To be or not to be, that is... Hamlet?

Hey there my Shakespearean Lovers 👋!

Hamlet is undoubtedly one of the most impressive works of Shakespeare. Many could say that the main theme is revenge but once you understand the storyline you realize that it is a tragedy that praises death. Hamlet may be seen as a suicide, a pessimist of life who after something bad has happened to him collapses and leaves. It is true that he talks a lot about death and about the meaning of life and it seems that his desire is to leave the world but at no time he does not seem to have any intentions of provoking his own death. It rather seems that he contemplates death and admires it. 

We can begin with the famous scene where Hamlet holds a skull. He makes a great reflection about death where he reaches the conclusion that even the most important of the human beings and the most degrading one end up in the same way. Death is the only thing that makes us all the same and nobody can skip it. 

Moreover, Hamlet does not fear death. He simply does not understand why we live if we die, if there is just suffer.

Hamlet is the most complex character ever created. He is intelligent and knows how to act and when to fake he has lost his mind. He tries to protect Ophelia, saying that he does not love her anymore when she truly is the love of his life. In the end, this does not end well for Hamlet since Ophelia ends up going crazy and suicides by drowning for love. Once again we can see in Ophelia the great extremism that comes from loving someone, as in Romeo and Juliet. But Hamlet pretended his madness not only for Ophelia, but because he must conceal that he was planning to kill his uncle, who knew that he had killed his father to steal the throne. Everything is very twisted but so is Hamlet.

Hamlet is a play where everyone seems to end up receiving some kind of justice. Everyone dies, typical of Shakespeare's tragedies, but most were not intended. In the end, Hamlet gets his revenge and honours his father, but dying does not make him unhappy. We can see that the only thing that matters is that the true story will be explained, so that everyone knows who his father was and what kind of person Claudius was too. 

Destiny is again present on the story because it is what makes Gertrude drink the poison and since then everything goes wrong and they die. To be or not to be, that is the question. Hamlet would not be because he is physically dead, but he is because his story is alive.

Yours Truly, 
The senior student 💕.