Hamlet

Hamlet is essentially characterised as the Renaissance man and grieving son who challenges and questions the values of his Elizabethan context and corrupt society of Elsinore. The futility of Hamlet’s life and his constant suffering is the true essence of the tragedy where Hamlet, the lone “noble prince” is isolated in a corrupt world. The inner turmoil of his rational mind and the corruption of his pure soul is Shakespeare’s way of commenting on the obfuscation of human emotions. The innate corruption and flawed nature of humanity is heavily dealt with through the constant questioning of the meaning of human life, a life that seems to entail little more than eternal struggle.

Hamlet’s philosophical morals allow him to conjure his disgusted perspective on the corruption and immorality that pervades his family and society. Hamlet is initially portrayed as a noble prince whose way of life is governed by the values of canon law, as he doubts the ghost’s existence, “The spirit I have seen may be a devil”. However this characterisation has been reshaped by Hamlet’s disgust with the permeation of corruption in society, represented in the metaphor, “foul and pestilent congregation of vapours.” Hamlet objects to his mother’s “incestuous” marriage and rejects Claudius' fatherly advances with cynical sarcasm, “a little more than kin, and less than kind.” His deject disgust with the imperfection of man in “man delights me not”, reveals his disconnection from the “unweeded garden” of his life in a corrupt world. Hamlet feels oppressed in a confined society. Images of constraint “prison,” “slave,” disease, “a plague for thy dowry,” and sin, “enseamed bed” epitomise Hamlet’s disgust with the corruption and pestilence of Elsinore. Hamlet is eventually unable to cope with the pressure of living in an imperfect world, leading to his tragic demise.

Through the characterisation of Hamlet, Shakespeare essentially questions the debased nature of human existence, an existence...