denmark is particularly revealing in this respect.

The tragedy "Hamlet" is Shakespeare's attempt to capture the whole picture of human life with a single glance, to answer the sacramental question about its meaning, to approach a person from the position of God. No wonder G.V.F. Hegel believed that Shakespeare, by means of artistic creativity, provided unsurpassed examples of the analysis of fundamental philosophical problems: a person's free choice of actions and goals in life, his independence in the implementation of decisions.

Shakespeare in his plays skillfully exposed human souls, forcing his characters to confess to the audience. A brilliant reader of Shakespeare and one of the first researchers of the figure of Hamlet - Goethe - once said: “There is no pleasure more sublime and purer than, closing your eyes, listening to how a natural and true voice does not recite, but reads Shakespeare. So it is best to follow the harsh threads from which he weaves events. Everything that is in the air when great world events are taking place, everything that timidly closes up and hides in the soul, here comes to light freely and naturally; we learn the truth of life without knowing how.”

Let us follow the example of the great German and read the text of the immortal tragedy, for the most correct judgment about the character of Hamlet and other heroes of the play can only be deduced from what they say, and from what others say about them. Shakespeare sometimes remains silent about certain circumstances, but in this case we will not allow ourselves to guess, but will rely on the text. It seems that Shakespeare in one way or another said everything that was needed both by contemporaries and future generations of researchers.

As soon as the researchers of the brilliant play did not interpret the image of the Prince of Denmark! Gilbert Keith Chesterton, not without irony, noted the following about the attempts of various scientists: “Shakespeare, without a doubt, believed in the struggle between duty and feeling. But if you have a scientist, then for some reason the situation is different. The scientist does not want to admit that this struggle tormented Hamlet, and replaces it with a struggle between the consciousness and the subconscious. He endows Hamlet with complexes, so as not to endow him with a conscience. And all because he, a scientist, refuses to take seriously the simple, if you will, primitive morality on which Shakespeare's tragedy rests. This morality includes three premises from which the modern morbid subconscious flees like a ghost. First, we must do what is right, even if we hate to; secondly, justice may require that we punish a person, as a rule, a strong one; thirdly, the punishment itself can take the form of a struggle and even murder.”

Tragedy begins with murder and ends with murder. Claudius kills his brother in his sleep by pouring a poisonous infusion of henbane into his ear. Hamlet imagines the terrible picture of his father's death in this way:

Father died with a bloated belly

All swollen, like May, from sinful juices.

God knows what else for this demand,

But all in all, probably a lot.

(Translated by B. Pasternak)

The ghost of Hamlet's father appeared to Marcello and Bernardo, and they called Horatio precisely as an educated person, capable of, if not explaining this phenomenon, then at least explaining himself to the ghost. Horatio is a friend and close associate of Prince Hamlet, which is why the heir to the Danish throne, and not King Claudius, learns from him about the ghost's visits.

Hamlet's first monologue reveals his tendency to make the broadest generalizations on the basis of a single fact. The shameful behavior of the mother, who threw herself on the "bed of incest", leads Hamlet to an unfavorable assessment of the entire beautiful half of humanity. No wonder he says: “Frailty, you are called: a woman!”. Original: frailty - frailty, weakness, instability. It is this quality for Hamlet that is now decisive for the entire feminine gender. Mother was for Hamlet the ideal of a woman, and it was all the more terrible for him to contemplate her fall. The death of his father and the betrayal of his mother in memory of the late husband and monarch mean for Hamlet the complete collapse of the world in which he had happily existed until then. The father's house, which he remembered with longing in Wittenberg, collapsed. This family drama makes his impressionable and sensitive soul come to such a pessimistic conclusion:

How, stale, flat, and unprofitable

Seem to me all the uses of this world!

Fie on "t, ah fie!" tis an unwedded garden

That grows to seed, things rank and gross in nature

Possess it only.

Boris Pasternak perfectly conveyed the meaning of these lines:

How insignificant, flat and stupid

It seems to me that the whole world is in its aspirations!

O abomination! Like an unweeded garden

Give free rein to the herbs - overgrown with weeds.

With the same indivisibility the whole world

Filled with rough beginnings.

Hamlet is not a cold rationalist and analyst. He is a man with a large heart capable of strong feelings. His blood is hot, and his senses are sharpened and unable to dull. From reflections on his own life collisions, he extracts truly philosophical generalizations concerning human nature as a whole. His painful reaction to his surroundings is not surprising. Put yourself in his place: your father died, your mother hurriedly jumped out to marry an uncle, and this uncle, whom he once loved and respected, turns out to be the murderer of his father! Brother killed brother! Cain's sin is terrible and testifies to irreversible changes in human nature itself. Ghost is absolutely right:

Murder is vile in itself; but this

More vile than all and all inhuman.

(Translated by M. Lozinsky)

Fratricide testifies that the very foundations of humanity have rotted away. Everywhere - treason and enmity, lust and meanness. No one, not even the closest person, can be trusted. This torments Hamlet the most, who is forced to stop looking at the world around him through rose-colored glasses. The terrible crime of Claudius and the lustful behavior of his mother (typical, however, for many aging women) look in his eyes only manifestations of universal corruption, evidence of the existence and triumph of world evil.

Many researchers reproached Hamlet with indecision and even cowardice. In their opinion, he should have slaughtered him as soon as he found out about his uncle's crime. Even the term "Hamletism" appeared, which began to denote weak-willedness prone to reflection. But Hamlet wants to make sure that the spirit that came from hell told the truth, that the father's ghost is really an "honest spirit". After all, if Claudius is innocent, then Hamlet himself will become a criminal and will be doomed to hellish torment. That is why the prince comes up with a "mousetrap" for Claudius. Only after the performance, having seen the uncle's reaction to the villainy committed on the stage, Hamlet receives real earthly proof of the revealing news from the other world. Hamlet almost kills Claudius, but he is saved only by the state of immersion in prayer. The prince does not want to send his uncle's soul cleansed of sins to heaven. That is why Claudius is spared until a more favorable moment. Sohmer S. Certain Speculations on "Hamlet", the Calendar, and Martin Luther. Earl Modern Literary Studios 2.1 (1996):

Hamlet seeks not just to avenge his murdered father. The crimes of the uncle and mother only testify to the general corruption of morals, the death of human nature. No wonder he says the famous words:

The time is out of joint - o cursed spite.

That ever I was born to set it right!

Here is a fairly accurate translation of M. Lozinsky:

The century was shaken - and worst of all,

That I was born to restore it!

Hamlet understands the viciousness not of individual people, but of all mankind, of the entire era, of which he is a contemporary. In an effort to take revenge on the killer of his father, Hamlet wants to restore the natural course of things, revives the destroyed order of the universe. Hamlet is offended by the crime of Claudius, not only as the son of his father, but also as a person. In the eyes of Hamlet, the king and all the court brethren are by no means isolated random grains of sand on the human shore. They are representatives of the human race. Despising them, the prince tends to think that the entire human race is worthy of contempt, absolutizing special cases of Shakespeare W. The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. // The Complete Works. - Oxford: Claredon Press, 1988. . Queen Gertrude and Ophelia, for all their love for the prince, are unable to understand him. Therefore, Hamlet sends curses to love itself. Horatio, as a scientist, cannot understand the mysteries of the other world, and Hamlet pronounces a sentence on learning in general. Probably, even in the silence of his Wittenberg existence, Hamlet experienced the hopeless torments of doubt, the drama of abstract critical thought. After returning to Denmark, things escalated. He is bitter from the consciousness of his impotence, he is aware of all the treacherous fragility of the idealization of the human mind and the unreliability of human attempts to think the world according to abstract formulas.

Hamlet faced reality as it is. He experienced all the bitterness of disappointment in people, and this pushes his soul to a turning point. Not for every person, the comprehension of reality is accompanied by such upheavals that fell to Shakespeare's hero. But it is precisely when faced with the contradictions of reality that people get rid of illusions and begin to see true life. Shakespeare chose an atypical situation for his hero, an extreme case. The once harmonious inner world of the hero is collapsing, and then recreated before our eyes again. It is precisely in the dynamism of the image of the protagonist, in the absence of static in his character, that the reason for the diversity of such contradictory assessments of the Danish prince lies.

The spiritual development of Hamlet can be reduced to three dialectical stages: harmony, its collapse and restoration in a new quality. V. Belinsky wrote about this when he argued that the so-called indecision of the prince is “disintegration, the transition from infantile, unconscious harmony and self-enjoyment of the spirit into disharmony and struggle, which are a necessary condition for the transition to courageous and conscious harmony and self-enjoyment of the spirit.” ".

The famous monologue "To be or not to be" is pronounced at the peak of Hamlet's doubts, at the turning point of his mental and spiritual development. There is no strict logic in the monologue, because it is pronounced at the moment of the highest discord in his mind. But these 33 Shakespearean lines are one of the pinnacles not only of world literature, but also of philosophy. Fight against the forces of evil or avoid this battle? - this is the main question of the monologue. It is he who entails all other thoughts of Hamlet, including those about the eternal hardships of mankind:

Who would take down the whips and mockery of the century,

The oppression of the strong, the mockery of the proud,

The pain of despicable love, judges slowness,

The arrogance of the authorities and insults,

Made to meek merit,

When he himself could give himself the calculation

With a simple dagger....

(Translated by M. Lozinsky)

All these problems do not belong to Hamlet, but here he again speaks on behalf of mankind, for these problems will accompany the human race until the end of time, for the golden age will never come. All this is “human, too human,” as Friedrich Nietzsche would later say.

Hamlet reflects on the nature of the human tendency to think. The hero analyzes not only the present being and his position in it, but also the nature of his own thoughts. In the literature of the Late Renaissance, characters often turned to the analysis of human thought. Hamlet also makes his own critique of the human "faculty of judgment" and comes to the conclusion that excessive thinking paralyzes the will.

So thinking makes us cowards,

And so determined natural color

languishes under a cloud of pale thought,

And undertakings, ascending powerfully,

Turning aside your move,

Lose the name of the action.

(Translated by M. Lozinsky)

The entire monologue "To be or not to be" is permeated with a heavy awareness of the hardships of being. Arthur Schopenhauer, in his thoroughly pessimistic Aphorisms of Worldly Wisdom, often follows the milestones that Shakespeare left in this heartfelt monologue of the prince. I do not want to live in the world that appears in the hero's speech. But it is necessary to live, because it is not known what awaits a person after death - perhaps even worse horrors. “Fear of a country from which no one has returned” makes a person drag out an existence on this mortal earth - sometimes the most miserable. Note that Hamlet is convinced of the existence of the afterlife, for the ghost of his unfortunate father appeared to him from hell.

Death is one of the main characters not only of the monologue "To be or not to be", but of the entire play. She collects a generous harvest in Hamlet: nine people die in that very mysterious country that the Prince of Denmark reflects on. About this famous monologue of Hamlet, our great poet and translator B. Pasternak said: “These are the most trembling and crazy lines ever written about the anguish of the unknown on the eve of death, rising with the power of feeling to the bitterness of the Gethsemane note.”

Shakespeare was one of the first in the world philosophy of modern times to think about suicide. After him, this topic was developed by the greatest minds: I.V. Goethe, F.M. Dostoevsky, N.A. Berdyaev, E. Durkheim. Hamlet reflects on the problem of suicide at a turning point in his life, when the “connection of times” broke up for him. For him, the struggle began to mean life, being, and the departure from life becomes a symbol of defeat, physical and moral death.

Hamlet's instinct for life is stronger than the timid sprouts of thoughts about suicide, although his indignation against the injustices and hardships of life often turns back on himself. Let us see with what choice curses he heaps upon himself! "Stupid and cowardly fool", "rotozey", "coward", "donkey", "woman", "dishwasher". The internal energy that overwhelms Hamlet, all his anger falls for the time being into his own personality. Criticizing the human race, Hamlet does not forget about himself. But, reproaching himself for slowness, he never for a moment forgets the suffering of his father, who suffered a terrible death at the hands of his brother.

Hamlet is by no means slow to take revenge. He wants Claudius, dying, to know why he died. In his mother's bedroom, he kills the lurking Polonius in full confidence that he has committed revenge and Claudius is already dead. The more terrible his disappointment:

As for him

(points to the corpse of Polonius)

Then I mourn; but heaven said

They punished me and me him,

So that I become their scourge and servant.

(Translated by M. Lozinsky)

Hamlet sees in chance the manifestation of the higher will of heaven. It was heaven that entrusted him with the mission to be "scorge and minister" - a servant and executor of their will. This is how Hamlet views the matter of revenge.

Claudius is infuriated by Hamlet's "bloody trick" because he understands who the sword of his nephew was really aimed at. Only by chance does the “fidgety, stupid troublemaker” Polonius die. It is difficult to say what were the plans of Claudius in relation to Hamlet. Whether he planned his destruction from the very beginning, or whether he was forced to commit new atrocities by the very behavior of Hamlet, hinting to the king about his awareness of his secrets, Shakespeare does not answer these questions. It has long been noticed that the villains of Shakespeare, unlike the villains of ancient drama, are by no means just schemes, but living people, not devoid of sprouts of goodness. But these sprouts wither away with each new crime, and evil flourishes in the soul of these people. Such is Claudius, who is losing the remnants of humanity before our eyes. In the duel scene, he actually does not prevent the death of the queen drinking poisoned wine, although he tells her: "Do not drink wine, Gertrude." But his own interests are above all, and he sacrifices his newly found spouse. But it was precisely the passion for Gertrude that became one of the causes of Cain's sin of Claudius!

I would like to note that in the tragedy Shakespeare collides two understandings of death: religious and realistic. The scenes in the cemetery are indicative in this respect. Preparing the grave for Ophelia, the gravediggers unfold before the viewer a whole philosophy of life.

The real, and not the poetic image of death is terrible and vile. No wonder Hamlet, holding in his hands the skull of his once beloved jester Yorick, reflects: “Where are your jokes? Your foolishness? your singing? Nothing left to poke fun at your own antics? Jaw dropped completely? Now go into the room to some lady and tell her that even if she puts on a whole inch of makeup, she will still end up with such a face ... ”(translated by M. Lozinsky). Everyone is equal before death: “Alexander died, Alexander was buried, Alexander turns to dust; dust is earth; clay is made from the earth; and why can't they plug a beer barrel with this clay into which he has turned?

Yes, Hamlet is a tragedy about death. That is why it is extremely relevant for us, the citizens of a dying Russia, modern Russian people, whose brains have not yet completely become dull from watching endless serials that lull consciousness. The once great country perished, as did the once glorious state of Alexander the Great and the Roman Empire. We, once its citizens, are left to drag out a miserable existence in the backyards of world civilization and endure the bullying of all kinds of Shylocks.

The historical triumph of "Hamlet" is natural - after all, it is the quintessence of Shakespearean dramaturgy. Here, as in a gene, Troilus and Cressida, King Lear, Othello, Timon of Athens were already in the bundle. For all these things show the contrast between the world and man, the clash between human life and the principle of negation.

There are more and more stage and film versions of the great tragedy, sometimes extremely modernized. Probably, "Hamlet" is so easily modernized because it is all-human. And although the modernization of Hamlet is a violation of the historical perspective, there is no escape from this. In addition, the historical perspective, like the horizon, is unattainable and therefore fundamentally inviolable: how many epochs - so many perspectives.

Hamlet, for the most part, is Shakespeare himself, it reflects the soul of the poet himself. Through his lips, wrote Ivan Franko, the poet expressed many things that burned his own soul. It has long been noted that Shakespeare's 66th sonnet coincides strikingly with the thoughts of the Danish prince. Probably, of all the heroes of Shakespeare, only Hamlet could write Shakespearean works. No wonder Bernard Shaw's friend and biographer Frank Garrick considered Hamlet a spiritual portrait of Shakespeare. We find the same in Joyce: "And, perhaps, Hamlet is the spiritual son of Shakespeare, who lost his Hamlet." He says: "If you want to destroy my conviction that Shakespeare is Hamlet, you have a difficult task ahead of you."

There can be nothing in creation that was not in the creator himself. Shakespeare might have met Rosencrantz and Guildenstern on the streets of London, but Hamlet was born from the depths of his soul, and Romeo grew out of his passion. A man is least of all himself when he speaks for himself. Give him a mask and he will become truthful. The actor William Shakespeare knew this well.

The essence of Hamlet lies in the infinity of the spiritual quest of Shakespeare himself, all his “to be or not to be?”, the search for the meaning of life among its impurities, the awareness of the absurdity of being and the thirst to overcome it with the greatness of the spirit. With Hamlet, Shakespeare expressed his own attitude to the world, and, judging by Hamlet, this attitude was by no means rosy. In Hamlet, for the first time, a motif characteristic of Shakespeare “after 1601” will sound: “Not one of the people pleases me; no, not even one."

The closeness of Hamlet to Shakespeare is confirmed by numerous variations on the theme of the Prince of Denmark: Romeo, Macbeth, Vincent ("Measure for measure"), Jacques ("How do you like it?"), Postumus ("Cymbeline") - a kind of twins of Hamlet.

The power of inspiration and the power of the stroke testify that Hamlet became an expression of some personal tragedy of Shakespeare, some of the poet's experiences at the time of writing the play. In addition, Hamlet expresses the tragedy of an actor who asks himself which role is more important - the one he plays on stage or the one he plays in real life. Apparently, under the influence of his own creation, the poet also thought about which part of his life is more real and complete - the poet or the person Belozerov N.N. Integrative Poetics. - TSU Publishing House, Tyumen, 1999, - P.125.

Shakespeare in "Hamlet" appears as the greatest philosopher-anthropologist. Man is always at the center of his thoughts. He reflects on the essence of nature, space and time only in close connection with reflections on human life.

Independent work#13

Subject: Shakespeare's "Hamlet"

Balzac "Gobsek"

Flaubert "Salambo"

Task: Analysis of works.

Hamlet is a philosophical tragedy

Hamlet is a philosophical tragedy. Not in the sense that the play contains a system of views on the world expressed in dramatic form. Shakespeare created not a treatise giving a theoretical exposition of his worldview, but a work of art. It is not for nothing that he portrays Polonius with irony, teaching his son how to behave. No wonder Ophelia laughs at her brother, who reads morality to her, and he himself is far from being able to follow it. We can hardly be mistaken in assuming that Shakespeare was aware of the futility of moralizing. The purpose of art is not to teach, but, as Hamlet says, "to hold, as it were, a mirror in front of nature: to show the virtues of her own features, arrogance - her own appearance, and to every age and estate - its likeness and imprint." To portray people as they are - this is how Shakespeare understood the task of art. And, to accomplish this task, Shakespeare actively bought discounts for coupons. What he does not say, we can add: the artistic image must be such that the reader and the viewer himself is able to give a moral assessment to each character. This is how those we see in tragedy are created. But Shakespeare is not limited to two colors - black and white. As we have seen, none of the main characters is simple. Each of them is complex in its own way, has not one, but several features, which is why they are perceived not as schemes, but as living characters.

That a direct lesson cannot be derived from tragedy is best evidenced by the difference in opinion about its meaning. The picture of life created by Shakespeare, being perceived as a “likeness and imprint” of reality, encourages everyone who thinks about tragedy to evaluate people and events in the same way as they are evaluated in life. However, unlike reality, in the picture created by the playwright, everything is enlarged. In life, it is not immediately possible to know what a person is like. In the drama, his words and actions quickly make the audience understand this character. The opinions of others about this character also help this.

Shakespeare's worldview is dissolved in the images and situations of his plays. With his tragedies, he sought to excite the attention of the audience, to put them face to face with the most terrible phenomena of life, to disturb the complacent, to respond to the moods of those who, like him, experienced anxiety and pain due to the imperfection of life.

The goal of tragedy is not to frighten, but to provoke the activity of thought, to make one think about the contradictions and troubles of life, and Shakespeare achieves this goal. Achieves primarily due to the image of the hero. Putting questions before himself, he encourages us to think about them, to look for answers. But Hamlet not only questions life, he expresses many thoughts about it. His speeches are full of sayings, and, what is remarkable, the thoughts of many generations are concentrated in them. Research has shown that there is a long tradition behind almost every saying. Shakespeare did not read Plato, Aristotle, or medieval thinkers, but their ideas reached him through various books that dealt with philosophical problems. It has been established that Shakespeare not only carefully read the "Experiments" of the French thinker Michel Montaigne, but even borrowed something from them. Let us turn again to the monologue "To be or not to be." Recall how Hamlet compares death and sleep.

Analysis of Balzac's story "Gobsek"

Another feature of Balzac's narrative can rather be attributed to the shortcomings of his manner: Balzac feels so businesslike in his creations that he invades the world of characters without hesitation, attributing to his heroes observations, conclusions, speeches, etc. that are not characteristic of them. "Gobsek" Balzac now and then "gets used" to the characters and sees, evaluates, speaks for them or even instead of them.

This is partly due to the writer's desire for an objective depiction of people and events, when the author does not take the side of anyone, but simply covers what is happening, but basically this is Balzac's indefatigable desire to express his point of view, to convey it to the reader, despite minor conventions like that that the heroes cannot speak or think this way due to their upbringing, education, social role, breadth of outlook, and other factors.

First of all, this refers to Gobsek, the most interesting, bright and close to Balzac character; not without reason, in one of the episodes of his story about him, Derville suddenly calls this mysterious and ruffy old man "my Gobsek". The old usurer, describing his visits to Anastasi de Resto and Fanny Malvo, suddenly switches to the style of a gallant poet, a connoisseur of female beauty and those joys that knowledgeable people can extract from this gift of nature: “An artist would give dearly to stay at least a few minutes in my debtor's bedroom this morning. The folds of the curtains by the bed breathed voluptuous bliss, the knocked-down sheet on the blue silk down jacket, the crumpled pillow, sharply white against this azure background with its lacy frills, seemed to still retain an indistinct imprint of marvelous forms that teased the imagination.

He expresses his impressions of the meeting with Fanny Malvo in no less unexpected language: she seems to him a “fairy of loneliness”, she exudes “something good, truly virtuous”. The Balzac usurer admits: “I seemed to have entered into an atmosphere of sincerity, purity of soul, and it even became easier for me to breathe.” These experiences, not to mention the fact that they are discussed with an unfamiliar person, are not at all consistent with the appearance of a suspicious and unsociable usurer who considers gold the only object worthy of attention.

The continuation of the narrator’s speech is the already cited words of Gobsek, which are not entirely appropriate in the mouth of the character (he, like a specialist in image advertising, comments on the impression he evokes): “Well, what do you think now ... are burning pleasures hidden behind this cold, frozen mask , which so often surprised you with its immobility?

Comte de Borne, interrupting Derville's story, gives a concise and biting portrait of the society dandy Maxime de Tray, executed in the spirit of Balzac's "codes" and "physiology": Count Maxime "is now a scoundrel, now the very nobility, more soiled with dirt than stained with blood." In the scene with diamonds, he is echoed in the same expressions by Gobsek, who declared to Maxim: “To shed your blood, you must have it, my dear, and instead of blood, you have mud in your veins.”

Such a coincidence most of all looks like a deliberate negligence, dictated by the author's desire to preserve the unity of the reader's impression of the depicted persons and events. Consistently expressing his point of view, Balzac, as we see, was ready for some sacrifices in the field of psychological certainty and plausibility. But he won in another way: even such a relatively small story as "Gobsek" is full of excellent observations and pictures from life, which occupy not the last place in the history of morals that Balzac wrote. Formally, these apt generalizations belong to different characters, but they are so similar to each other that they give reason to conclude that the structure of the Balzac narrative is monologue. The voices of the characters are only a convention for the author, who completely subjugates the entire image in the work.

Let us briefly recall the most significant observations of this kind. This is the already mentioned description of the room of the Countess de Resto, turning into a portrait of the mistress of this luxurious boudoir. Various signs of the material world, which Balzac so subtly noticed and understood, help him to penetrate into the spiritual world of his heroes, to substantiate and consolidate general conclusions about their personality and fate: “Flowers, diamonds, gloves, a bouquet, a belt and other accessories of the ball gown. It smelled of some subtle perfume. In everything there was beauty, devoid of harmony, luxury and disorder. And already the poverty that threatened this woman or her lover, lurking behind all this luxury, raised her head and showed them her sharp teeth. The countess's tired face was a match for her entire bedchamber, dotted with signs of the past festival.

In the same way, the interior of Gobseck's room helps to better understand the peculiarities of the psychology of the central character of the story, let us recall the neatness of the room, which looks like a monastic cell and the abode of an old maid, a fireplace in which firebrands smoldered a little, never flaring up, etc.

Seminar lesson number 4.

Shakespeare's tragedy "Hamlet"

1. What was the basis of the tragedy "Hamlet" by Shakespeare? Why is the plot about the Danish prince Amlet known only to specialists, while Shakespeare's Hamlet is known to the whole world?

It's no secret that Shakespeare often wrote his books, inspired by old stories already told by someone. For example, the story of Romeo and Juliet was told before Shakespeare in Arthur Brooke's poem. Someone unknown long before Shakespeare wrote a primitive dramatic story "King Lear and the Three Daughters". The tradition of Hamlet is also centuries old. His story was told by Saxo Grammaticus in his History of the Danes (c. 1200). It described the life of the Jutland prince Amlet, who lived in pagan times, that is, until 827, when Christianity was introduced into Denmark.

Subsequently, this story was retold several times by different authors, and in 1589. the Prince's story even ran on the London stage.

These traditions and legends, with their inherent simplicity and naivety, would continue to exist, as many legendary and fairy tales still exist, retaining all the charm of their primitiveness. But it is to Shakespeare that they owe the acquisition of an extraordinary depth of comprehension of life, a huge poetic power. Who would have known Romeo and Juliet, Lear, Macbeth, Othello, Hamlet, if Shakespeare had not depicted their fate? These and many other stories Shakespeare raised to the height of such an understanding of life, which was not in art before him.

2. Why did every post-Shakespeare century see in Hamlet a work consonant with its search? What is the mystery of the Prince of Denmark?

Shakespeare's tragedy "Hamlet" is the most famous of the plays of the English playwright. According to many highly respected connoisseurs of art, this is one of the most thoughtful creations of human genius, a great philosophical tragedy. It concerns the most important issues of life and death, which cannot but excite every person, and are of truly universal significance. In addition, the tragedy poses acute moral problems; that is why "Hamlet" attracts many generations of people. Life changes, new interests and concepts arise, but each new generation finds something close to itself in the tragedy.

However, everyone sees Prince Hamlet in their own way.

For example, Goethe considered him "a beautiful, pure, noble, highly moral being," although he noted in him "weakness of will with a high consciousness of duty."

German researcher August Schlegel comes to the conclusion that an excessive tendency to reasoning, reflection kills determination, the will to act. Thus the tragedy of Hamlet begins to be regarded as the eternal tragedy of the intelligentsia.

To Turgenev, he seemed to be an egoist: “He lives all for himself ... He is a skeptic and always fiddles and rushes about with himself.” He contrasts the indecisive, skeptical, incapable of captivating Hamlet with Don Quixote as a man of action.

claims that Hamlet at different stages shows both strength, and weakness, and indecision, and lightning-fast determination; and that it is only in this way, in evolution, in motion, that the multifaceted image of Hamlet should be considered.

Hence the paradox of the perception of the great tragedy. Precisely because it touches everyone very personally, it gives rise to completely different, sometimes contradictory interpretations.

3. What is the tragedy of Hamlet?

"He was a man in everything" (Character of Hamlet, its content and ways of its disclosure).

To prove, by analyzing the texts, that Hamlet is a man of thought, a philosopher.

Hamlet is the bearer of the humanistic worldview of his era and at the same time a critic of the ideas of the Renaissance.

The problem of Hamlet's will.

Tragedy is a rare guest in world art. There are whole epochs of spiritual development, devoid of a developed tragic consciousness. The reason for this lies in the nature of the dominant ideology. Tragedy can arise in a crisis of religious ideology, as was the case in ancient Greece and the Renaissance.

Shakespeare was a contemporary of the great era in the history of mankind, called the Renaissance, which was born at the turn of the XIII-XIV centuries. That was a long period of social and spiritual development of Europe, when the centuries-old feudal system was broken and the bourgeois system was born. It started in Italy. A new worldview was formed in connection with the growth of cities, the development of commodity production, the formation of a world market, geographical discoveries ... The spiritual domination of the church was put to an end, the beginnings of new sciences appeared.

Separately, it must be said about the birth and formation of a new humanistic culture. In sculpture and painting, a cult of antiquity arose, they saw in it the prototype of free humanity.

At first, humanism meant only the study of the languages ​​and writings of the Greco-Roman world. This new science was opposed to the dominant church doctrine of the feudal Middle Ages, the bearer of which was theology. Over time, humanism has taken on a broader meaning. It took shape in an extensive system of views covering all branches of knowledge - philosophy, politics, morality, natural history.

Humanists by no means rejected Christianity as such. His moral teaching, the ethics of goodness, was not alien to them. But humanists rejected the Christian idea of ​​renunciation of the blessings of life and, on the contrary, argued that earthly existence was given to man in order to fully use his strength.

For humanists, man is the center of the universe. The ideal of the humanists was a comprehensively developed person, equally manifesting himself in the field of thought and practical activity. Having broken the old morality of obedience to the existing order, the supporters of the new outlook on life rejected all kinds of restrictions on human activity.

Shakespeare reflected all aspects of this complex process. In his works we see people who are still inclined to live the old fashioned way, as well as those who have thrown off the shackles of obsolete morality, and those who understand that human freedom does not at all mean the right to build one's well-being on the misfortunes of others.

The heroes of Shakespeare's plays are people of just such a warehouse. They have great passions, a powerful will, immeasurable desires. All of them are outstanding people. The character of each is manifested with extraordinary clarity and completeness. Everyone determines his own destiny, choosing one way or another in life.

Hamlet is the foremost man of his time. He is a student at Wittenberg University, which was advanced in the era of Shakespeare. The progressive outlook of Hamlet is also manifested in his philosophical views. In his reasoning, one can feel glimpses of spontaneous materialism, the overcoming of religious illusions. True, the misfortunes with which he encountered brought discord in his worldview. On the one hand, Hamlet repeats the teachings of the humanists about the greatness and dignity of man, which he had mastered well: “What a masterful creation man is! How noble of mind! How boundless in his abilities, shapes and movements! How precise and marvelous in action! How like an angel he is in deep insight! How like a god he is! The beauty of the universe! The crown of all living! (II, 2). This high appraisal of a person is opposed by an unexpected conclusion immediately pronounced by Hamlet: “And what is this quintessence of dust for me? Not one of the people makes me happy ... ”(II 2). With these statements, he both confirms the ideas of the Renaissance and criticizes them.

Based on the text, we can safely assume that before the terrible incidents that disturbed his spiritual peace, Hamlet was a whole person, and this is especially evident in the combination of thought, will and ability to act. The shocked consciousness led to the disintegration of the unity of these qualities.

The very first monologue of Hamlet reveals his tendency to make the broadest generalizations from a single fact. The mother's behavior leads Hamlet to a negative judgment about all women: "Frailty, you are called a woman!"

With the death of his father and the betrayal of his mother, Hamlet experienced a complete collapse of the world in which he had lived until then. He sees the whole world in black:

How tiresome, dull and unnecessary

It seems to me everything that is in the world!

O abomination! This lush garden, fertile

Only one seed; wild and evil

It dominates.

Shakespeare portrays his hero as a nature endowed with great sensitivity, deeply perceiving the terrible phenomena that affect them. Hamlet is a man of hot blood, a big heart capable of strong feelings. He is by no means the cold rationalist and analyst he is sometimes imagined to be. His thought is excited not by the abstract observation of facts, but by their deep experience. If we feel from the very beginning that Hamlet rises above those around him, then this is not the elevation of a person above the circumstances of life. On the contrary, one of the highest personal virtues of Hamlet lies in the fullness of sensations of life, his connection with it, in the consciousness that everything that happens around is significant and requires a person to determine his attitude to things, events, people. Hamlet is distinguished by an acute, intense and even painful reaction to his surroundings.

In Hamlet, more than anywhere else, Shakespeare reveals the variability of personality. For example, at first Hamlet accepts the task of revenge for his father with somewhat unexpected fervor. After all, quite recently we heard from him complaints about the horrors of life and the recognition that he would like to commit suicide, just not to see the surrounding abomination. Now he is imbued with indignation, gathering strength for the task ahead. A little time later, it is already painful for him that such a huge task fell on his shoulders, he does not look at her as a curse, she is a heavy burden for him:

The century was shaken - and worst of all,

That I was born to restore it!

He curses the age in which he was born, curses that he is destined to live in a world where evil reigns and where, instead of surrendering to truly human interests and aspirations, he must devote all his strength, mind and soul to the struggle against the world of evil.

The problem of Hamlet's will is the problem of his choice. In his most famous monologue, "To be or not to be?" Hamlet doubts like never before. This is the highest point of his doubts:

What is nobler in spirit - to submit

Slings and arrows of a furious fate

Or, taking up arms against the sea of ​​troubles, slay them

Confrontation?

In this monologue, Hamlet appears as a deep philosopher, a thinker appears in him, asking new questions: what is death:

Die, sleep

And only: and say that you end up sleeping

Longing and a thousand natural torments,

Legacy of the flesh - how such a denouement

Don't crave?

Monologue "To be or not to be?" from beginning to end is permeated with a heavy consciousness of the sorrows of being. This is the apogee of his thoughts. The point is, will Hamlet stop at these reflections, or are they a transitional step to the next?

But in Act III, Scene 5, Hamlet, after much thought, in yet another monologue, finds his final determination.

I don't know myself

Why do I live, repeating: "This is how it should be done,"

Since there is reason, will, power and means,

To do it.

Before Shakespeare, no writer conveyed such deep moral torments, did not describe such deep reflections.

4. What is the heroism of Hamlet's deeds and the greatness of his feat (to prove by analyzing the main monologues of Hamlet)? Assess your attitude to Hamlet and the methods of fighting evil that he chooses.

Hamlet is irreconcilable to evil, but he does not know how to fight it. His heroism lies in the fact that, having gone through hellish circles of doubt, reflection, torment, he nevertheless brings his revenge to the end.

An interesting detail: when Laertes suspects that Claudius killed his father, he raises the people to revolt against the king. Hamlet in exactly the same situation does not resort to the help of the people, although the people love him. Why doesn't Hamlet act like Laertes? Hamlet does not even think of such a way to settle scores with the king. His struggle with Claudius has exclusively moral meaning for him. Hamlet is a lonely fighter for justice. But it is interesting that he fights against his enemies with their own methods - he pretends, cunning, seeks to find out the secret of his enemy, deceives and - paradoxically - for the sake of a noble goal, he is guilty of the death of several people. Claudius is to blame for the death of only one former king. Hamlet kills (though not intentionally) Polonius, sends Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to certain death, kills Laertes and, finally, the king; he is the direct cause of Ophelia's insanity and is indirectly responsible for her death. But in the eyes of all, he remains morally pure, for he pursued noble goals and the evil that he committed was always a response to the intrigues of his opponents.

In our time, one can only be horrified by the methods that Hamlet chose. But you need to know the history of the bloody revenge of the era when there was a special sophistication of retribution to the enemy, and then Hamlet's tactics will become clear. He needs Claudius to be imbued with the consciousness of his criminality, he wants to punish the enemy first with internal torments, pangs of conscience, if he has one, and only then deliver a fatal blow so that he knows that he is punished not only by Hamlet, but by the moral law, universal justice.

Monologues - question number 3.

5. Breadth and fullness of Shakespearean characters (images of Polonius, Claudius, Gertrude, Laertes, Ophelia, etc.) Episodic characters.

Claudius pleasant, courteous, and perhaps even seductive in some eyes. (Hamlet: "Smiling scoundrel, damned scoundrel.")

Claudius, unlike Richard III, for example, having committed one atrocity, was ready to stop at it. Having achieved his goal, as his throne speech shows, he sought to strengthen his position by peaceful means: firstly, to secure the country from a possible raid by Fortinbrass, and secondly, to make peace with Hamlet. Understanding perfectly well that he took the throne from him, Claudius, compensating for this loss, declares him his heir, we ask you to see him as your father. The only thing he requires of Hamlet is not to leave the Danish court, so that it would be more convenient to watch him (Hamlet: “Denmark is a prison for me”).

He realizes that he committed a grave sin - fratricide. But he prays out of repentance, not because he deeply believes, he just wants to wash away his guilt, in the hope of begging for forgiveness. He himself admits that he is "unrepentant." His baseness is also manifested in the fact that he twice secretly plots to kill Hamlet, although he is married to his mother! As a result, he unwittingly poisons her. In addition, he killed the former king, turns out to be the culprit in the death of the crown prince - he exterminated the entire royal family and therefore, according to Shakespeare's plan, is worthy of death.

Gertrude. Hamlet is sure that Gertrude sincerely loved his father, and her marriage to Claudius was prompted by an exceptionally base sensuality, which disgusts him. Hamlet reproaches and even bitterly condemns Gertrude not only in this, but also in incest, which in those days was considered a grave sin. She so blindly indulged in her desire for happiness, marrying a second time, that she did not recognize the true nature of the one into whose hands she gave her fate. Nevertheless, Gertrude knows that Hamlet's madness is imaginary, but she does not betray this to anyone.

During the duel between Hamlet and Laertes, she openly takes the side of her son. The insidious conspiracy of the king with Laertes is unknown to her. She calmly drinks the goblet of poison prepared for Hamlet. The fact that she drinks the poison intended for her son has a symbolic meaning. She, like Hamlet, falls victim to the cunning of Claudius, and this at least partly atones for her moral guilt.

Polonium. He probably held a high position under the old king. The new king favors him with his favors and is ready to give them to him first. This suggests that after the death of the former monarch, Polonius played an important role in the election of Claudius as king. Worshiping before the reigning persons, in his house he is an unlimited ruler, requiring unconditional obedience. He needs to know everything that is going on in the palace. He is always in a hurry to tell all the news to the king and immediately runs to announce to him, for example, that the reason for Hamlet's insanity is rejected love. The main means of extracting information from him is surveillance. He dies, eavesdropping on Hamlet's conversation with his mother.

There is not a word about sympathy or helping other people in his speeches. Polonius knows by himself: "I myself know when the blood is on fire, how generous the tongue is for oaths." He recommends caution in dealing with others and almost every one of his prescriptions is imbued with distrust of people, even sending a man to spy on his own son to check whether Laertes in Paris is fulfilling his precepts.

The wisdom of Polonius is the wisdom of a courtier, sophisticated in intrigues, not going to the goal in direct ways, able to act secretly, hiding true intentions.

Laertes. If Hamlet bowed to his father, then Laertes wanted to get rid of his guardianship as soon as possible. After the death of his father, his suspicion instantly falls on the king. From this we can conclude what opinion he has about his sovereign. Without hesitation, Laertes raises the people to rebellion, bursts into the palace and is going to kill the king. So he considers himself equal to the king. Revenge for his father is a matter of honor for him, but he has his own concept of it. For example, he is outraged that the ashes of his father and sister were not given due honors, but at the same time he is going to cut Hamlet's throat in the church. For the sake of revenge, he is ready even for sacrilege

But his contempt for true honor is fully manifested in the fact that he agrees to the cunning plan of Claudius to kill Hamlet by fraudulent means, fighting him with a poisoned rapier against Hamlet's ordinary rapier for fencing exercises. He behaves not like a knight, but like an insidious killer. Before his death, Laertes, however, repents. Belatedly, his nobility of spirit returns to him and he confesses his crime; he understands now: "I myself am punished by my treachery."

Hamlet forgives him: "Be pure before heaven!" Why? He is the brother of Ophelia and Hamlet is convinced of the nobility of Laertes, that he should have the same high notions of honor as he himself. If we recall everything that Hamlet was to blame for in relation to the Polonius family, then the relationship between them may well be characterized by Shakespeare's formula - "measure for measure".

Ophelia. She pronounces only 158 lines of text, but Shakespeare was able to invest his whole life in these lines.

Ophelia's love is her trouble. Although her father is close to the king, his minister, nevertheless she is not of royal blood and therefore no match for her lover. From the very first appearance of Ophelia, the main conflict of her fate is clearly indicated - her father and brother demand that she give up her love for Hamlet. Obeying them, we see in her a complete lack of howl and independence.

There is not a single love scene between Hamlet and Ophelia in the tragedy. But there is a scene of their breakup. It is full of amazing drama.

The words that Hamlet utters over the grave of Ophelia finally convince us that his feeling for her was genuine. That is why the scenes where Hamlet rejects Ophelia are imbued with a special drama - all the cruel words that he says to her are given to him with difficulty, he utters them with despair, because, loving her, he realizes that she has become an instrument of his enemy against him and for the implementation of revenge must give up love. Hamlet suffers from being 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 this vicious world for a monastery.

Horatio. Hamlet's university friend. A completely inactive character, Horatio is assigned an important role in the ideological design. It serves Shakespeare to reveal the ideal of man. Hamlet completely trusts him with his plan of revenge. He is not a slave of passions; Horatio is a calm, balanced person, rationalism is inherent in him. But the main thing that Hamlet emphasizes in him is his philosophical outlook on life. Horatio, with all his wise calmness, passionately loves Hamlet. Seeing a hundred prince dying, he wants to share his fate with him and is ready to drink poison from a poisoned goblet. Hamlet stops him.

Horatio is a man of humanistic culture, an ardent admirer of antiquity. Before attempting to drink poison and commit suicide, he exclaims: "I am a Roman, not a Dane in soul."

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. They are quiet habits, servility and evasiveness, assent, flattery and flattery, pretense, groveling, goodness and insignificance.

The peculiar drama of their fate is that they are pawns in someone else's game. Accustomed to please and obey, they do not know anything about the essence of what is happening, even about what they are directly involved in. Voluntary servants of evil, they die, like Polonius, when hit by one of two powerful opponents.

Prince Fortinbrass and his father.

The role of Fortinbrass is perhaps the smallest in the tragedy. The princes never meet in person, they judge each other by hearsay, but both hold each other in high regard.

Fortinbrass goes to fight driven by ambition. Hamlet would not have raised his sword for this. With chivalrous militancy, the Norwegian prince follows his father, who did not like to sit idle. He languished in peace and, without any reason, challenged Hamlet's father to a duel, himself putting forward the condition that the vanquished give his lands to the winner, and lost.

Hamlet gives Fortinbrass a vote for the possession of Denmark, since he, unlike Claudius, but despite his certain limitations, acts with an open visor, honestly, without malice and deceit. Not being an ideal knight, he is, one might say, the lesser evil.

Hamlet's father. Without him there would be no tragedy. From beginning to end, his image hovers over her. Instructing the prince to take revenge on Claudius, the Ghost warns Hamlet not to do any harm to his mother, the punishment for which should be her own mental anguish and not tarnish her honor.

6. Are the ideas of Hamlet relevant today?

Problems of moral choice will always be relevant. The deeper the reader thinks about the great work of Shakespeare, the more he will find in it. The meaning of the work is revealed not only in characters and situations. There is something in tragedy that is not specifically expressed. This is a very special feeling, as if, reading or watching a play on stage, we join the very roots of life. This cannot be expressed in words. But after all that we have learned about the people who appeared in the tragedy, after the fate of each of them has come true, there is a feeling that the poet has led us to that central point where the greatness, beauty and tragedy of being are concentrated. It is in vain to look in Shakespeare's work for clear and precise answers to the questions raised by it. The more fully we can imagine the diversity of characters, the complexity of the dramatic action, the deeper we feel into the tragic fate of the heroes, the closer we will come to that vast world that the genius of Shakespeare was able to embody in the relatively small volume of his great tragedy.

This is one of those works that surprisingly stimulates thinking. For the majority, it becomes that personal property that everyone feels entitled to judge. Having understood Hamlet, imbued with the spirit of the great tragedy, we not only comprehend the thoughts of one of the best minds; "Hamlet" is one of those works in which the self-consciousness of mankind is expressed, its consciousness of contradictions, the desire to overcome them, the desire for improvement, intransigence towards everything that is hostile to humanity.

Issues

The problem of moral choice

One of the most striking problems of the work is the problem of choice, which can be considered a reflection of the main conflict of the tragedy. For a thinking person, the problem of choice, especially when it comes to moral choice, is always difficult and responsible. Undoubtedly, the final result is determined by a number of reasons and, first of all, by the value system of each individual. If in his life a person is guided by higher, noble impulses, he most likely will not decide on an inhumane and criminal step, will not violate the well-known Christian commandments: do not kill, do not steal, do not commit adultery, etc. However, in Shakespeare's tragedy "Hamlet" we are witnessing a somewhat different process. The protagonist, in a fit of revenge, kills several people, his actions cause ambiguous feelings, but condemnation in this series is in last place.

Having learned that his father fell at the hands of the villain Claudius, Hamlet faces the most difficult problem of choice. The famous monologue "To be or not to be?" embodies the spiritual doubts of the prince, making a difficult moral choice. Life or death? Strength or impotence? Unequal struggle or shame of cowardice? Hamlet tries to resolve such complex questions.

Hamlet's famous monologue shows the destructive spiritual struggle between idealistic ideas and cruel reality. The insidious murder of the father, the indecent marriage of the mother, the betrayal of friends, the weakness and frivolity of the beloved, the meanness of the courtiers - all this fills the soul of the prince with exorbitant suffering. Hamlet understands that "Denmark is a prison" and "the age is shaken". From now on, the main character is left alone with the hypocritical world, which is ruled by lust, cruelty and hatred.

Hamlet constantly feels a contradiction: his consciousness clearly says what he must do, but he lacks will, determination. On the other hand, it can be assumed that it is not the lack of will that leaves Hamlet inactive for a long time. No wonder the theme of death constantly arises in his reasoning: it is in direct relationship with the awareness of the frailty of being.

Finally, Hamlet makes a decision. He is truly close to madness, since the sight of evil that triumphs and rules is unbearable. Hamlet takes responsibility for the world's evil, all the misunderstandings of life, for all the suffering of people. The protagonist acutely feels his loneliness and, realizing his powerlessness, nevertheless goes into battle and dies like a wrestler.

Finding the meaning of life and death

The monologue "To be or not to be" shows us that a huge internal struggle is going on in Hamlet's soul. Everything that happens around him is so burdensome for him that he would commit suicide if it were not considered a sin. The hero is concerned about the very mystery of death: what is it - a dream or a continuation of the same torments with which earthly life is full?

“Here is the difficulty;

What dreams will dream in a death dream,

When we drop this mortal noise, -

That's what brings us down; that's where the reason

That calamities are so enduring;

Who would take down the whips and mockery of the century,

The oppression of the strong, the mockery of the proud,

The pain of despicable love, judges slowness,

The arrogance of the authorities and insults,

Made to meek merit,

When he himself could give himself the calculation

With a simple dagger? (5, p.44)

Fear of the unknown, of this country, from where not a single traveler has ever returned, often makes people return to reality and not think about the "unknown land from which there is no return."

Unhappy love

The relationship between Ophelia and Hamlet forms an independent drama within the framework of the great tragedy. Why can't people who love each other be happy? In Hamlet, the relationship between lovers is destroyed. Revenge turns out to be an obstacle to the unity of the prince and the girl he loves. Hamlet depicts the tragedy of the rejection of love. At the same time, their fathers play a fatal role for lovers. Ophelia's father orders to break with Hamlet, Hamlet breaks with Ophelia in order to devote himself entirely to revenge for his father. Hamlet suffers from the fact that he is forced to hurt Ophelia and, suppressing pity, is merciless in his condemnation of women.

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The fight between good and evil

The struggle between good and evil is one of the main problems of tragedy. The heaviest burden was thrown by fate on the shoulders of Hamlet: "The age has been shaken, and the worst thing is that I was born to restore it." To “restore” the shattered century is such a mission that only a titan can do, which, in fact, was the idea of ​​a person by the artists of the Renaissance. We meet Hamlet at the moment when before him - a man who grew up in understanding and love, a student at the University of Wittenberg - the drama of life is revealed. The first real pain is the death of his father, whom Hamlet idolized, in whom he honored the ideal of Man (“He was a man, a man in everything”). However, the contradiction that broke the harmony in the soul of Hamlet is the “vile haste” of the mother, who became the wife of Claudius a month after the death of her husband. In Hamlet's mind, the mother's love for his father, which he remembered and in which he grew up, and such a quick replacement for Claudius do not fit. This hurts Hamlet so much that the thought of suicide slips through him (“Or if the eternal one had not set a ban on suicide”). Hamlet's first monologue in the play is a cry of pain, misunderstanding, he is torn apart by a contradiction: he loves his mother, but cannot forgive her "heinous haste".

However, the most terrible revelations about the disharmony of the world awaited Hamlet in the words of the Phantom. The marriage of his mother, the hypocrisy and treachery of his uncle seem to him even meaner and more terrible. Hamlet sees that a man who has committed fratricide enjoys life as if he had done nothing wrong. This was a terrible discovery for Hamlet, which shook all his ideas about life: he sees that the foundations of a harmonious world order are crumbling, signs of decay are visible in everything, primarily in how people have changed. For them, vice is no longer vice, and virtue is virtue:

You can live with a smile

And with a smile to be a scoundrel.

Honesty and honor have disappeared from the world.

Claudius becomes the embodiment of evil in the play. Already in the first words of Claudius - hypocrisy, duplicity, selfishness: under the guise of sorrow and sadness - contentment with the achieved goal. Calling the king Hamlet Sr., who was killed by him, “beloved brother,” Claudius hides the poisoning and blinding envy of his brother that originally lived in his soul; addressing Hamlet as “a son close to his heart”, “the first of his kind”, “our son and dignitary”, Claudius hates him as the closest reminder of the price that had to be paid for the throne and the queen.

Claudius is aware of his guilt, his terrible sin, which is why Hamlet managed to lure him into his "mousetrap", to see the king's fear and confusion during the play. Claudius is afraid of God's judgment, fear has forever settled in his soul, he is trying to alleviate mental turmoil with prayer, but only pure words can rise to heaven: "Words without thought will not reach heaven." However, according to the laws of treachery and human baseness, instead of repentance, cleansing of conscience, Claudius chooses a different path - the path of getting rid of Hamlet. Evil grows like a snowball, giving rise to new evil: Claudius tries to get rid of the severity of one murder through another. So complex, offensive, aggressive is the evil against which Hamlet rises. However, Claudius is not a soulless machine of evil, but still a person who is not alien to human feelings - passion for Gertrude, a sense of fear and sin. But precisely because he is a man, he is responsible for everything he has done, and therefore he pays for his moral choice - an unexpected death not purified by prayer.

The problem of moral choice. Destiny and free will. The price of human life.

The image of the protagonist is also associated with such important problems as moral choice, the predestination of fate and the free will of a person, the price of human life. One of the questions that comes up when reading the play is why Hamlet is slow in retribution. The answer can be found by comparing the three heroes of the play in a situation of revenge: Fortinbras, Laertes and Hamlet. Fortinbras initially refuses to avenge his father, as the Norwegian is defeated in a fair fight. Laertes, having learned about the death of Polonius, unlike Hamlet, "flies on the wings of revenge" blindly, through, without thinking. Bursting into Claudius with the exclamation “You, vile king, return my father to me!”, He immediately becomes a toy in the hands of a smart and cunning king. It was not difficult for Claudius to direct Laertes' anger at Hamlet, Laertes willingly agrees to become a "tool" in the hands of the king and only a moment before his death begins to see clearly, understands everything and manages to tell Hamlet: "The king ... the king is guilty." So determination, not bound by the "fetters" of doubts, reflections, not knowing the eternal "to be or not to be", leads to a catastrophe, death, and multiplies evil. Unlike Laertes, Hamlet wants to serve not blind revenge, but Truth. This is his Mission, his cross, his chosen one.

Hamlet's doubts are not an indicator of his weakness, on the contrary, he knows how to be bold and decisive, like a few. Already in the first act, strong will, courage, determination are revealed in Hamlet: he is warned to follow the Ghost - he is unstoppable in his impulse to find out the truth. "Hands off!" he says to those trying to stop him. Hamlet is a Thinker, an Analyst, he has a special activity - the activity of Thought. Hamlet's three monologues in the play are his touch on the eternal problems of being: good and evil, predestination of fate and free will, the price of human life and the purpose of man. Perhaps the most famous monologue not only of Shakespeare’s play, but of the entire world dramaturgy is “To be or not to be?” Revolt against evil or reconcile with it, go through the whole thorny path in the name of truth or retreat, deciding that it is impossible to achieve it? “To die, to fall asleep” - Hamlet does not even have the right to die, because death would be too simple a decision, it would become a Refusal of choice.

What is nobler in spirit - to submit

Slings and arrows of a furious fate

Or, taking up arms against the sea of ​​unrest,

Slay them with confrontation?

The eternal problem - a person in the face of a choice, global, colossal, on which both his life and the life of the world depend - this is the moral and philosophical sound of the monologue. Only a titan can make such a choice. Just to realize this choice, to face one's fate - this alone requires superhuman strength and courage. The faith of Shakespeare, an artist of the Renaissance, was already reflected in the fact that he sees such forces in a person.

The meeting with the army of Fortinbras, going to Poland, makes Hamlet think about the price of human life, about the goal and means:

Death is about to swallow twenty thousand

What for the sake of whim and absurd fame

They go to the grave like a bed to fight

For a place where not everyone can turn around,

Where there is nowhere to bury the dead.

On one side of the scale - the life and death of thousands, on the other - "whim" and "nonsense glory." For Hamlet the humanist, this is unacceptable: not all means are good for achieving the goal, human life is incomparable with a piece of land, the price of this life should not be negligible.

The meeting with the gravediggers makes Hamlet think about the price of human life, about life and death. Does a person disappear without a trace? What remains after it? Is death, which equalizes and reconciles all, really the turning of man into dust? Hamlet does not want to agree that a person completely dissolves in non-existence, he rebels against the very law of nature: "My bones hurt from such a thought." However, the very fact that Yorick comes to life in Hamlet's memory, whose skull he now holds in his hands with such sadness, says that a person is not erased into dust, that the invisible aura of his presence is felt on earth.

In these monologues, Hamlet is revealed as a philosopher and poet. “A poet is the structure of the soul,” Marina Tsvetaeva will say. This “structure of the soul” is palpable in Hamlet: who, if not a poet, could say that he sees his father “in the eyes of his soul”, who could so acutely perceive the destruction of harmony, the consonance of his soul and the world.

Hamlet is a tragic hero: he makes a conscious choice to fight evil, realizing that this unequal duel can end in death. Hamlet, as a true hero of the Renaissance, rises up against world disharmony in defense of harmony, but in this confrontation he finds himself alone. It would seem that outwardly Hamlet is not alone: ​​his mother loves him, the people favor him, the army is always ready to rise behind him, but we have the right to talk about the special inner loneliness of Shakespeare's hero - the loneliness of the First. Hamlet went further than others in comprehending evil, what was closed to others was revealed to him, next to him there is no person endowed with the same spiritual strength, even Horatio, a true friend of Hamlet, has no right to be with him at the decisive moments of his life.

Even the imaginary madness of Hamlet emphasizes his loneliness in the confrontation with the world of evil: madness is a mask that helps him speak the truth in a world of lies: “Denmark is a prison”, “If you take everyone according to their deserts, then who will escape the whip?”, “To be honest despite what this world is like, it means to be a man fished out of tens of thousands. Madness is an opportunity to temporarily stop being the Hamlet that Claudius fears and hates, it is the only way to survive in a crazy world.

In the fight against evil, Hamlet dies, as almost all the heroes of the tragedy die, except for Horatio and Fortinbras. Fortinbras is resolute and noble, he really deserves to take the Danish throne, but he cannot be a complete replacement for Hamlet: a person is irreplaceable. Hamlet did a lot: he called evil evil, threw off the mask of hypocrisy, exposing the cunning of Claudius, he avenged the death of his father. However, the ending of the play is tragic, and the appearance of Fortinbras does not remove the tragic tension. In a fatal duel with evil, Hamlet dies - and this is Shakespeare's tragic recognition of the complexity and diversity of evil, which cannot be defeated by one person, even if this person is Hamlet.

After the departure of Hamlet, a void remains that cannot be filled by anything or anyone: the world has become poorer for Hamlet, the Thinker, Poet, Man has left the world. However, the tragedy of the finale still does not crush with oppressive hopelessness, in Shakespeare's tragedy there is a light of faith in a person, in his greatness, his possibilities, there is an enlightened sadness of recognizing the drama of a person's fate in the world, there is hope.

The problem of the tragic fate of love in a world not intended for love.

Many in the play have their own tragedy - Ophelia has the tragedy of love in the world of calculation and deceit. The true cause of Ophelia's madness and death is the death of harmony, a collision with such tragedies that crushed her mind: the "madness" of Hamlet, which Ophelia perceives as her own pain and the collapse of hopes for happiness and love, the death of her father. In her songs - a reflection of disharmony in the soul, which has lost joy and light: she sings about death, deceit, deceit of a loved one. The very death of Ophelia is meek, covered with sadness and a kind of woeful charm: she herself, not realizing her end, becomes part of the water (and water is a symbol of purification). Ophelia, as she lived, dies clean, her inner nobility, ability to love, spiritual subtlety are not destroyed by the cunning of the world - and this is her kind of victory over evil. The fate of Ophelia is the inexcusable guilt of a world in which beauty and purity could not survive.

The loss of Ophelia for Hamlet is such a pain that he, without thinking, without fear of being recognized, rushes into her grave in order to be with the one he loved and who was taken away from him by the “shattered age” for another moment.

The eternal theme of love even more reflects the tragedy of Hamlet's fate: next to him there is no person left whose love would be able to reconcile with the imperfection of the world. There were too many obstacles in the way of this love: the death of fathers, the intrigues of the court, the orders of the elders, but most importantly, time itself, not intended for love.