Hamlet As An Ideal Hero
Uploaded by magicninja on Dec 22, 2004
Hamlet As An Ideal Hero
Hamlet as an ideal hero By: john mathers Hamlet's Delay We often wonder why Shakespeare's character Hamlet, in the play Hamlet, waited so long after bring told by the ghost, about the evil deed, before carrying out his plan. Everyone contains a tinge of Hamlet in his or her feelings, wants, and worries. Hamlet is not like other tragic heroes of his period. He stands apart from other Shakespeare's heroes in his much discussed innocence. Is this supposed tragic hero maybe an ideal hero, one without the tragic flaw, which has been a part of the formula for the tragedy since the Golden Age of Greece? This is a question that has been the field for many literary critics' battles. The main, and, most often, the only flaw that has been attributed to Hamlet was his delay. This seems to constitute the central part in Hamlet. Critics seem to cling to this detail, as if trying to save the status of Hamlet as a typical Elizabethan tragedy of revenge. According to Aristotle, " the definition of tragedy, there should exist a flaw in the character of the main hero, who is a great personality that is engaged in a struggle that ends catastrophically".(Aristotle, 459) If Hamlet had no flaw, what kind of tragic hero is he? No doubt, Hamlet is a tragical drama, for it has many characters that end up losing their lives. But the play would not lose it's tragic tone if Hamlet was an ideal hero instead of a tragic one. Which is exactly the case. If just all critics realized this, maybe today we would not have that much trouble trying to decipher Hamlet's character, just like Elizabethan audiences never raised any questions concerning Hamlet's delay. Alice Griffin, a drama critic, lecturer, states " it was only in the last two centuries, that the audience and their perceptions have drastically changed, which causes this confusion concerning the character that was created by Shakespeare for the common people, some ignorant ones among them, perhaps". (Griffin, 63) Hamlet is an ideal hero with a flaw, a flaw that sparks many questions among critics everywhere, these questions can be answered in a simple concentration of one scene. Hamlet is like a soldier that is thrown into a war where he has to do some things he rather would avoid doing, but under the given circumstances...