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Example research essay topic: Act Five Scene Act Three Scene - 3,223 words

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Why seems it so particular with thee? Hamlet: Seems, madam? Nay, it is. I know not seems Tis not alone my inky cloak, good mother, Nor customary suits of solemn black, Nor windy suspiration of for d breath, No, nor the fruitful river in the eye, Nor the dejected harbour of the visage, Together with all forms, moods, shapes of grief, That can denote me truly. These indeed seem, For they are actions that a man might play; But I have that within which passes show, These but the trappings and the suits of woe. (Act One, Scene Two) Hamlet and Ghosts Three other Shakespeare plays have ghosts as characters: Julius Caesar (Brutus is visited by the ghost of Caesar), Macbeth (Banquo s ghost interrupts Macbeth s banquet) and Richard III (the king is haunted by the ghosts of his victims). In Hamlet, the role of the ghost, who appears as early as the first scene, is to trigger the action by revealing Claudius crime and by demanding vengeance.

For the celebrated English critic John Dover Wilson (1881 - 1969), the ghost of Hamlet s father is thus both a revenge-ghost and a prologue-ghost. It is one of Shakespeare s glories, he continues, that he took the conventional puppet, humanized it, christianized it, and made it a figure that the spectators would recognise as real, as something which might be encountered in any lonely graveyard at midnight... The Ghost in Hamlet comes, not from a mythical Tartarus, but from the place of departed spirits in which post-medieval England, despite a veneer of Protestantism, still believed at the end of the sixteenth century. What Happens in Hamlet (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), p. 52.

One should note Horatio s scepticism: at first he refuses to believe spirits can assume material form. Then, disconcerted on seeing the ghost, he nonetheless tries to communicate with it by persuading it to speak in the name of heaven. In the end he gives some credence to the ghost whom he feels to be an omen of some strange catastrophe for the kingdom. The Soliloquies 1. O that this too sullied flesh would melt (Act One, Scene Two) 2. O all you host of heaven (Act One, Scene Five) 3.

O what a rogue and peasant slave am I! (Act Two, Scene Two) 4. To be, or not to be, that is the question (Act Three, Scene One) 5. Tis now the very witching time of night (Act Three, Scene Three) 6. And so a goes to heaven (Act Three, Scene 3) 7. How all occasions do inform against me (Act Four, Scene Four) Hamlet gives us seven soliloquies, all centred on the most important existential themes: the emptiness of existence, suicide, death, suffering, action, a fear of death which puts off the most momentous decisions, the fear of the beyond, the degradation of the flesh, the triumph of vice over virtue, the pride and hypocrisy of human beings, and the difficulty of acting under the weight of a thought which makes cowards of us all.

He offers us also, in the last act, some remarks made in conversation with Horatio in the cemetery which it is suitable to place in the same context as the soliloquies because the themes of life and death in general and his attitude when confronted by his own death have been with him constantly. Four of his seven soliloquies deserve our special attention: O that this too sullied flesh would melt, O what a rogue and peasant slave am I! , To be, or not to be, that is the question, and How all occasions do inform against me. Readings of these soliloquies are varied and diverse. However, three remarks are in order: 1.

The density of Hamlet s thought is extraordinary. Not a word is wasted; every syllable and each sound expresses the depth of his reflection and the intensity of his emotion. The spectator cannot but be hypnotized. 2. The language is extremely beautiful.

Shakespeare was in love with words. His soliloquies are pieces of pure poetry, written in blank verse, sustained by a rhythm now smooth, now rugged, by a fast or a slow pace, offering us surprises in every line. 3. The soliloquies are in effect the hidden plot of the play because, if one puts them side by side, one notices that the character of Hamlet goes through a development which, in substance, is nothing other than the history of human thinking from the Renaissance to the existentialism of the twentieth century. The Hamlet of the first soliloquy is an outraged man who, disgusted by his sullied flesh, can see no outcome to his disgust other than death. To free himself from the grip of his flesh he must put an end to his life. But there is the rub: God, the Everlasting, he tells us, does not allow one to act in this way.

God still rules the universe and Hamlet must obey his strictures. O that this too too sullied flesh would melt, Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew; Or that the Everlasting had not fix d His canon gains self-slaughter. Hamlet s attitude is different in To be, or not to be. He asks himself about death beyond religious considerations; the nature of his dilemma has changed, as Hamlet tells us with a lucid simplicity.

To be, or not to be, that is the question: Whether tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune Or to take arms against a sea of troubles And by opposing end them. To die, to sleep No more; and by a sleep to say we end The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks That flesh is heir to; tis a consummation Devoutly to be wish d. To die, to sleep; To sleep, perchance to dream ay, there s the rub: For in that sleep of death what dreams may come, When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, Must give us pause there s the respect That makes calamity of so long life. For who would bear the whips and scorns of time, Th oppressor s wrong, the proud man s contumely, The pangs of despite d love, the law s delay, The insolence of office, and the spurns That patient merit of th unworthy takes When he himself might his quietus make With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear, To grunt and sweat under a weary life, But that the dread of something after death, The un discover d country, from whose born No traveller returns, puzzles the will, And makes us rather bear those ills we have Than fly to others that we know not of?

Thus conscience does make cowards of us all, And thus the native hue of resolution Is sickle o er with the pale cast of thought, And enterprises of great pitch and moment With this regard their currents turn awry And lose the name of action. In the first soliloquy Hamlet submits to rules and prohibitions; in the second he imagines and rationalise's and decides to remain in the world, for the moment at least. But he goes much further. Throughout the final act he pictures the final scene. There, where another dramatist would have given the dying Hamlet a long discourse on death, Shakespeare has Hamlet say just a few words of disconcerting simplicity, the rest is silence, precisely because Hamlet has already said everything before: Alas, poor Yorick! (Act Five, Scene One) And a man s life s no more than to say one. (Act Five, Scene Two) There is special providence in the fall of a sparrow.

If it be now, tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come. The readiness is all. (Act Five, Scene Two) The other two soliloquies are memorable because they reveal all the passionate nature of Hamlet s personality. Observing young Fortinbras and his army on their way to conquer Poland an eggshell, a wisp of straw Hamlet, on the edge of despair, asks himself why he, when he has so many reasons, cannot stir himself to action, why he cannot carry out the necessary act of vengeance. Why? Why? The last lines of Act Four are very revealing: How all occasions do inform against me, And spur my dull revenge.

What is a man If his chief good and market of his time Be but to sleep and feed? A beast, no more. Sure he that made us with such large discourse, Looking before and after, gave us not That capability and godlike reason To first in us unu's d. Now whether it be Bestial oblivion, or some craven scruple Of thinking too precisely on th event A thought which, quarter d, hath but one part wisdom And ever three parts coward I do not know Why yet I live to say this thing s to do, Sith I have cause, and will, and strength, and means To do t. Examples gross as earth exhort me, Witness this army of such mass and charge, Led by a delicate and tender prince, Whose spirit, with divine ambition puff d, Makes mouths at the invisible event, Exposing what is mortal and unsure To all that fortune, death, and danger dare, Even for an eggshell. Rightly to be great Is not to stir without great argument, But greatly to find quarrel in a straw When honour s at the stake.

How stand I then, That have a father kill d, a mother stain d, Excitements of my reason and my blood, And let all sleep, while to my shame I see The imminent death of twenty thousand men That, for a fantasy and trick of fame, Go to their graves like beds, fight for a plot Whereon the numbers cannot try the cause, Which is not tomb enough and continent To hide the slain? O, from this time forth My thoughts be bloody or be nothing worth. Some actors, including the very best, believe that the most beautiful soliloquy is that which comes at the end of Act Two, immediately after the first discussion between Hamlet and the travelling players. Here Hamlet is enraged, furious and rude. He lays himself, we feel, totally bare.

He is no fool however. Recovering his spirits he devises a plan which will lead the king to betray himself. This is Shakespeare at the height of his theatrical prowess, stamping Hamlet s language with relentless changes in tone, the peaks of rage inter-cut with short moments of profound depression or of incredulous questioning. O what a rogue and peasant slave am I! Is it not monstrous that this player here, But in a fiction, in a dream of passion, Could force his soul so to his own conceit That from her working all his visage wann d, Tears in his eyes, distractions in his aspect, A broken voice, and his whole function suiting With forms to his conceit? And all for nothing!

For Hecuba! What s Hecuba to him, or he to her, That he should weep for her? What would he do Had he the motive and the cue for passion That I have? He would drown the stage with tears, And cleave the general ear with horrid speech, Make mad the guilty and april the free, Confound the ignorant, and amaze indeed The very faculties of eyes and ears. Yet I, A dull and muddy-mottled rascal, peak Like John-a-dreams, unpregnant of my cause And can say nothing no, not for a king, Upon whose property and most dear life A damn d defeat was made. Am I a coward?

Who calls me villain, breaks my pate across, Plucks off my beard and blows it in my face, Tweaks me by the nose, gives me the lie i th throat As deep as to the lungs who does me this? Ha! Swounds, I should take it: for it cannot be But I am pigeon-liver d and lack gall To make oppression bitter, or ere this I should ha fatted all the region kites With this slave s offal. Bloody, bawdy villain! Remorseless, treacherous, lecherous, kindless villain! Why, what an ass am I!

This is most brave, That I, the son of a dear father murder d, Prompted to my revenge by heaven and hell, Must like a whore unpack my heart with words And fall a-cursing like a very drab, A scullion! Fie upon t! Foh! About, my brains. Hum I have heard That guilty creatures sitting at a play Have, by the very cunning of the scene, Been struck so to the soul that presently They have proclaim d their malefactions.

For murder, though it have no tongue, will speak With most miraculous organ. I ll have these players Play something like the murder of my father Before mine uncle. I ll observe his looks; I ll tent him to the quick. If a do blench I know my course. {} The play s the thing Wherein I ll catch the conscience of the king. The character of Hamlet is without doubt one of the roles most coveted by actors.

However, some claim it is also one of the easiest. The text is so beautiful and so expressive that it merely has to be spoken; it flows by itself effortlessly and it only remains for the actor to be coherent for the duration of the performance. Yet it is here that choices have to be made. How should one approach these soliloquies? Should one treat them as pieces of music and approach them as one would the arias of an opera?

Shakespeare s language certainly lends itself to such an approach. Or should one see these speeches as Hamlet s thoughts which he expresses aloud, and deliver them as if he were speaking to himself? Alternatively, isn t Hamlet in the act of saying something to the public through the special and particular magic of the theatre, isn t he taking us into his confidence in an act of communion which resembles, in some aspects, an act of love? These three approaches are possible, as well as others, of course. Hamlet and Theatre More than any of his other plays, Shakespeare s Hamlet is pure theatre, a theatre cascading through three or four layers, like Russian dolls. 1. Structurally Hamlet offers all the characteristics of classical tragedy.

The first act gives us nearly all the elements necessary to drive the plot. The second act accelerates the action until the formidable explosions of the third act, which can only lead to the tragic denouement of the fifth act. The play is long and some directors don t hesitate to make drastic cuts (Rosencrantz and Guildenstern sometimes disappear totally, Ophelia s interventions are shortened, and the cemetery scene is reduced to an absolute minimum, as are Hamlet s conversations with the travelling players). 2. There are numerous remarks about theatre itself in the play and Shakespeare obviously makes use of his principal character to make a number of observations on the acting of the players and, by extension, on acting methods and conventions in London at the turn of the seventeenth century. Be natural, he tells them, don t overdo it (hold as there a mirror up to nature; I would have such a fellow whipped for o ending Termagant. It out-Herod's Herod).

To this are added some observations on the young boys who play female roles. This is Shakespeare the master speaking. He tells us how things should be, or tries to, for it is not an easy matter, as he is about to show us in a moment. In any case, if one can judge from the sharpness of some of his comments, the acting of some of his contemporaries was such that he would have happily sent them to be flogged! Clearly, Shakespeare is settling a few accounts here; what is astonishing is that, to do so, he has to stop the action and suspend the plot. Only he, Shakespeare, could afford such a thing. 3.

The play within the play the theatre within theatre occupies the heart of Act Three. It does have its function within the plot, although it is not absolutely certain that it really enables Hamlet to flush out the king, but above all it is a striking example of what theatre should not be. Being bad actors, the players fall into all the traps Hamlet has just warned them against, and give us a piece of bad theatre. This is Shakespeare at his most sardonic, but he may be the butt of his own irony: imagine Shakespeare s Hamlet acted as badly in front of Shakespeare whilst he admonishes his own actors, in the same play, for acting in such a way! 4. Great theatre is therefore to be found elsewhere in his play, and in no way is Shakespeare economical with it. Let us remember that Hamlet hides behind his anti disposition for the greater part of the play; it is therefore important to remember that he is an actor, and that he acts so well that none of the other characters ever succeeds in reading him.

But Shakespeare sprinkles other choice pieces of theatre within theatre throughout the play, the most successful and striking being without doubt the meeting between Hamlet and Ophelia in Act Two, Scene 1. Not a word is exchanged but many things occur. It is a mime, an almost ritualistic dance the full meaning of which we cannot be sure has not escaped us. Hamlet is a master actor, an amateur who acts a hundred times better than the inept professionals of the mime in the third act. There it is, that is good theatre, Shakespeare tells us. However this genius of a director goes further still: this mime does not take place on the stage; in a supreme paradox, it only exists through language, for it is through the words of Ophelia that it is given life in the theatre of our imagination.

A perfectly real illusion, it takes shape in our minds through another illusion: the language and acting of the actor on the stage. The mise-en-above of the mime through language. Only Shakespeare could risk this, and succeed. With Hamlet Shakespeare has bequeathed us a supreme gift. It is a testament in which the creative genius of its author shines out, demonstrating his knowledge of the human spirit, his mastery of plot, and the unbelievable wealth of his language. But there is too much theatre within theatre in this play for us not to see that through a sustained engagement with this theme Shakespeare wanted to discover and to make known a truth rarely grasped, or even perhaps to tell us that there is no truth, save for that truth given existence by a genius through theatrical devices, representation, illusion and art.

This is what Tom Stoppard understood very well, when, in his play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, he took the two most insignificant characters in Hamlet, turned them into heroes, and reproduced entire passages from Shakespeare's play. This is theatre in its purest form which self reflexively claims itself as such. That idea was already present in Hamlet. 318


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