ESSENTIAL QUESTION PROMPT:
No other tragic hero in Shakespeare’s plays evokes so much pity and sympathetic understanding than the young Hamlet. Whether for his unstable nervous qualities, shock from his father’s death and his mother’s hasty remarriage to his uncle, a melancholic pessimism, the burden of his royal duties, his martyrdom, or an obsession with revenge, Hamlet indeed suffers from what some scholars argue is a “disease of the soul.” Throughout Hamlet Prince of Denmark, he suffers as most humans may and his behavior may be more readily understood through the lens of 21st-century psychoanalysis or sociological theory.
We might argue Hamlet finds himself caught between the worlds of love and hate, forgiveness and revenge, individualism and royal or familial obligation, passion and reason, realism and idealism, heaven and hell, truth and deceit, naiveté and wisdom, loneliness and companionship, or unconditional acceptance and universal rejection – all the while hoping to find resolution in his secret plans for justice. He is the most complex of Shakespeare’s protagonists.
Here, we appreciate the brilliance of Shakespeare to develop a character with whom and to craft a play with which any one human being may find connections. Hamlet suffers as he seeks the truth in a world in which its inhabitants are misled, misinformed, misaligned, and often maligned. In prince Hamlet, the audience members see shared human qualities that force a contemplation of life itself. The internal struggles of the prince and the external themes of the drama are universal as both provoke the audience to search for answers to life’s greatest mysteries not only within the self but also around.
How can one Renaissance playwright have such an awesome ability to accomplish as much as he does within five Acts? How can a playwright employ literary devices and use language in such a way as to stir complex thought and emotion? How is it possible a play written in 1603 continues to mesmerize audiences and spark analytical debate in the fields of literature, psychology, and sociology?
[Hamlet’s character, the setting, the plot, the rise and fall of action, the play’s resolution, dialogue, banter, play on words, symbolism, imagery, soliloquies, tragic foils, a play within a play, the appearances of the ghost, comedy (irony and sarcasm), the presence of the clown(s), foreshadowing, hubris universal human themes scholarly literary criticism and/or sociological and psychological peer-reviewed articles]
RELEVANT LITERATURE:
Sir William Shakespeare’s Hamlet
4-5 scholarly, peer-reviewed research articles from databases
REQUIREMENTS:
MLA 8th edition formatting (12-point font, Times New Roman, double-spaced)
Works Cited page
7 pages
Evidence and Synthesis Log included
DUE DATE: see syllabus