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Samuel Coleridge, for example, delivered lectures on Hamlet during this period that evaluated his tragic state of mind in an interpretation that proved influential for over a century. For Coleridge, Shakespeare depicted Hamlet's light of indecisiveness as resulting from an imbalance between the human attention to external objects, and inward ...
In Act II, Hamlet refers to Polonius as a "tedious old fool" [3] and taunts him as a latter day "Jephtha". [4] Polonius connives with Claudius to spy on Hamlet. Hamlet unknowingly kills Polonius, provoking Ophelia's descent into madness, ultimately resulting in her (probable) suicide and the climax of the play: a duel between Laertes and Hamlet.
Eliot begins the essay by stating that the primary problem of Hamlet is actually the play itself, with its main character being only a secondary issue. Eliot goes on to note that the play enjoys critical success because the character of Hamlet appeals to a particular kind of creatively minded critic.
Claudius grants permission for Polonius's son Laertes to return to school in France, and he sends envoys to inform the King of Norway about Fortinbras. Claudius also questions Hamlet regarding his continuing to grieve for his father, and forbids him to return to his university in Wittenberg. After the court exits, Hamlet despairs of his father ...
They discover that Claudius has written a play. The king's literary work is so embarrassingly bad that Claudius has decreed that anyone who mentions it must be executed. They obtain the manuscript and convince Hamlet to perform it. When he does, Claudius decrees that he must die, but is eventually persuaded to banish him to England.
Claudius agrees to try the eavesdropping plan later. The plan leads to what is commonly called the "Nunnery Scene", [6] from its use of the term nunnery which would generally refer to a convent, but at the time was also popular slang for a brothel. [7] Polonius instructs Ophelia to stand in the lobby of the castle while he and Claudius hide.
Gilbert himself took the role of Claudius in a 1904 production of his play. [5] Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (1966), tells the story of Hamlet from the perspective of two minor characters in Shakespeare's play. [6] He has also written other Hamlet-inspired drama, including Dogg's Hamlet and The Fifteen-Minute Hamlet. [7]
Hamlet and Oedipus is a study of William Shakespeare's Hamlet in which the title character's inexplicable behaviours are subjected to investigation along psychoanalytic lines.