According to Aristotle Essay

Laertes verbose and theatrical behaviour causes the audience to dislike him. Nevertheless, unlike Hamlet he is willing to seize revenge at the first opportunity. There are many different perspectives on how Shakespeare addresses the theme of revenge in Hamlet, and also whether it is done successfully. One criticism made by Catherine Belsey, undermines Shakespeare’s approach, as she believed the â€Å"secular injustice is not resolved†. I only agree with the statement to a certain extent, because although Hamlet puts it off and Claudius’ death isn’t planned by him – he does force Claudius to drink the poison, causing his death. If the injustice did remain unresolved, which I don’t believe it did, then that would support the criticism made by T. S Eliot that ‘Hamlet as a revenge tragedy play itself, is a failure’. In my opinion this accusation cannot be sustained as aside from the long wait, Shakespeare does manage to keep revenge the core theme throughout. According to Aristotle; an effective tragic hero is a protagonist who â€Å"†¦ is able to evoke both our pity and terror and is not thoroughly good or thoroughly bad, but a mixture of both†. I think Shakespeare is therefore successful as we do pity Hamlet because he does want to kill Claudius but his orthodox Christianity and strict moral codes acts as a barrier – his tragic flaw is procrastination. We are also scared of his ‘bad’ side which is when he kills Polonius, attacks his mother and rejects Ophelia. Shakespeare uses a number of antitheses; evil vs. good, life vs. death, secular vs. religion and so on and the audience is left to decide which successes over the other. I think Shakespeare constructs Hamlet’s character so that the audience could become him, it is natural for us to question ourselves when faced with a dilemma as imperative as his. We understand his procrastination, but on the other hand his character does raise many questions that remain unresolved even by the end of the play. For example, we question whether his love for his mother and jealousy of Claudius is simply an Oedipus complex – especially as scenes in the film and stage directions of his actions are ambiguous causing us to be unsure of what he’s actually doing to her. Overall, an audience of any century, can relate to him and he becomes a believable psychologically developed character, unlike the others who seem to me to be caricatures and representatives of certain types of people. Word Count: 1,715 A website: http://people. brandeis. edu/~teuber/earlycrit. html http://www. britannica. com/eb/article-9063348/revenge-tragedy http://en. wikipedia. org/wiki/Revenge_play A book: Gill, Roma ed. , ‘Hamlet’ (Oxford School, Shakespeare), Oxford University Press, 2007.