The Nature Of Humanity In Shakespeare's Hamlet

The defining aspect of Shakespeare’s Hamlet (1602) is the human struggle for a cohesive sense of identity in a world of relentless pressure and immorality. Hamlet charts its protagonist’s ontological search for meaning as Renaissance humanism and Christian Providence generate conflicting values. Hamlet’s loyalty to his father compels him to take decisive vengeance, but it is deeply entwined with a personal complexity that remains unresolved as Hamlet confronts its moral implications. His rational style of thinking generates an internal instability, providing a dramatic vehicle through which Shakespeare critically evaluates the nature of human relationships. Ultimately, Hamlet reconciles his internal conflict and becomes in his own eyes worthy …show more content…
The striking imagery alluding to Caesar’s death “trains of fire, and dews of blood” combines with the dramatic appearance of the ghost to foreshadow the social upheaval and create the context for Hamlet’s quest to curtail the “unweeded garden.” His soliloqies express an intense personal hatred, “Remorseless, treacherous, lecherous, kindless villain! / Oh, vengeance!” that generates a self-deprecating response as he equates his Renaissance humanist tendency to philosophise to “a whore unpack(ing) my heart with words.” The ‘mouse trap’ as a meta-theatrical device becomes highly significant in resolving this conflict between passion and reason by holding a “mirror up to nature,” exposing corruption and endorsing truth. In the aftermath of the mousetrap, Hamlet’s failure to act “this is hire and salary, not revenge” reveals that his primary impulse is to impose suffering on Claudius as personal retribution rather than stem the corruption of the social fabric. Within Hamlet’s psyche, the competing forces of passion and reason complicate the process of revenge as conscience turns “enterprises of great pitch” into a destabilising lack of