Hamlet, the Prince of Denmark, violates the law by killing different people such as Polonius, Laertes, Claudius, and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, making him a tragic hero. Hamlet's madness leads him down this path of destruction in which he harms and kills many people.
Ophelia's Death
Perhaps the most tragic death in "Hamlet" is one the audience doesn't witness. Ophelia's death is reported by Gertrude: Hamlet's would-be bride falls from a tree and drowns in a brook. Whether or not her death was a suicide is the subject of much debate among Shakespearean scholars.
Sweet and innocent, faithful and obedient, Ophelia is the truly tragic figure in William Shakespeare's Hamlet. "Her nature invites us to pity her misfortune caused not by any of her own self-initiated deeds or strategies"(Lidz 138).
Activity Overview. Hamlet is full of important literary elements for students to explore. One of these elements is the tragic hero, a protagonist who seems to be ill-fated, and destined for doom. In this play, Hamlet is the tragic hero as he leads himself and many others to their ruin and deaths.
In addition to the play ending with the death of Hamlet and a host of others, Hamlet himself is a classic tragic protagonist. As the Prince of Denmark, Hamlet is a figure whose actions matter to an entire kingdom, which means the play's events reverberate through the entire world of the play.
The play by William Shakespeare, Macbeth, is a play about ambition. Macbeth is considered a tragedy, and Macbeth is the tragic hero as he displays a tragic flaw that leads to his destruction.
In Hamlet, Shakespeare uses the tragedies and deaths to make the play a tragedy; Hamlet is a tragic hero because he is a person of high rank who violated a law, and he poses a threat to society and causes suffering to others through violating the law, which are all characteristics of a tragic hero.
Claudius is the primary antagonist in Hamlet. He thwarts Hamlet by killing his father. And when he usurps the Danish throne, Claudius denies Hamlet the future that rightfully belongs to him.
Hamlet is Shakespeare's absolute hero. He is heroic even in the Greek sense: he is larger than life. Though "Something [was] rotten in the state of Denmark" (I, iv, 90) at the beginning of the play, all that rottenness is dead at the end-and Hamlet's story remains.
Horatio remains loyal to Hamlet throughout the play and is trusted by Hamlet until the end. He is one of the only characters who survive in the play and he tells Hamlet's story to Prince Fortinbras in the final scene. Facts we learn about Horatio at the start of the play: He is Hamlet's closest friend.
She died because of her virtues, while others perished because of their faults. She did nothing wrong, but so many wrongs were dealt to her. Therefore, it was these factors, especially the loss of her father, which caused her to become mad and seen as a tragic figure.
In Act 4 Scene 7, Queen Gertrude reports that Ophelia had climbed into a willow tree (There is a willow grows aslant the brook), and that the branch had broken and dropped Ophelia into the brook, where she drowned. Gertrude says that Ophelia appeared "incapable of her own distress".
Hamlet, in a fury, runs Claudius through with the poisoned sword and forces him to drink down the rest of the poisoned wine. Claudius dies crying out for help. Hamlet tells Horatio that he is dying and exchanges a last forgiveness with Laertes, who dies after absolving Hamlet.
Horatio is the only survivor of the final events. Horatio and Hamlet share a mutual love and respect for one another. They are, however, opposites in many of their traits. This makes Horatio a foil for Hamlet.
Before the play even begins, Hamlet's father, the king of Denmark, has died. Hamlet has returned home for his father's funeral, which is followed soon after by Gertrude, his mother, getting married to the king's own brother, Claudius, which Hamlet identifies as: ''But two months dead, nay, not so much, not two.
Hamlet intimidates Gertrude, and she cries out that he is trying to murder her. Polonius reacts from behind the curtain and yells for help. Hamlet draws his sword and thrusts it through the tapestry, killing Polonius.
The Prince of Denmark, the title character, and the protagonist. About thirty years old at the start of the play, Hamlet is the son of Queen Gertrude and the late King Hamlet, and the nephew of the present king, Claudius.
The Mystery of Death
In the aftermath of his father's murder, Hamlet is obsessed with the idea of death, and over the course of the play he considers death from a great many perspectives.
As a character, Horatio is presented to us as utterly dependable, well educated, stoical, dispassionate and devout. Of all the major characters, he alone remains uncontaminated by the corruption in Elsinore, and Hamlet's election of him as the person to tell his story is thoroughly appropriate.
RALPH: What Hamlet has written down here — that one may smile and smile and be a villian — is of course referring to Claudius' ability to hide his terrible crime — although he's murdered the King and taken the throne, he is able to completely disguise his guilt and appear happy and morally upright in the Danish court, ...
Despite the evidence that Hamlet actually is mad, we also see substantial evidence that he is just pretending. The most obvious evidence is that Hamlet himself says he is going to pretend to be mad, suggesting he is at least sane enough to be able to tell the difference between disordered and rational behavior.
Throughout the play we can trace a progression of corruption, that leads to death, through 'disease' in the characters of Polonius, Claudius and Hamlet. Polonius is perhaps the most obviously corrupt character in Hamlet.
Hamlet's tragic flaw is his inability to avenge his father's death because he hasn't been able to conquer himself in his internal conflict. This recalls the cliche – “One's greatest enemy is no other than oneself”.
The interpretation which best fits the evidence best is that Hamlet was suffering from an acute depressive illness, with some obsessional features. He could not make a firm resolve to act. In Shakespeare's time there was no concept of acute depressive illness, although melancholy was well known.
It's easy to say that Hamlet is a revenge tragedy because it's about a character trying to exact revenge. In Hamlet's case, he's plotting to murder his uncle Claudius in retribution for Claudius' murder of Hamlet's father, which allowed Claudius to become king of Denmark and even marry Hamlet's mother.