The Structure in Hamlet :: GCSE English Literature Coursework

The Structure in small town William Shakespeares tragic drama juncture invites various interpretations of the structure because of the plays complexity. Let us in this essay analyze various interpretations of structure. Mark Rose, in Reforming the Role, highlights the reduplicate plot structure within hamlet and another tragedy critical point and Lear are the only two of Shakespeares tragedies with double plots. . . . The story of Poloniuss family works analogously in Hamlet. Each member of the family is a more or less ordinary person who serves as a foil to some formulation of Hamlets extraordinary cunning and discipline. Polonius imagines himself a regular Machiavel, an skillful at using indirections to find directions out, but compared to Hamlet he is what the prince calls him, a great baby. Ophelia, unable to control her grief, lapses into wildness and a muddy death, reminding us that it is one of Hamlets achievements that he does not go gaga but only plays at ins anity to disguise his true strength. And Laertes, of course, goes mad in a different fashion and becomes the model of the kind of revenger that Hamlet so disdains. (125) A.C. Bradley in Shakespearean Tragedy analyzes the structure of Shakespearean tragedy As a Shakespearean tragedy represents a skirmish which terminates in a catastrophe, any such tragedy may roughly be divided into three parts. The first of these sets forth or expounds the situation, or maintain of affairs, out of which the conflict arises and it may, therefore, be called the Exposition. The second deals with the definite beginning, the growth and the vicissitudes of the conflict. It forms consequently the bulk of the play, comprising the Second, Third and Fourth Acts, and usually a part of the number 1 and a part of the Fifth. The final section of the tragedy shows the issue of the conflict in a catastrophe. (52) Thus the first step of the structure of Hamlet involves the presentation of a conflict-generatin g situation. Marchette Chute in The Story Told in Hamlet describes the beginning of the Exposition of the drama The story opens in the cold and sick of a winter night in Denmark, while the guard is world changed on the battlements of the royal castle of Elsinore. For two nights in succession, just as the bell strikes the hour of one, a ghost has appeared on the battlements, a foreshadow dressed in complete armor and with a face give care that of the dead king of Denmark, Hamlets father.