Hamlet essay 'Hamlet is a play about corrupt, deceitful and sinful characters. There are no true victims'
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Course
Drama and poetry pre-1900
Institution
OCR
An A* essay discussing the characters of Hamlet, their victim status, and whether we view them as corrupt. This is a Part B response, with lots of context and knowledge of adaptations.
“Hamlet is a play about corrupt, deceitful and sinful characters. There are
no true victims.”
How far and in what ways do you agree?
In Shakespeare’s Hamlet, we see several complex characters, all of which
appear to commit some form of sinful act, but the reasoning behind their
choices could determine whether an audience views them as corrupt or as
a victim. Several external factors such as the interpretation of the play,
the context that an audience lives in, and one’s personal beliefs also
contribute to whether the characters appear as villains or victims. A victim
can be defined as “a person harmed, injured, or killed as a result of a
crime, accident, or other event or action,” or “a person who is tricked or
duped.” We see several examples of these definitions throughout the
play, but is it as simple as these definitions suggest deciding which
characters are victims?
Firstly, we should question the title character of Hamlet, and whether he is
corrupt or not. With Hamlet, how an audience feels about him depends on
whether they feel he is mad or not, and then whether he was justified or
responsible for his actions. Hamlet is cruel to Ophelia during Act 3 scene 1
when he begs her to “get thee to a nunnery”, but depending on the
interpretation of the play Hamlet could either be being cruel to her
because of his madness, or casting her away so as both to protect her (by
not having to watch his descent into insanity so closely) and also to affirm
to Polonius and Claudius that he really is mad. In the David Tennant
version of the play, we see that he acknowledges the CCTV cameras and
then asks, “where is your father”, and we have seen that Hamlet has
overheard Polonius, Claudius and Ophelia talking. We see him angrily
performing to the camera, and so it appears that Hamlet is aware that
they are spying on him and so feigns madness so as to try to fool Polonius
and Claudius. This begs the question of where the true sin really lies here-
with Hamlet for deceiving them but to try to avenge his father, or with
Claudius and Polonius for spying on Hamlet and manipulating Ophelia?
Furthermore, Hamlet stabs Polonius who was hiding behind the curtain in
Act 3 scene 4, but an audience may question whether it was murder, or
manslaughter by mistaken identity. Hamlet believes it is Claudius, and so
feels that by killing Claudius when he is spying then he would be avenging
his father as he would be killing him when he is doing something sinful,
rather than when he was praying earlier in Act 3 scene 3. In the 1990 Mel
Gibson version of the play, we see Hamlet in a fit of rage, having let out a
primal scream moments before killing the figure behind the curtain. In this
sense, he seems hardly able to be held accountable for this crime, as he
didn’t seem to know what he was doing. As D.J. Snider explains in “The
Journal of Speculative Philosophy”, “insanity destroys responsibility, and
thus Hamlet could in nowise be held accountable for his acts." However, in
the David Tennant version, he seems to be more comically feigning
madness prior to Polonius’ murder, and appears to feel guilt and remorse
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