Hamlet and Elizabethan Revenge
Hamlet and Elizabethan RevengeClay Garland
ENGL1102
Greavu-Comely
November 28, 2000
Elizabethan Revenge
Hamlet, written by William Shakespeare, very closely follows the dramatic conventions of revenge in Elizabethan Theatre. All revenge tragedies stem from the Greeks, who wrote and performed the first plays. After the Greeks, came Seneca, who had profound influence on all writers of Elizabethan tragedy. Seneca, who was Roman, sets all of the basic guidelines for revenge playwrights in the Renaissance era including William Shakespeare. Arguably the greatest of all English revenge tragedies was Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Hamlet uses most of the Elizabethan conventions for revenge tragedies, especially incorporating all revenge conventions in one way or another, which made Hamlet the ultimate revenge play. Shakespeare’s Hamlet is one of many heroes of the Elizabethan and Jacobean stage who finds himself grievously wronged by a powerful figure, with no recourse to the law, and with a crime against his family to avenge.
Seneca was among the greatest authors of classical tragedies and there were no educated Elizabethans who were unaware of him or his plays. There were certain stylistic devices that Elizabethan playwrights, including Shakespeare, ascertained explicitly from Seneca’s great tragedies: The five act structure, the appearance of apparitions, the one line exchanges known as stichomythia, and Seneca’s use of long rhetorical speeches are all used in future tragedies by Elizabethan playwrights. Some of Seneca’s theatrical ideas were originally taken from the Greeks by Roman conquest. Some of Seneca’s stories that originated from the Greeks like Agamemnon and Thyestes, who dealt with bloody family histories and revenge, captivated the Elizabethans. Seneca’s stories were not written for the purpose of performance, so if English playwrights liked his ideas, they were forced to make the story theatrically feasible, relevant and exciting to an Elizabethan audience, which was extremely demanding. Seneca’s influence formed part of a developing tradition in tragedies whose plots hinge on political power, forbidden sexuality, family honor and private revenge. There was no author who exercised a wider or deeper influence upon the Elizabethan mind or upon the Elizabethan form of tragedy than did Seneca. For the dramatists of Renaissance Italy, France and England, classical tragedy meant only the ten Latin plays of Seneca and nothing else. Hamlet is certainly not like any play of Seneca’s. Hamlet is, however, without Seneca, inconceivable.
During the period of Elizabethan theater, vengeful tragedies were common and a regular conventions were formed on what aspects belonged in a typical revenge tragedy. In all revenge tragedies, a crime is committed and for various reasons laws and justice cannot punish the crime. Therefore, the protagonist is forced to excise vengeance in spite of everything. The protagonist usually endures a period of doubt, during which he or she tries to decide whether or not to proceed with revenge. This tribulation typically involves complex and intense deliberation. Other features typical of the said plays are the appearance of a ghost to incite avenger....
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