Explore how Shakespeare presents revenge in Hamlet. You must relate
your discussion to relevant contextual factors and ideas from your critical
reading.
Point 1:
Shakespeare presents revenge as a prolonged and delayed action to perhaps explore the
frustrations it brings to the titular character
‘Sweep to my revenge’/’thy commandment’
- Act 1 scene 5, filled with determination, and haste
- Deifies his father , but now feels he has betrayed his father by failing to enact a
sacred and hold duty
‘Unpregant of my cause’
- Metaphor- emasculation
- He lacks the motivation that should appear natural to him
- But since he, as a typical renaissance scholar and thinker who has been thrusted
into the role of an avenger, he equates himself to feminine traits which are
defined by inaction
‘I am pigeon liver’d and lack gall’
- Hamlet is suggesting his lack the violent tendency: the Melancholic (earth)
temperament
‘Must like a whore and unpack my heart with words’
- Simile - cheap and undignified
- He is compelled to think before taking action and sees himself as sullied
‘A rogue and unpleasant slave’
- Metaphor - lowly, ignoble and undeserving of his father’s name
- Trapped by his own conscience and moral indecision
AO3: ‘gall’ - Allusion to the Four Humours - an Elizabethan theory of medicine where a person’s
temperament is determined and based on the excess or the deficit of bodily fluids
AO5:
‘Hamlet seems incapable of deliberate action’ - Hazlitt
‘Hamlet is a tragedy of thought’ - Bradley
Point 2:
Shakespeare additionally presents a typical quick medieval revenge through Laertes to
juxtapose Hamlet’s procrastination.
‘My lord, the ocean, overpeering of his list’
- Metaphor - conveying Laertes as a wild and uncontrollable force who dares to spill over
social boundaries
‘Vows to the blackest devil!’/’to the profoundest pit’
- Superlative phrasing highlights the extent of which Laertes is willing to undertake
vengeance against Hamlet for the death of his father
- Juxtaposes how Hamlet, although announces that he will ‘sweep to his revenge,’ he
does not do so and ends up delaying
your discussion to relevant contextual factors and ideas from your critical
reading.
Point 1:
Shakespeare presents revenge as a prolonged and delayed action to perhaps explore the
frustrations it brings to the titular character
‘Sweep to my revenge’/’thy commandment’
- Act 1 scene 5, filled with determination, and haste
- Deifies his father , but now feels he has betrayed his father by failing to enact a
sacred and hold duty
‘Unpregant of my cause’
- Metaphor- emasculation
- He lacks the motivation that should appear natural to him
- But since he, as a typical renaissance scholar and thinker who has been thrusted
into the role of an avenger, he equates himself to feminine traits which are
defined by inaction
‘I am pigeon liver’d and lack gall’
- Hamlet is suggesting his lack the violent tendency: the Melancholic (earth)
temperament
‘Must like a whore and unpack my heart with words’
- Simile - cheap and undignified
- He is compelled to think before taking action and sees himself as sullied
‘A rogue and unpleasant slave’
- Metaphor - lowly, ignoble and undeserving of his father’s name
- Trapped by his own conscience and moral indecision
AO3: ‘gall’ - Allusion to the Four Humours - an Elizabethan theory of medicine where a person’s
temperament is determined and based on the excess or the deficit of bodily fluids
AO5:
‘Hamlet seems incapable of deliberate action’ - Hazlitt
‘Hamlet is a tragedy of thought’ - Bradley
Point 2:
Shakespeare additionally presents a typical quick medieval revenge through Laertes to
juxtapose Hamlet’s procrastination.
‘My lord, the ocean, overpeering of his list’
- Metaphor - conveying Laertes as a wild and uncontrollable force who dares to spill over
social boundaries
‘Vows to the blackest devil!’/’to the profoundest pit’
- Superlative phrasing highlights the extent of which Laertes is willing to undertake
vengeance against Hamlet for the death of his father
- Juxtaposes how Hamlet, although announces that he will ‘sweep to his revenge,’ he
does not do so and ends up delaying
