Lesson "Hamlet" outline of a lesson in literature (grade 9) on the topic. Why is the image of Hamlet an eternal image? The Image of Hamlet in Shakespeare's Tragedy The Ideal Hero of the Renaissance

MUSIC

The timpani rumble at the appearance of Claudius, as if in mockery of his vanity.

" This is reported by the thunder of the timpani,

How about winning."

The violins pierce us with their sounds like swords, when, after the performance of wandering actors, Hamlet is convinced of the veracity of the words of the ghost, and Claudius realizes that his secret is open. The same violins cry out for the drowned Ophelia. The drums accompany the duel between Hamlet and Laertes. And finally, in the finale, a funeral march is played.

"Let music and abusive rites
Rattle about him."

THEATER, ACTORS, MASKS

"The whole world is a theater.
In it, women, men - all actors.
They have their own exits, departures,
And each one plays a role."

Hamlet plays with his son respectfulness to his mother and uncle. True, he is not very good at it. After he takes the role of a madman. He convinces everyone of his madness, with the possible exception of the suspicious Claudius.

Wandering actors reveal the secret of fratricide with their performance.

Ophelia, sincerely in love with Hamlet and, apparently, loved by him, loses her sincerity and becomes a spy for Claudius at the behest of her father. Hamlet understands this and also begins to play with her. Their feelings are dying. Ophelia will also die.

The uncle plays the role of a just king, a loving husband, a caring uncle who replaces Hamlet's father, who was killed by him.

Polonius is playing his game - a dodgy courtier with the guise of a sage. Intrigue, hypocrisy, cunning became the norm of his behavior in the palace and his own house. Everything is subject to calculation. He teaches the same to others: his son Laertes: "Keep thought away from language... Collect all opinions, but keep your own...".

Hamlet's mother, Gertrude, is also included in the overall game. Realizing the indecency of her behavior (haste in marriage after the funeral of her first husband) and tormented by vague and terrible guesses about her second husband, she pretends that everything is in perfect order. Her game ends when she talks about the poison in the goblet.

Laertes' game ends like Gertrude's with death approaching:

"I am dying myself for meanness and will not get up.

There is no queen. I can not anymore…

King of everything, king of everything! "

The roles allotted to them are played by former university comrades of Hamlet - Guildenstern and Rosencrantz.

Hamlet wants to believe that he is acting, but plays a special independent role in the play.

"What do you think, I'm worse than a flute?
Declare me any instrument
you can upset me
but I can't play."

And even imagines himself the author of a play written by himself. But this is a delusion and a manifestation of pride. Shakespeare proves to us that the plays of people's lives cannot be written by people themselves. They are written by the providence of the Lord.

WIDOW OF FATHER AND MOTHER

"Prudence, Horace! From the funeral

A commemorative pie went to the wedding table.

THE ETERNAL QUESTION OF LIFE

To be or not to be, that is the question.

Is it worthy to endure the disgrace of fate without a murmur

Do you need to resist?

Rise, Arm, Conquer

Or die, die, sleep?

And to know that this breaks the chain of heart torment

And thousands of hardships inherent in the body!

Is this not the goal that everyone desires -

Die, sleep, sleep?

And see dreams?

Here is the answer.

What kind of dreams in that mortal dream will dream,

When was the veil of earthly feeling removed?!

Here is the solution.

This is what lengthens our misfortunes for so many years!

Shakespeare's contemporaries and people of subsequent generations explained this great question in different ways. Some are simple: to live or not to live; act or not act. Philosophers see it as an attempt to understand the meaning of human existence. One way or another, to the great and eternal question of life, which Shakespeare posed before us, we each answer in our own way.

ENVY, SIN

EVILITY

"What would goodness do without evil?
Why would mercy be needed?
We pray that God won't let us fall
Or saved us from the depths of the fall ". (Claudius)

"The king does not sleep and dances until he drops,

And he drinks and feasts until the morning."

Perhaps gluttony, drunkenness and constant holidays help Claudius to drown out the pangs of conscience. Anger manifests in him when he feels the approach of retribution.

GHOST, SHADOW OF HAMLET'S FATHER

RETRIBUTION

DEATH

T tragedy is filled with death to the limit. Almost all the main characters die. Polonius is killed by Hamlet's sword. Ophelia goes mad because of her father's death and drowns in the river. Hamlet's father and his mother Gertrude die from the poison of Claudius. Laertes, Claudius and Hamlet himself are killed by a rapier smeared with the poison of the same Claudius. And even the characters of the second plan - Guildenstern and Rosencrantz, as we see from the text, will inevitably lay down their heads on the chopping block thanks to the forged letter of Hamlet. Death, therefore, although not declared by the author in the credits of the tragedy, is undoubtedly one of its characters.

Hello guys! Sit down. Check if everything is ready for the lesson. On the desk should be writing utensils, a diary, a textbook on literature. Fine. You can start. Open your notebooks, write down the date and topic of the lesson:

September thirtieth

W. Shakespeare "Hamlet".

"Eternal image" of Hamlet in the tragedy. Thought suffering.

1. Introductory word of the teacher

Today at the lesson we begin to study one of the greatest works of foreign literature, the tragedy of William Shakespeare "Hamlet". In fact, "Hamlet" does not belong to the period of classicism. The work was written earlier (1600-1601), and is an example of the works of the Renaissance. Classicism will follow.

We changed the logic a little, because due to certain circumstances we mistakenly skipped this topic, but we are forced to return to it, since Hamlet is one of the outstanding works of literature, and we have no right to bypass it. In the next lesson, we will return to classicism, and we will study the Ode of Lomonosov.

There is one thing in common between the Renaissance and the Classical era. Can anyone name her?

The fact is that during the period of the development of human thought and the development of literature, the samples of Antiquity were addressed three times, three times they tried to return them and presented them as ideals. The first time in the Renaissance, then during the Enlightenment and the reign of classicism, and then already in the Silver Age - this is the beginning of the 20th century (Blok, Balmont, Bryusov). A common feature is an appeal to the ideals of the past. Shakespeare's Hamlet is a work of the Renaissance, but you can already see some of the features of classicism that we noted yesterday in this text. They are just being born. The main difference between the works of the Renaissance and the classics is the absence of a cult of reason over feelings, that is, on the contrary, feelings dominate. We can find confirmation of this fact by analyzing Shakespeare's Hamlet, since the work is full of feelings and experiences, they are in the foreground, they measure everything.

1. The teacher's message.

Pay attention to the topic of the lesson. Today we will analyze the image of the protagonist of the tragedy, but before we start this work, let's remember what underlies the play? (Conflict) In the tragedy "Hamlet" he has 2 levels:

1 level. Personal between Prince Hamlet and the King

Claudius, who became the husband of the prince's mother after

treacherous murder of Hamlet's father. Conflict

has a moral nature: two vital

positions.

2level . The conflict of man and era. ("Denmark-prison." "The whole

the world is rotten.)

From the point of view of action, the tragedy can be divided into 3 parts. Which? Where is the plot, climax, denouement?

1 part . The plot, five scenes of the first act. Meeting Hamletwith the Ghost, who entrusts Hamlet with the task of avenging a dastardly murder;

2 part. The climax, dubbed the "mousetrap". Hamlet is finally convinced of Claudius's guilt, Claudius himself realizes that his secret has been revealed, Hamlet opens the eyes of Gertrude, etc.;

part 3 . Interchange. Duel of Hamleg and Laertes, death of Gertrude, Claudius

Laertes, Hamlet.

Who is Hamlet? Who is Hamlet, the hero of Shakespeare's tragedy?

Knight of Honor? The ideal renaissance man?

A passionate debunker of untruth? Or the most miserable person

who lost everything in this world and perished? Crazy? - Every

the reader evaluates Hamlet in his own way.

The first thing that catches your eye when reading a tragedy is an unusual

poetic language, especially in the translation of B. Pasternak. All

characters think in poetic images and concepts. Before us

action is deployed in a specific country (Denmark), in a specific

time (XIV century), but it seems that this can happen in any

another country and at any other time. That is why the work is so popular to this day.

"Eternal images", what does it mean? Any opinions?

Let's write down.

“Eternal images” is the name of literary characters, to whom the ultimate artistic generalization imparts human, timeless meaning. (Don Juan, Hamlet, Faust, etc.) Writers from different countries and generations explain the essence of their characters in their own way.

The appearance of a new concept is even connected with the image of Hamlet, it is called "hamletism". That is a special trait of a person. Such character traits as indecision, being in a state of eternal contradictions, doubts are implied. This reflection, introspection, paralyzing in a person the ability to act.

The prototype of the hero was the semi-legendary Prince Amlet, whose name is found in one of the Icelandic sagas. The very first literary monument, which tells the saga of Amleth's revenge, belonged to the pen of a medieval Danish chronicler.

Let us turn to the character of Hamlet as a hero - a microcosm of tragedy.

We can judge what is happening in the inner world of Hamlet indirectly (behavior, clashes with courtiers, poisonous remarks) and directly (from conversations with friends, with his mother, from monologues).

1. Work with the text, revealing the reader's perception of the work by students.

How do we see Hamlet in Act 1? What are his first speeches about?

The hero's first words reveal the depth of his grief. before us and truly noble hero. This is a man who first encountered evil in his life and felt with all his heart how terrible it is. Hamlet does not reconcile with evil and intends to fight it.

Analysis of the first monologue. What is the monologue about? Why does Hamlet say that he is disgusted with the whole world? Because of which? Is it only because of the death of his father?

The first monologue reveals to us a characteristic feature of Hamlet - the desire to generalize individual facts. It was just a private family drama. For Hamlet, however, it turned out to be enough to make a generalization: life is “a lush garden that bears only one seed; wild and evil rules in it.”

So, 3 facts shocked the soul:

Sudden death of father;

The place of the father on the throne and in the heart of the mother was taken by an unworthy person in comparison with the deceased;

Mother betrayed the memory of love. Thus, Hamlet learns that evil is not a philosophical abstraction, but a terrible reality that is next to him, in people who are closest in blood.

The problem of revenge in tragedy is solved by different heroes in different ways. Why is the task of revenge entrusted to Hamlet perceived by him as a curse?

Hamlet makes the task of personal revenge a matter of restoring the entire destroyed moral world order. The task of revenge in the mind of Hamlet grew into a matter of retribution, and these are different things. Before starting to live truly, as befits a person, he still needs to first arrange his life so that it corresponds to the principles of humanity.

Why didn't Hamlet act immediately after taking on the task of revenge?

The shock left him unable to act for some time.

He had to see to what extent he could trust the ghost's words. In order to kill a king, it is necessary not only to convince yourself of his guilt, but also to convince others.

What is the nature of Hamlet's "madness"?Is his madness only feigned or is he really going crazy?

Hamlet is a man who felt what happened with his whole being, and the shock he experienced undoubtedly brought him out of balance. He is in a state of deepest turmoil.

How does the internal conflict of the hero deepen with the development of the action? To answer this question, let's turn to Hamlet's famous monologue "To be or not to be ...", which is the culmination of the image of the development of mental discord (act 3, scene 1)So what's the question?

1. Listening and analysis of the reading of Hamlet's monologue by Vysotsky.

Message word

Let's turn to the video material, Hamlet's monologue is read by Vladimir Vysotsky, who managed to most accurately and fully convey the complexity of the image of Hamlet. According to the majority of theater critics, Hamlet performed by V. Vysotsky is the best of all created in the last four decades in the theater.

Listening (5 minutes)

1. Conversation

Vladimir Vysotsky himself is already giving a partial description of the hero. Reveals to us the Hamlet he played.

What distinguishes this monologue from other monologues and replicas of the prince?

1. Monologue is the compositional center of the tragedy.

2. Thematically unrelated to the action of this scene and the main storyline.

3. Hamlet appears already thinking, we do not know the beginning of his monologue and its end - “But be quiet!”. For a moment, the inner world of the hero “opens up” to us.

What is Hamlet thinking about in this monologue? What prompted his thoughts?

Hamlet experiences a painful state caused by the realization of what surrounds him. Before him, in the faces of his relatives and courtiers, the abysses of evil that exist in the world open up. The question of the attitude towards evil is a matter of life and death.

Hamlet stops before the question of how a person should behave in the world of evil: to fight with him with his own weapon (“taking up arms against the sea of ​​unrest, to slay them with confrontation”) or evade the struggle, leave life without soiling himself with its dirt.

Hamlet's thoughts are heavy and gloomy. What is the reason for Hamlet's internal hesitation?

Before Hamlet, death appears in all its painful tangibility. There is a fear of death in him. Hamlet reached the highest limit in his doubts. So. He decides to fight, and the threat of death becomes real for him: he understands that Claudius will not leave alive a person who will throw an accusation of murder in his face.

What prevents Hamlet from simply taking revenge on Claudius and killing him, just as he killed his father? After all, such a case presents itself to him (Act 3, scene 2).

1. Hamlet needs Claudius' guilt to become obvious to everyone. In addition, the hero does not want to become like his enemies and act by the same means (to kill the king now means to commit the same secret and vile murder). He has a plan for this:

Excite (the mask of madness does not lull, but awakens Claudius' vigilance, provokes him to action)

Force to impersonate (Act 2, scene 2)

Kill (Act 3, scene 3).

2. Prayer cleanses the soul of Claudius (his father died without remission of sins).

3. Claudius is on his knees with his back to Hamlet (violation of the principles of noble honor).

How do we see Hamlet now?

Now we have a new Hamlet, who does not know the former discord; his inner calm is combined with a sober understanding of the discord between life and ideals.

Does the final scene resolve Hamlet's conflict?

By killing Claudius, Hamlet fulfills his personal revenge. But the big task that the hero sets himself - the transformation of reality - remains unbearable for him. Departing from life, Hamlet leaves the world still imperfect, but he alarmed him, focused the attention of those who remained alive on the terrible fact: “the age has been shaken”. This was his mission, like that of other great humanists of the Shakespearean era.

So what is the tragedy of Hamlet?

The tragedy is not only that the world is terrible, but also that it must rush into the abyss of evil in order to fight it. He realizes that he himself is far from perfect, his behavior reveals that the evil that reigns in life, to some extent, blackens him. The tragic irony of life circumstances leads Hamlet to the fact that he, acting as an avenger for the murdered father, also kills the father of Laertes and Ophelia, and Laertes takes revenge on him.

1. Summarizing. Generalization.

Why do you think our lesson is called “The Suffering of Thought”?

The moral choice is the main problem that grows out of the fate of Hamlet. Everyone has a choice. What that choice is depends on the individual. And so from generation to generation. The image of Hamlet becomes an eternal image, it has been addressed again over the centuries and will be addressed more than once in the future. Hence the concept of "Hamletism" - that is, an eternally doubting person.

1. Homework

The image of Hamlet in Shakespeare's tragedy is central. He enters into a struggle with reality, which requires the hero to think about being. Philosophical thoughts become the main ones in the work.

Character

The protagonist of the tragedy is a smart man. This is manifested not only in the fact that he studied at the university, but also in the fact that he constantly strives for the truth. He does not consider himself the best, because he knows that he has something to strive for. Hamlet is far from a self-satisfied and far from arrogant person.

Hamlet is a man of honor. He will never be able to forgive lies and close his eyes to the deceit of loved ones. This speaks of the inflexibility of the character of the protagonist. In the clash of the character with the outside world, the main conflict of the work is manifested: man and society. Hamlet cannot live in such a contradictory world in which evil and cruelty reign. The image of the central character is determined by the social picture, Hamlet is the birth of an era.

The external conflict of the tragedy develops into an internal one. Hamlet feels his loneliness, he is not like the people around him. This becomes the reason for constant reflections about one's own presence in the world.

Philosophical content

Hamlet is a very intelligent and educated person. In his mouth, the author puts serious reflections on the essence of society and the world as a whole. In Shakespeare's tragedy, there are quite a lot of Hamlet's monologues, among which the well-known reflections stand out: “To be or not to be?

". All monologues reveal the essence of the image, its internal contradictions.

Hamlet is a man of a new era, expressing the philosophical worldview of the Renaissance. The hero of Shakespeare's tragedy is a philosophical category, an "eternal image", which is interesting for its psychological features.

The ambiguity of the image

Analysis of the image of Hamlet allows us to say that the hero is ambiguous. Internally, he is very contradictory. The search for truth and truth leads to deep reflections that put Hamlet before a choice. The desire to take revenge constantly fades into the background, the hero’s reasoning comes to the fore, which are the central link in the tragedy.

External circumstances, which include the death of his father, the betrayal of his uncle and mother, become the cause of the destruction of all the moral principles of Hamlet. The reality, with which the protagonist entered the fight, destroys all ideals: love, friendship, and honor. However, Hamlet wants to resist evil, so he decides to avenge his father's death. Hamlet's revenge is not a sign of cruelty, it is a desire for justice. One small detail is important: the hero does not want to kill the murderer of his father when he is praying. All this speaks of the purity of the hero's intentions. And the fact that Hamlet wants to take revenge contradicts his worldview and outlook on his own life. This is where all the inconsistency of the image is manifested, which bears both individual features and features of the era.

Shakespeare is the creator of an entire artistic universe, he possessed an incomparable imagination and knowledge of life, knowledge of people, so the analysis of any of his plays is extremely interesting and instructive. However, for Russian culture, of all Shakespeare's plays, the first in importance was "Hamlet", which can be seen at least by the number of his translations into Russian - there are over forty of them. On the example of this tragedy, let's consider what new Shakespeare brought to the understanding of the world and man in the late Renaissance.

Let's begin with plot of Hamlet, like almost all other works of Shakespeare, is borrowed from the previous literary tradition. Thomas Kidd's tragedy Hamlet, presented in London in 1589, has not come down to us, but it can be assumed that Shakespeare relied on it, giving his version of the story, first told in the Icelandic chronicle of the 12th century. Saxo Grammaticus, author of The History of the Danes, relates an episode from the Danish history of the "dark time". The feudal lord Horvendil had a wife Gerut and a son Amlet. Horvendil's brother, Fengo, with whom he shared power over Jutland, envied his courage and glory. Fengo killed his brother in front of the courtiers and married his widow. Amlet pretended to be crazy, deceived everyone and took revenge on his uncle. Even before that, he was exiled to England for the murder of one of the courtiers, where he married an English princess. Subsequently, Amlet was killed in battle by his other uncle, King Wiglet of Denmark. The similarity of this story with the plot of Shakespeare's "Hamlet" is obvious, but Shakespeare's tragedy unfolds in Denmark only in name; its problematic goes far beyond the tragedy of revenge, and the types of characters are very different from the solid medieval heroes.

Premiere of "Hamlet" at the Globe Theater took place in 1601, and this is the year of well-known upheavals in the history of England, which directly affected both the Globe troupe and Shakespeare personally. The fact is that 1601 is the year of the "Essex conspiracy", when the young favorite of the aging Elizabeth, the Earl of Essex, led his people into the streets of London in an attempt to raise a rebellion against the queen, was captured and beheaded. Historians regard his speech as the last manifestation of the medieval feudal freemen, as a rebellion of the nobility against the absolutism that limited its rights, not supported by the people. On the eve of the performance, Essex's messengers paid the actors of the Globe to perform an old Shakespearean chronicle, which, in their opinion, could provoke discontent with the queen, instead of the play planned in the repertoire. The owner of the "Globe" then had to give unpleasant explanations to the authorities. Together with Essex, young nobles who followed him were thrown into the Tower, in particular, the Earl of Southampton, the patron of Shakespeare, to whom, as it is believed, the cycle of his sonnets is dedicated. Southampton was later pardoned, but while Essex's trial was going on, Shakespeare's heart must have been especially dark. All these circumstances could further thicken the general atmosphere of the tragedy.

Its action begins in Elsinore, the castle of the Danish kings. The night watch informs Hamlet's friend Horatio about the appearance of the Phantom. This is the ghost of Hamlet's late father, who at the "dead hour of the night" tells his son that he did not die a natural death, as everyone believes, but was killed by his brother Claudius, who took the throne and married Hamlet's mother, Queen Gertrude. The ghost demands revenge from Hamlet, but the prince must first make sure of what has been said: what if the ghost is a messenger from hell? In order to gain time and not reveal himself, Hamlet pretends to be crazy; incredulous Claudius conspires with his courtier Polonius to use his daughter Ophelia, with whom Hamlet is in love, to check whether Hamlet has really lost his mind. For the same purpose, Hamlet's old friends, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, are summoned to Elsinore, who willingly agree to help the king. Exactly in the middle of the play is the famous "Mousetrap": a scene in which Hamlet persuades the actors who have arrived in Elsinore to play a performance that accurately depicts what the Ghost told him about, and Claudius is convinced of his guilt by the confused reaction. After that, Hamlet kills Polonius, who is eavesdropping on his conversation with his mother, in the belief that Claudius is hiding behind the carpets in her bedroom; Sensing danger, Claudius sends Hamlet to England, where he is to be executed by the English king, but on board the ship Hamlet manages to replace the letter, and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, who accompanied him, are executed instead. Returning to Elsinore, Hamlet learns of the death of Ophelia, who has gone mad, and becomes the victim of Claudius' last intrigue. The king persuades the son of the late Polonius and brother of Ophelia Laertes to take revenge on Hamlet and hands Laertes a poisoned sword for a court duel with the prince. During this duel, Gertrude dies after drinking a cup of poisoned wine intended for Hamlet; Claudius and Laertes are killed, Hamlet dies, and the troops of the Norwegian prince Fortinbras enter Elsinore.

Hamlet- the same as Don Quixote, the "eternal image" that arose at the end of the Renaissance almost simultaneously with other images of the great individualists (Don Quixote, Don Juan, Faust). All of them embody the Renaissance idea of ​​the unlimited development of the personality, and at the same time, unlike Montaigne, who valued measure and harmony, in these artistic images, as is typical of Renaissance literature, great passions are embodied, extreme degrees of development of one side of the personality. The extreme of Don Quixote was idealism; Hamlet's extreme is reflection, introspection, which paralyzes a person's ability to act. He does many things throughout the tragedy: he kills Polonius, Laertes, Claudius, sends Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to death, but since he delays with his main task - revenge, one gets the impression of his inactivity.

From the moment he learns the secret of the Ghost, Hamlet's past life collapses. What he was like before the action in the tragedy can be judged by Horatio, his friend at the University of Wittenberg, and by the scene of the meeting with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, when he shines with wit - until the moment when friends admit that Claudius called them. The indecently fast wedding of his mother, the loss of Hamlet Sr., in whom the prince saw not just a father, but an ideal person, explain his gloomy mood at the beginning of the play. And when Hamlet is faced with the task of revenge, he begins to understand that the death of Claudius will not improve the general state of affairs, because everyone in Denmark quickly consigned Hamlet Sr. to oblivion and quickly got used to slavery. The era of ideal people is in the past, and the motive of Denmark-prison runs through the whole tragedy, set by the words of the honest officer Marcellus in the first act of the tragedy: "Something has rotted in the Kingdom of Denmark" (act I, scene IV). The prince comes to realize the hostility, the "dislocation" of the world around him: "The age has been shaken - and worst of all, / That I was born to restore it" (act I, scene V). Hamlet knows that it is his duty to punish evil, but his idea of ​​evil no longer corresponds to the straightforward laws of tribal revenge. Evil for him is not reduced to the crime of Claudius, whom he ultimately punishes; evil is spilled in the world around, and Hamlet realizes that one person is not capable of confronting the whole world. This internal conflict leads him to think about the futility of life, about suicide.

The fundamental difference between Hamlet from the heroes of the previous tragedy of revenge in that he is able to look at himself from the outside, to think about the consequences of his actions. Hamlet's main sphere of activity is thought, and the sharpness of his self-analysis is akin to Montaigne's close self-observation. But Montaigne called for the introduction of human life within proportionate boundaries and painted a person who occupies a middle position in life. Shakespeare paints not only a prince, that is, a person standing at the highest level of society, on which the fate of his country depends; Shakespeare, in accordance with the literary tradition, draws an outstanding nature, large in all its manifestations. Hamlet is a hero born of the spirit of the Renaissance, but his tragedy testifies to the fact that at its late stage the ideology of the Renaissance is in crisis. Hamlet undertakes the task of revising and reevaluating not only medieval values, but also the values ​​of humanism, and the illusory nature of humanistic ideas about the world as a kingdom of unlimited freedom and direct action is revealed.

The central storyline of Hamlet is reflected in a kind of mirror: the lines of two more young heroes, each of which sheds a new light on Hamlet's situation. The first is the line of Laertes, who, after the death of his father, finds himself in the same position as Hamlet after the appearance of the Ghost. Laertes, in the general opinion, is a "worthy young man", he perceives the lessons of Polonius's common sense and acts as the bearer of established morality; he takes revenge on the murderer of his father, not disdaining collusion with Claudius. The second is the line of Fortinbras; despite the fact that he owns a small place on the stage, his significance for the play is very great. Fortinbras - the prince who occupied the empty Danish throne, the hereditary throne of Hamlet; this is a man of action, a decisive politician and military leader, he realized himself after the death of his father, the Norwegian king, in precisely those areas that remain inaccessible to Hamlet. All the characteristics of Fortinbras are directly opposed to those of Laertes, and it can be said that the image of Hamlet is placed between them. Laertes and Fortinbras are normal, ordinary avengers, and the contrast with them makes the reader feel the exceptional behavior of Hamlet, because the tragedy depicts precisely the exceptional, the great, the sublime.

Since the Elizabethan theater was poor in scenery and external effects of the theatrical spectacle, the strength of its impact on the audience depended mainly on the word. Shakespeare is the greatest poet in the history of the English language and its greatest reformer; the word in Shakespeare is fresh and succinct, and in Hamlet it is striking stylistic richness of the play. It is mostly written in blank verse, but in a number of scenes the characters speak prose. Shakespeare uses metaphors especially subtly to create a general atmosphere of tragedy. Critics note the presence of three groups of leitmotifs in the play. Firstly, these are images of a disease, an ulcer that wears away a healthy body - the speeches of all the characters contain images of decay, decay, decay, working to create the theme of death. Secondly, the images of female debauchery, fornication, fickle Fortune, reinforcing the theme of female infidelity passing through the tragedy and at the same time pointing to the main philosophical problem of the tragedy - the contrast between appearance and the true essence of the phenomenon. Thirdly, these are numerous images of weapons and military equipment associated with war and violence - they emphasize the active side of Hamlet's character in the tragedy. The entire arsenal of artistic means of tragedy is used to create its numerous images, to embody the main tragic conflict - the loneliness of a humanistic personality in the desert of a society in which there is no place for justice, reason, dignity. Hamlet is the first reflective hero in world literature, the first hero who experiences a state of alienation, and the roots of his tragedy were perceived differently in different eras.

For the first time, the naive audience interest in Hamlet as a theatrical spectacle was replaced by attention to the characters at the turn of the 18th-19th centuries. I.V. Goethe, a zealous admirer of Shakespeare, in the novel "Wilhelm Meister" (1795) interpreted Hamlet as "a beautiful, noble, highly moral being, devoid of the power of feeling that makes a hero, he perishes under a burden that he could neither bear nor throw off" . I.V. Goethe Hamlet is a sentimental-elegiac nature, a thinker who is not up to the task of great deeds.

Romantics explained the inactivity of the first in a series of "superfluous people" (they were later "lost", "angry") by excessive thinking, the collapse of the unity of thought and will. S. T. Coleridge in Shakespeare's Lectures (1811-1812) writes: "Hamlet hesitates due to natural sensitivity and hesitates, held by reason, which makes him turn effective forces in search of a speculative solution." As a result, the Romantics presented Hamlet as the first literary hero, consonant with modern man in his preoccupation with introspection, which means that this image is the prototype of modern man in general.

G. Hegel wrote about the ability of Hamlet - as well as other most vivid Shakespearean characters - to look at oneself from the outside, treat oneself objectively, as an artistic character, and act as an artist.

Don Quixote and Hamlet were the most important "eternal images" for Russian culture in the 19th century. V.G. Belinsky believed that Hamlet's idea consists "in the weakness of the will, but only as a result of disintegration, and not by its nature. By nature, Hamlet is a strong man ... He is great and strong in his weakness, because a strong man in his revolt." V.G. Belinsky and A.I. Herzen saw in Hamlet a helpless but stern judge of his society, a potential revolutionary; I.S. Turgenev and L.N. Tolstoy - a hero, rich in mind, of no use to anyone.

Psychologist L.S. Vygotsky, bringing the final act of the tragedy to the fore in his analysis, emphasized Hamlet’s connection with the other world: “Hamlet is a mystic, this determines not only his state of mind on the threshold of a double existence, two worlds, but also his will in all its manifestations.”

The English writers B. Shaw and M. Murray explained Hamlet's slowness by unconscious resistance to the barbaric law of tribal vengeance. Psychoanalyst E. Jones showed that Hamlet is a victim of the Oedipus complex. Marxist criticism saw him as an anti-Machiavellian, a fighter for the ideals of bourgeois humanism. For Catholic K.S. Lewis Hamlet - "Evrimen", an ordinary person, suppressed by the idea of ​​original sin. In literary criticism, a whole gallery of mutually exclusive Hamlets: an egoist and pacifist, a misogynist, a brave hero, a melancholic incapable of action, the highest embodiment of the Renaissance ideal and an expression of the crisis of humanistic consciousness - all this is a Shakespearean hero. In the process of understanding the tragedy, Hamlet, like Don Quixote, broke away from the text of the work and acquired the meaning of "supertype" (Yu.

Today, in Western Shakespeare studies, the focus is not on "Hamlet", but on other plays by Shakespeare - "Measure for Measure", "King Lear", "Macbeth", "Othello", also, each in its own way, consonant with modernity, since in each Shakespeare's play poses the eternal questions of human existence. And each play contains something that determines the exclusivity of Shakespeare's influence on all subsequent literature. The American literary critic H. Bloom defines his author's position as "disinterest", "freedom from any ideology": "He has no theology, no metaphysics, no ethics, and less political theory than modern critics "read" into him. According to sonnets it can be seen that, unlike his character Falstaff, he had a superego, unlike the Hamlet of the final act, he did not cross the boundaries of earthly existence, unlike Rosalind, he did not have the ability to control his own life at will. invented them, we can assume that he deliberately set certain limits for himself. Fortunately, he was not King Lear and refused to go crazy, although he could perfectly imagine madness, like everything else. His wisdom is endlessly reproduced in our sages from Goethe to Freud, although Shakespeare himself refused to be known as a sage"; "You can't confine Shakespeare to the English Renaissance, any more than you can confine the Prince of Denmark to his play."

We parted from the hero when he took upon himself the task of revenge, accepted it as a heavy but sacred duty.

The next thing we learn about him is his insanity. Ophelia rushes in to tell her father about the prince's strange visit:

When I sewed, sitting at my place,
Prince Hamlet in an unbuttoned doublet,
Without a hat, in untied stockings,
Soiled, falling to the heels,
Knocking knees, pale shirts
And with a look so deplorable, as if
He was released from hell
To broadcast about horrors - came to me ...
He took my hand and squeezed it tightly:
Then, recoiling at arm's length,
He raised his other hand to his eyebrows,
He began to look intently into my face, as if
Drawing him. For a long time he stood like that;
And finally, with a slight shake of my hand
And nodding his head three times like this,
He let out a sigh so mournful and deep,
As if his whole chest had been shattered
And life went out; he let me go;
And looking at me over my shoulder
It seemed that he found his way without eyes,
Then, that went out the door without their help,
Stir their light all the time on me.
        II, 1, 77-84, 87-100

Polonius, who has long been worried about his daughter's relationship with the prince, immediately suggests: "Mad with love for you?" After listening to her story, he affirms his conjecture:

It's like a frenzy of love here,
Which destroys itself by murder
And inclines the will to pernicious deeds,
Like any passion under heaven
Raging in nature.
        II, 1, 102-106

Moreover, Polonius sees this as a consequence of his ban on meeting Ophelia with the prince: “I’m sorry that you were harsh with him these days” (II, I, 106-107).

So there is a version that the prince has gone mad. Has Hamlet really lost his mind?

The question has occupied a significant place in Shakespeare studies. It was natural to assume that the misfortunes that befell the young man caused insanity. It must be said right away that this was not actually the case. Hamlet's madness is imaginary.

Let us recall his words addressed to his friends after the meeting with the Ghost:

Swear again - God help you, -
No matter how strange I act,
Then whatever I deem necessary
Dress in whims sometimes, -
That you won't, when you meet me,
Neither cross your arms like that, nor nod,
Don't speak ambiguous words
Like: “We know something,” or: “If only we could” ...
        1, 5, 177-184

From these words it clearly follows that Hamlet's madness is a mask that he puts on himself. The only thing to be said about the last scene of the first act is that it is psychologically difficult to explain how Hamlet could decide to pretend to be insane so soon after meeting the Ghost. Judging by what followed, the decision was made deliberately, and on the night of the meeting with the Ghost there was no time for this.

Here we again encounter one of the conventions of Shakespearean dramaturgy. Unlike later dramas, when the audience was confronted with mysteries and riddles, Shakespeare prepared the audience in advance for what was to come. Hamlet's words (I, 5) serve just such a purpose. Therefore, the viewer, informed by Shakespeare, knows that Hamlet appears to be mad, but the faces surrounding the hero do not know this.

Hamlet does not always put on the mask of the insane. He says to Guildenstern: “I'm only mad at north-nor-west; when the wind blows from the south, I distinguish a falcon from a heron" (II, 2, 374-375). Even a madman could say so, but Hamlet needs to be explained why, during most of II, 2, talking with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, he spoke quite reasonably.

Finally, when Hamlet explains to Horatio what virtues he appreciates in him, the prince abruptly cuts off his speech when he sees the approach of the king and the entire court camarilla:

They are coming; I need to be insane.
        III, 2, 90

Everything seems to be clear. However, we will not conceal from the reader one passage where Hamlet speaks of his insanity in a different way. Before starting a "friendly" duel with Laertes, Hamlet pleads guilty to the murder of Polonius:

Excuse me, cracker, I offended you;
But you will forgive me as a nobleman.
The audience knows, and you,
You must have heard how I'm punished
A painful illness. My act
Hurt your honor, nature, feeling, -
I declare it - was madness.
Who insulted Laertes? Hamlet? No;
After all, if Hamlet is separated from himself
And offends a friend, not his own,
It is not Hamlet who acts; Hamlet is clean.
But who is acting? His madness.
If so, he himself is one of those who are offended;
Poor Hamlet himself is at enmity with madness.
        V, 2, 237-250

These words can be taken as pure truth - only forgetting that Hamlet pronounces them in the presence of the king and the whole court. While Claudius is alive, Hamlet's goal is not achieved, so he continues to play the insane, only occasionally regaining consciousness. The recognition of Hamlet is only a tactical move.

It wasn't Shakespeare who invented the hero's madness. It was already in the ancient saga of Amlet and in its French retelling by Belfort. However, under the pen of Shakespeare, the character of Hamlet's pretense has changed significantly. In pre-Shakespearean interpretations of the plot, by denouncing a madman, the prince sought to lull the vigilance of his enemy, and he succeeded. He waited in the wings and then dealt with the killer of his father and his entourage.

Shakespeare's Hamlet does not lull Claudius' vigilance, but deliberately arouses his suspicions and anxiety. Two reasons determine this behavior of the Shakespearean hero. After a conversation with the Ghost, Hamlet assures his friends: "This is an honest spirit" (I, 5, 144). And in the monologue about Hecuba (II, 2), urging himself to act, the prince proceeds from the fact that the "honest spirit" told him the truth, calling Claudius a murderer. But at the end of the monologue, we suddenly hear doubt:

The spirit that appeared to me
Perhaps there was also a devil; the devil is powerful
Put on a cute image; and, perhaps,
That, since I am relaxed and sad, -
And over such a soul he is very powerful, -
He leads me to death. I need
Return support.
        II, 2, 534-600

So, on the one hand, Hamlet is not sure of the truth of the Ghost's words. In this, the prince discovers that he is far from alien to the prejudices about spirits, which were still very tenacious in the era of Shakespeare. But, on the other hand, Hamlet, a man of the new time, wants to confirm the message from the other world with absolutely real earthly proof. We will encounter this combination of old and new more than once, and, as will be shown later, it had a deep meaning.

Hamlet's words deserve attention in another aspect. They contain a direct recognition of the oppressed state of the hero. What has been said now echoes the sad thoughts of Hamlet, expressed at the end of the second picture of the first act, when he was thinking about death.

The cardinal question connected with these confessions is this: is Hamlet such by nature, or is his state of mind caused by the terrible events that he faced? The answer, of course, can only be one. Before all the events known to us, Hamlet was an integral harmonic personality. But we meet him already when this harmony is broken. Goethe decided that weakness had taken possession of Hamlet. Belinsky otherwise explained the state of Hamlet after the death of his father. What Goethe called weakness, according to the Russian critic, “is disintegration, the transition from infantile, unconscious harmony and self-enjoyment of the spirit into disharmony and struggle, which are a necessary condition for the transition to courageous and conscious harmony and self-enjoyment of the spirit. There is nothing contradictory in the life of the spirit, and therefore disharmony and struggle are together and guarantees for a way out of them: otherwise man would be too miserable a being. And the higher a person is in spirit, the more terrible is his disintegration, and the more solemn is his victory over his finiteness, and the deeper and holier is his bliss. This is the meaning of Hamlet's weakness."

Despite some intrusiveness of idealistic terminology, in essence Belinsky's concept correctly outlines three dialectical stages of Hamlet's spiritual development: harmony, decay her and recovery.

So far, we are observing Hamlet at the second stage of his development, and it is important to correctly understand the term used by Belinsky. By "disintegration" he does not mean the moral decay of the hero's personality, but the disintegration of the spiritual harmony that was previously inherent in him. The former integrity of Hamlet's views on life and reality, as it then seemed to him, was broken.

Although Hamlet's ideals remain the same, everything he sees in life contradicts them. His soul splits. He is convinced of the need to fulfill the duty of revenge - the crime is too terrible and Claudius is disgusting to the limit. But Hamlet's soul is full of sadness - grief over the death of his father and grief caused by his mother's betrayal did not pass. Everything that Hamlet sees confirms his attitude to the world - a garden overgrown with weeds, "wild and evil rules in it" (I, 2, 136-137). Knowing all this, is it surprising that the thought of suicide does not leave Hamlet?

At that time, there was still no concept that arose only more than two centuries later, in the era of romanticism - world sorrow, but this is exactly how Hamlet's view of life appears already in his first big monologue (I, 2). However, similar sentiments appeared in the era of Shakespeare, at the turn of the XVI-XVII centuries. Dissatisfaction with reality was then called melancholy. It could be caused by private causes or a complete disgust for the whole existing order of things. Shakespeare was sensitive to the moods of his contemporaries and was well aware that melancholy was becoming more widespread. In one of the last merry comedies, As You Like It (1599), Shakespeare devoted a significant place to melancholy. He brought here the figure of Jacques the melancholic. “I love melancholy more than laughter,” he says to the heroine of the comedy, Rosalind, and explains to her: “My melancholy is not at all the melancholy of a scientist, in whom this mood is nothing but competition; and not the melancholy of the musician, for whom she is the inspiration; and not the courtier, in whom she is arrogance; and not a warrior, in whom she is ambition; and not a lawyer, for whom she is a political trick; and not the lady, in whom she is cuteness; and not the lover who has her - all this put together; but I have my own melancholy, composed of many elements, extracted from many objects, and in essence the result of reflections taken from my wanderings, plunging into which I experience the most humorous sadness (IV, 1).

Shakespeare created this comedy in a completely different mood than Hamlet. Then Rosalind laughed at Jacques' melancholy, condemning it as extreme, and told him that for the sake of consistency he should "despise all the good that is in your country, hate the place of his birth and almost grumble at God for having created you just as you are" (IV, 1).

We will find the concept of melancholy in Hamlet. In the hero's monologue at the end of the second act, he says: "I am so relaxed and sad." The translation here is inaccurate; in the original: my weakness and my melancholy (II, 2, 630). Let's dwell on this word.

There is nothing easier than to explain the features of Hamlet's behavior by melancholy in the sense in which this word is understood now, that is, by despondency, thoughtful melancholy, or by what is commonly called depression in our time.

The word melancholy occurs many times in Shakespeare. Sometimes in a sense close to ours. But here it means a complete disillusionment with all the values ​​of life, similar to the mindset of Jacques. It gets an unexpected expression from him: this nobleman wants to become a jester. It is necessary to know the features of the class hierarchy of Shakespeare's era in order to understand the unusual and even unnatural desire of Jacques.

Why does he suddenly have such a desire? Jesters occupied the lowest position in class society also because they were considered mentally abnormal. No wonder the English word "jester" is equivalent to the word "fool" (fool). It is with this word that Shakespeare designates his jesters, giving them, however, sometimes proper names. As you know, the speech of a madman is uncontrollable. The speeches of jesters, that is, fools, were equated with the speeches of madmen. They were allowed to say whatever they wanted. They could even censure kings, and this, as you know, is used by the jester of King Lear.

The melancholy of Jacques, his disgust for the world, require for their expression complete freedom, such as jesters have. No matter what they say, it is not customary to be offended by their words. Let's listen to Jacques, why does he need to turn into a jester:

Be a joke!
I am waiting, as an honor, for a motley camisole.
... He suits me:
But only so that you uproot
From his head, the opinion that has settled in him,
That I am smart, and they gave me, moreover,
Freedom so that I can, like a free wind,
To blow on whom I want - like all jesters,
And those whom I scratch harder,
Let's laugh harder...
Dress me in a colorful cloak! Let
Tell the whole truth - and gradually
I will cleanse the stomach of the dirty world,
Let him swallow my medicine.
        II, 7, 42-61

The jester's outfit is needed by Jacques in order to tell the truth about the vices of people. Jacques' speeches reflect his skeptical attitude towards the world, but fun reigns in comedy and goodness, contrary to Jacques' melancholic reasoning, triumphs in it. Jacques decides to become a hermit.

In As You Like It, Shakespeare made the vogue of melancholy an object of ridicule. But what seemed at first only a fashion, in the early seventeenth century became the actual state of mind of a section of late Elizabethan society. In Hamlet, Shakespeare treated the critical spirit of his contemporaries differently. Not only in this play, but in two "dark comedies" close in time to "Hamlet" - in "Troilus and Cressida" (1602) and "Measure for Measure" (1604), the spirit of the times affected with the same force.

Jacques the melancholic only threatened to clean up vices, Hamlet does this - I almost said "seriously". No, the fact of the matter is that the prince indulges in this occupation as if jokingly, under the guise of a madman.

In Shakespeare's time, the attitude toward madmen inherited from the Middle Ages was still preserved. Their bizarre behavior was a cause for laughter. Pretending to be insane, Hamlet at the same time, as it were, puts on the guise of a jester. This gives him the right to tell people to their faces what he thinks of them. Hamlet makes extensive use of this opportunity.

In Ophelia, he settled confusion with his behavior. She is the first to see the dramatic change that has taken place in him. Polonia Hamlet is simply fooling, and he easily succumbs to the inventions of a pretended madman. Hamlet plays him in a certain way. “He plays on my daughter all the time,” says Polonius, “but at first he did not recognize me; said that I was a fishmonger...” (II, 2, 188-190). The second motive in Hamlet's "game" with Polonius is his beard. As the reader remembers, to the question of Polonius about the book in which the prince always looks, Hamlet answers: "this satirical rogue says here that old people have gray beards ...", etc. (II, 2, 198-206 ). When Polonius later complains that the monologue read by the actor is too long, the prince abruptly cuts him off: "This will go to the barber, along with your beard ..." (II, 2, 501).

With Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, Hamlet plays differently. With them, he behaves as if he believed in their friendship, although he immediately suspects that they were sent to him. Hamlet answers them with frankness for frankness. His speech is one of the most significant passages in the play.

“Recently - and why, I don’t know myself - I have lost my gaiety, abandoned all my usual activities; and, indeed, my soul is so heavy that this beautiful temple, the earth, seems to me a desert cape; this incomparable canopy, the air, you see, this splendidly spread firmament, this majestic roof lined with golden fire - all this seems to me nothing but a cloudy accumulation of vapors. What a masterful creation man is! How noble of mind! How infinite capacity! In appearance and in movements - how expressive and wonderful! In action - how similar to an angel! In comprehension - how similar to the deity! The beauty of the universe! The crown of all living! And what is this quintessence of dust for me? Not one of the people makes me happy, no, not even one, although with your smile you seem to want to say something else ”(II, 2, 306-324).

Here we hear the development of those thoughts that filled the monologue in the second scene of the first act. Only there, deep discontent had a specific address: Hamlet's mother, who made him doubt the values ​​of life. Here the same state of mind gets a generalized expression. There is only earthly life, here the whole universe seems to Hamlet to be devoid of meaning and value.

Hamlet, of course, is only playing frankly with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. He told them nothing new compared to what they knew from the king and queen. Claudius had already spoken to them about the "transfiguration" of Hamlet; “In it, both the inner and the outer man are definitely not similar to the former” (II, 2, 5-7). They also heard about the “excessively changed son” (II, 2, 36) from Gertrude.

Hamlet's speech is his first big utterance since he began to pretend to be insane. He guesses that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern have been warned about his madness. His plan is to convince them that he really is crazy.

As you know, real madmen are sure that they reason smartly. Based on this, Hamlet plays a complex game: he, a man in full mind, plays the role of a madman who is sure that he has retained his mind. This is a complex device, typical of Mannerism in the drama of the Late Renaissance, which cultivated all kinds of duality. It must also be manifested in the external manner of speech of the prince, at the same time frivolous and serious.

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern believed in Hamlet's madness for another reason as well. The Prince's speech is full of contradictions. Each phenomenon he mentions has two opposite assessments: the earth with its beauties seems to him a desert, the majestic roof of the sky - an accumulation of plague vapors, man - the beauty of the universe and at the same time the quintessence of dust. From the point of view of the school logic of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, what Hamlet said testifies to the loss of his mind, because, in their opinion, either one or the other of them should be correct. definitions, but not both.

Although Hamlet plays pranks on his university friends, he is indeed torn apart by contradictions. The spiritual balance of Hamlet is completely broken. He mocks the spies sent to him, and tells the truth about his changed attitude towards the world. The duality of Hamlet reflects the crisis of humanism, which has already been discussed earlier.

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are unable to unravel the complex nature of Hamlet, and they immediately report to the king:

Rosencrantz
He admits to himself that he is upset,
But what - he does not want to say for nothing.

Guildenstern
He doesn't let himself be questioned.
And with the cunning of madness escapes,
Just a little we want to persuade him to confess
About himself.
        III, 1, 5-10

But fellow students are inattentive. If they had a more sensitive ear, they would attach more importance to words, as if thrown in passing.

About the theater, Hamlet talks with them quite sensibly, without a shadow of insanity he talks with the actors. Upon learning that the troupe he once liked is arriving in Elsinore, Hamlet says: “He who plays the king will be a welcome guest; I will pay tribute to his majesty”, literally: “he will receive tribute from me” (II, 2, 333). They could pay attention to Hamlet's remark about the treatment of Claudius at court before he became king, and after: "those who made faces at him while my father was alive pay twenty, forty, fifty and one hundred ducats for his portrait in miniature. Damn it, there is something supernatural in this, if only philosophy could find out” (II, 2, 381-385).

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern attributed the prince's love of the theater to the choice of the monologue, which he asks to read to him and himself recalls the beginning. Speech, suddenly needed by Hamlet, is included in an old tragedy full of bloody horrors and cruelties. In it, the Greek warrior king, bursting into Troy, intoxicated with blood, strikes his victims indiscriminately until he finds the main enemy - the Trojan king Priam. The elder could not stand the collision with the angry Pyrrhus and fell. Pyrrhus raised his sword over him, but suddenly stopped. This piece is no longer read by Hamlet, but by the First Actor. Let's listen to the monologue:

So Pyrrhus stood like a monster in a picture,
And, as if alien to will and fulfillment,
Idle.
But as we often see before a thunderstorm -
Silence in the sky, the clouds are motionless,
Silent are the winds and the earth below
Quiet as death, and suddenly a terrible thunder
The air is torn; so, hesitate, Pyrrha
Awakened revenge leads to business;
And never fell, forging,
On the armor of Mars, the hammers of the Cyclopes
As fierce as a bloody Pyrrhic sword
Fell on Priam.
        II, 2, 499-514

Of course, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, who did not know anything about the secret of the death of the former king, could not guess that Hamlet's thoughts were occupied with the task of revenge. Nor did they know that the prince reproached himself for his slowness. But for an attentive viewer, and even more so for a reader, it becomes clear that the choice of this particular monologue is not accidental. We will not be far from the truth if we assume that Hamlet wants to see himself as such an avenger who hesitates, but the blow will be stronger when he finally delivers it with the same inexorability.

And one more place in the monologue from the old play is important for Hamlet - what it says about Priam's wife Hecuba. This part of the speech begins with the words: "But who would have seen the miserable queen ..."

Hamlet repeats after the actor: "The miserable queen?" (II, 2, 525-526).

The fires of the eyes of heaven would moisten
And angered the gods.
        II 2, 540-541

Hecuba is an example of a faithful wife. Even the actor was imbued with her grief, and he had tears in his eyes. Gertrude is not Hecuba.

Now we, readers and spectators, understand why it was this monologue that made me want to listen to Hamlet again. But Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, like Polonius, who is present at the reading of the actor, cannot know what lies behind the whims and desires of the prince.

Having sent everyone away, Hamlet again reproaches himself for inaction. Let us pay attention to the fact that in the first place for him Hecuba, the image of a faithful wife. Even the actor was imbued with her grief “in imagination, in fictitious passion” (II, 2, 578):

Because of Hecuba! What is Hecuba to him, What is Hecuba to weep for her?
        II, 2, 585-586

And after that - a reproach to himself for the fact that he does not take revenge -

For the king, whose life and wealth
So badly ruined.
        II, 2, 596-597

We know, however, that Hamlet had doubts as to how far the Ghost could be trusted. He needs such a proof of Claudius's guilt, which would be earthly reliable. He decides to take advantage of the arrival of the troupe in order to show the king a play in which exactly the villainy that he committed will be presented: “a spectacle is a noose // To lasso the conscience of the king” (II, 2, 633-634).

This plan probably arose when the First Actor so excitedly read a monologue about Pyrrhus and Hecuba. Sending the actors away on his behalf, Hamlet orders the head of the troupe to present the play "The Murder of Gonzago" and asks to include sixteen lines written by himself in it.

Thus arises Hamlet's plan to test the truth of the words of the Phantom. Is it necessary? We, readers and spectators, have long had no doubts about Claudius's guilt. Therefore, it seems to many that this delay in direct action, that is, reprisals against Claudius, is another proof of Hamlet's weakness, his unwillingness to act. In other words, Hamlet is suspected that his words and deeds diverge sharply. But to think so means not to understand the laws of Shakespearean dramaturgy.

Shakespeare's characters' monologues are always true. As already noted, a monologue is a form of direct communication between the hero and the audience. He is frank with them. However, the villains, when they are alone with the public, lay out their plans, are also frank in their own way. Such words must be believed. If the character in Shakespeare is hypocritical, he will also find an opportunity (Shakespeare will give him one) to confess to the audience his hypocrisy, as Angelo does, for example, in the comedy Measure for Measure (II, 4, 1-17).

Hamlet does not rely on his intuition or on a voice from the other world, he needs a proof that satisfies the requirements of reason. It is not for nothing that in a long speech expressing Hamlet's view of the universe and man (it was mentioned above), Hamlet puts reason in the first place when he exclaims: “What a masterful creation - man! How noble of mind! (II, 2, 315-316). It is only through this highest human ability that Hamlet intends to condemn the hated Claudius.