Before discussing the degree to which Hamlet does or does not fit the
criteria for being what is known, typically speaking, as a "revenge hero,"
we must first settle on what the criteria for being designated as such
should be. Indeed, much in the way that tragedy has a classical form of the
sort prescribed by Aristotle in his Poetics, so does the revenge hero, too,
possess these sorts of rigorous requirements by which we can decide whether
or not he fits within the classical model, so to speak. These criteria will
be deployed and enumerated and subsequent to a discussion of these salient
feature and analysis of the ways in which Hamlet does or does not conform
to these requirements will then be offered. The first requirement for a
revenge hero is that he forced to act by specific forces outside of his
control. The second of the criteria is that the existing authorities prove
themselves to be either unwilling or incapable of satisfying the most basic
mandates of justice and, for this very simple reason, the hero is then
required to take up his own arms and take justice into his own hands.
Thirdly, being a revenge hero requires that the putative hero dreams up a
complicated and cunning plan that he then follows through with in such a
manner that killer is brought to light and eventually brought down. Lastly,
there must be a moment where the revenge hero tells his deserving victim
the reason that he is seeking justice and why the victim's death is
required to serve the ends of justice. While Hamlet fulfills the first two
criteria, the second too are considerable more ambiguous in a way that keep
shim from really being a revenge hero, per se.
Certainly, Hamlet fulfills the first set of requirements for the
traditional revenge hero, which is that he is impelled to act by outside
forces. Certainly, there are indeed a great number of forces, both natural
and supernatural, wh...