Captivating the audience, Shakespeare's play <em>Hamlet </em>expresses romance, tragedy, and revenge. The true meaning behind the plot of <em>Hamlet</em> has been a question concerning the world for centuries and continues to perplex the modern reader today. Shakespeare was brilliant when creating the plot of the play and developing the main character, Hamlet, allowing him to have moral integrity and thoughtfulness while avenging a great wrong.  <em>Hamlet</em> should be persevered in order to come to a final conclusion of the message Shakespeare gave to literature many years ago.

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One of Shakespeare's most famous plays he ever wrote was <em>Hamlet, Prince of Denmark</em>, written around the time of 1600. The play reflects romance, tragedy, and revenge. Most of Shakespeare’s playwrights that  incorporate romance “Have much in common with the late medieval and early Tudor prose romances” (Lamb and Wayne. 91). With romance comes tragedy in nearly all of Shakespeare’s plays. Side by side though, romance and tragedy portray two different aspects of life, “In their treatment of the familial relationships and social order” (Lamb and Wayne. 92). Tragedies show, “The dissolution of the family and destruction of the social order…” (Lamb and Wayne. 92) while prose romance shows, “A positive treatment of women, and they work towards the reconstitution of a dispersed family and restoration of a shattered royal household”   (Lamb and Wayne. 92). These are two key factors in which <em>Hamlet</em> beholds.

The play <em>Hamlet</em> is supposedly a reflection of many works from profound writers. <em>Ur-Hamlet</em> is the source most credited for the direct historical background of Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Similar sources related to the inspiration of <em>Hamlet </em>include <em>The Spanish Tragedy </em>by Thomas Kyd and Saxo Grammaticus’s <em>Historia Danica </em>(“Hamlet: Intro”). Another major influence of <em>Hamlet</em> belongs to the Roman playwright Seneca (Cummings). Seneca’s work reflected on, “The certainty of death, the fickleness of fate, the instability of power and happiness, the virtue of stoic moderation, and the obscurity and the like” (Turey). Just like in<em> Hamlet</em>, Seneca based his plays around a central character that is indulged by evil and unspeakable criminality.  Seneca also frequently implied a ghost like figure into his plays as seen in Shakespeare’s play when the ghost of Hamlet’s father comes back to spike revenge in Hamlet (Turey).

<em> Hamlet</em> has seen to cause the most trouble is deciphering the message within the storyline. To readers, the main character of the play seems both weak and strong.  Some argue that his depression kept him from acting on the revenge needed to avenge his father's death, while others argue that his depression allowed him to logically find a way to avenge the death. With the exception of certain biblical text, <em>Hamlet</em> is by far, “The most problematic text in all of literature” (Johnston). There is great debate on how we are to understand Shakespeare's tragedy but the one thing we can be sure of is, Hamlet's plot for revenge (Johnston).

<em>Hamlet</em> is a revenge play in which the plot consist of the main character seeking revenge and acting on his own without any outside help but it is not typical like other revenge plays. While writing <em>Hamlet</em>, “Shakespeare’s focus on this conflict was a revolutionary departure from contemporary revenge tragedies…” ("Hamlet: Intro"). Shakespeare appears to have twisted the revenge theme and allowed the main character, Hamlet, to struggle with morality. Throughout the story Hamlet seeks revenge on the man who killed his father, married his mother, and took the crown of Denmark, and eventually succeeds, but the question frequently asked is why Hamlet waited so long to do so? Was he planning a way for revenge to come justly or was he emotionally weak? By Act I of the play Hamlet is fully aware of his father's killer. He certainly vows for the revenge to take place but Hamlet does not follow up on his actions until weeks, or even months had passed since the death of his father (Johnston). Though many historians speculate that Hamlet was a coward, the question as to why he waited has yet to be answered. Shakespeare could have purposefully left us to ponder this.

It is also interesting that Shakespeare willingly wrote about revenge in <em>Hamlet</em>. During Shakespeare's time of the Elizabethan era, Christian ethics considered revenge as wrong doing. A saint of the church, “Would forgive and bring about reconciliation” (Friedlander) rather than punish another. The people of this time wanted justice, but no one was allowed to take the law in their own hands.  The church provided forgiveness and justice was served through the legal system.   The Elizabethan’s could not give out revenge in their own lives, but they loved to watch revenge and live through it vicariously through plays.

Though Hamlet is looked upon as a killer who tries to fight off the temptations of love and hatred, he is also portrayed as a mirror image of society and the role that humans play or want to play. <em>Hamlet</em> is one of literature's first real views of human nature (Friedlander). The play shows an ordinary person being thrown back and forth between what is morally right and wrong whether it was his own suicide, murder, or vengeance.  Unlike contemporary media, “Hamlet leaves us with the message that life is indeed worth living, even by imperfect people in an imperfect world” (Friedlander). During the play, Hamlet struggles with depression and suicide but after the burial of his love, Ophelia, he decides that intentional death without ever living may be worse than living. The reader also sees Hamlet struggle when he tries to murder his father's killer the first time.  He walks in on Claudius praying and struggling with the immoral choices that he made with murder and adultery.  Because of this, Hamlet has sympathy for him and doesn’t kill him then but murders Polonius rashly.  By the end of the play, the reader has a newfound love for Hamlet because he morally finds a way to get revenge on his father's killer and punish himself for a thoughtless murder that he had committed.  He lets the reader into his mind and shows that he is both genuine and sincere. We can all relate to Hamlet and admire his resistance to the corruptions of evil that surround him (Friedlander).

Shakespeare also expresses a negative view towards women in <em>Hamlet</em>. This is odd due to the fact that most of Shakespeare's plays involve women with a sense of power who have major influence over men. In <em>Hamlet,</em> his mother, Gertrude, and his love, Ophelia, are both, “Weaklings who are dominated by men” (Cummings). Gertrude gives into Claudius to adultery and murder, and Ophelia will not stand up to her father and chooses suicide to solve her problems. Both of these women made poor choices and suffered from them. During the Renaissance, Shakespeare's audience would have greatly appreciated the play because men at that time thought little of women and treated them as objects of possession.  Also Hamlet's allusive sexual desire towards Ophelia was highly acceptable (Henderson). Men during this time feared women and their loyalty to them and <em>Hamlet</em> reflected that fear. It was said to be that, “…the greatest threat to the male patriarchal ego then, and the most disrupter of the social order, was cuckoldry, or unfaithfulness by the female” (Henderson). The male was to have full dominance and <em>Hamlet</em> implied what society had told it to do.

As Shakespeare used the work of others to construct <em>Hamlet</em>, an author used <em>Hamlet </em>to construct <em>Euordanus, Prince of Denmark</em>. Key elements of the play point out the similarities between it and <em>Hamlet</em> which supports the close relationship between the two. <em>Eurodanus</em> and <em>Hamlet</em> were published around the same time, which shows, “How genres overlapped in the Renaissance and how tragedy is linked with other popular literary forms of the period” (Lamb and Wayne. 92-93). <em>Eurodanus</em> and <em>Hamlet</em> share intertexts, which means carrying one meaning of a text to another text. <em>Hamlet</em> through time seems to be printed before <em>Eruodanus </em>meaning that <em>Eruodanus</em> used <em>Hamlet </em>as an intertext rather than vice versa. A main intertext that the two plays share is a, “Common interest in the earlier Anglo-Danish relationship…,” “Both <em>Eurodanus</em> and <em>Hamlet</em> turn different aspects of England’s historical link with Denmark into subjects of fiction and drama, respectfully” (Lamb and Wayne. 93).

During the Elizabethan era, <em>Hamlet, Prince of Demark</em> was a play by Shakespeare conducted for pure entertainment. It is now seen to be after many years a never-ending jigsaw puzzle. Shakespeare may have intended <em>Hamlet</em> to be an ever-lasting mystery, but in reality, different versions were likely printed and combined together accidentally causing confusion future society.

<em>Hamlet</em> is a particular valuable piece of work because it stimulates pressure on society to reach a final interpretation on whether Hamlet, the main character, is emotionally weak or moral, and it is the first time that a character is shown to struggle with inner and outer conflict. With all of the different aspects and elements used within the play, readers of <em>Hamlet</em> have yet to come to an agreement of the meaning behind it the character struggle and plot. Shakespeare’s departure from what was the status quo with plot will continue to inspire writers to take risks not seen before.  Future generations should preserve Shakespeare’s incredible tragedy in order to learn further about his brilliant writing ability and seek a final closure of the true meaning behind <em>Hamlet.</em>

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<p style="text-align: center"><strong>Work Cited</strong></p>
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Cummings, Michael J. "Hamlet, Prince of Denmark." <em>Free Study Guides for Shakespeare   and Other Authors</em>. 2003. Web. 27 Mar. 2011.

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Friedlander, ED. "Enjoying "Hamlet" by William Shakespeare." <em>The Pathology Guy</em>. Friedlander ER (1999), 25 Dec. 2003. Web. 02 Apr. 2011.

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"Hamlet: Introduction." <span style="text-decoration: underline">Shakespeare for Students</span>. Ed. Marie Rose Napierkowski. Vol. 1. Detroit: Gale, 1998. <span style="text-decoration: underline">eNotes.com</span>. January 2006. 2 April 2011<strong> </strong>

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Henderson, Steve. "Hamlet and a Feminist Argument." <em>Books &amp; Literature Classics</em>. Web. 27 Mar. 2011.

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Johnston, Ian. "Introductory Lecture on Shakespeare’s Hamlet." <em>Studies in Shakespeare</em>. 27 Feb. 2001. Web. 28 Mar. 2011.

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Lamb, Mary E., and Valerie Wayne. <em>Staging Early Modern Romance: Prose Fiction, Dramatic Romance, and Shakespeare</em>. N.p.: Routledge, 2008. 76-93. Web. 22 Mar. 2011.

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Turey, Wayne S. "Lucius Annaeus Seneca." <em>Wayne S. Turney, Home Page</em>. Web. 27 Mar. 2011.

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