English Literature

William Shakespeare is famous for his creation of characters. Some of them are immortal characters. Shakespearean characters look like real people. In Hamlet we find the following characters: A. Hamlet: Hamlet is the protagonist of the play. The entire play revolves round his character. He is the prince of Denmark. He is brave and intelligent. The name of his father is King Hamlet. He is now dead and the viewers see only his Ghost. Hamlet’s mother is Gertrude. After the death of the king of Denmark she has become the wife of Claudius. Claudius is the suspected murderer of Hamlet’s father. He is the uncle of Hamlet. The daughter of Polonius named Ophelia loves him. But she dies young. When the Ghost of Hamlet’s father accuses Claudius of his murder and demands revenge, Hamlet starts his mission of taking revenge of his father’s murder. Doubt makes him indecisive. Unfortunately he delays. It is his real problem. He pretends to be mad. But when Hamlet comes to know the truth of his...

Hamlet is a popular revenge tragedy in English by William Shakespeare. So far as the revenge drama is concerned, it has a very long history. The early seeds of the revenge drama can be seen in a trilogy named Oresteian composed by great Aeschylus in the 5th century BC. But about five century later in the mid-1st century CE Roman philosopher Seneca laid a strong foundation of revenge drama. Seneca's Thyestes is identified as the first revenge drama that highlights the revenge theme. The revenge play appeares as a favourite form of English tragedy in the Elizabethan and Jacobean eras and finds its highest expression in William Shakespeare’s Hamlet . On the English stage the revenge drama is established by Thomas Kyd with his The Spanish Tragedy in the late 16th century. Other notable revenge plays in English literature are- John Marston’s Antonio’s Revenge , George Chapman’s Revenge of Bussy d’Ambois , Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus , Henry Chettle’s The Tragedy of Hoffman , ...