ASSIGNMENT

PAPER: 1

THE RENAISSANCE LITERATURE:

TOPIC   :   “HAMLET AS A TRAGIC DRAMA.”

NAME     :   BHALIYA UMA H.

ROLL NO:  02

SEM -1: M.A. PART-1

BATCH:  2010-2011

SUBMITTED TO:  Mr. JAY Mehta.

Department of English, Bhavnagar University.

v     HAMLET AS A TRAGIC DRAMA

-SHAKESPEARE’S

   ANS: 

                       ARISTOTLE DEFINITION OF TRAGEDY :-

Tragedy, then is an imitation of an action that is serious, complete, and of a certain magnitude: in the language embellished with each kind of artistic ornament. The several kinds being found in separate part of the play. In the form of action. Not of narrative through pity and fear effecting the proper purgation – catharsis of these and similar emotions.

The tragic section presented on the stage in a drama should be complete or self contained with a beginning, middle and an end. A beginning is that before which the audience or the reader does not need to be told anything to understand the story. If something more is required to understand the story than the beginning gives. It is unsatisfactory. From it follow the middle. In their turn the event from the middle lead to the end.

Tragedy has never been a drama of despair, causeless death or chance disaster. The drama that only paints horrors and leaves souls shattered and mind unreconciled with the world may be described as a gruesome, ghastly play, but not a healthy tragedy, for tragedy is a play in which disaster or downfall has causes which could carefully be avoided and sorrow in it does not upset the balance in favors of pessimism. That is why, in spite of seriousness, even heartrending scenes of sorrow, tragedy embodies the vision of beauty. It stirs noble thoughts and serves tragic delight but does not condemn us to despair. If the healthy notion of tragedy is maintained throughout the literary history, of Europe, the ultimate credit, perhaps, goes to Aristotle who propounded it in his theory of catharsis.

CATHARSIS VIEW OF TRAGEDY   :-

Catharsis established tragedy as a drama of balance. Sorrow alone would be ugly and repulsive. Beauty pure would be imaginative and mystical. These together constitute what may be called tragic beauty. Pity alone would be sentimentality. Fear alone would make us cowards. But pity and fear, sympathy and terror together constitute the tragic feeling which is most delightful though it is tearfully. Delightful. Such tragic beauty and tragic feeling which it evokes constitute the aesthetic of balance as pronounded for the first time by Aristotle in his theory of catharsis.

Aristotle asserts that any tragedy can be divided into six component parts.

a)   the spectacle

b)  melody / songs

c)   diction

d)  character

e)   thought

f)    the plot

  “HAMLET” AS SHAKESPEAREANS TRAGEDY  :-

In the world literature, “hamlet” is one of the four greatest tragedies. The present tragedy raises several problems which may baffle us but which stimulate our mental faculties too. Mostly Shakespearean tragedy deals with “the hero, a person of high rank” and is a tale of suffering or misfortune leading to his death, who must be a man holding a lofty position and commanding respect; and the suffering on misfortune must be of an exceptional or extraordinary kind so as to produce strong tragic feelings especially of pity awe, and terror. “Hamlet” is primarily or chiefly the tragedy of hamlet, the prince of Denmark. Hamlet is a well-known, honored and well-beloved figure in the political life of Denmark, at the time at which the incidents of this play are supposed to have taken, place. In the play hamlet suffers mentally due to his mother-Gertrude’s hastily remarriage with his uncle – Claudius, his father’s brother. He has suspicion that Claudius might have killed his beloved father king hamlet, here, he  speaks

“How weary, stale flat

And unprofitable

Seem to me all the

Uses of this world”.

                           [Act 1, scene 2, 133 – 4]

In this solilorly he contrasts his dead father with the present king.

“So excellent a king:

That was a to this / Hyperion

To a satyr”.

 Behind the fall of hero. There is always defect in the hero’s character. Character chiefly is responsible for suffering and tragedy. The tragedy of hamlet is due mainly to a defect in his own character. This defect is his quality of procrastination. Hamlet is certainly capable of impulsive action, but he is not capable of planned or pre-meditated action.

But here one can not fully ignore to fate and destiny, which also play a vital role after the tragedy of hamlet. Hamlet certainly produces a feeling in us that there is some mysterious power working in this universe and that this power upsets human hopes, plans, and calculation. The very appearance of the ghost in this play is a situation for which fate is responsible. At one moment hamlet speaks about fate.

“The time is out of joint o

Cursed spite,

That eér I was born to

Set it right!”.

                    [Act iv, 196-7]

Conflict is the absences of a Shakespearean tragedy.

A.                       The outward conflict is taken place between hamlet and Claudius, to whom hamlet wants to avenge his father’s murder.

B.                        The inner conflict is taken place in the mind of hamlet, it totally indicates to his procrastination. Almost every soliloquy contains this conflict for paradigm.

“To be or not to be – that is the question”.

                                  [Act iii, 56- 88]

There is a perfect unity of tone and effect in Shakespeare’s tragedies the unity is achieved by preserving a single play. In tragedies where the element of horrors is introduced, it serves not only to relieve the tragic intensity but also to deepen it by contrast. In hamlet, the unconscious humors is provided by Polonius and by grave diggers also: these comic elements. Do not strike a discordant note in a play which is predominantly tragic in tone and effect. In hamlet one laughs on the affected and superficial osric. But the most central use of comedy is hamlet’s mordant wit.

If one judges “hamlet” according to Shakespearean tragedy. He marks that there is one duel continuously going on between fate and character. In which character looses everything due to his taken action against a little glimpse of fate. Means fate just gives glimpse now. It depends upon your own prospective. Here same thing occurs with hamlet. That’s why here one very popular line from the present tragedy.

“Nothing is good or bad

  Everything depends upon

You’re thinking”.

 “HAMLET” AS A TRAGIC HERO   :-

The tragic heroes of Shakespeare are built on a grand scale. A hero in a Shakespearean. Tragedy has either nobility of mind or strength of character or genius or immense force which in spite of his defect or flow. Exits our admiration and sympathy for him. Hamlet a prince of Denmark is a man of genius, has high sense of humor his heart is full of devotion to his dead father king hamlet he has a noble mind. These qualities win him our admiration and sympathy in spite of his tendency to procrastinate.

So great is the mental suffering of hamlet, that times he seems to have gone mad. However, as we have been told early in the play hamlet merely pretends to be mad and that he is not be regarded as actually mad. Same time there can be no doubt of the genuine and deep. Despondency which afflicts hamlet throughout the play. And which makes him bitter and cynical in his conversations with the various characters in the play.

Here in the tragic figure of hamlet there is a defect of proerastination. He is certainly capable of impulsive action but he is not capable of planned or premeditated action. He wants to avenge Claudius for his father’s murder. But there are many postponements from hamlet’s side for the revenge. These post-ponement of his revenge. This irresolution, this shrinking from what he has already called his duty, constitutes a serious flow in  his character and is chiefly responsible for his tragedy.

The essence of conflict is also in the character of hamlet

(a) The outward conflict is between the characters and their particular ideology.

(b) The inner conflict is in the mind of hamlet due to this inner conflict there are various kinds of soliloquy and the formost and very popular soliloquy is.

“To be or not to be- that is the question.”

                                           [Act-3, 56-88]

There is transformation in the tragic figure of the hero. When we first meet hamlet, he is in deep depression. The world seems to him an “unweeded garden”from which he would willingly depart. He has found corruption not only. In the Denmark but in existence itself. We soon learn that he had not always been so. Ophelia tells us that he had been the ideal renaissance prince – a combination of the  soldier, the scholar the courtier etc. And though the glimpses of his formor personality through his conversation with horatia. However by the final scene, his composure and is in fact, aggravated. However by the final scene his composure has returned.

Thus, at the end, hamlet is transformed. Into something which he had not been at the beginning of the play. At the end the hero is very different from the man. Shakespeare’s  tragic heroes do not renounce the world. The dying hamlet is still concerned about. The welfare of the kingdom and about his own wordly reputation. Such values are never denied, but at the end of the tragedies this value is no longer. At such moments the contral thing is that the spirit of man adlieves grandeur.

Thus, hamlet is a tragic drama. That who connects one chine. It is a revenge tragedy.