Hamlet is a very important play that has been around for more than 400 years now. It was written by William Shakespeare between 1599 and the early 1600s. William Shakespeare is known as the "most influential writer in all of English literature." He is worldwide famous for all of his work but critics say Hamlet "offers the greatest exhibition of Shakespeare's powers." Shakespeare uses a lot of literary devices and techniques in the writing of this play. He does a good job at making something that seems simple and ordinary have deeper meanings to something very complex, that is why some people don't understand Hamlet.
Hamlet starts of with a scene that captures the reader’s attention and makes them want to read more. It leaves the reader with questions and anxious to figure out why the ghost is there, what happened, what is going on and that makes them go on and keep reading and as soon as they find out the answers they see another conflict so then they want to keep reading to see how that problem gets solved and so on. While reading the play Hamlet, I noticed how William Shakespeare used many layers in his play. For example, how he has different layers of conflict. The main conflict in the play was Claudius killing Hamlet's dad, the king, and Hamlet wanting to get revenge but then we have other conflict in the play like Hamlet killing Polonius and then Laertes wanting to get revenge against Hamlet. Also, Ophelia going crazy and dying and then Claudius and Laertes planning how to kill Hamlet. Shakespeare does a good job of connecting all the minor conflicts to the major conflict so that they all make sense and so that the overall play makes sense and flows together. Shakespeare has a way of making something have a simple meaning when you just read over it, but once you analyze what you just read and really think about it and connect it to other parts of the story you really see that it is way deeper than you think and it all starts to make sense.
Shakespeare uses many characters in Hamlet to make the story more complex and realistic. There are about sixteen characters in Hamlet, Hamlet being the main character of the play and the one involved in most of the major and minor conflicts. In Hamlet all the characters make up a part of the play and they each are very different from each other. By reading Hamlet, we really see the personality of each character and the way they act. We can also see a character foil between Laertes and Hamlet. Laertes contrasts with Hamlet and that way highlights various features of Hamlet's personality.
Hamlet has a variety of themes that all tie up together to the final play. We can see revenge as one of the major themes because throughout the whole play we can see that Hamlet's only goal was to get revenge for his father's death by killing his uncle. We can also see this in Laertes when his father dies. We can see love between Hamlet and Ophelia, Gertrude and Claudius, and we can see love between Laertes and Ophelia. We can also see death. For example, Hamlet's dead father, and then everyone that dies at the end. We can see unnatural things like the ghost. In this play we can also see the theme of what is the significance of life and what it is to be part of this world like when Hamlet has conflicted feeling about suicide he says, "How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable seem to me all the uses of this world!" Saying that he really didn't see a purpose in life.
Shakespeare is also able to write so many things with simple settings like the outside and inside of a castle. He is able to really use the setting well to make the play a lot more realistic. Shakespeare has a very interesting way of writing that keeps the audience reading. He put part of the things going on in the play outside of the play like when the play starts Hamlet's dad has already been killed and the reader finds this out when they keep reading.
The way Shakespeare writes makes the play a little more hard to understand. He doesn't just make the characters talk the way we talk now and goes right to the point, but he uses a lot of words and sort of analyzes what he is saying. He writes like a poet and makes his words flow. Like for example in the famous line Hamlet says, "To be, or not to be?" He knows the right words to use and how and when to use them. All these and many more elements and literary devices make Hamlet one of the best and most famous plays of all time.
Theater Reviews
There are many things and elements that are sometimes combined to make a great play. It is important for the people making the play to have these elements in mind in order for them to also make a great play. In “Mother Courage” Hilton Als, in an article in The New Yorker, analyzes acting and how for “Streep, acting seems to be less about stardust than about architecture. Each character is built precisely, according to its creator’s specifications. For her performance in Tony Kushner’s brilliant adaptation of ‘Mother Courage,’ Streep constructs a house that is gray and lopsided a thespian’s version of van Gogh’s sad bedroom. Her grandeur is merely a facade she seems to be telling us and she is as committed to the job at hand as any other conscientious working actress.” Characterization is very important for every play and story because characters are the ones that make up a story. In plays, it is important for the characters to be good actors and not just act their character but be their character and actually get in the role they have so that the play seems more realistic and not fake.
Another element that might be very important in some plays and stories are satires. Satires add more to the story and make the overall play interesting for the audience. In “The Book of Mormon,” we can see a good example of a satire that is also a musical, like our play. This play was written by Trey Parker, Robert Lopez, and Matt Stone, who are best known for creating the animated comedy “South Park.” Both the TV show and the play are examples of satires and this has helped them be around for a while now and has made them popular too. In The New Yorker article John Lahr says, “The show is smart enough to test the waters of outrage but not brazen enough to take a genuine plunge. The satire is more about the Mormons’ buttoned-down, bushy-tailed style than about the substance of the religion.” Satires are important to not only add humor to plays and to make the audience laugh but also to give the audience new perspectives on a topic. It helps them see the different opinions people have and different ways they see a topic. Not all people agree with one thing and that’s why it is important to give the audience different perspectives. In using satires, the playwrights have to make sure that the satire is clear and that people will get it because if they don’t it won’t make sense to them and they won’t even laugh so there would be no point in using a satire.
The setting is a very important part of every play or story. The setting is so important that it could affect the story if its not the right setting. For example, if you are talking about chicken and animals and trees and open space then the best setting would be a farm and not a factory in the future, it could be but you have to have a good explanation of why that makes sense. For example in “Lucky You” we can see how the setting influences the movie. “The picture takes place before and during the World Series of Poker in 2003, the year the Internet players—the non-pros—marched in on the Las Vegas tough guys sitting in the heavily draped Bellagio casino, taking money from one another as they waited for the competition to start,” David Denby said in The New Yorker article “Games of chance.” Another example would be in Hamlet, in the beginning of the play the setting was at a castle in the middle of the night close to the sea, foggy and hard to see and with that setting the vision of seeing Hamlet’s dead father’s ghost becomes more real and makes it more likely that it happened.
I think in our own play we can use all of these elements but just make sure we use them right. I feel like we already have characterization in our play but maybe we could fix a few things like give certain characters a little more lines so that we get to meet them more and see who they really are and how they act in certain situations. We can use satire if we really wanted to and I think we already kind of have it in there because we are kind of making fun of musicals and show it from a perspective of a character that doesn’t know he’s in a musical. We could probably develop a little more on that satire. I think for setting we are good because we know most of it is going to happen at a school but maybe we can also develop more on that.
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