Ready Reference Treatise: Hamlet

By Raja Sharma

Hamlet’s character is the expression of overwhelming grief to seething rage. Sometimes there is real madness and sometimes it is feigned.

The most important themes are revenge, treachery, incest, and moral corruption.

The exact date of its writing is not known, but the three different early version of “Hamlet” have survived. These three versions are First, Second, and Third Quarto. Each of these versions has the lines and scenes which are missing from the others.

The character of Hamlet is based on the legend of Amleth, which was preserved by the nineteenth century historian Saxo Grammaticus in his Gesta Danorum. The story was retold later in the sixteenth century by Francois de Belleforest, a scholar. An earlier play which was perhaps written during the Elizabethan era was titled “Ur-Hamlet.”

• Language: English
• Publisher: Raja Sharma
• Release date: Apr 4, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301741281

Raja Sharma

Raja Sharma is a retired college lecturer.He has taught English Literature to University students for more than two decades.His students are scattered all over the world, and it is noticeable that he is in contact with more than ninety thousand of his students.

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Ready Reference Treatise: Hamlet

Raja Sharma

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Ready Reference Treatise: Hamlet

Raja Sharma

Copyright@2013 Raja Sharma

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Chapter One: About William Shakespeare

The beauty of the English Language is so mesmerizing that without the knowledge of this beautiful language one finds oneself incapable of doing various things which one could have easily done if one had the knowledge of this language.

Vast and enchanting English Literature is immensely indebted to a person who did not have any higher academic qualification. Most of the colleges and universities all over the world have his poems and playas in their course of study. It is quite surprising that his diction was so much his own that if a man from this era tries to read his works using the modern meanings, he will definitely be quite confounded. Such was the power of the person that to understand his works properly one must have the dictionary which defines his vocabulary. That person, the most widely read and admired, is William Shakespeare, also called Bard.

William Shakespeare was born on 26 April, 1564, in Stratford-upon-Avon. When he was eighteen, he married Anne Hathaway, with whom he had three children: Susanna, and twins Hamnet and Judith.

Having left Stratford-upon-Avon, Shakespeare moved onto London and he started his career as an actor. In the following seven years, from 1585 to 1592, Shakespeare began a successful career as an actor, writer, and part owner of a playing company called the Lord Chamberlain's Men, later known as the King's Men.

It is generally assumed that Shakespeare retired to Stratford around 1613, where he breathed his last three years later. In the absence of enough records of Shakespeare, most of the things about Bard are assumed. There has been a considerable amount of guesswork about his physical appearance, sexuality, religious beliefs. Some critics and historians doubt whether the works attributed to Shakespeare were actually written by him; they say that some other people wrote the plays and poems which were launched under his name.

Most of Shakespeare’s famous writings were produced between 1589 and 1613. Most of his initial plays were either comedies or histories. He raised these genres to extreme sophistication and aesthetic heights by the conclusion of the sixteenth century. After that he is assumed to have begun writing tragedies in the year 1608. His famous tragedies, Hamlet, King Lear, Macbeth, etc. are believed to be some of the best works in the English language. Towards his twilight years, he began to write tragicomedies which were also known as romances. While writing tragicomedies, Shakespeare collaborated with other playwrights.

Different versions of his plays were published in different editions during his lifetime. In the year 1623, two of his former theatrical colleagues published the First Folio, a collected edition of his dramatic works that included all but two of the plays now recognized as Shakespeare's.

Though he was a famous and respected poet and drama writer in his time, he did not get the real fame until the nineteenth century. People began to realize his genius which had been under the cloud of suspicion for more than three centuries. In the nineteenth century, the Romantics acclaimed Shakespeare's genius, and the Victorians worshipped Shakespeare with a reverence that George Bernard Shaw called bardolatry. With the advent of the twentieth century, more and more academic bodies, and scholars began to explore and analyze Shakespeare’s works. In the twentieth century, his work was repeatedly adopted and rediscovered by new movements in scholarship and performance. His plays remain highly popular today and are constantly studied, performed and reinterpreted in diverse cultural and political contexts throughout the world.

Shakespeare’s father, John Shakespeare, was a very successful glover and alderman; he was originally from Snitterfield. His mother, Mary