Hamlet, written by playwright William Shakespeare, is a tragedy that reveals many personal aspects of the characters’ lives. Shakespeare was successful in bringing together the negatives and the positives of important problems with humanity and displaying them in his characters. One of the most significant aspects of this play is the concept of love and how it affects the characters. Details from the play show how love is a very powerful feeling that can change a person’s world, leaving their thoughts and actions uncontrollable. Love causes characters’ downfalls because it blinds them to dangers, makes them indecisive, and clouds their better judgements. Love is a theme that is brought up at the very beginning of the play. Hamlet, the main …show more content…
1. 127-129). “If thou dost marry, I’ll give thee this plague for thy dowry: be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as snow, thou shalt not escape calumny. Get thee to a nunnery, go: farewell.” (3. 1. 146-149) Hamlet insults Ophelia, telling her to go to a nunnery which, during this time, was slang for a brothel (British Library, “First use of…”). This comment is offensive to Ophelia and no doubt is misogynistic in the way she understood it. However, Hamlet’s intentions for telling Ophelia this were to protect her. Hamlet intends to kill King Claudius and doesn’t want Ophelia to be a target of his. By pushing her away, Hamlet is hoping the King wouldn’t use her against him. Hamlet clearly loved Ophelia because when she died, he stated, “I loved Ophelia: forty thousand brothers, Could not, with all their quantity of love, Make up my sum,” (5. 1. 254-256) During this scene, he jumped into Ophelia’s grave and fought with her brother over who loved her more, expressing how he is stricken with grief from her death and angry at his decisions that led her to this. Hamlet’s love for Ophelia clouded his judgment on what would be a better way to protect her from danger and interact with the people around
Love is an important and dependable topic. Exploring the experiences of love in different surfaces and how it is experienced in different people. The topic of love spreads throughout the play as the central characters go through the phases of their relationships. Love is important because, it’s a natural part of life. The ups and downs in relationship between Hero and Claudio and Beatrice and Benedick as Shakespeare uses the idea of love to show us how essential trust and loyalty are in any relationship.
“Love is the expansion of two natures in such fashion that each include the other, each is enriched by the other” (Felix Adler). True love contains many emotions that affect people in ways that nothing else can. These influences can create feelings that are revealed through expressions and actions. Shakespeare uses these aspects within his writing to create references to things outside of the work he has created in order to give the reader a deeper understanding of what the two “star crossed lovers” are feeling emotionally. He portrays the idea of love through the use of various allusions.
Romeo and Juliet and Othello are some of Shakespeare's most famous works. Upon first glance, one would assume that one of the more prevalent themes in these plays is love. After all, what love story is more famous than Romeo and Juliet? Unfortunately, this is not the case. After further inspection, it's easy to see that hatred is a more prevalent theme.
A straightforward reading of this scene would reveal that this outburst is due to Hamlet’s pent up anger at his mother’s relationship with his uncle, and he is expressing this anger at an inopportune moment towards Ophelia. Even though some of his anger in this moment is truly directed towards Ophelia, the notion that she is pregnant in this scene makes his words more abrasive and misogynistic. As he says “Why wouldst thou be a breeder of sinners?” (3.1.122-123), he takes on an accusatory tone. He places blame solely on Ophelia, even though if she is pregnant, he would also be at fault.
Throughout the play, Shakespeare portrays love as a violent, overpowering force that overwhelms all other values. He suggests that love is able to obscure one's vision
Hamlet decides to sit next to Ophelia instead of his mother. He is very confusing towards Ophelia as he tries to lie his head on her lap, but yet his words come out out harsh. He makes her feel uncomfortable
Shakespeare uses love to develop personalities, take risks, and allow characters to make decisions that would otherwise be unthinkable. He shows many different types of love in his plays.
King Hamlet loved Gertrude with all his heart that he “might not beteem the winds of heaven visit her face too roughly” this represents true unforgettable love. Hamlet is exasperated about his mother’s hasty marriage that he claims a “beast that wants discourse of reason would have mourned longer”. Gertrude’s hasty marriage with Claudius seems to Hamlet as done with “wicked speed to post with such dexterity to incestous sheets” showing Hamlet is disgusted with this relationship and aggressively disapproves to this action. Further into the play Act 3 Scene 2, Hamlet is having a conservation with Ophelia when he mentions “look you how cheerfully my mother looks, and my father died within two hours” showing anger towards the happiness of his mother. Throughout the play Hamlet uncovers horrible deeds his uncle has committed, which were “Remorseless, Treacherous, lecherous”.
Hamlet once again fails to understand that Ophelia much like himself is only trying to stay loyal to her father, much like what he is doing himself. In addition, Hamlet blames woman for giving birth to such evil and deceiving men like Claudius and himself. When he was talking to Ophelia he told her "Get thee to a nunnery. Why wouldst thou be a breeder of sinners? I am myself indifferent honest, but yet I could accuse me of such things that it were better
They did sleep together, and then Hamlet told Ophelia that she needed to go to a nunnery and that he would never marry a girl who slept around. Ophelia's feelings turned around and she felt very disrespected by
Saying this, Hamlet’s behavior towards Ophelia is crude, rough, and full of anger. Despite Hamlet’s harsh treatment towards Ophelia, he really did love her, but because she was not his main focus, the
Love has been a common focal point of literature throughout the ages, from a young adult novel’s idealization love or the obsessive love portrayed in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Love plays an especially large role in the plot of A Midsummer Night’s Dream as it is the reasoning behind all the madness and mayhem. For example, the lovers’ arc shows the maddening effect of love through the desperate, despicable actions that the lovers commit against one another. The strongest examples of love’s crazy influence are shown in Lysander’s extremities and Helena’s betrayal.
Hamlet does not value Ophelia 's feelings he belittles her. In Hamlets defense this is the way he was brought up to treat women, during that time this was a common way to treat a women. Even though in today 's society it is not at all ok to treat women with such disrespect. He also likes for everything to go as planned and this may result in why he can not have a stable relationship with a woman. This also causes him to have many stumbling blocks in his life that causes some emotional pain
In the “nunnery scene” which is played in Hamlet, Ophelia (as per her father’s and King Claudius’ instruction) attempts to push Hamlet away. As Hamlet realizes that Ophelia is trying to cut ties with him, his mood changes from sweet and loving to angry and sour. In a fit of rage Hamlet curses Ophelia’s name, ruins her name in a public setting and leaves her, upset (and crying in most adaptations) as she expresses her sorrow about having to leave Hamlet. In Ophelia’s soliloquy following her interaction with Hamlet, Ophelia mourns the loss of her ‘one true love’ and the way that Hamlet was behaving.
These crude comments Hamlet says to Ophelia continue throughout the play until Ophelia is being buried when Hamlet asserts that he loved Ophelia. The male character’s treatment of Ophelia and Gertrude make them appear to be ineffectual