After Hamlet has killed Polonius and Laertes has returned from Paris demanding satisfaction, Hamlet justly observes "by the image of my cause, I see the portraiture of his." It is the contrasts between these three characters which give significance to the parallelisms. The intelligent, sensitive Hamlet and the hot-headed Machiavellian Laertes perish on the same poisoned foil, leaving the kingdom to the cool-headed Norwegian, who has been a shrewder contriver

Here, it is obvious that he cannot see the world in such a simple terms. This attitude establishes Hamlet's views on human nature and life, as stated in his famous soliloquies. First, Hamlet, as a witness and an avenger of his father's murder and of the sinful relationship of his mother to the murderer, is driven to consider that man is nothing more but a "quintessence of dust," although he

Shakespeare Never Read Aristotle? Or, the dynamic forms of catharsis and tragic flaws in Shakespeare's plays Shakespeare's most beloved plays are his tragedies. If one were to list his best and most popular plays: Othello, Romeo & Juliet, Hamlet, King Lear, and so forth, one would find the list comprised almost entirely of tragedies. So it would not be amiss to say that much of the modern literary conception of theatrical

Shakespeare's Hamlet and Herman Hesse's Siddhartha meet the words Eliot's "Little Gidding" One of T.S. Eliot's most famous poetic protagonists, that of J. Alfred Prufrock, may lament that he is not Prince Hamlet, only a fool like Yorick or Polonius of the tragedy that bears the prince's name. But a closer examination of Shakespeare's play highlights the fact that the noble Prince Hamlet, is not really so noble at all, but

For Oedipus to be considered successful, then, he would have had to challenge his own fate and succeed, rather than enact it entirely according to what was set out for him. In Hamlet, on the other hand, the enemy is tangible and human in the form of Hamlet's uncle, and thus Hamlet is able to confront and vanquish him. Thus, Oedipus represents a kind of ignorant struggle against the

Tragedy & Comedy One popular method of distinguishing between a comedy and a tragedy has always been by virtue of whether a play or film has a happy or tragic ending. Today, however, it is largely considered that a tragedy can be comic in parts, and need not necessarily result in an unhappy ending or death (Thorndike, p.2-3) Similarly, although comedies are widely defined as humorous entertainment, evoking a great deal