Question 1: Plot
Look carefully at each act of the drama. What is the function of each? What important event or situation is developed in each act by Shapespeare?
Each act or scene or act of drama when intergrated in a play or drama plays a major roe in the build up of the play. It is therefore imperative to note that the playwright uses each part to build up the major theme he or she intends to communicate to the reader or audience. It is for this reason tha it can be said that Shakespeare in his play Hamlet, uses all the act to develop the main themes that he wanted to communicate to the audience.
For instance Act I serves as introductory that has so many unanswered questions for a start which throws the audience into a quagmire not knowing what to expect. But the most important bit of it is the appearance of the ghost to Hamlet and also to the guards. This acts as the centre upon which the play is developed because it is through it the play develops its main thems all the way up to the climax. Perhaps the ghost is the most important aspect of the play as it makes Hamlet want to avenge the death of his father, something that happens at the end of the play.
In Act II, Hamlet pretends to be mad to fool around with not only Polonius but to King Claudius and his mother Getrude. This is mistaken to be love gone sour between Polonius’ daughter Ophellia. Shakespeare may have usef this to trick the king and queen into believing that Hamlet is mad and therefore not to take him seriously. This moment of madness is the point at which Hamlet is torn between believing or not believing the ghost because he still held doubts whether it was a spirit. Through the few lines that he wants to incorporates in the play The Murder of Gonzago, he wants to be sure of the guilt of the King in order to go on with his planned revenge.
Act III has a build up of events that also play a crucial role in the development of events in the play. The most outstanding of all the events is the trap set by hamlet to trap the conscience of the king. This is a play within a play which seeks to develop a reliable basis upon which Hamlet can avenge the murder of his father and just to be sure that the ghost can be trusted. This can only be exhibited through Claudius behavior because gult always has a way of giving someone away. this act can therefore be said to be revealing some secrets that some characters are speculating on, one of them being the death of Hamlet the king.
Act IV on its part has a very important situation that is very crucial in the development of events. The fallen king’s ghost reappears again before Hamlet, Horatio and Marcellus. This time round, Hamlet refers to it as Father, King and Dane. The ghost signalls Hamlet to follow it and this time round Hamlet seems to be sure that it is not an evil spirit like he had thought the first time the ghost appeared. The importance of theis section is to signify that finally, Hamlet will stand to the challenging of avenging his father’s murder because now he believes that the ghost is his father’s spirit.
And finally Act five has a series of events but the culmination of the entire play is centred on the fencing fight between Laertes and Hamlet. This is the event that brought to light how immoral and bad king Claudius was to such an extent of wanting to poison and kill Hamlet by whichever means that were at his discretion. But at the end of the day his evil deeds are brought to book and he causes not only his own death but the deaths of Laertes, queen Getrudeand Hamlet. This helps bring to an end the evil Claudius as well as his deeds meaning that evil never prevails over good.
Question 2: Theme
It is quite clear when an injustice is committed that the offended party feels like wanting to retaliate depending on the extent to which this happens. In the case of Hamlet, it goes way beyond expected when his uncle Claudius goes way too much into doing the extremes in the quest for power and position at the expense of other people’s comfort and happiness. It is for this reason and many more that he sparks the feelings of vengeance and hatred in young Hamlet as is seen throughout the play. His revenge mission is therefore absolutely justifiable as seen as the play unfolds.
Matters are even made worse for Hamlet when Claudius marries his mother queen Gertrude. She may have innocently gotten married to him because she did not know who he really was and that he was the mastermind of the death of King hamlet. What makes matters worse is the fact that when all this happens, Claudius does not consider young Hamlet. He seems to want to take everything from him even his own mother. It defeats logic that within a very short period of time, Hamlet looses to this man, the people so dear to him, his mother and father.
Apart from taking from him the people who mattered to him, Hamlet loses the throne to Claudius. Apparently, Hamlet could have been the next in line to the throne but now the throne is occupied by the cold Claudius. After taking so much from him, it is quite clear that any normal human being could not just sit on the fence and watch as one person gets away with his or her immoral acts. Looking at him from a normal human nature of position, it was too much to just stand on the fence and watch without doing something so as to bring evil to book.
It is sad of how greedy a person can be such that nothing good ever comes out of him or her. Claudius goes way too far and plots the death of Hamlet himself. Apparently, Claudius may have felt guilty of what he did to young and old Hamlet and wanted to get rid of young Hamlet because of the burden of guilt that he was carrying. It defeats logic that he goes to such an extreme knowing very well that what he was plotting against Hamlet was not good. It is therefore very much justifiable that after knowing that Claudius was the mastermind behind King Hamlet’s death and that the situation was so severe in all human understanding, retaliating was at least the way out considering the times when Shakespeare wrote the book. Hamlet even goes to such an extent of wishing to kill himself because of the big confusing web that he finds himself.
References
Shakespeare, W. (1980). Hamlet. Ed. David Bevington. New York: Bantam.
SparkNotes Editors. (2007). SparkNote on Hamlet. Retrieved May 7, 2013, from http://www.sparknotes.com/shakespeare/hamlet/
