Evaluate Hamlet as a revenge tragedy.
Hamlet is a
play written by William Shakespeare that very
closely follows the dramatic conventions of revenge in
Elizabethan
theater. All revenge tragedies originally stemmed from the
Greeks, who
wrote and performed the first plays. After the Greeks came
Seneca who
was very influential to all Elizabethan tragedy writers.
Seneca who
was Roman, basically set all of the ideas and the norms for
all
revenge play writers in the Renaissance era including William
Shakespeare. The two most famous English revenge tragedies
written in
the Elizabethan era were Hamlet, written by Shakespeare and
The
Spanish Tragedy, written by Thomas Kyd. These two plays used
mostly
all of the Elizabethan conventions for revenge tragedies in
their
plays. Hamlet especially incorporated all revenge
conventions in one
way or another, which truly made Hamlet a typical revenge
play.
“Shakespeare’s Hamlet is one of many heroes of the
Elizabethan and
Jacobean stage who finds himself grievously wronged by a
powerful
figure, with no recourse to the law, and with a crime
against his
family to avenge.”
Seneca was
among the greatest authors of classical tragedies
and there was not one
educated Elizabethan who was unaware of him or
his plays. There were certain stylistic and different
strategically
thought out devices that Elizabethan playwrights including
Shakespeare
learned and used from Seneca’s great tragedies. The five act
structure, the appearance of some kind of ghost, the one
line
exchanges known as stichomythia, and Seneca’s use of long
rhetorical
speeches were all later used in tragedies by Elizabethan
playwrights.
Some of Seneca’s ideas were originally taken from the Greeks
when the
Romans conquered Greece, and with it they took home many
Greek
theatrical ideas. Some of Seneca’s stories that originated
from the
Greeks like Agamemnon and Thyestes which dealt with bloody
family
histories and revenge captivated the Elizabethans. Seneca’s
stories
weren’t really written for performance purposes, so if
English
playwrights liked his ideas, they had to figure out a way to
make the
story theatrically workable, relevant and exciting to the
Elizabethan
audience who were very demanding. Seneca’s influence formed
part of a
developing tradition of tragedies whose plots hinge on
political
power, forbidden sexuality, family honor and private
revenge. “There
was no author who exercised a wider or deeper influence upon
the
Elizabethan mind or upon the Elizabethan form of tragedy
than did
Seneca.” For the dramatists of Renaissance Italy, France and
England,
classical tragedy meant only the ten Latin plays of Seneca
and not
Euripides, Aeschylus and Sophocles. “Hamlet is certainly not
much like
any play of Seneca’s one can name, but Seneca is undoubtedly
one of
the effective ingredients in the emotional charge of Hamlet.
Hamlet
without Seneca is inconceivable.”
During the
time of Elizabethan theater, plays about tragedy
and revenge were very common and a regular convention seemed
to be
formed on what aspects should be put into a typical revenge
tragedy.
In all revenge tragedies first and foremost, a crime is
committed and
for various reasons laws and justice cannot punish the crime
so the
individual who is the main character, goes through with the
revenge in
spite of everything. The
main character then usually had a period of
doubt , where he tries to decide whether or not to go
through with the
revenge, which usually involves tough and complex planning.
Other
features that were typical were the appearance of a ghost,
to get the
revenger to go through with the deed. The revenger also
usually had a
very close relationship with the audience through
soliloquies and
asides. The original crime that will eventually be avenged
is nearly
always sexual or violent or both. The crime has been
committed against
a family member of the revenger. “ The revenger places
himself outside
the normal moral order of things, and often becomes more
isolated as
the play progresses-an isolation which at its most extreme
becomes
madness.” The revenge
must be the cause of a catastrophe and the
beginning of the revenge must start immediately after the
crisis.
After the ghost persuades the revenger to commit his deed, a
hesitation first occurs and then a delay by the avenger
before killing
the murderer, and his actual or acted out madness. The
revenge must be
taken out by the revenger or his trusted accomplices. The
revenger and
his accomplices may also die at the moment of success or
even during
the course of revenge.
It should not
be assumed that revenge plays parallel the moral
expectations of the Elizabethan audience. Church, State and
the
regular morals of people in that age did not accept revenge,
instead
they thought that revenge would simply not under any
circumstances be
tolerated no matter what the original deed was. “ It is
repugnant on
theological grounds, since Christian orthodoxy posits a
world ordered
by Divine Providence, in which revenge is a sin and a
blasphemy,
endangering the soul of the revenger.” The revenger by
taking law into
his own hands was in turn completely going against the total
political
authority of the state. People should therefore never think
that
revenge was expected by Elizabethan society. Although they
loved to
see it in plays, it was considered sinful and it was utterly
condemned.
The Spanish Tragedy
written by Thomas Kyd was an excellent
example of a revenge tragedy. With this play, Elizabethan
theater
received its first great revenge tragedy, and because of the
success
of this play, the dramatic form had to be imitated. The play
was
performed from 1587 to 1589 and it gave people an
everlasting
remembrance of the story of a father who avenges the murder
of his
son. In this story, a man named Andrea is killed by
Balthazar in the
heat of battle. The death was considered by Elizabethan
people as a
fair one, therefore a problem occurred when Andrea’s ghost
appeared to
seek vengeance on its killer. Kyd seemed to have used this
to parallel
a ghost named Achilles in Seneca’s play Troades. Andrea’s
ghost comes
and tells his father, Hieronimo that he must seek revenge.
Hieronimo
does not know who killed his son but he goes to find out.
During his
investigation, he receives a letter saying that Lorenzo
killed his
son, but he doubts this so he runs to the king for justice.
Hieronimo
importantly secures his legal rights before taking justice
into his
own hands. The madness scene comes into effect when
Hieronimo’s wife,
Usable goes mad, and Hieronimo is so stunned that his mind
becomes
once again unsettled. Finally Hieronimo decides to go
through with the
revenge, so he seeks out to murder Balthazar and Lorenzo,
which he
successfully does. Hieronimo becomes a blood thirsty maniac
and when
the king calls for his arrest, he commits suicide.
