Loyalty, Revenge, And Madness In Shakespeare's Hamlet

Shakespeare embeds the three major themes of loyalty, revenge, and madness in his novel, Hamlet. He utilizes these preeminent themes in his characters and in the plot as the story transpires. It is evident that these three themes have equal great weight in the novel and all revolve around each other. Based on the story of Hamlet, the reader can deduce that Shakespeare considered loyalty as the strongest of the three. The story strongly supports loyalty as the backbone of the plot. Shakespeare cleverly uses loyalty as a basis for other themes of revenge and madness in his novel. The prince Hamlet does demonstrate the themes of revenge and madness greatly in the novel, but those themes occur because of his loyalty to his father. Hamlet shows …show more content…
Due to his loyalty, Hamlet kills Polonius and later King Claudius. Laertes, Polonius’s son, while being loyal and loving to his father, realizes that his father was killed and wants to seek revenge while becoming mad. King Claudius demonstrates loyalty to his title and position as he does not let anything or anyone take that away from him. Due to his loyalty to his title, he becomes mad as he tries to get rid of Hamlet by exile and death. Shakespeare utilizes loyalty as a motive for madness and revenge.An example where Shakespeare utilizes loyalty as a motive for revenge is in Act 1 Scene 5, “Haste me to know’t,that I, with wings as swift as meditation or the thoughts of love, may sweep to my revenge.” (page 59). Shakespeare uses Hamlet’s loyalty to …show more content…
It’s human nature to want to seek revenge when something undesired it done to an individual. That individual will want to do the same or worse to the offender. I think when Hamlet learned that his father was killed by King Claudius, I’m certain he wanted to seek revenge before the ghost even told him that his father commanded him to kill him. His father’s command just stimulated his madness to commit the ultimate revenge of killing Claudius. Once Laertes found out his father was dead he wanted to kill his father 's murder. Laertes even said himself in Act 4 Scene 5, “Let come what comes, only I’ll be revenged most thoroughly for my father.” (page 215). His loyalty and madness only makes his revenge more certain and he utilizes them as a stimulation to actually carry out revenge. Additionally, once he sees that Ophelia turned mad and eventually drowns herself because her father was killed by Hamlet and Hamlet has left her, Laertes is motivated to avenge Hamlet. In the complex story of Hamlet, Claudius also seeks revenge. When He finds out that Hamlet was going to do anything to kill him through the play Hamlet wrote, King Claudius is motivated to kill and get rid of Hamlet first. He first attempts to send him to England where he would “accidently” be killed and then tries to kill him by poisoning him. Besides the examples in the book, I believe the main theme is revenge