the tragedy of hamlet, prince of denmark is an english tragedytragedy
tragedy is a work of theater that ends with death.
by shakespeareshakespeare
shakespeare was a poet and a playwright of both Comedy and tragedy. He wrote hamlet and the tempest. he was inspired by ovid, seneca, plutarch, and montaigne.
. one of his longest and most complex plays, it has been an enduring staple of english literatureliterature
Literature is a type of art associated with Writing and language.
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. the critic harold bloom calls the play "poem unlimited," a phrase of polonius.
hamlet is a story about a troubled family. the father, king hamlet, has mysteriously died, leaving uncle claudius to take the throne and marry the mother gertrude. The son, prince hamlet, has a clear call to action here. but what makes Hamlet interesting and frustrating is his inability to act: his intellect, his seeming awareness that he is in a play, his self-reflexivity all get in the way. he may be the first modern individual.
to avoid detection by claudius, hamlet also pretends to be mad. it is a perennial question whether hamlet is indeed mad or only putting on an act. In gesta danorumgesta danorum
gesta danorum is a book about danish history by saxo grammaticus.
, which contains the basic story of amleth (his original name), hamlet's madness is only an act. incidentally, the northman is a sibling work to hamlet because it derives from that book.
there's influence of the stoicstoic
a stoic practices stoicism, the hellenistic philosophy founded by zeno of citium (c. 335-252 bc) who studied with plato's successors at the academy in athens. zeno taught at the stoa, meani...s and a good dose of existentialismexistentialism
existentialism is a stance regarding the meaningness of the human condition as a response to nihilism from Jean-Paul sartre and others, coming from nietzsche, kierkegaard, [... in it as well as connections to the Protestant Reformation in it (see technologies of the selftechnologies of the self
technologies of the self was a 1928 seminar by michel foucault tracing the "development of the hermeneutics of the self" as a technology in platonism, hellenistic philosophy, and we...).