Shakespeare's writing of the play Hamlet. Interesting Facts

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Horatio, Hamlet’s friend, comes to the guards, the Danish officers Marcellus and Bernard, who are serving at Elsinore Castle. His visit is motivated by a desire to check a rumor about the appearance of the ghost of the recently deceased Danish king. This phenomenon makes the scientist Horatio think about upcoming unrest in the kingdom. He decides to tell his friend about what he saw. Hamlet grieves for his dead father. His sadness is aggravated by his mother's marriage too soon after his father's death. Having met the ghost, Hamlet learns about the crime committed. The king was poisoned by his own brother, who dreamed of seizing the throne. The ghost asks the prince to commit an act of revenge.

Laertes goes to Paris. Together with their father, the nobleman Polonius, they give instructions to Ophelia, believing that she should not spend much time with Hamlet. Those around him believe that the reason for Hamlet's insanity is his love for Ophelia. The servants of the new king, Rosencrantz and Guildestern, are attempting to find out the reason for the prince's sad mood. The young man reveals their plans.

Hamlet wants to take revenge on the murderer. He agrees with the visiting actors that in the murder scene in their play, they will add lines composed by the prince to the hero’s words. Hamlet hopes that this scene will make an impression and the murderer will reveal himself. The young man reflects on the fear of death and comes to the conclusion that a person is afraid of the unknown.

The prince meets Ophelia, but soon realizing that their conversation is being overheard, he pretends to be crazy. At the performance, Hamlet comments on what is happening on stage and during the murder episode the king cannot stand it. This convinces the prince and his friend Horatio that their accusations are valid.

Hamlet's conversation with the queen is overheard by Polonius, who, having discovered himself, receives a fatal blow with a sword. The ghost appears and exhorts Hamlet to take pity on his mother. The Queen does not see anyone nearby and takes Hamlet’s conversation with the ghost as clouding her son’s mind. The king decides to take the life of the prince heading to England with the help of his servants. Hamlet is tormented by his indecision.

Laertes returns, shocked by the news of his father's death, and finds Ophelia in a mental disorder from the grief she has suffered. Hamlet returns. Having received this news, the king wants to kill Hamlet at the hands of Laertes, thirsty for retribution. Ophelia dies. Hamlet returns on the ship, aware of his enemy's plan. After a pirate attack on the ship, the prince is captured and ends up in Denmark. Before the duel with Laertes, Hamlet asks him for forgiveness. The king prepares a rapier for Laertes for a duel. Ophelia's brother hits Hamlet with a poisoned sword. After exchanging rapiers, the prince strikes Laertes. Hamlet's mother dies after drinking wine poisoned by the king, prepared for her son. Hamlet wounds the king with a poisonous blade he prepared. Horatio, who wanted to drink wine poisoned by poison in order to follow his friend, is stopped by Hamlet with a request to tell the whole truth about what happened.

Hamlet is one of Shakespeare's greatest tragedies. The eternal questions raised in the text concern humanity to this day. Love conflicts, themes related to politics, reflections on religion: this tragedy contains all the basic intentions of the human spirit. Shakespeare's plays are both tragic and realistic, and the images have long become eternal in world literature. Perhaps this is where their greatness lies.

The famous English author was not the first to write the story of Hamlet. Before him there was The Spanish Tragedy, written by Thomas Kyd. Researchers and literary scholars suggest that Shakespeare borrowed the plot from him. However, Thomas Kyd himself probably consulted earlier sources. Most likely, these were short stories from the early Middle Ages.

Saxo Grammaticus, in his book “The History of the Danes,” described the real story of the ruler of Jutland, who had a son named Amlet and a wife Geruta. The ruler had a brother who was jealous of his wealth and decided to kill him, and then married his wife. Amlet did not submit to the new ruler, and, having learned about the bloody murder of his father, decides to take revenge. The stories coincide down to the smallest detail, but Shakespeare interprets the events differently and penetrates deeper into the psychology of each character.

The essence

Hamlet returns to his native castle Elsinore for his father's funeral. From the soldiers who served at the court, he learns about a ghost who comes to them at night and whose outline resembles the late king. Hamlet decides to go to a meeting with an unknown phenomenon, a further meeting horrifies him. The ghost reveals to him the true cause of his death and persuades his son to take revenge. The Danish prince is confused and on the verge of madness. He doesn’t understand whether he really saw his father’s spirit, or was it the devil who visited him from the depths of hell?

The hero reflects on what happened for a long time and ultimately decides to find out on his own whether Claudius is really guilty. To do this, he asks a troupe of actors to perform the play “The Murder of Gonzago” to see the king’s reaction. During a key moment in the play, Claudius becomes ill and leaves, at which point a sinister truth is revealed. All this time, Hamlet pretends to be crazy, and even Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, who were sent to him, could not find out from him the true motives of his behavior. Hamlet intends to talk to the queen in her chambers and accidentally kills Polonius, who hid behind the curtain in order to eavesdrop. He sees in this accident a manifestation of the will of heaven. Claudius understands the criticality of the situation and tries to send Hamlet to England, where he is to be executed. But this does not happen, and the dangerous nephew returns to the castle, where he kills his uncle and himself dies from poison. The kingdom passes into the hands of the Norwegian ruler Fortinbras.

Genre and direction

“Hamlet” is written in the genre of tragedy, but the “theatrical” nature of the work should be taken into account. After all, in Shakespeare’s understanding, the world is a stage, and life is a theater. This is a specific worldview, a creative look at the phenomena surrounding a person.

Shakespeare's dramas are traditionally classified as. She is characterized by pessimism, gloom and aestheticization of death. These features can also be found in the work of the great English playwright.

Conflict

The main conflict in the play is divided into external and internal. Its external manifestation lies in Hamlet’s attitude towards the inhabitants of the Danish court. He considers them all base creatures, devoid of reason, pride and dignity.

The internal conflict is very well expressed in the hero’s emotional experiences, his struggle with himself. Hamlet chooses between two behavioral types: new (Renaissance) and old (feudal). He is formed as a fighter, not wanting to perceive reality as it is. Shocked by the evil that surrounded him on all sides, the prince is going to fight it, despite all the difficulties.

Composition

The main compositional outline of the tragedy consists of a story about the fate of Hamlet. Each individual layer of the play serves to fully reveal his personality and is accompanied by constant changes in the hero’s thoughts and behavior. Events gradually unfold in such a way that the reader begins to feel constant tension, which does not stop even after Hamlet’s death.

The action can be divided into five parts:

1. First part - plot. Here Hamlet meets the ghost of his deceased father, who bequeaths him to take revenge for his death. In this part, the prince for the first time encounters human betrayal and meanness. This is where his mental torment begins, which does not let him go until his death. Life becomes meaningless for him.
2. Second part - action development. The prince decides to pretend to be crazy in order to deceive Claudius and find out the truth about his act. He also accidentally kills the royal advisor, Polonius. At this moment, the realization comes to him that he is the executor of the highest will of heaven.
3. The third part - climax. Here Hamlet, using the trick of showing the play, is finally convinced of the guilt of the ruling king. Claudius realizes how dangerous his nephew is and decides to get rid of him.
4. Part four - The Prince is sent to England to be executed there. At the same moment, Ophelia goes crazy and tragically dies.
5. Fifth part - denouement. Hamlet escapes execution, but is forced to fight Laertes. In this part, all the main participants in the action die: Gertrude, Claudius, Laertes and Hamlet himself.

The main characters and their characteristics

• Hamlet– from the very beginning of the play, the reader’s interest is focused on the personality of this character. This “bookish” boy, as Shakespeare himself wrote about him, suffers from the disease of the approaching century - melancholy. At his core, he is the first reflective hero of world literature. Someone may think that he is a weak person, incapable of action. But in fact, we see that he is strong in spirit and is not going to submit to the problems that befell him. His perception of the world changes, particles of former illusions turn to dust. This gives rise to that same “Hamletism”—an internal discord in the hero’s soul. By nature he is a dreamer, a philosopher, but life forced him to become an avenger. Hamlet’s character can be called “Byronic”, because he is extremely focused on his inner state and is quite skeptical about the world around him. He, like all romantics, is prone to constant self-doubt and tossing between good and evil.
• Gertrude- Hamlet's mother. A woman in whom we see the makings of intelligence, but a complete lack of will. She is not alone in her loss, but for some reason she does not try to get closer to her son at a time when grief has occurred in the family. Without the slightest remorse, Gertrude betrays the memory of her late husband and agrees to marry his brother. Throughout the action, she constantly tries to justify herself. Dying, the queen understands how wrong her behavior was, and how wise and fearless her son turned out to be.
• Ophelia- daughter of Polonius and lover of Hamlet. A meek girl who loved the prince until her death. She also faced trials that she could not endure. Her madness is not a fake move invented by someone. This is the same madness that occurs at the moment of true suffering; it cannot be stopped. There are some hidden indications in the work that Ophelia was pregnant with Hamlet's child, and this makes the realization of her fate doubly difficult.
• Claudius- a man who killed his own brother to achieve his own goals. Hypocritical and vile, he still carries a heavy burden. The pangs of conscience devour him daily and do not allow him to fully enjoy the rule to which he came to in such a terrible way.
• Rosencrantz And Guildenstern– Hamlet’s so-called “friends” who betrayed him at the first opportunity to make good money. Without delay, they agree to deliver a message announcing the death of the prince. But fate has prepared a worthy punishment for them: as a result, they die instead of Hamlet.
• Horatio- an example of a true and faithful friend. The only person the prince can trust. They go through all the problems together, and Horatio is ready to share even death with his friend. It is to him that Hamlet trusts to tell his story and asks him to “breathe some more in this world.”

Themes

1. Hamlet's Revenge. The prince was destined to bear the heavy burden of revenge. He cannot coldly and calculatingly deal with Claudius and regain the throne. His humanistic principles force him to think about the common good. The hero feels responsible for those who have suffered from the evil that is widespread around him. He sees that it is not Claudius alone who is to blame for the death of his father, but all of Denmark, which blithely turned a blind eye to the circumstances of the death of the old king. He knows that to take revenge he needs to become an enemy to everyone around him. His ideal of reality does not coincide with the real picture of the world; the “shaken age” arouses hostility in Hamlet. The prince understands that he cannot restore peace alone. Such thoughts plunge him into even greater despair.
2. Hamlet's love. Before all those terrible events, there was love in the hero’s life. But, unfortunately, she is unhappy. He loved Ophelia madly, and there is no doubt about the sincerity of his feelings. But the young man is forced to give up happiness. After all, the proposal to share sorrows together would be too selfish. To finally break the connection, he has to inflict pain and be merciless. Trying to save Ophelia, he could not even imagine how great her suffering would be. The impulse with which he rushes to her coffin was deeply sincere.
3. Hamlet's friendship. The hero values ​​friendship very much and is not used to choosing his friends based on his assessment of their position in society. His only true friend is the poor student Horatio. At the same time, the prince is contemptuous of betrayal, which is why he treats Rosencrantz and Guildenstern so cruelly.

Problems

The issues covered in Hamlet are very broad. Here are the themes of love and hate, the meaning of life and the purpose of man in this world, strength and weakness, the right to revenge and murder.

One of the main ones is problem of choice, which the main character faces. There is a lot of uncertainty in his soul; alone he thinks for a long time and analyzes everything that happens in his life. There is no one next to Hamlet who could help him make a decision. Therefore, he is guided only by his own moral principles and personal experience. His consciousness is divided into two halves. In one lives a philosopher and humanist, and in the other, a man who understands the essence of a rotten world.

His key monologue “To be or not to be” reflects all the pain in the hero’s soul, the tragedy of thought. This incredible internal struggle exhausts Hamlet, makes him think about suicide, but he is stopped by his reluctance to commit another sin. He began to become increasingly concerned about the topic of death and its mystery. What's next? Eternal darkness or a continuation of the suffering he endures during his life?

Meaning

The main idea of ​​tragedy is to search for the meaning of life. Shakespeare shows a man of education, eternally searching, with a deep sense of empathy for everything that surrounds him. But life forces him to face true evil in various manifestations. Hamlet is aware of it, trying to figure out how exactly it arose and why. He is shocked by the fact that one place can so quickly turn into hell on Earth. And his act of revenge is to destroy the evil that has entered his world.

Fundamental to the tragedy is the idea that behind all these royal squabbles there is a great turning point in the entire European culture. And at the forefront of this turning point, Hamlet appears - a new type of hero. Along with the death of all the main characters, the centuries-old system of understanding the world collapses.

Criticism

In 1837, Belinsky wrote an article dedicated to Hamlet, in which he called the tragedy a “brilliant diamond” in the “radiant crown of the king of dramatic poets,” “crowned by entire humanity and having no rival before or after himself.”

The image of Hamlet contains all the universal human traits "<…>this is me, this is each of us, more or less...”, Belinsky writes about him.

S. T. Coleridge, in his Shakespeare Lectures (1811-12), writes: “Hamlet hesitates due to natural sensitivity and hesitates, held back by reason, which forces him to turn his effective forces to the search for a speculative solution.”

Psychologist L.S. Vygotsky focused on Hamlet’s connection with the other world: “Hamlet is a mystic, this determines not only his state of mind on the threshold of double existence, two worlds, but also his will in all its manifestations.”

And literary critic V.K. Kantor looked at the tragedy from a different angle and in his article “Hamlet as a “Christian Warrior”” pointed out: “The tragedy “Hamlet” is a system of temptations. He is tempted by a ghost (this is the main temptation), and the prince’s task is to check whether it is the devil who is trying to lead him into sin. Hence the trap theater. But at the same time he is tempted by his love for Ophelia. Temptation is a constant Christian problem.”

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Hamlet, tormented by the problem of choosing between honor and duty, has been forcing readers and theater lovers to think about the meaning of life, human destiny and the imperfection of society for 500 years. The immortal work “The Tragic Story of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark” is considered one of the famous tragedies in the world. This story is not just a high-level murder that happened in the Danish kingdom. The value of the image of the young prince lies in the feelings that force the reader to experience.

History of creation

During William Shakespeare's time, works for theater productions were created based on existing plays. “Hamlet” was no exception - back in the 7th century, the Danish chronicler Saxo Grammaticus wrote down the legend of Prince Hamlet, which was included in the collection of Scandinavian sagas. Based on its motives, a contemporary and compatriot of the English playwright (it is assumed that it was Thomas Kyd) composed a play that was staged in theaters, but has not survived to this day. In those days there was a joke about “a bunch of Hamlets scattering handfuls of tragic monologues.”

In the period 1600-1601, Shakespeare simply remade the literary work. The work of the great poet differs from the Scandinavian source in the sophistication of its artistic outline and meaning: the author shifted the emphasis from external struggle to the spiritual suffering of the main character. Although the audience still saw, first of all, a bloody story.

During Shakespeare's lifetime, the tragedy went through three editions. However, researchers believe that all of them were created without the permission of the author and are considered “pirated” because only some monologues are fully recorded in each, while the speeches of other characters are either poorly presented or completely absent. The fact is that the publishers paid the actors to “leak” the plays, but the actors could only reproduce their words verbatim in the production.

Scene V from the play "Hamlet": Act IV (Ophelia before the king and queen)

Later, literary scholars managed to compile the full text of the play. The only thing that remained “behind the scenes” was the final form of the work that was presented to the public. The modern division of the play into acts and actions does not belong to the author.

In Russia, dozens of writers tried to translate Hamlet. Shakespeare's most famous tragedy is read "from the words" of the poet and translator Mikhail Lozinsky and writer. The latter endowed the work with a more vibrant artistic language.

Plot and characters

Shakespeare included many characters in the list of the main characters of the tragedy:

• Claudius - King of Denmark;
• Hamlet is the son of the deceased and nephew of the king;
• Polonius is a close nobleman of the reigning king;
• Horatio is Hamlet's learned friend;
• Laertes is the son of Polonius;
• Ophelia is the daughter of Polonius, Hamlet’s beloved;
• Gertrude - Hamlet's mother, widow of the previous king, wife of Claudius;
• Rosencrantz and Guildestern are Hamlet's friends;
• The ghost of Hamlet's father.

The plot of the play is based on the Danish prince's thirst for revenge on the current king for the murder of his father. A ghost appears in front of the castle in Elsinore every night. One day, Horatio becomes convinced that these are not rumors, but reality, and tells Hamlet, who came from school to his father’s funeral, about what he saw. The young man's grief is further aggravated by his mother's betrayal - Gertrude immediately after her husband's death married his brother.

The young man manages to talk with the night shadow of the deceased autocrat, who told the truth: the king was poisoned by Claudius when he was peacefully resting in the garden. The ghost begs his son to avenge him. Hamlet decides to pretend to be crazy in order to bring his uncle into the open.

The first to suspect Hamlet's madness was his beloved girl Ophelia. Soon the news that the prince had gone mad reached the king. But the monarch is not so easy to fool, and he sends the young man’s friends, Rosencrantz and Guildestern, to find out the truth. Hamlet immediately reveals the purpose of the sent comrades, so he continues to play the madman.

The prince comes up with another plan related to the arrival of artists in the city. Hamlet asks the troupe to insert a couple of poems of their own composition into the play about the murder of the main character Priam. The king, present at the performance, cannot stand such a direct indication of guilt and leaves the theater, thereby betraying his crime.

Prince Hamlet is invited to her chambers by the queen, outraged by her son's behavior. During the conversation, he mistakes Polonius, who is hiding behind the carpet, for the king and pierces him with a sword.

Shocked by the murder of his father, Laertes arrives from Paris, but another surprise awaits him at home - his sister Ophelia has gone crazy. And King Claudius decides to destroy Hamlet with the hands of an angry Laertes, having come up with a cunning idea: the son of Polonius will meet the prince in a duel in which he will hit him with a poisoned sword.

Before the fight, to be sure, the ruler puts a cup of wine and poison on the table to give Hamlet a drink. In this performance, everyone was destined to die: Laertes wounded the enemy, while changing rapiers, the Danish prince dealt a fatal blow to Laertes and the king with a poisonous sword, and the queen accidentally drank poisoned wine.

When analyzing a work, literary scholars give a very specific description of the hero. The main character of the tragedy becomes a misanthrope, because it is impossible to remain a philanthropist while maintaining honor in such a society. According to socionics, Hamlet’s personality type is an ethical-intuitive extrovert: a romantic intolerant of evil, prone to endless reasoning, doubts and hesitations, focused on the global problems of humanity. Asks questions whether people deserve happiness, what is the meaning of life, is it possible to eradicate evil.

A humanist, a man of modern times, he is tormented by the need to take revenge. But decisions are difficult for Hamlet, because he is not sure that the world will change for the better with the departure of Claudius. And murder will make him equal to those on the “dark side.” The hero faces complete disappointments, even in love. He comes to the conclusion that man is a weak creature in the face of evil. He cannot come to terms with injustice, but finding the strength to take decisive steps is also not easy.

The philosophical essence of “Hamlet” is the tragedy of the conflict between a high personality and a society where lies, betrayal and hypocrisy flourish. The prince's reasoning speaks of an internal struggle; the hero is torn between a sense of duty and his worldview. And the famous monologue “To be or not to be” not only reflects the question of all times: what is easier - to come to terms with misfortunes and continue to live, or to end mental suffering by death. The question of choice is brought to the fore: fight injustice or meekly accept it.

Productions and film adaptations

The number of theatrical and film productions of this immortal work is incalculable. Richard Burbage was the first to embody the image of Shakespeare's Hamlet at London's Globe Theater at the beginning of the 17th century. Subsequently, the story of the Danish prince was transferred to the stage of the temples of Melpomene in almost every corner of the globe. Hamlet appeared in cinema in 1907 - the Frenchman Georges Méliès presented the audience with a silent short film. It is still unclear who got the main role.

Let us note the most interesting productions of English tragedy in cinema and theater:

"Hamlet" (1964)

A two-part drama dedicated to the 400th birthday of William Shakespeare was directed by Grigory Kozintsev, choosing the inimitable for the key role. 10 years before the film adaptation, Kozintsev staged the play at the Drama Theater named after. , and it was a resounding success. The film adaptation expected the same degree of popularity, and not only in the Soviet Union.

Having hatched the idea for the film, the director immediately decided on Hamlet. However, the actors for the other main roles were not inferior in talent to Smoktunovsky. Ophelia was played by the fragile, already familiar to the audience as Assol from “Scarlet Sails” and Gutierre from “Amphibian Man”. The film stars Mikhail Nazvanov (King Claudius), Elsa Radzin (Queen Gertrude), Yuri Tolubeev (Polonius).

"Hamlet I Collage" (2013)

The play by Canadian director Robert Lepage captivated the audience with its originality, becoming the highlight of the Theater of Nations season. The uniqueness of the work is that all the images were embodied, and high 3D technologies were used in the production itself.

Mironov shows the world the wonders of transformation, instantly changing images. The authors of the production managed to harmoniously combine circus tricks and animation, enhanced by brilliant acting. Hamlet's biography underwent significant changes.

"Hamlet" (2015)

The performance with the participation of the English theater-goers was delighted. The production was made famous by the actor's name, but overall it received unflattering reviews.

Tickets began to be sold in the summer a year before the premiere, and by mid-autumn the box office was empty. Benedict was called the incomparable Hamlet.

"Hamlet" (2016)

In the spring of 2016, he presented the new “Hamlet” at the St. Petersburg Maly Drama Theater. The modernity of the Prince of Denmark is revealed by his clothes - in the main role he wears jeans on stage.

But the innovations are not at all in clothes, but in the sense: Dodin reoriented Hamlet’s thoughts from the thirst for restoration of justice to revenge in its pure manifestation. The young man appears as an obsessed killer. Plays Ophelia.

• Hamlet's role is the longest in Shakespeare's plays. The volume of text coming from his lips is 1506 lines. And in general, the tragedy is larger than the author’s other works - it stretches over 4 thousand lines.
• For the author's contemporaries, the tragedy was a story of bloody revenge. And only at the end of the 18th century he turned the perception of the work upside down - he saw in the main character not an avenger, but a thinking representative of the Renaissance.
• In 2012, the character took second place in the Guinness Book of Records for the frequency of appearances of human book characters in films and on television (the leader was).

• Crimea often became a location for filming Soviet films. The scene of the monologue “To be or not to be...” performed by Innokenty Smoktunovsky was filmed at the “Children's Beach” in Alupka.
• According to socionics, a harmonious business or family union will be made up of such types as Hamlet (ethical-intuitive extrovert) and (logical-intuitive extrovert). In the Hamlet and Jack pair, relationships can remain in balance for a long time: the first partner is responsible for communication skills and the emotional component, the second is responsible for the reasonable use and distribution of resources.

Quotes

“There are many things in nature, friend Horatio, that our sages never dreamed of.”

“And then there is silence.”

“How often has blindness saved us,
Where foresight has failed!”

“Close to my son, but away from my friend.”

“You turned your eyes with your pupils into your soul.”

"Don't drink wine, Gertrude!"

“The great have no power in their desires.”

“The madness of the powerful requires supervision.”

“Call me any instrument, you may upset me, but you can’t play me.”

The plot and history of the creation of William Shakespeare's tragedy "Hamlet"

"Hamlet" stands apart even in Shakespeare's brilliant legacy. The main character of the play is a man not only of strong passions, but also of high intelligence, a man who reflects on the meaning of life, on ways to fight evil. This makes the play similar to the dramaturgy of the 20th century.

The pre-Shakespearean play about Hamlet, which belonged to the genre, as they said then, of “the tragedy of thunder and blood,” has not reached us. The story of Hamlet is based on a Danish legend, first recorded at the end of the 12th century by the Danish chronicler Saxo Grammaticus. In the ancient times of paganism - so says Saxo Grammaticus - the ruler of Jutland was killed during a feast by his brother Feng, who then married his widow. The son of the murdered man, young Hamlet, decided to take revenge for the murder of his father. To gain time and appear safe in the eyes of the treacherous Feng. Hamlet pretended to be mad: he rolled around in the mud, waved his arms like wings, and crowed like a rooster.

All his actions spoke of “complete mental stupor,” but his speeches contained “bottomless cunning,” and no one was able to understand the hidden meaning of his words. A friend of Feng (the future Shakespeare's Claudius), “a man more self-confident than reasonable” (the future Shakespeare's Polonius), undertook to check whether Hamlet was truly insane. To eavesdrop on Hamlet's conversation with his mother, this courtier hid under the straw lying in the corner. But Hamlet was careful. Entering his mother, he first searched the room and found the hidden spy. Hamlet killed the courtier, cut his corpse into pieces, boiled them and threw them to be eaten by pigs. Then he returned to his mother, “pierced her heart” for a long time with bitter reproaches and left her crying and grieving. Feng sent Hamlet to England, accompanied by two courtiers (Shakespeare's future Rosencrantz and Guildenstern), secretly handing them a letter to the English king asking him to kill Hamlet. As in Shakespeare's tragedy, Hamlet replaced the letter, and the English king sent two courtiers who accompanied Hamlet to execution instead. The English king kindly received Hamlet, talked with him a lot and marveled at his wisdom. Hamlet married the daughter of the English king. He then returned to Jutland, where during a feast he made Feng and the courtiers drunk and set the palace on fire. The courtiers died in the fire. Hamlet cut off Feng's head. Thus Hamlet triumphed over his enemies.

In 1576, the French writer Belfort retold this ancient legend in his Tragic Tales. In the 1680s, a play about Hamlet, probably written by playwright Thomas Kyd, was staged on the London stage. This play is lost. The ghost of Hamlet's father was brought out in it (that's all we know about this play). These were the sources from which Shakespeare created his Hamlet in 1601.

A huge number of books and articles have been written about this tragedy, many theories have been put forward trying to explain the character of Hamlet and his actions. But researchers are doomed to wander forever in the dark until they turn to the era of Shakespeare, reflected in his tragedy. The point here, of course, is not that Hamlet is supposedly a weak person from birth. After all, he himself says that he has “will and strength.” The question is much deeper. Shakespeare's time gave birth to humanist thinkers who, seeing the surrounding lies and untruths and dreaming of other, fair human relationships, at the same time acutely felt their powerlessness to realize this dream in reality. Thomas More placed his ideal state on an unknown island, but did not and could not indicate the path to this island. He called it Utopia, which in Greek means “the land that does not exist.” And the brighter Utopia shone for More, the darker the surrounding reality became for him. “The whole world is a prison,” wrote More. Shakespeare's Hamlet repeats the same words. We have already mentioned that Hamlet calls man “the beauty of the universe, the crown of all living things.” But around him in the royal castle he sees people who are rude and rigid in their stupid complacency:

...What does a person mean?

When his deepest desires -

Food and sleep? Animal - that's all.

The hero of the tragedy Hamlet is a leading man of his time. He is a student at the University of Wittenberg, which was a leading university in Shakespeare's era. Hamlet's progressive worldview is manifested in his philosophical views. In his reasoning one can feel glimpses of elemental materialism and the overcoming of religious illusions.

Hamlet's reflection and hesitation, which became a hallmark of the character of this hero, was caused by an internal shock from the “sea of ​​disasters,” which entailed doubt in the moral and philosophical principles that seemed unshakable to him.

The case is waiting, but Hamlet hesitates; more than once throughout the play, Hamlet had the opportunity to punish Claudius. Why, for example, does he not strike when Claudius is praying alone? Therefore, the researchers found that in this case, according to ancient beliefs, the soul goes to heaven, and Hamlet needs to send it to hell. In fact of the matter! If Laertes had been Hamlet, he would not have missed the opportunity. “Both worlds are despicable for me,” he says, and this is the tragedy of his situation. The psychological duality of Hamlet's consciousness is of a historical nature: its cause is the dual state of a contemporary, in whose consciousness voices suddenly began to speak and the forces of other times began to act.

Although the death of a person is tragic, yet the tragedy has its content not in death, but in the moral, ethical death of a person, what led him on a fatal path that ends in death.

“In this case, Hamlet’s true tragedy lies in the fact that he, a man of the most beautiful spiritual qualities, broke down. When he saw the terrible sides of life - deceit, betrayal, murder of loved ones, he lost faith in people, love, life lost its value for him. Pretending to be insane, he is actually on the verge of madness from the realization of how monstrous people are - traitors, incestuous people, perjurers, murderers, flatterers and hypocrites. He gains courage to fight, but he can only look at life with sorrow.”

What was the cause of Hamlet's spiritual tragedy? His honesty, intelligence, sensitivity, belief in ideals. If he were like Claudius, Laertes, Polonius, he could live like them, deceiving, pretending, adapting to the world of evil.

But he could not reconcile, and how to fight, and most importantly, how to defeat, destroy evil, he did not know. The cause of Hamlet's tragedy, therefore, is rooted in the nobility of his nature.

“The tragedy of Hamlet is the tragedy of man’s knowledge of evil. For the time being, the existence of the Danish prince was serene: he lived in a family illuminated by the mutual love of his parents, he himself fell in love and enjoyed the reciprocity of a lovely girl, had pleasant friends, was passionate about science, loved the theater, wrote poetry; A great future awaited him - to become a sovereign and rule an entire people.” But suddenly everything began to fall apart. At the dawn of time, my father died. Before Hamlet had time to survive the grief, a second blow befell him: the mother, who seemed to love his father so much, less than two months later married the brother of the deceased and shared the throne with him. And the third blow: Hamlet learned that his father was killed by his own brother in order to take possession of the crown and his wife.

Is it surprising that Hamlet experienced the deepest shock: after all, everything that made life valuable to him collapsed before his eyes. He had never been so naive as to think that there were no misfortunes in life. And yet his thoughts were largely fueled by illusory ideas.

The shock experienced by Hamlet shook his faith in man and gave rise to a duality of his consciousness.

Hamlet sees two betrayals of people connected by family and blood ties: his mother and the king's brother. If people who should be closest to each other violate the laws of kinship, then what can you expect from others? This is the root of the dramatic change in Hamlet's attitude towards Ophelia. “The example of his mother leads him to a sad conclusion: women are too weak to withstand the harsh tests of life. Hamlet renounces Ophelia also because love can distract him from the task of revenge."

Hamlet is ready for action, but the situation turned out to be more difficult than one might imagine. The direct fight against evil becomes an impossible task for some time. The direct conflict with Claudius and other events unfolding in the play are inferior in their significance to the spiritual drama of Hamlet, which is highlighted. It is impossible to understand its meaning if we proceed only from Hamlet’s individual data or keep in mind his desire to avenge the murder of his father. Hamlet's internal drama consists of the fact that he repeatedly torments himself for inaction, understands that words cannot help matters, but does nothing specifically.

Hamlet reveals the moral torment of a person called to action, thirsting for action, but acting impulsively, only under the pressure of circumstances; experiencing a discord between thought and will.

When Hamlet becomes convinced that the king will commit reprisals against him, he talks differently about the discord between will and action. Now he comes to the conclusion that “thinking too much about the outcome” is “bestial oblivion or a pathetic skill.”

Hamlet is certainly irreconcilable to evil, but he does not know how to fight it. Hamlet does not recognize his struggle as a political struggle. It has a predominantly moral meaning for him.

Hamlet is a lonely fighter for justice. He fights against his enemies with their own means. The contradiction in the hero’s behavior is that to achieve his goal he resorts to the same, if you like, immoral methods as his opponents. He pretends, is cunning, seeks to find out the secret of his enemy, deceives and, paradoxically, for the sake of a noble goal, he finds himself guilty of the death of several people. Claudius is responsible for the death of only one former king. Hamlet kills (though unintentionally) Polonius, sends Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to certain death, kills Laertes and, finally, the king; he is also indirectly responsible for Ophelia's death. “But in the eyes of everyone he remains morally pure, for he pursued noble goals and the evil that he committed was always a response to the machinations of his opponents.” Polonius dies at the hands of Hamlet. This means that Hamlet acts as an avenger for the very thing that he does to another.

Hamlet's only friend is the poor student Horatio.

Even before meeting the Ghost, Hamlet looks with disgust at the reality around him:

O abomination! Like an unweeded garden.

Give free rein to the grass and it will become overgrown with weeds.

With the same undividedness the whole world

Rough beginnings filled.

The Ghost's story about the vile murder finally opens Hamlet's eyes to the crime of the world around him. He constantly returns to the idea that everything around him is rushing him to speed up his revenge. Hamlet carries out his personal revenge by killing Claudius. But the big task, which Hamlet himself is only vaguely aware of - the transformation of reality - remains beyond his strength. He does not see the path to this transformation, just as Shakespeare and other humanists of that era did not see this path. And the reason here was, of course, not in their subjective qualities, but in the objectively inevitable and independent of them historical limitations of their consciousness as people of the 16th century. They could only dream of fair human relations.

This discord between dream and reality often gave rise to a feeling of deep sorrow, painful dissatisfaction with oneself, and anxious anxiety. Hamlet is all in confusion, all in search. He is impetuous, easily moves from one mood to another. Each time he appears before us in a new state: either he grieves for his father, then, overcome by despair, he turns to the Phantom with the same insoluble question for him: “What should we do?”, then he warmly greets Horatio, then he mocks Polonius, then (after the “mousetrap” scene) he laughs at the exposed king... At the same time, Hamlet is by no means a reckless “dreamer” looking at life through a “romantic fog.” He sees life with clear eyes: otherwise he would not suffer so much. He is astute in the vigilance of his observations: for example, he immediately guesses that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern were sent to him by Claudius and that Polonius is eavesdropping on his conversation with Ophelia.

Hamlet is extremely sincere. “It “seems” to me to be unknown,” he says to Gertrude. His speech itself is simple and genuine, and there are especially many paraphrased folk proverbs and sayings in it.

Throughout the entire tragedy, Hamlet is a passionate, indignant accuser. “Every word of Hamlet is a sharp arrow doused with poison,” Belinsky wrote in his wonderful article “Hamlet,” Shakespeare’s drama. Mochalov

as Hamlet." Hamlet’s strength lies in the fact that he raised the question of the injustice of the world around him, which he calls a prison, “and an exemplary one at that, with many prison cells, dungeons and dungeons,” and how he could and how he could expose this world.

Having read the tragedy, it is not difficult to notice that the aristocratic castle of Shakespeare’s era clearly emerges through the outlines of the ancient Danish castle. The nephew of the castle owner goes to university, where he gets acquainted with books such as “Utopia” by Thomas More. Returning to the castle, he looks at his surroundings with different eyes and feels like a stranger in the castle. Capital actors come to this castle. The owner of the castle is having fun: “...and dances until he drops, and drinks, and revels until the morning.” There is also the old seneschal of the castle, who once studied at the university and even played in a student amateur performance of Julius Caesar (in one of the “school dramas” of the 16th century), and the seneschal’s daughter, picking flowers in the meadows located near the castle itself . Before us are living people of Shakespeare's England. How typical, for example, is Horatio, one of the “university minds” of the Renaissance, who immersed himself in the study of Roman antiquities: having seen a ghost with his own eyes, Horatio first of all remembers those miracles that supposedly took place in ancient Rome when Julius was killed Caesar; at the end of the tragedy, Horatio calls himself a “Roman.”

To imagine Hamlet more clearly, you need to compare him with other faces of the tragedy, for example, with Laertes. After all, Laertes is a “good fellow” in his own way, and Hamlet personally treats him well. But Laertes is alien to those thoughts and feelings that excite Hamlet. He lives, so to speak, in the old fashioned way, like other young nobles of his time. Nothing can greatly excite his heart except blood feud, for the sake of which he is ready to choose any means. His feelings are not deep. It is not for nothing that Hamlet does not attach much importance to Laertes’ lamentations over Ophelia’s grave. In the overall picture, the works of Hamlet and Laertes are opposed to each other. Gertrude also does not understand Hamlet, although she loves him in her own way. Having listened to Hamlet's reproaches and seemed to agree with him, Gertrude still does not break with Claudius. Gertrude, of course, knew nothing about the murder of her first husband. (“The murder of the king?” - she repeats with bewilderment the words of Hamlet who reproaches her). And only at the end of the tragedy, suddenly realizing the monstrous truth, Gertrude drinks the poisoned wine.

Female images in the tragedy “Hamlet” play a fundamental role.

In this Shakespeare tragedy, the hero's grief is caused by his mother's hasty marriage. The lines spoken by the actor who played the queen are specially intended for her.

Betrayal cannot live in my chest.

The second spouse is a curse and a shame!

The second one is for those who killed the first one...

Those who remarry,

Self-interest alone attracts, not love;

And I will kill the dead again,

When I let someone else hug me.

Critics argue about which sixteen lines Hamlet inserted into The Murder of Gonzago. Most likely those that contain direct reproaches of the mother. But no matter how true this assumption is, Hamlet, after hearing the words of the old play quoted here, asks his mother: “Madam, how do you like this play?” - and hears in response restrained, but quite significant words, corresponding to Gertrude’s current situation: “This woman is too generous with assurances, in my opinion.”

One might ask why Hamlet didn’t tell his mother anything before? He waited for the hour when he would be sure of Claudius' crime. Now, Hamlet reveals to her that she is the wife of the one who killed her husband. When Gertrude reproaches her son for committing a “bloody and crazy act” by killing Polonius, Hamlet responds:

A little worse than the damned sin

After killing the king, marry the king's brother.

But Hamlet cannot blame his mother for the death of her husband, since he knows who the murderer was. However, if earlier Hamlet saw only his mother’s betrayal, now she is tainted by marriage to her husband’s murderer. Hamlet puts his murder of Polonius, the crime of Claudius, and his mother’s betrayal on the same criminal scale.

You should pay attention to how Hamlet pronounces his addresses to his mother. You have to listen to the intonation of his tirades:

Don't break your hands. Quiet! I want

Break your heart; I'll break it

When it is accessible to insight,

When it's a damn habit

Not hardened through and through against feelings.

According to Hamlet, Gertrude did such a thing,

Which stains the face of shame,

Calls innocence a liar, on the forehead

Holy love replaces the rose with pestilence;

Transforms marriage vows

In the player's promises; such a thing.

Which is made of flesh contracts

Takes away the soul, transforms faith

In a confusion of words; the face of heaven is burning;

And this stronghold and dense bulk

With a sad look, as if before a court,

Mourns for him.

The last three lines require clarification: Hamlet calls the Earth “a stronghold and a dense bulk.” At the end of his speech, Hamlet mentions heaven.

Hamlet does not simply shower his mother with reproaches. It's about something more. Here we must remember what was said above about the breadth of Shakespeare’s views, for whom every tragedy is connected with the entire world order.

Accusing his mother, Hamlet says that her betrayal is a direct violation of morality. It is equivalent to other similar violations: disgrace of modesty, hypocritical trampling of innocence; These are the vices of private life, but similar things happen; when treaties are violated and instead of religion they are limited to serving it only in words. Gertrude's behavior is equated by Hamlet to those violations of the world order that make the whole Earth tremble, and the heavens are covered with shame for humanity. This is the truly large-scale meaning of Hamlet’s speeches.

Full of rhetoric, the prince's speech burns with true anger, there is no trace of the weakness usually attributed to him. It is not the son who speaks to the mother, but the judge, accusing her in the name of heaven and all the laws of earthly life.

Hamlet can be reproached for taking on too much. Let us remember, however, his words: he is a scourge and an executor of the highest will. Let us also not forget one of the laws of Shakespearean drama. Hamlet's speeches here are more than his personal opinion. They express an assessment of Gertrude's second marriage from the point of view of the highest laws of natural morality. The playwright, therefore, entrusted Hamlet with the mission of being a defender of the foundations of universal morality.

The entire tone of Hamlet's conversation with his mother is characterized by cruelty. The appearance of the Phantom intensifies his thirst for revenge. But now its implementation is prevented by sending it to England. Suspecting a trick on the part of the king, Hamlet expresses confidence that he can eliminate the danger. The reflective Hamlet gives way to the active Hamlet.

Ophelia occupies a special place in the overall picture of the work. She, without realizing it, becomes a weapon in the hands of the worst enemies of the person she loves. Ophelia's fate is more unfortunate than the fate of Juliet and Desdemona, who nevertheless had their own short period of happiness. Ophelia calls herself “the poorest of women.”

If the image of his mother evokes a feeling of cruelty in Hamlet, then the image of Ophelia evokes a feeling of love in him.

The image of Ophelia is one of the most striking examples of Shakespeare's dramatic skill. She pronounces only 158 lines of poetic and prose text. Shakespeare managed to fit a whole girl’s life into these one and a half hundred lines.

Hamlet loves Ophelia, the meek daughter of the courtier Polonius. This girl differs from other Shakespearean heroines, who are characterized by determination and a willingness to fight for their happiness: obedience to her father remains the main feature of her character. This is partly because she sees her father as an ally: he wanted her to marry the prince.

Ophelia is depicted in her relationship with her brother, father, Hamlet. But the heroine’s personal life from the very beginning turns out to be tightly constrained by the mores of the royal palace.

“I was informed that very often,” Polonius tells his daughter, “Hamlet “began to share his leisure time with you.” Polonius was informed of the prince's meetings with his daughter. He spies on her, as well as on his son, and it is in such an atmosphere that Ophelia’s love for Hamlet arises. They immediately try to prevent this feeling.

Ophelia's love is her misfortune. Although her father is a close associate of the king, his minister, she is nevertheless not of royal blood and therefore is not a match for her lover. Her brother and father repeat this in every possible way.

From the very first appearance of Ophelia, the main conflict of her fate is indicated: her father and brother demand that she renounce her love for Hamlet.

“I will obey you, my lord,” Ophelia answers Polonius. This immediately reveals her lack of will and independence. Ophelia stops accepting Hamlet's letters and does not allow him to visit her. With the same humility, she agrees to meet with Hamlet, knowing that their conversation will be overheard by the king and Polonius.

In the tragedy there is not a single love scene between Hamlet and Ophelia. But there is a scene of their breakup. It is full of amazing drama.

Finishing his thoughts expressed in the monologue “to be or not to be,” Hamlet notices Ophelia praying, he immediately puts on the mask of a madman. Ophelia wants to return to Hamlet the gifts she received from him. Hamlet objects: “I gave you nothing.” Ophelia's response reveals something about their past relationship:

No, my prince, you gave; and words,

Breathed so sweetly that doubly

The gift was valuable...

Ophelia says that Hamlet has ceased to be kind and courteous and has become unfriendly and unkind. Hamlet treats her rudely and embitteredly. He confuses her by admitting: “I loved you once” and immediately refuting himself: “You shouldn’t have believed me... I didn’t love you.”

Hamlet unleashes a stream of accusations against women on Ophelia. Their beauty has nothing to do with virtue - a thought that rejects one of the provisions of humanism, which affirmed the unity of the ethical and aesthetic, goodness and beauty. The world is such that even if a woman is virtuous, she cannot avoid slander. Hamlet also attacks fake beauty: “...God gave you one face, and you make yourself another; you dance, you jump, and chirp, and you give nicknames to God’s creatures, and you pass off your dissipation as ignorance. No, I’ve had enough, it drove me crazy.” The condemnation of women began with the mother.

The attacks against women are not divorced from Hamlet's general negative attitude towards society. Ophelia's persistent advice to go to a monastery is associated with the prince's deep conviction about the depravity of the world. Condemning women, Hamlet does not forget about the stronger sex: “We are all inveterate rogues; Don't trust any of us."

Ophelia is by no means a simpleton. She is not stupid, as can be judged by her witty response to her brother’s advice to abandon Hamlet:

Don't be like a sinful shepherd that others

Points to the sky the thorny path,

And he himself, a carefree and empty reveler,

Success follows a blossoming path.

This is not only a rebuff to his brother, but also a hint of what he himself is like. She understands his nature. The second time she discovers her mind is by remembering what Hamlet was like before he lost his mind. Hamlet's last meeting with Ophelia takes place on the evening of the performance of The Murder of Gonzago. Before the start of the performance, Hamlet sits down at her feet. He speaks harshly to her, to the point of indecency. Ophelia patiently endures everything, confident in his madness.

After this scene we don't see Ophelia for a long time. During this time, Hamlet kills her father. She appears before us having already lost her mind.

The tragedy depicts two types of madness: imaginary in Hamlet and real in Ophelia. This emphasizes once again that Hamlet has by no means lost his mind. Ophelia lost it. She experienced two shocks. The first was the loss of a loved one and his madness, the second was the death of her father, killed by her lover. Her mind could not accommodate the fact that the man she loved so much turned out to be her father's killer.

In Shakespeare's theater, madness served as a reason for the audience to laugh. However, the scene of Ophelia's madness is written in such a way that it is difficult to imagine even the most rude and uneducated audience laughing at the poor girl's misfortune. Ophelia's behavior is pathetic. It seems that the audience at Shakespeare's theater was imbued with sympathy for the unfortunate heroine.

Who cannot feel her grief when she says: “You must be patient; but I can’t help but cry when I think that they put him in the cold ground.”

Ophelia's madness has its own "consistency" of ideas. The first, naturally, is the horror that she lost her father. This sounds in the song she sings:

Oh, he's dead, lady,

He is cold dust;

There is green turf at the heads;

A pebble in my feet.

The second thought is about her trampled love. She sings a song about Valentine's Day, when boys and girls meet and love begins between them; However, she sings not about innocent love, but about how men deceive girls.

The third motive: “the world is evil” and people need to be appeased. For this purpose, she distributes flowers: “Here is rosemary, this is for memories, .. and here is the Trinity color, .. this is for thoughts,” “here is rue for you; and for me too; it is called the grass of grace...”

And as a final chord, thoughts about my father again:

And he won't come back to us?

And he won't come back to us?

No, he's gone.

He left the world...

Just as the memory of the late king hangs over the whole tragedy, so Ophelia does not leave the memory for quite a long time. We hear a poetic account of how she died; It is noteworthy that before her death she continued to sing and passed away in an unusually beautiful way. This final poetic touch is extremely important to complete the poetic image of Ophelia.

Finally, at her open grave we hear Hamlet admit that he loved her as forty thousand brothers cannot love! That is why the scenes where Hamlet rejects Ophelia are imbued with special drama. The cruel words that he says to her are difficult for him, he pronounces them with despair, because, loving her, he realizes that she has become a tool of his enemy against him and to carry out revenge he must give up love. Hamlet suffers because he is forced to hurt Ophelia and, suppressing pity, is merciless in his condemnation of women. It is noteworthy, however, that he personally does not blame her for anything and seriously advises her to leave the vicious world for a monastery.

Let us note that, no matter how different they are in nature, they experience the same shock. For Ophelia, as for Hamlet, the greatest grief is the death, or rather the murder, of her father!

The relationship between Ophelia and Hamlet forms, as it were, an independent drama within the framework of a great tragedy. Before Hamlet, Shakespeare portrayed in Romeo and Juliet a great love that ended tragically due to the fact that the blood feud that separated the Montague and Capulet families prevented the union of two loving hearts. But there was nothing tragic in the relationship between the two Verona lovers. Their relationship was harmonious; in Hamlet, the relationship between lovers is destroyed. Here, too, but in a different way, revenge turns out to be an obstacle to the unity of the prince and the girl he loves. Hamlet depicts the tragedy of giving up love. At the same time, their fathers play a fatal role for lovers. Ophelia's father orders her to break up with Hamlet, Hamlet breaks up with Ophelia in order to devote himself entirely to revenge for his father.

Ophelia's father, Polonius, is two-faced. He likes to pretend to be a chatty simpleton, but no less likes to spy and eavesdrop. Osric's eloquence conceals cunning. It is no coincidence that Claudius sends Osric to challenge Hamlet to a duel, the outcome of which is predetermined. Osric is the judge of the duel, and he knew that Laertes' weapon was poisoned. At the end of the tragedy, Osric, who is ready to serve any master, solemnly announces the approach of Fortinbras. Osric is a typical representative of the court environment.

The criminal Claudius, Hamlet's main enemy, is not an outright "villain" of melodrama. He is cunning and crafty. “You can smile and smile and be a scoundrel,” says Hamlet about him. Claudius managed to bewitch Gertrude; he skillfully guides Laertes for his own purposes. “Playing with complacency, he calls Hamlet his son, probably being ironic in his heart. At times, Claudius finds himself in a “repentant” mood, but not a very deep one.” This is on the one hand.

Claudius is a Machiavellian, a brilliant embodiment of the ideas contained in the treatise “The Prince”, where, for example, it is said: “Those whose course of action corresponds to the peculiarities of the time preserve their well-being.” Claudius is a Renaissance villain, and his “modus operandi” is built on will, energy and cunning and is aimed at preserving the integrity of the state. Hamlet, in his thirst for justice, lost sight of Fortinbras, who wanted to take Denmark into his hands. Fortinbras, the enemy of Hamlet's father, claims Danish territory and, after the death of all the heroes of the tragedy, receives it without any effort. Thus, Claudius, on the other hand, even plays a positive role if we consider him from a state point of view. “Cruelty is used well in those cases<...>when it is manifested immediately and for reasons of safety” - for this, the prototype of Claudius Fengon invented the story of the king’s attempt on the life of his wife. Claudius' words are one thing, actions are another, thoughts are another. Claudius is sweet and kind in words, but in deeds he is cunning. He would have remained a winner if he had remembered another remark of Machiavelli: “anyone who does not value life can make an attempt on the life of the sovereign, so there is no sure way to avoid death at the hands of a possessed person.”

Hamlet was exactly such a person: the desire for retribution acquired such power over him that Claudius had no chance of salvation.

Thus, Shakespeare’s Hamlet is not a primitive “avenger”, which is described in all the interpretations of this plot that preceded his play, and that duality, those complexes, those painful thoughts, that tragic insolubility and hopelessness of his situation (situation-trap, situation-“ mousetraps”, for not only and not so much Claudius falls into the “mousetrap”, but, undoubtedly, first of all, Hamlet himself) that are seen in his fate - they, of course, were laid down, “programmed” by his creator. The strange paradox of this character is that, having described it seemingly extremely reliably, Shakespeare nevertheless, as it turned out over the years, created a wonderful, unique and universal scheme in its own way, a certain model that everyone is “born with intelligence and talent” - is free to fill with your own content. Hence the multiplicity of interpretations, which has no analogues in the entire history of world theater, sometimes mutually exclusive, but still in some important way, as a rule, remaining faithful to the Shakespearean spirit, although sometimes not at all to the “letter”. Hence such multiplicity, such inexhaustibility of “Hamlet’s motifs” in the works of writers and poets of various eras and countries. But this will be discussed in the following chapters, where we will attempt to trace the evolution of the views of critics and actors on Shakespeare’s famous play.

Year: 1600-1601 Genre: tragedy

Main characters: King's heir Hamlet, King's brother Claudius, Hamlet's fiancée Ophelia, her brother Laertes, Queen Gertrude

Plot:

Prince Hamlet learns that at midnight the spirit of his late father appears on the castle walls. Alarmed, he decides to see the ghost, who reveals the terrible truth. Claudius, the brother of the deceased king, poisoned him, wanting to get the throne and the queen's hand. Hamlet pretends to be crazy in order to find evidence of his uncle's guilt. Beginning to suspect that his nephew knows about his crime and is feigning madness, Claudius wants to get rid of him.

After Hamlet accidentally kills the royal advisor Polonius, he is sent to England with a letter containing an order to immediately kill the heir. But Hamlet avoids the trap and leaves the ship. In Elsinore, Ophelia, the prince's lover, loses her mind after the death of her father Polonius. Hamlet attends her funeral and encounters Ophelia's older brother, Laertes. The king invites the young people to resolve their differences with a duel, during which both wound each other with a poisoned blade. Hamlet stabs Claudius, and Queen Gertrude dies from drinking poison.

Along with other works of the great playwright, the tragedy "Hamlet" touches upon eternal problems. Among them: the conflict of high ideals and mundane reality; discrepancy between the goal and the means spent to achieve it; the role of an individual human personality in history, in a changing world. And, most importantly, the search for answers about the meaning of life.

Read a summary of Shakespeare's Hamlet

For two nights in a row, Bernardo and Marcellus, on night guard, notice the figure of a royal ghost on the walls of the royal castle of Elsinore. They fearfully recognize the recently deceased king, the father of Crown Prince Hamlet. The military shares their observations with Horatio, Hamlet's learned friend, and he comes to the square at midnight to see for himself. Seeing the spirit with his own eyes, Horatio is shocked. The phenomenon seems to him a harbinger of terrible events.

Hamlet, returning from the university in Wittenberg, indulges in grief and despair. With bitterness he accepts the hasty marriage of his mother, Queen Gertrude, with his uncle, who took the Danish throne after the death of his brother. A short period of mourning for the deceased seems indecent to him, as does a union that in recent times was considered “incestuous.”

Horatio's story worries Hamlet to the core, he goes to guard the ghost, and he manages to draw the otherworldly guest into conversation. The shadow of his father reveals to Hamlet the terrible truth: Claudius, the treacherous usurper, poisoned his brother and took his place on the throne and in the queen's bed. The restless spirit calls on his son to take revenge, but asks to spare his mother. Let Gertrude’s conscience torment her, her son should not encroach on her life.

Shocked by the monstrous truth, Hamlet begins to ask questions. What is real in this life? What can you take for granted? Who to rely on? Why are we given our existence? What should we use the time allotted for? Torn apart by emotions, he wants to make sure the ghost's words are true. Hamlet decides to hide under the mask of a madman.

Meanwhile, Laertes, the eldest son of the royal adviser Polonius, leaving his native place, instructs his sister to stay away from the prince and his advances. Her father tells her the same thing, and then Ophelia admits that she recently saw Hamlet, who was “as if not himself,” behaved wildly and looked strange.

Soon everyone will know that the heir has lost his mind. Polonius is trying to prove to the king that Hamlet has gone mad with love for his daughter, who was too strict with him. They secretly observe the meeting of young people, during which the prince pushes Ophelia away and tells her to “enter the monastery”, where she has a chance to preserve her honor and not become a pawn in the intrigues of the powers that be.

The nephew's words worry Claudius, whose conscience is not clear. He does not believe that Hamlet has gone mad from passion. From Wittenberg, the king invites Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, Hamlet's university friends, to whom he proposes to keep an eye on the heir in order to find out his true motives. Hamlet receives his comrades well, but he clearly does not trust them.

Together with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, a troupe of traveling performers appears in the royal castle, which friends invited, since the prince always loved theatrical performances. Hamlet is friendly with the actors; he asks them to stage the play “The Murder of Gonzago.” The performance is meant to be a trap for Claudius.

On the day of the performance, the king and queen and the servants gather in the main hall. Everyone is in a good mood because Prince Hamlet seems cheerful and well. He communicates affably with his mother and flirts with Ophelia. The play begins. When the actors reach the scene of the killing of Gonzago, who is sleeping in the garden, with mercury poured into his ear, King Claudius rises from his seat in confusion and leaves. The courtiers leave with him. Hamlet, left alone, triumphs. Now he is sure that the ghost's accusations were true.

That evening, the prince appears in his mother's chambers to express to Gertrude his opinion about her and her new marriage. Hamlet cruelly scourges the queen with words, praises the virtues of her late husband and reproaches his mother for infidelity. Suddenly it seems to him that Claudius himself is hiding behind the tapestry, and Hamlet pierces the moving cover with his blade. Polonius, who overheard the conversation, turns out to be killed.

Taking advantage of the pretext, Claudius decides to send the heir away from the country until his crime is forgotten. He sends him, along with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, onto a ship bound for England. The king writes a secret letter to the ruler of Britain asking him to immediately execute the sender of this message. On the way to the sea, Hamlet sees the Norwegian army of Fortinbras, marching to defend a piece of no-man's land. The prince is amazed at how much effort another person spends for a worthless goal, and he himself has still not completed his mission.

Ophelia loses her mind after the death of Polonius. Laertes, who returned to the country for revenge, rebels and seizes the castle, but Claudius convinces the young man that the real enemy is Hamlet. The sight of his sister touches Laertes and inflames his hatred of the prince.

Hamlet's ship is captured by pirates, and he himself is landed back on Danish soil. Claudius receives news of this and persuades Laertes to a duel with the prince, for which they will prepare in advance. Meanwhile, Ophelia is found drowned in the river.

On the morning before the funeral, Hamlet walks through the cemetery, where gravediggers are digging earth for Ophelia's coffin, throwing out old bones. The prince discovers the skull of the old jester Yorick; in a monologue addressed to Horace, Hamlet talks about the transience and futility of life.

A funeral procession appears. Hiding, Hamlet listens to the funeral speeches and thus learns that Ophelia is being buried. When Laertes throws himself on the coffin screaming, Hamlet pulls him out of the grave. A quarrel begins, and they agree to settle it with a duel.

The next day, Hamlet tries to apologize to Laertes, but he does not want to give up revenge. Laertes has a poisoned rapier in his hand; he wounds the prince with it, but in the heat of battle the fighters exchange weapons, and Laertes himself also receives a dangerous scratch. Gertrude takes a sip from the cup intended for Hamlet. It contains poison that Claudius threw there, and she dies. Hamlet demands to find the culprit, Laertes confesses everything to him, after which the prince stabs Claudius. On his deathbed, Hamlet and Laertes make peace. Horace is about to finish the poisonous drink, but Hamlet convinces him to tell people about everything that happened.

Master Pavlin Pavlinovich Kuroslepov, going out onto the porch of his house, began asking Silan in detail whether he had checked the gate and whether he was carefully watching the house.

Summary of Sholokhov Nakhalenok

Eight-year-old Minka lives in the company of his mother and grandfather. “Nakhalenok” received this nickname due to his restless character and the fact that his mother gave birth to him out of wedlock. Soon, Minka’s father, a member of the Red Guard, comes home from the war.

Summary of Pushkin the Stone Guest

​This work is the third small tragedy; its action is presented in four scenes. The first scene begins with Don Guan arriving in Madrid, along with his servant Leporello.

Summary of Sparks' Notebook

An 80-year-old man staying in a nursing home, leafing through a notebook, recalls the events of past days. The story tells about the relationship between a young guy, Noah, and a girl from a wealthy family, Ellie, living in North Carolina.