Hamlet - Identity Crisis

Shakespeare’s Hamlet is arguably one of the best plays known to English literature. It presents the protagonist, Hamlet, and his increasingly complex path through self discovery. His character is of an abnormally complex nature, the likes of which not often found in plays, and many different theses have been put forward about Hamlet's dynamic disposition. One such thesis is that Hamlet is a young man with an identity crisis living in a world of conflicting values.

An identity crisis can be defined as 'a psychosocial state or condition of disorientation and role confusion occurring especially in adolescents as a result of conflicting internal and external experiences, pressures, and expectations and often producing acute anxiety.' (www.dictionary.com) It was apparent that Hamlet did indeed have an identity crisis because of his conflicting internal and external experiences and the pressures and expectations from those in the Royal Court of Denmark. He endures conflicting internal and external experiences such as the ghost of his father requesting him to exact revenge on Claudius and in doing so contradict all of the morals he has formed. Pressures to accept the dubious marriage of his mother to his uncle, pressure to accept Clau

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His hatred for women was launched by his mother's incestuous and hasty marriage to his uncle, Claudius. He has become greatly introspective and muses on his life.

"If thou dost marry, I'll give thee this plague

for thy dowry: be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as

snow, thou shalt not escape calumny. He thinks that Hamlet's madness is caused by deep melancholy. Hamlet's staging of the play gained the desired result, the king's reaction. The play is a re-enactment of the murder of his father so that when Claudius saw the murder scene he would hopefully react to it in some way, and in doing so prove his implication in King Hamlet's death. Hamlet was a Christian living in a dying Heroic world which was succumbing to the Machiavellian world. " At first his madness is clearly feigned as he would snap back to reality and then to madness again very quickly as easily, but towards the end of the play, his heightened emotional state leaves a blurry line between his feigned madness and his sane actions. After he has had time to think, Hamlet realises what must be done, he must murder his uncle. His eventual plunge into a state of insanity was a direct consequence of stress. When he finds the King in prayer he realises that "now might… (he)… do it pat" (3:3, 74), but just as suddenly as his confidence grew, it left him and he began to make excuses that Claudius would "go to heaven" (3:3, 75) and so would not be true revenge. When he returns from his travel and particularly his macabre meeting with Yorrick, the time marks a significant shift in Hamlet's state of mind. At the time, Denmark was in a state of transition between three metaphysical worlds; the heroic world, where a man's honour was foremost, killing was not accepted but expected, might was power, the Machiavellian world, an amoral world where politics and mind games were employed ruthlessly, the ends justified the means, and the Christian world of love and forgiveness. Hamlet's father, King Hamlet, belonged to the heroic world, and so for him revenge was of the utmost importance, shown by the fact that "but two months" (1:2, 136) after his death he returned to instruct Hamlet to avenge his murder.

Anger, however, is not a foreign emotion to Hamlet.

Approximate Word count = 1842
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page double spaced)

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