The Characteristics Of A New Prince, By Niccolo Machiavelli

Register to read the introduction… The King Hamlet is murdered by his own brother Claudius who then immediately married the sister-in-law Gertrude and reigns on till Hamlet the prince avenged the death of his father by killing Claudius and dying in the process..finally we have the advent of Fortinbras who march in a Denmark open, free and presented to him. Hence looking at it this way we have a general and evolving array of events in the history of Denmark, just like one of the examples cited in Machiavelli's prince. We thus take the three mentioned characters and evaluate them. Claudius is a complete villain, he murders his own brother by pouring poison in his ears, he ruled the kingdom strongly, he indulges in incessant merry making, then he plots the death of his nephew. Thus his action as we see in the play is completely calculated. He ventures out taking a risk and ends up winning. Fortinbras on the other hand is an example of a completely opposite phenomenon; Denmark is presented to him in the end completely unguarded with the king, queen and the future prince lying dead. He, thus does not risk anything but attains the kingdom completely by luck. Hence we can, according to Machiavelli evaluate their gaining of the state as Claudius: Gaining his kingdom of becoming price by crime and Fortinbras: Gaining his kingdom by complete good luck. Claudius like Agathocles the Sicilian gains power but does not gain any glory. Claudius fails as a king because according to Machiavelli, his cruelty is not "well used". According to Machiavelli the rulers who come to power by crime can survive if they use cruelty in the beginning to establish and determine his authority and then use it to maintain and preserve the state Claudius fails to exercise cruelty, he usurps the …show more content…
The troubles would end with him. He cannot choose between Christian morals and the new morals of politics and thus suffers and fails in the end as a Machiavellian Prince. He drifts away from the stereotypical Renaissance ideas and somehow becomes an ordinary man like ourselves, trapped in a cruel world not knowing how to escape the helpless ness and filth that surrounds us. This is Hamlet's tragedy, he remains a ever-suspended bridge between the two choices, between Claudius and Fortinbras, between Virtu and Fortuna. He fails as a Machiavellian Prince, but touches our souls as the harbinger of a new code of conduct, the conduct of role playing, the conduct of the problematic metamorphosis of the Renaissance actor, the conduct of the actor in a play stuck in another play completely lost in interplays of plays and searching for his own