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Characterization in the play ‘Hamlet’ plays a crucial role in developing the story’s themes and plot
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Characterization in Hamlet
Characterization in the play ‘Hamlet’ plays a crucial role in developing the story’s themes and plot. ‘Hamlet’ is one of Shakespeare’s most famous literary works that has been studied throughout the world. It is a tragic play whose main characters are the first family of Denmark. It is a sad tale of how a son, Hamlet, seeks vengeance for his father’s death and how his quest leaves destruction in its wake. Hamlet who is the main character in the story is central to the development of the play’s themes and other characters.
The story is set in the city of Elsinore in Denmark around the middle ages (Knights 19). When the play begins, the King of Denmark who is Hamlet’s father has been recently murdered. Hamlet is grief-stricken at the death of his father. Gertrude is the Queen of Denmark and Hamlet’s mother. Upon the death of her husband, she marries Claudius who happens to be her late husband’s brother. Other characters in the play are Ophelia who is the daughter to Polonius. Polonius serves as a royal attendant to the King. Laertes is Ophelia’s brother and a son to Polonius who ends up taking his father’s place in the palace after the death of Polonius.
The Ghost of Hamlet’s father is another character in the story that is seen to inspire many of Hamlet’s actions. Other minor characters include Horatio with whom Hamlet attended school and Guildenstern and Rosencrantz who are friends of Hamlet as well. All the characters in the story play a critical role and help to deliver the plot and the themes of the play in a vivid manner. The reader can find the characters very relatable, and their actions are what one would expect from the situations in which they find themselves.
Hamlet is the main protagonist in the play. Throughout the play, his actions are focused on seeking revenge for his dead father. He believes that the new king, Claudius, was a part of the plot to kill his father. He even suspects that his mother Gertrude aided him in carrying out the deed. “O most pernicious woman/ O villain, villain, smiling damned villain!…/ One may smile, and smile and be a villain/ At least I am sure it may be so in Denmark.”
Hamlet can be described as being loyal to the memory of his late father. He tells Horatio that he will never see anyone like his father, ““I shall not look upon his like again”. He wants to find out exactly who killed him so that he might take revenge on them. He is also very impulsive, and this can be seen in Act III where he speaks to his mother about her relationship with her husband, King Claudius. He tells her that what he did by marrying Claudius is disrespectful of his dead father. Unknown to him, Polonius was hidden behind the tapestry to protect Queen Gertrude from her son’s strange actions. Hamlet thinks Claudius is behind the curtain and drives a knife through it, killing Polonius.
Hamlet is brutally honest. He tells his mother in no uncertain terms exactly how he feels about her marriage to his uncle. He says, “O most wicked speed, to post/ With such dexterity to incestuous sheets!/ It is not, nor it cannot come to good/ But break my heart, for I must hold my tongue” . Hamlet thinks that his mother and Claudius insulted the late King’s memory by getting married a short time after the King’s death. Their marriage can also be considered incestuous as Gertrude married the brother of her late husband (Knights 35). He is also vengeful and will stop at nothing to find out who killed his father.
Hamlet is also very emotional and unstable. His father’s death caused him much grief, and this shows what a loving son he must have been (Jarosz 13). Hamlet is anxious to speak to the ghost of his father when Horatio tells him of how they saw the ghost. With all the problems that Hamlet faces after the death of his father and his mother’s remarriage, he considers suicide but fails to go through with it as he believes it a sin. His actions, however, become more unpredictable by the day and lead his mother to summon him in the third act to find out what the problem is. Hamlet can also be quite level-headed when he chooses to be. Instead of rushing to kill his uncle on the ghost’s word, he decides that he must first get more evidence of his foul actions. He does this by performing a play about the Murder of Gonzago to see Claudius’ reaction.
Gertrude is another major character in the play. She is the Queen of Denmark because when her husband died, she married his brother and remained Queen. Such an act can be considered a betrayal and an insult to the memory of her late husband. She did so very soon after the death that Hamlet feels that her grief was faked. She is also very inconsiderate of her son Hamlet. Gertrude did not give him enough time to grieve his dead father before she went ahead to marry his brother. She, however, does not understand how her actions affected Hamlet and led to his unstable state of mind. Gertrude is a woman who lacks virtue, her marriage to her late husband’s brother can be considered incestuous and Hamlet tells her as much, her weak morality is brought to light when Hamlet asks her not to sleep in Claudius’ bed, to which she replies, “What shall I do?” (Thompson & Neil).
Queen Gertrude can be said to be gullible and guileless. She bows down to her husband’s every whim and is blind to his faults. She fails to comprehend the reason as to why Hamlet has been acting so strange lately. She acts shocked and surprised when Hamlet lets her know how he feels about her marriage and her grief that is quite shallow. She presents herself as a helpless victim in the whole scenario. This is hardly the case as she married Claudius soon after her husband’s death with no regard for Hamlet’s feelings or the opinions of other people. She is also selfish as her marriage was likely because she wanted to maintain the status quo of being Queen of England.
King Claudius is the main antagonist of the story. He became King by poisoning his late brother and then becoming King in his place. He also marries his dead brother’s wife, Queen Gertrude. The marriage can be seen as an incestuous act. Claudius appears to be repentant of his crimes as he confesses his sins to God in his chapel. The confession shows how remorseful he is for killing his brother. The King can also be said to be a capable leader. When the play begins, he manages to diplomatically avert a military crisis when Denmark is threatened by Norway. He is calm and gentle with Hamlet whom he urges to stop being so sad all the time.
As is his wife Gertrude, King Claudius is inconsiderate of Hamlet. He marries the Prince’s mother without giving him to grieve for his dying father. Claudius is also manipulative and scheming. He manipulates his wife into believing that he is innocent of any crimes. He manages to convince Laertes to become his ally after the death of Polonius. When he takes over as King, he tries to unite all his people who are grieving for their king. “The whole kingdom/to be contracted in one brow of woe” (Shakespeare 31). He is a heavy drinker, and in the end, he succumbs to poisoned wine which is ironical. The public persona of Claudius is entirely different from who he is in private. The ghost describes him as being incestuous for marrying his wife. His greed and lust for power are what led him to kill his brother in the first place.
Other minor characters in the story are Polonius, Ophelia, and Laertes. Polonius was a faithful attendant to the court. He is the one who asks Gertrude to speak to Hamlet to find the cause of Hamlet’s strange behavior. This is not out of genuine for concern for Hamlet, but it was a way of spying for the king hence Polonius is a pretender. His son Laertes is a man of weak character as he goes from being King Claudius’ enemy to being his friend. Ophelia is a gullible woman who bows down to the instructions of her father Polonius when he sends her to speak to Hamlet with the hope of finding the cause of his behavior.
The characters in the play are well explained, and Hamlet especially brings vivid images to the reader. His desire to avenge his father and his anger towards his mother overwhelm him and lead to the death of all the characters discussed. Characterization in the play helps the reader to identify the lot and theme of the story without much struggle.
Works Cited
Jarosz, Maria. Bargains with fate: Psychological crises and conflicts in Shakespeare and his plays. Routledge, 2017.
Jarosz gives an insightful analysis of the works and Shakespeare in this book. This insight is gained mostly from the fact that the Shakespearean characters are very bold and there are different modes of thought that keep on changing as a result. The author takes this into account and allows different perspectives into the main characters such as Hamlet, Gertrude, Claudius, Polonius and the other characters. It makes the reader relate more with the characters by explaining them as humans with tragedies just like the readers. The hypotheses that the author gives are very bold but accompanied with evidence that support it.
Knights, Lionel Charles. An Approach to” Hamlet.”. Stanford University Press, 1961.
This book by Knights gives a detailed explanation about the play Hamlet. Each act is carefully dissected to put into perspective the themes and characters. The book also gives an adequate guide on how the words and actions of each character can be interpreted in line with the general themes and messages that Shakespeare intended to pass across to the audience. It portrays Hamlet who is the main character in different light depending on his words and actions. The reader is eventually led to sympathize with the hero of the story who can be seen to be both a victim of circumstances and a master of his own fate.
Muir, Kenneth. The sources of Shakespeare’s plays. Routledge, 2014.
This book takes an in-depth look at the events and occurrences that influenced the literary works of art that were penned by Shakespeare. Specifically, it looks at how his general readings of other literary works was incorporated into the plays and books he wrote. Shakespeare painstakingly collected the sources that he would refer to in writing his plays and Hamlet is no exception. The tragedy was inspired by real life events that took place in Denmark. The main aim of literary works is to portray some events that have happened or are likely to happen. Hamlet is one such work where the acts are likely to occur and the characters show how the scenario may play out.
Shakespeare, William. The tragedy of Hamlet, prince of Denmark, 2018.
This is the primary source in the characterization of Hamlet. It is considered as one of Shakespeare’s most popular works. The acts of the play show us what the main characters represent and the reader can deduce their characters from their words and actions. The paly has several acts that are set in different locations. The conversations between the characters give us an insight into their characters. The dialogues gives us a clear picture of the events and how the characters react to them. For example Hamlet’s conversation with his mother Gertrude shows us that he disapproves of her actions in marrying his uncle Claudius.
Thompson, Ann, and Neil Taylor, eds. Hamlet: A Critical Reader. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2016.
This book by Ann Thompson and Neil Taylor gives the perspective of both modern scholars and those who have studied the book in earlier times. the characters of the tragedy Hamlet are examined in detail and are a useful reference in the description of the characterization in the play. The past critiques of the books accompanied with more modern analysis makes the range of perspectives given a very wide one. When studying the play, this book is an invaluable companion in dissecting the themes, characters and the plot of the play. It is an effective study guide.
Music has been with us for a very long while
Music has been with us for a very long while. In fact, part of being human is an appreciation of the finer arts. However, music’s role has remained anything but constant throughout history. Music has gone from a mathematical science to a synthesis of melody and harmony. Many wonderful pieces have been written for religious purposes. Many more have been written for the secular world. The art of music has not always been that way. The Roman Catholic Church, for the longest time, was the only source of music that was approved by societies. Little by little, that changed. The secularization of music could not have occurred with out a secularization of the whole of western culture itself. While no one person can be single handedly responsible, there were many people who contributed to the gradual move of music away from the church.
To understand some of the later developments that were made in music, one has to look back on the beginning of western musical thought. Many people associate the beginning of the western world with the tribes that migrated and eventually conquered the Pelopeniasian lands, the area that was eventually called Greece. Greece was one of the first cultures to emerge in the west outside of the Fertile Crescent. It was certainly the first to leave clues as to how the culture thought. Greek scholars like Aristotle, believed that music should be grouped up as to its purpose. There was the solemn, disciplined and restrained music, Apollonian, and the wild, emotional, unrestrained music, the Dianysian. The Apollonian was usually reserved for the serious moments where wild displays of raw emotions were looked down upon. That included prayers, religious services and funerals. The Dianysian was the music used for dancing and celebrating. The whole of the Greek musical theory revolved on keeping those distinctions in mind. The Greeks viewed music as a science. That is an important point. The fact that the Greeks looked at it as a science rather than a religious experience let them have more freedom to study than the later cultures. It was a science, and the nature of science is experimenting. “What if you jiggle your left index finger on that high note?” If there is five hundred years of doctrine saying it is a sin to do that, a composer will feel less inclined to add it in. If you are in a culture that celebrates music as a science, a composer feels they have more freedom to add anything they want in. Rome was an extension of Greece. They were a conquering race of people who had a history of taking what they wanted from a conquered enemy and burning the rest. The Romans were very impressed with the theory of music that the Greeks had. They took it back to Rome and altered it slightly to please them. One of the ideas the Romans kept was separate types of music. There was “Music of the Spheres”, the serious music that made you think and have deep emotions to, and there was the “Music of the Human”, the dancing, not-too-deep, party music that you had urges and acted upon them.
The Roman Empire “fell” and many areas of Europe had very few authority figures to turn to. The kings in Europe were the lords of a hundred acres or so. There were no huge institutions to turn to keep the cultural ideals of the past alive. Enter the Roman Catholic Church. The church was the stable base that kept Europe from falling over after the Romans were finished. In most places, the church was the only stable thing around. In the early sixth century, all the lords were sure to have Rome behind them whenever they did the smallest thing, even write music. A big requirement of singing is you have to be able to read and write. With the fall of basically every institution there was, the people had no way to keep up with everything. They had to forget about music for a while in order to survive. So, there was tons of music lying around, but next to no one was able to understand what it meant. There was only one big organization around that taught people how to read and write. To train as a monk, being able to read and write the scripture was a big deal. Pope Gregory (590 – 604) decided that it was a good idea to pair music with glorifying God. Legends say that he sat down for a few years and hashed out all the music the church would use in its services, the hymns, psalms and canticles. Although it has been proved that there were many people who helped, he was the major force behind reviving the art of music after Rome “fell”. Pope Gregory also brought all the church’s political power to Rome, so that when he said to do something, local lords did not say “He’s some minor monk, I owe fealty to this monk”, they obeyed with out question. When he wanted to include music in the services, all those local lords did everything they could to help.
Europe was sailing along smoothly until one day, the Turks take over the Holy Land. The pope mounts a couple of crusades to wipe them out. During one of them, the second to be exact, the King of France’s wife, Eleanor of Aquitine, went along. Along the way they both had an affair with the same knight. On the way bake, they had their marriage annulled with a quick stop at Rome. Eleanor, however, was the large part of that family’s income. Aquitine made up all of western France at that point. When she went and married England’s king, Henry II, that was adding insult to injury. Henry II is better known by his sons King Richard II, “the Lion Hearted” and King John, the one who signed the Magna Carta. With their marriage, Eleanor was almost as rich as the pope. Half of the pope’s power came from the fact that he was richer than every other monarch. One of Eleanor’s passions was music. In her native Aquitine, there was a large Celtic influence. From that sprang the class of people called Bards. Wandering singers who played for money and food. The Roman Catholic Church had taken a hard line on the idea of Bards. Their music had the effect as to make people wish to commit sinful acts of passion and defiance. Eleanor absolutely loved them. She made it known that her lands were safe haven for bards and minstrels. She could defy Rome like that because she had the money. Also, she had the option of going into her lands and confiscating all the church’s lands and make them hers and therefore, taxable. Eventually, the church backed down. Her victory was short lived after her death. Her land became the territory of Richard II, who loved the idea of a holy quest and obeyed the pope to a fault. However, it was an important point in the history of music. Someone from the secular world stood up to the pope on a matter of musical freedom.
The church could not hold on to power forever. Eventually, the strains on it became too much. The Holy Roman Empire was a constant threat to Rome. The dwindling Byzantine Empire could not hold back the Muslim Turks for much longer. Eventually, a group of scholars got together and decided to look for the best of the best. Find the greatest minds in Philosophy, Mathematics and Music. This was another important step. People were trying to get the best people in a lot of fields and were not turning to Rome. A secular hand would guide the future of thought. The people who gathered there looked back to the past to gain an understanding of where their fields of study had came from. Music was no exception. People learned ancient Greek just to be able to read Aristotle’s views on music. This group of people founded a school called Notre Dame. However, the hand of the church was still holding on. Just because its power had waned, did not mean they were letting go any time soon. There were still certain things you had to do. The songs still had to be based on Biblical text. There was one drone and there was a melismatic melody above it. Then things started to change. In a tribute to the past, the musicians at Notre Dame started to experiment with the science of music. Magistar Leonin came up with what is now known as Organum. This was outlined in his book Magus Liber Organi or “The Great Book of Organum”. A later scholar named Perotin came up with putting more than one melody in a piece. He did this by putting more parts above the drone in a piece of Organum. This was called Organum Triplum and Organum Quadruplum. Then there was the big breakthrough of a Motet. That was the biggest thing to ever hit music. The later Middle Ages saw the greatest decline in the Church’s power. There was a point where certain lords refused to acknowledge the pope’s authority, so the elected their own pope. There was some times where there were up to five popes at once. Eventually, the imposters were denounced and there was one pope again. His power, however, was considerably shaken. No longer could he dictate what was what from Rome without anyone thinking about the decision first. That is when Music comes full circle and there is what we now call “Secular Form”. It had no drone as a necessary voice part and there was a fixed form. The big ones are Ballade, and Rondo. They were music for the sake of music. Harkening back to the Dianysian style of music, it was a perfect tribute to the Greeks.
Music had come full circle after the church controlled it for about one thousand years. It should not be said that the church was wrong to have controlled it in the first place. A little artistic restriction that is eventually done away with is a better thing than letting all of music’s past crumble away to dust. Music, and indeed all the arts, is like a living thing. They need to grow or they will become stagnate and waste away.
Music has been for a long time been associated with politics
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Music has been for a long time been associated with politics, with a large number of musicians being involved in politics through their indirect influence as well as their ability to command a large population. Due to their influence, some of the musicians have been labeled as rebels to the government with some of the accusations leading to the assassination. Politicians, however, have misused the musicians and manipulated them to their gain.
‘Who shot the Sheriff’ is a Netflix documentary that narrates the circumstance that led to the attempted assassination of the Jamaican reggae icon, Bob Marley. Bob Marley was a famous reggae musician commanding a large crowd in Jamaica. Bob was a Rastafarian and rose to fame during the times that Jamaica was in chaos with people getting into war due to politics. Due to this Bob formed an underground movement named the roots and reggae movement and through this movement, he advocated for unity among the people through his music. Marley gained international recognition, and this sent tension to the politicians back at home as they saw a revolution and considered Bob Marley a threat. Two days before Marley could perform to a concert organized by the then prime minister of Jamaica Michael Manly, Bob together with his family and manager were shot by unknown people. According to the documentary, it is inferred that the attempted suicide was a plot to warn Bob to restrain himself from engaging in politics, and the CIA is thought to have had an upper hand of the attack.
The filmmaker intends to investigate who shot Bob Marley and therefore the film is an investigative documentary. The documentary opens with flickering images of black and white. Gunshots and people armed with guns are seen in the film, and this implies that Jamaica was in war at the time of the shooting. The documentary uses natural lighting, but the contrast is not very clear, and the reason is that the documentary uses past images recorded at a time when the technology was not advanced. Since the images and most of the videos were recorded past the year 1976, the visual quality is not that pleasing, and therefore the visual quality cannot be termed to be very good. However, the audio is very clear, and one can hear the wording without any strains. The coordination of the audio and visual elements is excellent, and this makes the overall quality of the documentary to be of high quality. Since the whole documentary is investigative, various interviews are done with different personalities providing their perspective on what transposed at the time of the shooting. Interviews are a source of valid data, and therefore it is a production of facts from the first-hand source, and this increases the credibility of the author. Through the interviews, that include from Bob Marley himself, we are able to obtain firsthand information and therefore sum up that the overall quality of the documentary is highly rated.
The mood created in the documentary is that of fear as people are seen shooting at one another and this creates a feeling of anxiety. The black and white images are a reminder of the past and therefore carries the mind of the viewer sometimes back. The responses of the Bob Marley during the interviews depicts him as being brave as he seems not to fear anything and this triggers a response of bravery from the audience. Despite the introduction of the documentary being hot with gunshots, Bob is seen with only a guitar in a concert preaching for peace, and this triggers responses of unity and togetherness to the people. Since Bob was a reggae artist, the Rastafarian colors are vividly depicted even through his dressing as well as the long hair that is a culture of the Rastafarians eliciting a response of being true to own religion which again calls for peace and unity. The documentary is thrilling and at the same time educative and therefore serves more than just being an investigative documentary.
Reference
Netflix. “Who Shot the Sheriff”. Retrieved from: https://www.netflix.com/ke/title/80191047