Essay on the opening scenes of Shakespeare's 'Hamlet'
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Course
Unit 1 - Drama
Institution
PEARSON (PEARSON)
An essay exploring the opening scenes of Shakespeare's 'Hamlet'. Written by a current university student that achieved an A* in English Literature A level by memorising these essays which are structured in an easily accessible, colour-coded, bulleted form easy to comprehend and can be tailored to a...
Explore the ways in which Shakespeare catches and maintains the audience’s attention in
the opening acts of ‘Hamlet.’
Shakespeare’s tragedy, ‘Hamlet,’ focuses extensively on the protagonist, Hamlet, who is
Prince of Denmark and seeks to avenge his father’s murder which was committed by his
uncle, Claudius, who successes Hamlet’s father as king and marries his mother, Gertrude.
From the outset of the play, Shakespeare immediately creates an ill-defined sense of
foreboding through the nervous and staccato-like exchanges between two sentinels,
Marcellus and Barnardo:
“Who’s there?
Nay, answer me. Stand and unfold yourself.
Long live the King!
Barnardo
He”
The tension and uncertainty of the scene is reflected in the darkness of the physical setting.
Furthermore, the undisclosed threat the soldiers were exposed to is alluded to when
Marcellus explains to Hamlet’s friend, Horatio, that they have “twice seen” an “apparition,”
and Barnardo adds that it took “the same figure like the King that’s dead.” This would
instantly invoke fear in many members of an Elizabethan and Jacobean audience. Society at
the time was predominantly Catholic, and therefore would perceive the ghost to inhabit the
state of purgatory troubled souls are trapped in when they are still in a state of grace and
have to be purified before they are ready to enter Heaven. A possible implication of this is
that the King could have died in an extenuating circumstance, thus capturing and
maintaining the audience’s attention to find out how exactly the King died, which
Shakespeare further alludes to when Horatio draws parallels between the event and the
supernatural occurrences which took place in the “most high a palmy state of Rome” prior
to Julius Caesar’s assassination that was also a murder following political intrigue like that of
Old King Hamlet. In addition to the supernatural threat present in the opening scene,
Shakespeare also foreshadows the physical threat of invasion young Fortinbras posed to
Norway, by drawing diction from the semantic field of war, such as “assail” and “fortified.”
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