hamlet conflict essay

“Conflict exists in every scene and at every level: it is the single driving force of the play”. In light of this remark, explore some of the ways Shakespeare presents conflict in Hamlet. In the course of your writing show how your appreciation of Middleton’s presentation of conflict in ‘The Revengers Tragedy’ has helped to shape your ideas. (40 marks)
Conflict is a driving force in William Shakespeare’s ‘Hamlet’ and is presented to the audience in many different forms, ranging from Hamlet’s personal struggle and inner conflicts around his quest for revenge, plus there are many key relationships fraught with conflict and confused emotions in the play, whether they are sexual, family or just relationships between people in the court. Furthermore, the physical conflict throughout the play is a very key theme as it spurs the beginning of the play and also ends the play in many productions.
Hamlet’s inner conflict is a major driving force in the play despite the fact that his personal struggle with morality is the thing that holds him back and causes his delay in taking action against Claudius. Hamlet is torn between what is right and wrong, and what is real and fake. On the one hand, he has a duty to avenge his father’s murder which means killing King Claudius, however, because of the power of the monarch and the divine right of kings, Hamlet faces a not only an act against the monarch but also against God whilst living under the religious pressures of the 16th century where people believed that monarchs were God’s deputies on Earth and had a ‘divine right’ to rule. The idea that there were some rightful and God-chosen claimants — such as James I, who certainly believed strongly in the Divine Right of Kings and himself as evidence of it — and others who were not, was a very relevant issue for Shakespeare's audience.
On the other hand, Hamlet must also decide whether the ghost is what he claims to be, he is unsure of the ‘questionable shape’ of his father. Despite the apparition taking his father’s form, Hamlet is cautious of the spirit’s intentions and finds himself unable to act upon his promise to avenge his father. Some audiences may suggest that Hamlet must consider whether the ghost is the devil or a demon in disguise trying to corrupt his religion and make him commit a sin. This is significant because religious audiences of the 16th century believed that they had an immortal soul that would carry them into the afterlife after death making how you lived your life an important factor as they believed you would face God when you die and would go to Heaven, Hell or Purgatory. Arguably, Shakespeare is exploring the idea of the conflicts between morality and a greater sense of duty, something that is reflected in Hamlet’s ‘To be, or not to be’ soliloquy where he contemplates the difference between life and death as an analogy for taking action or being passive.
Hamlet’s inner conflicts also stem from the relationship he shares with his mother Gertrude. Hamlet has to come to terms with the fact that his father’s murderer, also his uncle, marries his mother consequently denying him his rightful opportunity to ascend the throne. The hasteful marriage of his mother and uncle also deeply bothers Hamlet, ‘frailty, thy name is woman!’; he is furious as he believes that his mother did not sufficiently mourn her husband, nor was strong enough to mourn him and even complains that a ‘beast’ would have mourned longer than his mother and calls their marriage both ‘wicked’ and ‘incestuous’. The fact that the court came together to celebrate the marriage in the second scene further develops Hamlet’s hatred towards his uncle and mother as he struggles to contemplate a celebration so soon after a funeral. Hamlet exclaims, ‘that it should come to this’ showing the audience his shock and fury at the remarriage. Personally, I think that Hamlet’s relationship with his mother is a major reason, if not the main reason, for Hamlet’s apparent madness. Hamlet has just lost his father and his mother should be the one person he should be able to truly grieve with and taking from the way she asks Hamlet to stay in Denmark instead of travelling (‘I pray thee, stay with us’) suggests that before the death of his father, they had a good mother – son relationship. When she so suddenly remarries without grief and then Hamlet discovers who his father’s killer is, Hamlet is torn between a woman whom he once loved and respected and the terrible, incestuous act she has committed. Hamlet’s internal conflicts are the thing that holds him back Because of Hamlet's ensuing melancholy, his inaction and dissatisfaction with others, he perceives all others against him; he accuses Polonius as well as his daughter Ophelia, whom he supposedly loves, of treachery and no one. His mother he describes as a villain: ‘O most pernicious woman! / O villain, villain, smiling, damned villain! ...That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain. / At least I am sure it may be so in Denmark’. This is contrasted with ‘The Revenger’s Tragedy’s’ Vindice’s course of action against the Duke because Vindice has no hesitation nor inner quarrel about what he must do.
Conflict can also be seen in the physical threat of war that Denmark face from Fortinbras. This very conflict is what opens the play as we see Horatio and the guards watching from the castle in case of attack which arguably is used as a dramatic device to position the audience in an unsure and uncertain atmosphere as to reflect the uncertainty of Denmark at the time as well as the opening line of the entire play being, ‘who’s there?’, again positioning the audience in uncertainty and anxiety. Horatio mistakes the King’s ghost for an ominous portent of the looming war due to the warlike form of the ghost and tells the guards, ‘Such was the very armour he had on / When he the ambitious Norway combated." It may be argued by some audiences that the fact that the ghost appeared to the guards, in armour, as they said, "upon the platform where we watch'd," it is impossible not to infer that the king came upon a patriotic mission, and that his appearance was intended to have a relation to the defence of Elsinore.
Fortinbras presents a lot of parallels with Hamlet; his father made a bet with Old King Hamlet and wound up losing his life as well as some very important Norwegian territory which Young Fortinbras must now come to reclaim. The difference between Fortinbras and Hamlet however is the immediate action Fortinbras takes by raising an army which contrasts with the inner conflicts that delay HaHHhamhMAHamlet in taking action against his murderous uncle. Behind the stories of both Fortinbras and Hamlet is the question of why their uncles are wearing the crowns that should, in the normal pattern of heir to the throne, go to them. Fortinbras deals by going out and conquering other countries; Hamlet, in contrast, only mentions the fact that Claudius has "popped in between the election and hopes". He distracts himself with thinking, not with conquering hence spurring on the madness and self-conflict. Hamlet compares himself explicitly to Fortinbras when he passes his armies in the fields and sees Fortinbras as a model for how he should behave. "To be great / is not to stir without great argument / but greatly to find quarrel in a straw / when honor's at the stake". Hamlet realises that Fortinbras doesn’t really have any good reasons for leading an army but the reason was irrelevant as he was reserving the honour of his family – arguably this is the point at which Hamlet knows he must return to the court and avenge his father’s death which is followed by Hamlet’s conversation with the gravedigger. Here Hamlet takes the skull of Yorick and realises that with death comes nothing – everybody is reduced to bones in death, contrasting Hamlet’s previous religious beliefs in afterlife, heaven, hell and purgatory resolving his inner conflict which was stopping him from taking action.