Hamlet, written in 1600 or 1601, is the longest play Shakespeare ever produced. Hamlet has been classified as a tragedy, a concept evaluated in Aristotle’s The Poetics. Based on the basic requirements set forth by Aristotle, Hamlet can be viewed as a tragedy. Hamlet is “pre-eminently great, but not perfect” (“Tragedy and Comedy”1032); his inability to act and his intelligence are his flaws. The play also arouses solemn emotions, such as pity, through Hamlet’s situation at the beginning and throughout the play. Finally, Hamlet’s fall helps him accept the inevitability of death, corresponding with the sense of waste felt with the deaths of the royal family.

First, Hamlet’s intelligence causes his inability to act. After finding out the circumstances of his father’s murder, Hamlet does not take the ghost’s words as genuine, instead he chooses “to put an antic disposition on” (1.5.192). In Albert Bates’ article “HAMLET: An analysis of the play by Shakespeare,” he states that Hamlet “believes in the ghost of his father as long as he sees it, but as soon as it has disappeared, it appears to him almost in the light of a deception.” To make sure the ghost was real, he will feign madness to investigate Claudius. In Act II, enough time has passed for Hamlet’s madness to become well-known throughout the kingdom, but he has done nothing to avenge his father’s murder. However, he has aroused the suspicions of Claudius, who believes that Hamlet is faking his madness. In fact, Claudius brings in two of Hamlet’s old friends, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, to help him find the cause of Hamlet’s madness. Unfortunately for Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, Hamlet knows that they are there to spy on him and report to Claudius. After unsuccessfully trying to force them to admit that Claudius brought them back to Denmark, Hamlet tells them why they were sent to talk to him. Hamlet says he has “lost all my mirth” (2.2.319), and that he feels no purpose in life. Hamlet also says, however, that he has no real idea why he’s acting this way. T.S. Eliot suggests in The Sacred Wood: Essays on Poetry and Criticism that “Hamlet’s madness, his repetition of phrase, his puns, is a form of emotional relief because Hamlet has not acted.” Rosencrantz then tries to cheer Hamlet up by telling him that a group of traveling actors will arrive soon at Elsingor. When they do arrive, Hamlet asks them to recite a passage from a play he had once heard about. The passage covered King Priam of Troy’s death by Pyrrhus, who was taking revenge for his father’s death. Pyrrhus can only act wild at first and is unable to revenge his father’s death. He does accomplish the task in the end, however. This parallels Hamlet’s situation because it has been months since the ghost’s appearance and he has done nothing but feign madness. He is now beginning to feel guilt at his inaction and states:

                          Is it not monstrous that this player here,

                          But in a fiction, in a dream of passion,

                          Could force his own soul so to his own conceit

                          That from her working all his visage wanned,

                          Tears in his eyes, distraction in his aspect,

                          A broken voice, and his whole function suiting

                          With forms to his conceit---and all for nothing! (2.2.578-584)

His anger at himself , however, turns to anger at Claudius. Hamlet has been energized by the actor’s reciting and plots to have a play put on, with a few additions written by himself, to “catch the conscience of the King” (2.2.634). Only a few hours later, Hamlet has a relapse into depression and his thoughts of revenge against Claudius have disappeared as well. Instead, they have been replaced by thoughts of suicide, resulting in the famous statement, “To be or not to be” (3.1.64). Hamlet concludes that the reason he has waited so long to act is the fact that he thinks too much and analyzes his problems to a standstill, which he hates about himself. This is Hamlet’s tragic flaw.

Second, Hamlet’s situation throughout the play arouses pity and fear. When Hamlet is first seen, he is in mourning for his father’s death. Hamlet’s mother, Gertrude tries to tell Hamlet that death is “common; all that lives must die” (1.2.74), but Hamlet brushes her off by calling her common instead. Claudius then tells Hamlet to stop mourning, because “’tis unmanly grief” (1.2.98). When Claudius and the court walk away, Hamlet also lets us know why he is upset. Claudius, his uncle, has married Gertrude, his mother, within a month of his father’s death. Hamlet’s situation becomes more pitiful when he discovers that his uncle has killed his father as well. The ghost shatters Hamlet’s sense of melancholy by telling him to “revenge his most foul and unnatural murder”(1.5.31). The situation gets more complicated when Hamlet must feign madness in order to implicate Claudius in the murder. James P. Hammersmith’s article “Shakespeare and the Tragic Virtue” states, “That is not his fault; indeed, it is the cursed spite that somehow he, Hamlet, of all people, is called upon to set the disjointed times right.” His madness, however, has lost him his love, Ophelia.  Then, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, two of Hamlet’s friends from childhood, betray him by helping Claudius. Hamlet puts on a play to prove that Claudius killed his father. Even that knowledge adds another burden, because now Hamlet has no choice but to kill Claudius. When Hamlet walks by the chapel later, he sees Claudius “praying.” Hamlet decides to kill him then, but then he decides that he shouldn’t kill Claudius now, because Claudius would be free from all sins. Hamlet decides to kill Claudius while he is sinning so Claudius’s soul will be lost in Hell. This begins to bring fear, because Hamlet’s morals have descended to a point where he has no problem in sending a man’s soul to Hell.

Finally, Hamlet’s discovers, when he is dying, that he has learned to accept life on his own terms. Unfortunately, his inactivity has caused the death of almost everyone he cares about. In Barbara F. McManus’s article, “Outline of Aristotle's Theory of Tragedy in The Poetics,” she states that “the end of the tragedy is a katharsis (purgation, cleansing) of the tragic emotions of pity and fear,” which is what happens at the end. Hamlet has redeemed himself and cleansed Denmark.

Hamlet is a tragedy in the classical sense. It shows all of the characteristics of Aristotle’s The Poetics, yet retains its’ own originality. Hamlet becomes a tragic hero, and as such, must die to resolve Denmark’s state.

Works Cited

                                                   

 Bates, Albert. “Hamlet: An analysis of the play by Shakespeare.”          

           <http://www.theatrehistory.com/british/hamlet001.html> (10 May 2004).

                Eliot, T.S. The Sacred Wood: Essays on Poetry and Criticism.  1922.

 

         <http://www.bartleby.com/200/sw9.html> (10 May 2004).

                 Hammersmith, James P. "Shakespeare and the Tragic Virtue." 1990.

          <http://www.jsu.edu/depart/english/gates/shtragcv.htm> (10 May 2004).

                  McManus, Barbara F. “Outline of Aristotle's Theory of Tragedy in The Poetics.” 1999.

                                <http://www.cnr.edu/home/bmcmanus/poetics.html> (10 May 2004).

                  Shakespeare, William. The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. New York,

                                 Washington Square, 1992.

    “Tragedy and Comedy” Perrine’s Literature. Ed. Thomas R. Arp. 7^th ed. Fort Worth:

                                 Harcourt Brace College Publishers, 1998. 1032-33.