3 Review(s)

Every time Shakespeare is read or taught one faces a challenge: how to make him comprehensible to the eager student. This is what the present work daringly sets out to do. It provides the reader with biographical, socio-political and the literary background of Shakespeare. Within his three genres of plays— tragedies, comedies and histories—Shakespeare showed great variety. Taking up tragedy only, all four of the prevailing types are to be found in him. Macbeth is a conqueror tragedy, Othello, a villain tragedy, Romeo and Juliet, domestic tragedy and Hamlet, the play under discussion, exemplifies the highly popular contemporary mode, a revenge tragedy; yet these labels are but superficial tags, utterly unable to express the complexity and richness of his plays. Hamlet is unarguably Shakespeare’s most popular tragedy. In characterisation, theme and poetic beauty as exhibited in the famous soliloquies, the play excels all other plays and playwrights. It is a remarkable example of a typical Shakespearean tragedy in which the protagonist is not betrayed by “what is false within”, but becomes a victim of tragic circumstances which lead to tragic consequences.