Hamlet: A Psychological Approach In Shakespeare's Hamlet

Hamlet feels betrayed by his mother and feels like he can 't trust anyone. Shakespeare gives Hamlet these struggles in the play to amplify the mental and psychological events that make the reader feel bad about what all happened to Hamlet. Hamlet eventually kills Claudius like his father told him to, but only did it after his mother, Gertrude, drank the poison that Claudius meant to give Hamlet. This is a result of external action from all the sorrows that was building up in Hamlet’s life. This brings us to our next character, Gertrude, Claudius’s wife and Hamlets

In Hamlet, audiences witness betrayal regularly. An example of this is from Gertrude toward King Hamlet and Hamlet himself. “Hamlet is a tale of Gertrude’s betrayal of her husband King Hamlet as also Hamlet her son when she betrays his idea of a chaste wife and mother and of course it is the tale of Hamlet’s inability to fulfill his filial expectations”(Roychowdhury, 4). From the very beginning of the play, Gertrude has betrayed her husband, who is now dead, with his brother Claudius. Gertrude also betrays Hamlet by marrying his uncle.

Hamlet is a Shakespearean play about a distraught prince who comes home to Denmark at the news of his father’s death. Once he finds out that his uncle Claudius has married his mother and become king himself, Hamlet suspects foul play. When his father 's ghost comes back to tell him of Claudius’s sins, he is asked to murder Claudius for revenge, but he isn’t sure if he can do it. Some scholars, researchers, and casual readers would argue that this drives Hamlet mad by burdening him with decision. Others would say that after he accepts his father 's plea for vengeance, that he uses this cloak of madness as a disguise so Claudius cannot see his murderous intentions.

Hamlet felt like nobody was supporting him after his father died and with no support comes no advice. Hamlet was also dealing with a lot of emotions that are hard to deal with not to mention control. Hamlet was all so feeling betrayal in all of his relationships as stated before. Hamlet’s mother moved on to Claudius so fast (less than two months) that Hamlet thought she didn’t love his father the way he thought while growing up or maybe she only married him to stay queen. Then Claudius tells Hamlet to move on and that mourning for this long is unmanly and he should move on because everybody dies.

The setting of Hamlet differs greatly from present day Denmark. In the play, it is meant to emphasize the theme of the nation as a diseased body. For example, Claudius, Hamlet’s uncle, murders his own brother to take the throne for himself, as shown when he says, “To bear our hearts in grief and our whole kingdom to be contracted in one brow woe.” (Hamlet, 1.2.3-4). This demonstrates that the nation is rotting because the actions of the leader are corrupt. This also alludes to the corruption in Denmark caused by a single all powerful leader during Hamlet’s time.

So how does King hamlet affect the theme of the play as a whole even while being so briefly present? It all comes off of when when he told hamlet what really happened. Hamlet was overwhelmed with madness and as a result it affected everyone else because he was acting out his madness by making them wonder why he was so mad for so long because over time they didn’t think he should still be that mad about his father's death. So when King Hamlet told his son Hamlet that he was killed by Hamlet's uncle Claudius, which is now sleeping with his mother, drove Hamlet to instantly seek vengeance for his father throughout the entire play. Which set the theme for the play being, vengeance.

Very shortly after the tragic death of King Hamlet, Gertrude, his wife, immediately remarried to Claudius, making the mourning process quite uncomfortable for Hamlet. Hamlet 's act of stabbing Polonius through the curtain, which occurs almost casually in the middle of the tirade against Gertrude 's lust, seems only to increase his passionate desire to make her see her error in preferring Claudius to her first husband. For Hamlet, however, the problem of seeing a genuine difference between his original father and the man Gertrude has called his father assumes enormous significance at precisely this

The ghost’s appearance has a significant impact on Hamlet’s behaviors and forms his decisions through the play. Hamlet, who is suffering from depression since he is dealing with his father’s death and the hasty marriage of his mother with Claudius, his uncle, became obsessed with the concept of life and death after seeing his father’s ghost. In the first appearance of the ghost, he reveals the truth about the how the king has been murdered, which drives Hamlet to seek revenge, and by revenge killing his uncle. The ghost establishes a dilemma and gives Hamlet time to think about his father’s request. But Hamlet has an uncertainty about the existence of the ghost as he notes “the spirit that I have seen may be the devil, and the devil hath power T ' assume a pleasing shape” (2.2.561–563) here, Hamlet is concerned that the ghost may be the devil and questions the motivation of the ghost for killing Claudius.

“Something is rotten in the state of Denmark” (I.v.90). Hamlet is about a young prince who is mourning the loss of his father. He then tries to seek revenge on his uncle Claudius because he poisoned his father. Throughout the play Hamlet’s behavior starts to change which causes him to become mad. The theory about all this is a Psychological Approach.

The first character trait a tragic hero must fulfill is to awake a feeling of pity and fear in the audience. This happens at the point where Hamlet is thinking about suicide were he gets an interesting character (Act 1 Scene 2 p.23, 25). Furthermore, Hamlet is tough, grief world and upset with his mother’s love life with her new husband Claudius. He also feels betrayed when his mother marries his fathers brother so soon after his father’s death and he says “she married. O, most wicked speed, to post/ With such dexterity to incestuous sheets!”.

Benvolio says this to Romeo, because Tybalt has just been killed because he killed Mercutio. “Romeo, away, be gone! / The citizens are up and Tybalt slain.”(3.1.130-131) This supports that Tybalt is to blame because his death leads to a lot more events like the capulet finding out and being heartbroken, but Juliet is even more sad because Romeo has been punished to exile but her parents don’t know that they are married. So to try and cheer up their daughter they try and marry her to another man to get her spirits up. This supports that Tybalt is to blame because his death leads to a lot more events like the capulet finding out and being heartbroken, but Juliet is even more sad because Romeo has been punished to exile but her parents do not know that they are married.