Student number: 14245

The inevitable tensions between the individual and society are the foundations for the most
engaging moments in Hamlet.

Shakespeares Hamlet (1601) timelessly engages audiences in its exploration of the inevitable
tensions between the individual and society, exposing the perpetual pursuit of humanity towards
reconciling opposing forces. Through Hamlets deliberation, Shakespeare explores the inherent
human desire to rise above an irreversibly corrupt world, capturing the moral dilemmas stemming
from evolving contextual values. Driven by tensions arising from conflicting ideologies of the
Medieval code with emerging Humanist values, Hamlet strives to synthesise societal duty with moral
conscience whilst preserving integrity, underpinning the individuals search for meaning and truth
within a world of uncertainty. In the constant inquiry and questioning of the play, Shakespeare
crystallises the conflicts of the human experience through the tensions between the society and
individual, founding the transcendental engagement of Hamlet in the contemporary world.

Through the plays most engaging moments, Hamlet embodies the inevitable tensions arising between
an individual and society in a time characterised by corruption and deception, leading to his
disillusionment and isolation. Shakespeare mirrors the moral decay of the world in the plays imagery,
as the unweeded garden becomes an extended metaphor for the rotten state of Denmark. The
motif of disease compounded with the repetition of poison permeates the play, highlighting the
duality of human nature in the tensions between seeming and being as Hamlet struggles to find the
right course of action in a fallen world. This Shakespearean theme of disjuncture between
appearances and reality is extended through the recurring images of acting and performance,
personified by Claudius in his introductory speech to the public. Ostensibly a representative of a
worthy king, his skilful rhetoric disguises his capacity for duplicity displayed in his oxymoronic states
of defeated joy and dirge in marriage, simultaneously marking him as an effective and astute
monarch displaying the appropriate public face while successfully veiling his true nature. The image
of a fundamentally deceitful and corrupt king reveals contextual values of the Elizabethan period
reflecting the Chain of Being whereby the monarchs character determined the moral health of the
body politic. This notion of duplicity and theatricality is extended as Hamlet discusses how theatre is
a mirror of nature and society to show her virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the
very age and body of the time his form and pressure, anticipating the play-within-a-play which
echoes the illusory play-acting of the characters and demonstrates the plays awareness of its own
deception. The integral disingenuous nature of humanity is central to Hamlets struggle to uphold
rightful action in the face of a world inescapably tainted by human failings and corruption, evoked by
the cumulative force of Hamlets negative weary, stale, slate and unprofitable adjectives to describe
the uses of the world. Shakespeare immediately positions the audience to see Hamlet as one who
stands above the contamination of the world, a solitary and isolated figure in nighted colour
detached from the soiled State. Thus, Hamlet reflects the inevitable tensions generated by the
individuals response to the iniquity of their world, a universal and inescapable condition enduringly
engaging to audience across eras.

Where society presents diverging notions of morality, individuals must strive to reconcile their ethical
dilemmas and tensions in order to preserve a sense of integrity. The Renaissance was a period of
significant transition as the Medieval chivalric code of honour, emphasising societal allegiance and
duty, was challenged by emerging Humanist values articulating the value of individual conscience.
This fundamental shift in ethical conduct created tensions because of its demand that men act both
in accordance to the dictate of their conscience and their duty to the state, according to Reta A.
Terry. The tensions between the individual will and societal expectations cause Hamlet to be torn
 Student number: 14245

between his divinely ordained duty to set it right and the moral consequences of exacting blood
debt, yet his perception of his role in the metaphor of a scourge and minister sustains his honourable
calling in seeking to purify and cleanse the State. Hamlets earlier claims that he will with wings as
swift sweep to my revenge employs alliteration and metaphor to suggest his intention of
immediate action, and is affirmed by his imperative I have swornt, indicating his initial willingness
to accept revenge as a duty of honour. However, as the play progresses, Hamlet consistently fluctuates
between action and inaction, and as Coleridge notes After still resolvingstill deferringstill
determiningstill postponinghe does nothing. Hamlets eventual acceptance that conscience
does make cowards of us all discloses his recognition that it is his moral integrity which ultimately
causes him to lose the name of action. As a foil to Hamlet, Laertes embodies the qualities of a
conventional tragic hero who adheres to the medieval chivalric code of honour. His emotive
exclamation To hell allegiance! Vows to the blackest devil! coupled with his willingness to dare
damnation presents an outright rejection of the moral values embedded in the Renaissance. The
juxtaposition between Laertes action and Hamlets continual deliberation reveals the tensions
generated by conflicting ideologies of ethical conduct imposed upon the individual by society, a
conflict revealing Shakespeares own subversion of the traditional revenge genre in his focus on the
spiritual struggle of the protagonist. Hamlets acknowledgement that theres a divinity that shapes
our ends is a stoic resignation that his destiny is inevitably ordained by a higher power, revealing
that the central conflict for Hamlet has not been of whether to take revenge, but rather been between
competing demands of blood debt and the attempt to preserve his spiritual integrity whilst taking
inevitably corrupting action. By striving to preserve his moral integrity while taking revenge, Hamlet
reconciles the moral and ethical dilemmas pervading the course of his deliberation and echoes the
clash of cultural and philosophical values inherent in the collision of medieval and Renaissance ideas
of Shakespeares time. In doing so, Shakespeare captures the moral ambiguity that exists within the
interplay between societal pressures and the individual conscience, creating the foundation for the
most engaging and pivotal moment of the play.

most engage our admiration for Hamlet

The tension between the individual and society generates the place most philosophical/contemplative
gaining insight into the human experience.
Mortality death equality
Evading the tensions through suicide tensions becomes so unbearable that he attempts to evade it all
together (Ophelia psychological pressure) inevitable and inescapable tensions if he lives.
Acceptance of death Gravedigger rest is silence
To be or not to be
The pattern of the soliloquys embodies the human experience shows the tensions between
the individuals in society.
In the first soliloquy, he doesnt contemplate suicide properly. Tensions become so
overwhelming that he does.
Erratic nature vascillating between the individual and society
He is trying to voice feudal societal views.
Through the juxtaposition/contrast of the soliloquies the way the tensions between individual
and society becomes internalized.
Fruition of all the soliloquys Grave digger is an epiphany.
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Death is equalizer generated by the tensions.

Gives him perspective
Trying to make a decision that isnt his.
The tensions between individual and society imminate from his view that he can determine
his own fate. When he realized he cannot, the tensions are resolved.
He thought that suicide would remove tensions but he has realized that tensions would still be
there revenge and suicide still have tensions between ind and society.
Clear declaration of self It is I, Hamlet the Dane
Biblical allusion to Matthew
If it is be not now.. antimetabole
Emotional and psychological releases in his dialogue of the last act
let be let it be
the rest is silence
to be or not to be the tensions are inevitable he cannot evade, and he must confront them.
o Recalcitrant resists his fate and societal duty.
INSIGHT: the play provokes us into an awareness that the tensions between individual and
society cannot be evade, and must be confronted.
Final scene is engaging because he has finally confronted the tensions between himself and
society.
Blind unquestioning of the corruption goes against the humanist questioning of the orthodox
conventions.
Very individualistic upholding personal values.
Medieval: upholding societal duties not the individual, was not central idea.

Gertrude conformist, hiding behind the faade. She is the social faade

Hamlet has made people disillusioned people lock the doors

He has managed to morally shift in the society

Society is disillusioned in going with Claudius

DEFINE: value deconstruct the renaissance humanism

What about society that is not humanism?

Tensions between Hamlet and society microcosm of the shifting of ideas, birth of the modern age
In this play, we see the birth of our own age.

We are part of Hamlets time we understand that we are part of this historical era. Engages us
because it allows us to understand our own age.

We learn what is universal and what is distinctly modern about ourselves.

Timeless of tensions, and what makes us modern as opposed to Renaissance and Humanist.

nothing good or bad but thinking makes it so

OVERARCHING TECHNIQUES:
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To be:
Rhetorical questioning Renaissance questioning. Asking with no answers.
He is asking questions that are unanswerable you would have to transcend human
experience.
Insight into human limitations limits of knowledge, control and mortality.
O cursed spite -> let it be his trajectory.
Only by virtue of soliloquys that he arrives at that point of acceptance.
Realis

Evade the tension between individual and society:

take arms against sea of troubles military imagery.
Ironic that he is using a soldierly metaphor.
Questioning of morality of revenge and suicide revenge questioning morality, suicide
questioning the immorality.

2nd and 4th:

Rhyming couplets my thoughts be bloody Freudian slip. Betray your conscience. Even as
he is saying that he is going to be resolved, he is saying his thoughts are bloody rather than
actions ironic even when he is doing his resolute rhyming couplets.
Tensions still are there even though he seems to be resolved.
Dramatic counterpoint of Fortinbras army.
Tensions between individual and society shamed by individuals. All the men, the actor.
go to their graves at bed hyperbole.
To find quarrel in a straw when honours at the stake
Highlights the tensions differences between the value of honour of F against his lack of
value of honour.
Honour over life.
Delay is caused by one part thinking and three part coward intellectual brilliance is not
stopping him.
His ruthless honesty
Gertrude look at herself he looks at himself with ruthlessly cold eyes, engages audience
through his self knowledge and his lack of faade to himself.
Importance of being ruthlessly honest to himself
Tensions with society allow us to understand himself and the human experience.
Mainly cowardice not intellectual capacity, he is motivated to take action GRAVEDIGGER

GRAVEDIGGER