In Hamlet, Shakespeare follows regular convention for a
large part of the play. In the beginning, Shakespeare sets up
the scene, having a ghost on a dark night. Everyone is
working and something strange is happening in Denmark. It
is as if Shakespeare is saying that some kind of foul play has
been committed. This sets up for the major theme in the play
which is of course revenge. The ghost appears to talk to
Hamlet. It is quite obvious that the play had a gruesome,
violent death and the sexual aspect of the play was clearly
introduced when Claudius married Hamlet’s mother
Gertrude. The ghost tells Hamlet that he has been given the
role of the person who will take revenge upon Claudius.
Hamlet must now think of how to take revenge on Claudius,
although he doesn’t know what to do about it. He ponders
his thoughts for a long period of time, expecting to do the
deed immediately, but instead he drags it on until the end of
the play. Although what was important to note was that all
tragic heroes of plays at that time delayed their actual
revenge until the end of the play. In most revenge plays, the
revenger was often anonymous and well disguised, stalking
the enemy about to be killed, but Hamlet started a battle of
wits with Claudius by acting mad and calling it his “antic
disposition”, although the whole thing was a ploy to get
closer to Claudius to be able to avenge his father’s death
more easily. The tactic was a disadvantage in that it drew all
attention upon himself. More importantly though it was an
advantage that his “antic disposition”, isolated him from the
rest of the court because of the people not paying attention
to what he thought or did because of his craziness. One
important part of all revenge plays is that after the revenge is
finally decided upon, the tragic hero delays the actual
revenge until the end of the play. Hamlet’s delay of killing
Claudius takes on three distinct stages. Firstly he had to
prove that the ghost was actually telling the truth, and he did
this by staging the play “The Mousetrap” at court. When
Claudius stormed out in rage, Hamlet knew that he was
guilty. The second stage was when Hamlet could have killed
Claudius while he was confessing to god. If Hamlet had
done it here then Claudius would have gone to heaven
because he confessed while Hamlet’s father was in
purgatory because he did not get the opportunity to confess.
So Hamlet therefore decided not to murder Claudius at this
point in the play. The third delay was the fact that he got side
tracked. He accidentally killed Polonius which created a
whole new problem with the fact that Laertes now wanted
Hamlet dead. After he commit this murder he was also sent
off and unable to see the king for another few weeks until he
could finally do the job. “What makes Hamlet stand out from
many other revenge plays of the period is not that it rejects
the conventions of its genre but that it both enacts and
analyses them.” It can be easily understood that Hamlet very
closely follows the regular conventions for all Elizabethan
tragedies. First Hamlet is faced with the fact that he has to
avenge the murder of his father and since there is no fair
justice available, he must take the law into his own hands.
The ghost of his father appears to guide Hamlet to Claudius
and inform Hamlet of the evil that Claudius has committed.
Then Hamlet constantly delays his revenge and always finds
a way to put it off until he finally does it in Act V, Scene 2.
Hamlet at the same time continues to keep a close
relationship with the audience with his seven main soliloquies
including the famous, “To be, or not to be...”(Act 3 Scene
1). The play also consists of a mad scene where Ophelia has
gone mad because her father Polonius had been killed and
because Hamlet was sent off to England. The sexual aspect
of the play was brought in when Claudius married Gertrude
after he had dreadfully killed Old Hamlet and taken his
throne. Hamlet also follows almost every aspect of Thomas
Kyd’s formula for a revenge tragedy. The only point that can
be argued is that the accomplices on both sides were not
killed because at the end of the play, Horatio was the only
one to survive, although if it wasn’t for Hamlet, Horatio
would have commit suicide when he said, “ I am more an
antique Roman than a Dane. Here’s some liquor left.”(Act V
Scene 2, 346-347). If Horatio had killed himself, then
Hamlet would have followed the Kydian formula as well as
the regular conventions for Elizabethan revenge tragedy.
Hamlet is definitely a great example of a typical revenge
tragedy of the Elizabethan theater era. It followed every
convention required to classify it as a revenge play quite
perfectly. Hamlet is definitely one of the greatest revenge
stories ever written and it was all influenced first by
Sophocles, Euripides and other Greeks, and then more
importantly by Seneca. Hamlet as well as The Spanish
Tragedy tackled and conquered all areas that were required
for the consummation of a great revenge tragedy. Revenge
although thought to be unlawful and against the Church was
absolutely adored by all Elizabethan people. “ The
Elizabethan audience always insisted on seeing eventual
justice, and one who stained his hands with blood had to pay
the penalty. That no revenger, no matter how just, ever
wholly escapes the penalty for shedding blood, even in
error.” This was also a very important point that was also
dealt with brilliantly by Shakespeare in finding a way to kill
Hamlet justly even though he was required to kill Claudius.
Hamlet was written with the mighty pen of Shakespeare who
once again shows people that he can conjure up any play
and make it one of the greatest of all time. Hamlet was one
of the greatest of all time.