William Shakespeare's tragedy "Hamlet" was written in 1600 - 1601 and is one of the most famous works world literature. The plot of the tragedy is based on the legend of the ruler of Denmark, dedicated to the story of the protagonist's revenge for the death of his father. In Hamlet, Shakespeare raises a number of important themes regarding issues of morality, honor and duty of heroes. Special attention the author devotes philosophical topic life and death.

Main characters

Hamlet – Prince of Denmark, the son of the former and nephew of the current king, was killed by Laertes.

Claudius- Danish king, killed Hamlet's father and married Gertrude, was killed by Hamlet.

Polonium- the chief royal adviser, the father of Laertes and Ophelia, was killed by Hamlet.

Laertes- the son of Polonius, Ophelia's brother, a skilled swordsman, was killed by Hamlet.

Horatio- Hamlet's close friend.

Other characters

Ophelia- Polonius’s daughter, Laertes’ sister, went crazy after her father’s death and drowned in the river.

Gertrude– the Danish queen, Hamlet’s mother, Claudius’s wife, died after drinking wine poisoned by the king.

The ghost of Hamlet's father

Rosencrantz, Guildenstern – Hamlet's former university friends.

Fortinbras- Norwegian prince.

Marcellus, Bernardo - officers.

Act 1

Scene 1

Elsinore. The area in front of the castle. Midnight. Officer Bernardo relieves Soldier Fernardo on duty. Officer Marcellus and Hamlet's friend Horatio appear in the square. Marcellus asks Bernardo if he has seen the ghost, which the castle guards have already noticed twice. Horatio finds this just a trick of the imagination.

Suddenly, a ghost resembling the late king appears. Horatio asks the spirit who he is, but he, offended by the question, disappears. Horatio believes that the appearance of a ghost is “a sign of turmoil threatening the state.”

Marcellus asks Horatio why Lately The kingdom is actively preparing for war. Horatio says that Hamlet killed “the ruler of the Norwegians, Fortinbras” in battle and, according to the agreement, received the lands of the vanquished. However, the “younger Fortinbras” decided to recapture the lost lands, and this is precisely the “pretext for confusion and turmoil in the region.”

Suddenly the ghost appears again, but disappears with the crow of a rooster. Horatio decides to tell Hamlet about what he saw.

Scene 2

Reception hall in the castle. The king announces his decision to marry his late brother's sister, Gertrude. Outraged by the attempts of Prince Fortinbras to return power to lost lands, Claudius sends courtiers with a letter to his uncle, the king of the Norwegians, so that he will nip his nephew's plans in the bud.

Laertes asks the king for permission to leave for France, Claudius allows it. The Queen advises Hamlet to stop grieving for his father: “This is how the world was created: what is alive will die / And after life it will go into eternity.” Claudius reports that he and the queen are against Hamlet returning to study in Wittenberg.

Left alone, Hamlet is outraged that his mother, a month after her husband’s death, stopped grieving and married Claudius: “O women, your name is treachery!” .

Horatio tells Hamlet that for two nights in a row he, Marcellus and Bernardo saw the ghost of his father in armor. The prince asks to keep this news secret.

Scene 3

A room in Polonius's house. Saying goodbye to Ophelia, Laertes asks his sister to avoid Hamlet and not take his advances seriously. Polonius blesses his son on the road, instructing him how to behave in France. Ophelia tells her father about Hamlet's courtship. Polonius forbids his daughter to see the prince.

Scene 4

Midnight, Hamlet and Horatio and Marcellus are on the platform in front of the castle. A ghost appears. Hamlet turns to him, but the spirit, without answering anything, beckons the prince to follow him.

Scene 5

The ghost tells Hamlet that he is the spirit of his dead father, reveals the secret of his death and asks his son to take revenge for his murder. Contrary to popular belief, the former king did not die from a snake bite. His brother Claudius killed him by pouring henbane infusion into the king’s ear while he was sleeping in the garden. In addition, even before the death of the former king, Claudius “drew the queen into shameful cohabitation.”

Hamlet warns Horatio and Marcellus that he will deliberately behave like a madman and asks them to swear that they will not tell anyone about their conversation and that they saw the ghost of Hamlet's father.

Act 2

Scene 1

Polonius sends his confidant Reynaldo to Paris to deliver a letter to Laertes. He asks to find out as much as possible about his son - about how he behaves and who is in his social circle.

Frightened Ophelia tells Polonius about Hamlet's crazy behavior. The adviser decides that the prince has gone crazy with love for his daughter.

Scene 2

The king and queen invite Rosencrantz and Guildenstern (Hamlet's former university friends) to find out the reason for the prince's madness. Ambassador Voltimand reports the Norwegian's answer - having learned about the actions of Fortinbras's nephew, the King of Norway forbade him to fight with Denmark and sent the heir on a campaign to Poland. Polonius shares with the king and queen the assumption that the reason for Hamlet's madness is his love for Ophelia.

Talking with Hamlet, Polonius is amazed at the accuracy of the prince’s statements: “If this is madness, then it is consistent in its own way.”

In a conversation between Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, Hamlet calls Denmark a prison. The prince understands that they did not come at will, but by order of the king and queen.

Actors invited by Rosencrantz and Guildenstern come to Elsinore. Hamlet greets them kindly. The prince asks to read Aeneas’s monologue to Dido, which talks about the murder of Priam by Pyrrhus, and also to play “The Murder of Gonzago” at tomorrow’s performance, adding short excerpt, written by Hamlet.

Left alone, Hamlet admires the actor's skill, accusing himself of impotence. Fearing that the Devil appeared to him in the form of a ghost, the prince decides to first follow his uncle and check his guilt.

Act 3

Scene 1

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern report to the king and queen that they were unable to find out from Hamlet the reason for his strange behavior. Having set up a meeting between Ophelia and Hamlet, the king and Polonius hide, watching them.

Hamlet enters the room, pondering what stops a person from committing suicide:

“To be or not to be, that is the question.
Is it worthy
Resign yourself to the blows of fate,
Or must we resist
And in mortal combat with a whole sea of ​​troubles
End them? Die. Forget yourself."

Ophelia wants to return Hamlet's gifts. The prince, realizing that they are being overheard, continues to behave like a madman, telling the girl that he never loved her and no matter how much virtue is instilled in her, “the sinful spirit cannot be smoked out of her.” Hamlet advises Ophelia to go to a monastery so as not to produce sinners.

Having heard Hamlet’s speeches, the king understands that the reason for the prince’s madness is different: “he’s not exactly cherishing / In the dark corners of his soul, / Hatching something more dangerous.” Claudius decides to protect himself by sending his nephew to England.

Scene 2

Preparations for the play. Hamlet asks Horatio to look carefully at the king when the actors play a scene similar to the episode of his father's death.

Before the play begins, Hamlet places his head in Ophelia's lap. Starting with pantomime, the actors depict the scene of the poisoning of the former king. During the performance, Hamlet tells Claudius that the play is called "The Mousetrap" and comments on what is happening on stage. At the moment when the actor on stage was about to poison the sleeping man, Claudius rose sharply and left the hall with his retinue, thereby revealing his guilt in the death of Hamlet’s father.

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern tell Hamlet that the king and queen are very upset about what happened. The prince, holding a flute in his hand, replied: “Look, what kind of dirt you mixed me with. You are going to play on me." “Call me any instrument, you can upset me, but you can’t play me.”

Scene 3

The king is trying to atone for the sin of fratricide with prayer. Seeing Claudius praying, the prince hesitates, because he can take revenge for his father’s murder right now. However, Hamlet decides to delay the punishment so that the king's soul does not go to heaven.

Scene 4

Queen's room. Gertrude called Hamlet to talk to her. Polonius, eavesdropping, hides behind the carpet in her bedroom. Hamlet is rude to his mother, accusing the queen of insulting the memory of his father. Frightened Gertrude decides that her son wants to kill her. Polonius calls the guards from behind the carpet. The prince, thinking it is the king, stabs the carpet and kills the royal advisor.

Hamlet blames his mother for the fall. Suddenly a ghost appears, which only the prince sees and hears. Gertrude becomes convinced of her son's madness. Dragging Polonius' body, Hamlet leaves.

Act 4

Scene 1

Gertrude tells Claudius that Hamlet killed Polonius. The king orders to find the prince and take the body of the murdered adviser to the chapel.

Scene 2

Hamlet tells Rosencrantz and Guildenstern that he “mixed the body of Polonius with the earth to which the corpse is akin.” The prince compares Rosencrantz “to a sponge living on the juices of royal favors.”

Scene 3

Amused, Hamlet tells the king that Polonius is at dinner - “at one where he is not dining, but he is being eaten,” but then he admits that he hid the adviser’s body near the gallery stairs. The king orders Hamlet to be immediately lured onto the ship and taken to England, accompanied by Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Claudius decides that the Briton must repay his debt by killing the prince.

Scene 4

Plain in Denmark. The Norwegian army is passing through local lands. They explain to Hamlet that the military is going to “take away a place that is not noticeable by anything.” Hamlet reflects that the “decisive prince” is “glad to sacrifice his life” for the sake of a cause that is “not worth a damn,” but he himself still did not dare to take revenge.

Scene 5

Upon learning of Polonius's death, Ophelia goes crazy. The girl grieves for her father and sings strange songs. Horatio shares his fears and concerns with the queen - “the people are grumbling”, “all the dirt has surfaced from the bottom”.

Laertes, who secretly returned from France, breaks into the castle with a crowd of rebels who proclaim him king. The young man wants to avenge the death of his father, but the king pacifies his ardor, promising to compensate for the loss and help “in an alliance to achieve the truth.” Seeing the mad Ophelia, Laertes becomes even more passionate about revenge.

Scene 6

Horatio receives Hamlet's letter from the sailors. The prince reports that he has ended up with the pirates, asks to give the king the letters he sent and to rush to his aid as quickly as possible.

Scene 7

The king finds an ally in Laertes, pointing out to him that they have a common enemy. Letters from Hamlet are delivered to Claudius - the prince writes that he was landed naked on Danish soil and asks the king to receive him tomorrow.

Laertes is waiting to meet Hamlet. Claudius offers to guide the young man’s actions so that Hamlet dies “by himself.” goodwill". Laertes agrees, deciding to be sure before the battle with the prince to smear the tip of the rapier with poisonous ointment.

Suddenly the queen appears with the news that Ophelia has drowned in the river:

“She wanted to cover the willow with herbs,
I grabbed the branch, and he broke,
And, as it was, with a pile of colored trophies,
She fell into the stream."

Act 5

Scene 1

Elsinore. Cemetery. The gravediggers dig a grave for Ophelia, discussing whether it is possible to give a suicide a Christian burial. Seeing the skulls thrown away by the gravedigger, Hamlet wonders who these people were. The gravedigger shows the prince the skull of Yorick, the royal skoromokh. Taking it in his hands, Hamlet turns to Horatio: “Poor Yorick! “I knew him, Horatio.” He was a man of endless wit,” “and now this very disgust and nausea comes to the throat.”

Ophelia is buried. Wishing in last time Saying goodbye to his sister, Laertes jumps into her grave, asking her to bury him with his sister. Outraged by the falseness of what is happening, the prince, who was standing aside, jumps into the grave into the ice behind Laertes and they fight. By order of the king, they are separated. Hamlet reports that he wants to “settle the rivalry” with Laertes in a fight. The king asks Laertes not to take any action for now - “just chat. Everything is coming to an end."

Scene 2

Hamlet tells Horatio that he found a letter from Claudius on the ship, in which the king ordered the prince to be killed upon arrival in England. Hamlet changed its contents, ordering the immediate death of the bearers of the letter. The prince understands that he sent Rosencrantz and Guildestern to death, but his conscience does not torment him.

Hamlet admits to Horatio that he regrets the quarrel with Laertes and wants to make peace with him. The king's close associate Ozdrik reports that Claudius bet with Laertes six Arab horses that the prince would win the battle. Hamlet has a strange premonition, but he brushes it off.

Before the duel, Hamlet asks Laertes for forgiveness, saying that he did not wish him harm. Unnoticed, the king throws poison into the prince's glass of wine. In the midst of the battle, Laertes wounds Hamlet, after which they exchange rapiers and Hamlet wounds Laertes. Laertes realizes that he himself was “caught in the net” of his cunning.

The Queen accidentally drinks from Hamlet's glass and dies. Hamlet orders to find the culprit. Laertes reports that the rapier and drink were poisoned and the king is to blame. Hamlet kills the king with a poisoned rapier. Dying, Laertes forgives Hamlet. Horatio wants to drink the remaining poison from the glass, but Hamlet takes the cup from his friend, asking him to tell the uninitiated “the truth about him.”

Shots and a march are heard in the distance - Fortinbras returns from Poland with victory. Dying, Hamlet recognizes Fortinbras' right to the Danish throne. Fortinbras orders the prince to be buried with honor. A cannon salvo is heard.

Conclusion

In Hamlet, using the example of the Danish prince as an example, Shakespeare portrays a personality of modern times, whose strength and weakness lie in his morality and sharp mind. Being a philosopher and humanist by nature, Hamlet finds himself in circumstances that force him to take revenge and bloodshed. This is the tragedy of the hero’s situation - having seen the dark side of life, fratricide, betrayal, he became disillusioned with life and lost his understanding of its value. Shakespeare does not give in his work a definite answer to the eternal question “To be or not to be?”, leaving it up to the reader.

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Shakespeare's tragedy "Hamlet"

Characteristics of the main character

Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, is the main character of William Shakespeare's tragedy. His image is central to the tragedy. The bearer of the main idea and philosophical conclusions of the entire work is Hamlet. The hero's speeches are full of aphorisms, apt observations, wit and sarcasm. Shakespeare accomplished the most difficult of artistic tasks - he created the image of a great thinker.

Plunging into the events of Shakespeare's tragedy, we observe all the versatility of the protagonist's character. Hamlet 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 combat evil. He is a man of his era, who carries within himself its duality. On the one hand, Hamlet understands that “man is the beauty of the universe! The crown of all living things!”; on the other hand, “the quintessence of dust. Not a single person makes me happy.”

The main goal of this hero from the beginning of the play, revenge for the murder of his father, is contrary to his nature, because... Hamlet is a man of modern times, an adherent of humanistic views and he is incapable of causing pain and suffering to other people. But, having learned the bitterness of disappointment, the torment through which he goes, Hamlet comes to the realization that, fighting for justice, he will have to resort to force.

Around him he sees only treason, insidiousness, betrayal, “that you can live with a smile and with a smile be a scoundrel; at least in Denmark." He is disappointed in his “despicable love”, in his mother, uncle - “Oh, destructive woman! Scoundrel, smiling scoundrel, damned scoundrel! His thoughts about the purpose of man, about the meaning of life take on a tragic overtones. Before our eyes, the hero is going through a difficult struggle between a sense of duty and his own beliefs.

Hamlet is capable of great and faithful friendship. In his relationships, he is alien to feudal prejudices: he values ​​people by their personal qualities, and not by the position they occupy.

Hamlet's monologues reveal the internal struggle that he wages with himself. He constantly reproaches himself for his inactivity, trying to understand whether he is capable of any action at all. He even thinks about suicide:

“To be or not to be - that is the question;

What is nobler in spirit - to submit

To the slings and arrows of furious fate

Or, taking up arms in the sea of ​​turmoil, defeat them

Confrontation? Die, sleep -

But only; and say that you end up sleeping

Melancholy and a thousand natural torments,

The legacy of the flesh - how is such a denouement

Not thirsty? Die, sleep. - Fall asleep!

And dream, perhaps? That’s the difficulty” (5, p.44)

Shakespeare shows the consistent development of Hamlet's character. The power of this image is not in what actions it does, but in what it feels and forces the readers to experience.

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Shakespeare is the creator of an entire artistic universe, he had incomparable imagination and knowledge of life, knowledge of people, therefore the analysis of any of his plays is extremely interesting and instructive. However, for Russian culture, of all Shakespeare’s plays, the first in importance was "Hamlet", which can be seen at least by the number of its translations into Russian - there are over forty of them. Using this tragedy as an example, let us consider what new Shakespeare contributed to the understanding of the world and man in the late Renaissance.

Let's begin with plot of "Hamlet", like virtually all of Shakespeare's other works, is borrowed from a previous literary tradition. Thomas Kidd's tragedy Hamlet, presented in London in 1589, has not reached us, but it can be assumed that Shakespeare relied on it, giving his version of the story, first told in the Icelandic chronicle of the 12th century. Saxo Grammaticus, author of the "History of the Danes", tells an episode from the Danish history of the "dark time". The feudal lord Khorwendil had a wife, Geruta, and a son, Amleth. Horwendil's brother, Fengo, with whom he shared power over Jutland, was jealous of his courage and glory. Fengo killed his brother in front of the courtiers and married his widow. Amlet pretended to be crazy, deceived everyone and took revenge on his uncle. Even before that, he was exiled to England for the murder of one of the courtiers, and there he married an English princess. Amlet was subsequently killed in battle by his other uncle, King Wiglet of Denmark. The similarity of this story with the plot of Shakespeare's Hamlet is obvious, but Shakespeare's tragedy takes place in Denmark only in name; its problematics go far beyond the scope of the tragedy of revenge, and the types of characters are very different from the solid medieval heroes.

Premiere of "Hamlet" at the Globe Theater took place in 1601, and this is a year of well-known upheavals in the history of England, which directly affected both the Globe troupe and Shakespeare personally. The fact is that 1601 is the year of the “Essex Conspiracy,” when the young favorite of the aging Elizabeth, Earl of Essex, took his people to the streets of London in an attempt to rebel against the queen, was captured and beheaded. Historians regard his speech as the last manifestation of medieval feudal freemen, as a rebellion of the nobility against the absolutism that limited its rights, which was not supported by the people. On the eve of the performance, the Essex envoys paid the Globe actors to perform an old Shakespearean chronicle, which, in their opinion, could provoke discontent with the queen, instead of the play scheduled in the repertoire. The owner of Globus later had to give unpleasant explanations to the authorities. Along with Essex, the young nobles who followed him were thrown into the Tower, in particular the Earl of Southampton, Shakespeare's patron, to whom his cycle of sonnets is believed to be dedicated. Southampton was later pardoned, but while Essex's trial was going on, Shakespeare's mind must have been particularly dark. All these circumstances could further thicken the general atmosphere of the tragedy.

Its action begins in Elsinore, the castle of the Danish kings. The night watch informs Horatio, Hamlet's friend, about the appearance of the Ghost. This is the ghost of Hamlet’s late father, who in the “dead hour of the night” tells his son that he did not die a natural death, as everyone believes, but was killed by his brother Claudius, who took the throne and married Hamlet’s mother, Queen Gertrude. The ghost demands revenge from Hamlet, but the prince must first make sure of what has been said: what if the ghost is a messenger from hell? To gain time and not be discovered, Hamlet pretends to be crazy; the incredulous Claudius conspires with his courtier Polonius to use his daughter Ophelia, with whom Hamlet is in love, to check whether Hamlet has actually lost his mind. For the same purpose, Hamlet's old friends, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, are called to Elsinore, and they willingly agree to help the king. Exactly in the middle of the play is the famous “Mousetrap”: a scene in which Hamlet persuades the actors who came to Elsinore to perform a performance that exactly depicts what the Ghost told him about, and by Claudia’s confused reaction he is convinced of his guilt. After this, Hamlet kills Polonius, who overhears his conversation with his mother, in the belief that Claudius is hiding behind the carpets in her bedroom; Claudius, sensing danger, sends Hamlet to England, where he is to be executed by the English king, but on board the ship Hamlet manages to replace the letter, and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, who accompanied him, are executed instead. Returning to Elsinore, Hamlet learns of the death of Ophelia, who has gone mad, and becomes a victim of Claudius's latest intrigue. The king persuades the son of the late Polonius and Ophelia's brother Laertes to take revenge on Hamlet and hands Laertes a poisoned sword for a court duel with the prince. During this duel, Gertrude dies after drinking a cup of poisoned wine intended for Hamlet; Claudius and Laertes are killed, Hamlet dies, and the troops of the Norwegian prince Fortinbras enter Elsinore.

Hamlet- the same as Don Quixote, the “eternal image” that arose at the end of the Renaissance almost simultaneously with other images of the great individualists (Don Quixote, Don Juan, Faust). All of them embody the Renaissance idea of ​​limitless personal development, and at the same time, unlike Montaigne, who valued measure and harmony, in these artistic images, as is typical in the literature of the Renaissance, great passions are embodied, extreme degrees of development of one side of the personality. Don Quixote's extreme was idealism; Hamlet's extreme is reflection, introspection, which paralyzes a person's ability to act. He performs many actions throughout the tragedy: he kills Polonius, Laertes, Claudius, sends Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to their deaths, but since he hesitates with his main task - revenge, the impression of his inactivity is created.

From the moment he learns the Ghost's secret, things fall apart for Hamlet. past life. What he was like before the start of the tragedy can be judged by Horatio, his friend at the University of Wittenberg, and by the scene of the meeting with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, when he sparkles with wit - until the moment when the friends admit that Claudius summoned them. Indecent imminent wedding mother, the loss of Hamlet Sr., in whom the prince saw not just a father, but an ideal person, explain his gloomy mood at the beginning of the play. And when Hamlet is faced with the task of revenge, he begins to understand that the death of Claudius will not correct general position affairs, because everyone in Denmark quickly consigned Hamlet Sr. to oblivion and quickly got used to slavery. The era of ideal people is in the past, and the motif of Denmark-prison runs through the whole tragedy, set by the words of the honest officer Marcellus in the first act of the tragedy: “Something has rotted in the Danish kingdom” (Act I, Scene IV). The prince comes to realize the hostility, the “dislocation” of the world around him: “The century has been shaken - and worst of all, / That I was born to restore it” (Act I, Scene V). Hamlet knows that his duty is to punish evil, but his idea of ​​evil no longer corresponds to the straightforward laws of family revenge. Evil for him is not limited to the crime of Claudius, whom he ultimately punishes; Evil is spread throughout the world around him, and Hamlet realizes that one person cannot resist the whole world. This internal conflict leads him to think about the futility of life, about suicide.

The fundamental difference between Hamlet from the heroes of the previous revenge tragedy in that he is able to look at himself from the outside, to think about the consequences of his actions. Main sphere Hamlet's activity is thought, and the sharpness of his introspection is akin to Montaigne's close introspection. But Montaigne called for introducing human life within proportionate boundaries and painted a person occupying a middle position in life. Shakespeare draws not only the prince, that is, a person standing at the highest level of society, on whom the fate of his country depends; Shakespeare according to literary tradition draws an extraordinary nature, large in all its manifestations. Hamlet is a hero born of the spirit of the Renaissance, but his tragedy indicates that at its later stage the ideology of the Renaissance is experiencing a crisis. Hamlet takes upon himself the work of revising and revaluing not only medieval values, but also the values ​​of humanism, and the illusory nature of humanistic ideas about the world as a kingdom of boundless freedom and direct action is revealed.

Central story line Hamlet reflected in a kind of mirror: the lines of two more young heroes, each of which sheds New World to Hamlet's situation. The first is the line of Laertes, who, after the death of his father, finds himself in the same position as Hamlet after the appearance of the Ghost. Laertes, by all accounts, is a “worthy youth”; he takes lessons common sense Polonia acts as the bearer of established morality; he takes revenge on his father's murderer, not disdaining an agreement with Claudius. The second is the line of Fortinbras; Despite the fact that he has a small place on the stage, his significance for the play is very great. Fortinbras is the prince who occupied the empty Danish throne, Hamlet's hereditary throne; he is a man of action, a decisive politician and military leader; he realized himself after the death of his father, the Norwegian king, precisely in those areas that remain inaccessible to Hamlet. All the characteristics of Fortinbras are directly opposite to the characteristics of Laertes, and we can say that the image of Hamlet is placed between them. Laertes and Fortinbras are normal, ordinary avengers, and the contrast with them makes the reader feel the exceptionality of Hamlet’s behavior, because the tragedy depicts precisely the exceptional, the great, the sublime.

Since the Elizabethan theater was poor in decorations and external effects of theatrical spectacle, the strength of its impact on the viewer depended mainly on the word. Shakespeare - greatest poet in history in English and its greatest reformer; Shakespeare's word is fresh and succinct, and in Hamlet it is striking stylistic richness of the play. It is mostly written in blank verse, but in a number of scenes the characters speak in prose. Shakespeare uses metaphors especially subtly to create general atmosphere tragedy. Critics note the presence of three groups of leitmotifs in the play. Firstly, these are images of illness, ulcers, healthy body, - everyone's speeches characters contain images of rotting, decomposition, decay, working to create the theme of death. Secondly, images of female debauchery, fornication, fickle Fortune, reinforcing the theme of female infidelity running through the tragedy and at the same time pointing to the main philosophical problem tragedy - the contrast between appearance and the true essence of a phenomenon. Thirdly, these are numerous images of weapons and military equipment associated with war and violence - they emphasize the effective side of Hamlet’s character in the tragedy. The whole arsenal artistic means tragedy is used to create its numerous images, to embody the main tragic conflict- the loneliness of a humanistic personality in the desert of a society in which there is no place for justice, reason, and dignity. Hamlet is the first reflective hero in world literature, the first hero experiencing a state of alienation, and the roots of his tragedy are in different eras were perceived differently.

For the first time, naive audience interest in Hamlet as a theatrical spectacle gave way to attention to the characters at the turn of the 18th-19th centuries. I.V. Goethe, an ardent admirer of Shakespeare, in his novel Wilhelm Meister (1795) interpreted Hamlet as “a beautiful, noble, highly moral creature, deprived of the power of feeling that makes a hero, he perishes under a burden that he could neither bear nor throw off.” . U I.V. Goethe's Hamlet is a sentimental-elegiac nature, a thinker who cannot handle great deeds.

Romantics explained the inactivity of the first in the row " extra people"(they are later “lost”, “angry”) by the excessiveness of reflection, the collapse of the unity of thought and will. S. T. Coleridge in “Shakespeare’s Lectures” (1811-1812) writes: “Hamlet hesitates due to natural sensitivity and hesitates , held by reason, which forces him to turn his effective forces to search for a speculative solution." As a result, the romantics presented Hamlet as the first literary hero, consonant with modern man in his preoccupation with introspection, which means this image is a prototype modern man at all.

About Hamlet's ability - like other most lively Shakespearean characters - to look at himself from the outside, to treat himself objectively, as artistic character, and act as an artist wrote G. Hegel.

Don Quixote and Hamlet were the most important "eternal images" for Russian XIX culture century. V.G. Belinsky believed that Hamlet's idea consists "in weakness of will, but only as a result of decay, and not by its nature. By nature, Hamlet is a strong man... He is great and strong in his weakness, because a strong-spirited man and in his very fall is higher than a weak man, in his very fall his uprising." V.G. Belinsky and A.I. Herzen saw in Hamlet a helpless but stern judge of his society, a potential revolutionary; I.S. Turgenev and L.N. Tolstoy is a hero rich in intelligence that is of no use to anyone.

Psychologist L.S. Vygotsky, bringing to the fore the final act of the tragedy in his analysis, emphasized 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."

English writers B. Shaw and M. Murray explained Hamlet's slowness by unconscious resistance to the barbaric law of family revenge. Psychoanalyst E. Jones showed that Hamlet is a victim of the Oedipus complex. Marxist criticism saw him as an anti-Machiavellian, a fighter for the ideals of bourgeois humanism. For Catholic K.S. Lewis's Hamlet is an "everyman", an ordinary man, depressed by an idea original sin. In literary criticism there has been a whole gallery of mutually exclusive Hamlets: an egoist and a pacifist, a misogynist, a brave hero, a melancholic incapable of action, the highest embodiment of the Renaissance ideal and an expression of the crisis of humanistic consciousness - all this is a Shakespearean hero. In the process of comprehending the tragedy, Hamlet, like Don Quixote, broke away from the text of the work and acquired the meaning of a “supertype” (Yu. M. Lotman’s term), that is, it became a socio-psychological generalization of such a wide scope that its right to timeless existence was recognized.

Today in Western Shakespeare studies the focus is not on “Hamlet”, but on other plays of Shakespeare - “Measure for Measure”, “King Lear”, “Macbeth”, “Othello”, also, each in its own way, consonant with modernity, since in each Shakespeare's play is staged eternal questions human existence. And each play contains something that determines the exclusivity of Shakespeare's influence on all subsequent literature. American literary critic H. Bloom defines it author's position as “disinterest”, “freedom from any ideology”: “He has no theology, no metaphysics, no ethics, and less political theory than modern critics “read” into him. From the sonnets it is clear that, unlike his character Falstaff, he had a superego; unlike Hamlet of the final act, he did not cross the boundaries of earthly existence, unlike Rosalind, he did not have the ability to control; own life at will. But since he invented them all, we can assume that he deliberately set certain boundaries for himself. Fortunately, he was not King Lear and refused to go mad, although he could perfectly imagine madness, like everything else. His wisdom is endlessly reproduced in our sages from Goethe to Freud, although Shakespeare himself refused to be considered a sage"; "It is impossible to limit Shakespeare to the framework of the English Renaissance, just as it is impossible to limit the Prince of Denmark to the framework of his play."

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. Immortal work " Tragic story about Hamlet, Prince of Denmark" is considered one of the famous tragedies in the world. This story is not just a murder top level which happened in the Kingdom of Denmark. 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 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.

Later, literary scholars managed to compile full text plays. 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. Most famous tragedy Shakespeare 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 attend 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.

To a 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 verses into the play own composition 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 struck death blow with a poisonous sword to Laertes and the king, but the queen accidentally drank poisoned wine.

When analyzing a work, literary scholars give a very specific description of the hero. Main character 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. Yes, and murder will compare him with those who are “ 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 internal struggle, the hero is torn between a sense of duty and his worldview. And the famous monologue “To be or not to be” does not simply reflect 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

Number of theater and film productions immortal work cannot be counted. 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 globe. Hamlet appeared in the 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 she walked with 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 Guttiere 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 in St. Petersburg Maly drama theater presented the new “Hamlet”. The modernity of the Prince of Denmark is revealed by his clothes - in leading role 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 in late XVIII 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 filming location 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.”

Characterization of the image of Hamlet using quotation material. For Hamlet, whose life was harmonious in the family loving parents, among loyal university friends, everything turned upside down with the death of his father and the events that took place after that. The ghost of his father calls Hamlet to revenge. The world opened up before him in all its tragedy, turning a carefree young man into a suffering philosopher. The soul of the young prince is in doubt. Now he is painfully aware of the fact that words are heard all around that actually cover up lies. Ambition, vanity, the desire not to be, but to appear, are everywhere. Only Hamlet is alien to lies.

Hamlet stops believing anyone. His uncle turned out to be his father's murderer, his mother married a murderer, and recent friends Rosencrantz and Guildenstern turned out to be traitors. Even the pure, naive Ophelia becomes an unwitting weapon in the hands of her father Polonius, a weapon directed against Hamlet. In this situation, he does not know who he can trust. Hamlet is alone against the world of evil. Almost everyone around us is accustomed to dissembling, being a hypocrite, lying, “appearing,” hiding behind words. Hamlet wants to break this deceitful shell of words and find out what is behind it.

Those around him perceive him as strange, incomprehensible and even dangerous to themselves - “normal” people who are accustomed to living in a lie. This is how the version of the prince’s madness is born. Hamlet supports this statement, because his madness is an opportunity to tell the truth.

In fact, Hamlet is smart, widely enlightened. His nature is deep, subtle, artistic, and his language is witty and paradoxical: “And even if you lock me in a walnut cage, even there I will consider myself the ruler of infinity.” Hamlet is a philosopher who seeks to understand the essence of things.

He says about himself: “I myself am a pretty decent person, otherwise I can accuse myself of so many sins, why and how did my mother give birth to me?! I am very proud, vengeful, self-loving. I have more sins at my disposal than thoughts, to think about them, dreams to realize them, time to realize them. “We are all utter scoundrels.”

"To be or not to be" - Hamlet's famous question
The human world is terrible.
And life itself is woven from falsehood,
lies, cruelty.
What to do?
Die - Fall asleep, nothing more.
And know that it will end
Heartache and a thousand worries...
Die
Fall asleep.
Maybe even dream?"

What is beyond earthly existence? How to behave regarding universal evil? There are two ways. The first is to come to terms with evil as an inevitability:

It’s easier for us to put up with a well-known disaster,
Why rush to the unknown.

Another way is to disregard all obstacles and join the fight against evil. Hamlet chooses a different path - to rebel, arm, and win.

Hamlet's death was the beginning of his immortality. This image is interesting not only to theater workers. Today we can talk about Hamlet in poetry, painting, cinema...

Shakespeare's great poetic gift sharpened even the most acute ethical conflicts hidden in the very nature of human relations. The problems that the playwright violated in his works are perceived and rethought by each subsequent era in a new way, inherent only at this moment aspect, while remaining a product of its era, which absorbed all the experience of previous generations and realized the creative potential they had accumulated.

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