Features of the composition of Hamlet are parallelism and doubling. Essay “Mastery of Dramatic Composition of the Tragedy “Hamlet.” Genre and direction

Let us now see how the main characters are connected to the action of the tragedy as a whole. Shakespeare was a master of multifaceted composition, in which the play has several independent lines of action that intersect with each other. At the center of the tragedy is the royal family: Claudius, Gertrude, Hamlet and the Ghost of the murdered king hovering over the entire action. Nearby is the family of the royal minister Polonius: he, his son and daughter. The third line of action is formed by the history of the Norwegian royal dynasty; Only Prince Fortinbras is the only one who speaks about her more and is directly involved in the action, while his late father and living uncle are only mentioned.

From the very beginning, Shakespeare begins to connect different lines of action with various strokes. From Horatio's story in the first scene, we learn that Fortinbras's father challenged Hamlet's father to a duel and, having lost, was forced to give up his lands to the Danish crown. Now Denmark fears that Fortinbras might decide to take by force what his father lost.

In the second scene, Claudius first sends envoys to the Norwegian king to stop Fortinbras' plans. Having finished with state affairs, he begins to listen to the requests of those close to him, and his first word is addressed to Laertes. He grants the request to let him go to France no sooner than asking what Polonius thinks about it. The king clearly favors Polonius, for, as we can guess, when the throne suddenly became vacant, the minister apparently contributed to the election of Claudius to the throne.

In the third scene we learn that Hamlet is paying attention to Polonius's daughter, with her brother advising her and her father ordering her to break off her relationship with the prince. So already in the first three scenes of the first act, Shakespeare intertwined three main lines of action. Further, the relationship between the royal family and the minister's family becomes more and more dramatic. Polonius helps the king in the fight against Hamlet, and the unsuspecting Ophelia is also involved in this. Hamlet kills Polonius. Ophelia goes crazy after this. Laertes returns from France to avenge his father. At Ophelia's open grave, Hamlet and Laertes have their first confrontation, then the king conspires with Laertes to kill the prince. The intertwining of the destinies of these two families runs through the entire tragedy.

What does Fortinbras have to do with the plot of the tragedy? After the Norwegian king dissuades him from attacking Denmark, Fortinbras goes on a campaign to Poland. To do this, he needs to pass through Danish territory, for which he receives permission. At an important moment in the action, the two princes almost come face to face. The example of Fortinbras, active in the fight for his interests, has great moral significance for Hamlet.

Returning from the Polish campaign, Fortinbras sees the complete destruction of the entire Danish dynasty. By feudal law, since the lands belonging to his father are part of the Danish domain, he is the only legitimate claimant to the crown of Denmark, and it, we guess, will pass to him.

The background of the tragedy, the real basis for its action, is formed by the intertwining of the destinies of three families, and personal relationships are combined with great political interests. In a certain sense, we can say that the political center of the events of the tragedy is the question of the throne of Denmark: Claudius usurped it, depriving Hamlet of the right to inherit his father, both die, leaving the crown to the Norwegian prince. The listed elements of action seem simple; readers, and especially viewers, pass by them, taking everything for granted. Meanwhile, all this is the result of a carefully developed plan, translated into dramatic action. Nothing should have been superfluous; everything was designed to achieve a certain effect.

Not only does the playwright carefully “fit” one line of action to another. He makes sure that the episodes are varied in tone.

The gloomy night scene of the Phantom's appearance is followed by a formal scene in the palace. The solemn atmosphere of the monarch's reception of his entourage is replaced by the intimate home atmosphere of Laertes' farewell to Polonius and Ophelia. After two scenes in the "interior" we are again on the site of the castle, where the Phantom is expected to appear at midnight. Finally, the Ghost's terrible discovery of the secret of the death of the late king.

If the first scene in Polonius’s house was completely calm, then the second begins with Polonius’s concern about how Laertes behaves without his father’s supervision, then Ophelia learns alarming news - Prince Hamlet is not himself, apparently, he has lost his mind. The large scene that follows is equal in volume to a whole act and consists of several phenomena: Claudius instructs Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to find out the reason for the strange change that has occurred with Hamlet, the embassy returning from Norway reports that the danger of Fortinbras's invasion has been removed, Polonius informs the royal couple that The reason for Hamlet's insanity is his unhappy love for Ophelia. If the first two parts of this scene were in a serious tone, then Polonius’s reasoning exposes him in a comic form; the comedy intensifies when Hamlet, talking with Polonius, showers him with ridicule. And not just small talk, Hamlet’s meeting with Rosecranz and Guildenstern begins, the meeting with the actors takes place in a lively tone, it gives way to tragedy when the actor reads a monologue from an ancient tragedy, the act ends with Hamlet’s meaningful monologue about Hecuba. It is worth noting all this, and it will become obvious how well thought out the construction of the action is, not only from the point of view of the variety of events, but also the differences in tonality between the individual parts of this act.

Shakespeare wrote plays not only for the inner eye, but also for the outer eye. He always had in mind the spectators who surrounded the stage in a crowd and greedily demanded an entertaining spectacle. This need was met by the interesting plot chosen by the playwright, which unfolded before the eyes of the audience throughout the performance.

It is naive, however, to think that the action of the play was, as it were, given in advance by the narrative chosen for staging. The epic story had to be turned into a drama, and this required a special skill - the ability to build action. Some aspects of Shakespeare’s compositional skill have already been mentioned above, but not all have been noted. Now we return to the question of how the tragedy is constructed in terms of the development of its action.

Shakespeare wrote the play without dividing it into acts and scenes, because the performance in his theater was continuous. Both the quarto of 1603 and the quarto of 1604 did not have any divisions of the text into acts. The publishers of the 1623 folio decided to give his plays as scholarly a look as possible. To this end, they applied to Shakespeare the principle of dividing plays into five acts, recommended by the ancient Roman poet Horace and developed by Renaissance humanists. However, they did not apply this principle consistently in all the plays of the folio. In particular, in Hamlet the division is carried out only until the second scene of the second act. Further the text proceeds without divisions into acts and scenes. The first complete division of Hamlet was carried out by playwright Nicholas Rowe in his edition of Shakespeare in 1709. Thus, the division into acts and scenes that exists in all subsequent editions does not belong to Shakespeare. However, it is firmly established and we will stick to it too.

Captivated by the mystery of Hamlet's character, many readers involuntarily forget about the play as a whole and measure everything only by the significance of this or that circumstance for understanding the hero. Of course, while recognizing the central significance of Hamlet in the tragedy, one cannot, however, reduce its content to his personality alone. This is evident from the entire course of the action, during which the fates of many individuals are decided.

The composition of Hamlet has been carefully studied by researchers, and their conclusions have been far from uniform. Modern English critic Emrys Jones believes that this tragedy, like the rest of Shakespeare's plays, is divided into only two parts. The first consists of the entire action from the beginning, when the Ghost entrusts the prince with the task of revenge, until the murder of Polonius, after which Hamlet is urgently sent to England (IV, 4). The second phase begins with the return of Laertes (IV, 5). If in the first part the central content was Hamlet’s desire to find out the guilt of Claudius and take revenge on him for the murder of his father, then the second part of the tragedy centers on Laertes’ revenge on Hamlet for the murder of Polonius.

The outstanding English director H. Granville-Barker believes that the tragedy is divided into three phases: the first is the plot, which occupies the entire first act, when Hamlet learns about the murder of his father; the second occupies the second, third and fourth acts until the scene of Hamlet's departure to England; the third phase of Granville-Barker coincides with the second phase of E. Jones.

Finally, there is also a division of action into five parts, which does not quite coincide with the division of tragedy into five acts. It's more traditional. Its advantage is the division of the action into parts, reflecting the complex escalation of events and, most importantly, the various mental states of the hero.

The division of tragedies into five acts was first established by the ancient Roman poet Horace. It was recognized as mandatory by the theorists of Renaissance drama, but only in the era of classicism of the 17th century did it begin to be used everywhere. In the mid-19th century, the German writer Gustav Freitag, in his Technique of Drama (1863), came to the conclusion that the traditional division into five acts had a reasonable basis. Dramatic action, according to Freitag, goes through five stages. A correctly constructed drama has: a) an introduction (commencement), b) a rise in action, c) a peak of events, d) a fall in action, e) a denouement. The action diagram is a pyramid. Its lower end is the beginning, the action that arises after it follows an ascending line and reaches the top, after which there is a decline in the development of the action, ending with a denouement.

Freitag's terms may give rise to the incorrect conclusion that as the action progresses and after the climax, there is a weakening of tension and a corresponding decline in the interest of the audience, which the German writer did not mean at all. He added three more dramatic moments to his pyramid.

The first moment is the initial excitement, the second is the peripeteia, or the tragic moment that comes at the peak of the action, the third is the moment of final tension.

Many Shakespeare scholars of the late 19th and early 20th centuries used Freytag's pyramid to analyze Hamlet. Let us indicate how the action of our tragedy is divided accordingly.

1) The plot is formed by all five scenes of the first act, and it is clear that the moment of highest excitement is Hamlet’s meeting with the Ghost. When Hamlet learns the secret of his father's death and the task of revenge is entrusted to him, then the plot of the tragedy is clearly defined.

2) Starting from the first scene of the second act, the action develops, arising from the plot: Hamlet’s strange behavior, causing the king’s fears, Ophelia’s grief, and the bewilderment of the others. The king takes measures to find out the reason for Hamlet's unusual behavior. This part of the action can be defined as complication, “increase”, in a word, the development of a dramatic conflict.

3) Where does this part of the tragedy end? Opinions differ on this matter. Rudolf Franz includes in the second stage of the action both the monologue “To be or not to be?”, and Hamlet’s conversation with Ophelia, and the presentation of the “mousetrap”. For him, the turning point is the third scene of the third act, when all this has already happened and the king decides to get rid of Hamlet. N. Hudson recognizes the climax of the scene when Hamlet can kill the king, but does not lower his sword on his head (III, 3, 73-98). It seems to me that Hermann Conrad’s idea is more correct that the peak of the action covers three important scenes - the presentation of the “mousetrap” (III, 2), the king at prayer (III, 3) and Hamlet’s explanation with his mother (III, 4).

Is this too much for a punchline? Of course, you can limit yourself to one thing, for example, exposing the king: the king guesses that Hamlet knows his secret, and from here everything further follows (III, 3). But the action of Shakespeare's tragedies is rare and difficult to give in to various dogmatic definitions. The opinion of Martin Holmes looks convincing: “This entire third act of the play is like a sea stream, irresistibly striving towards its terrible goal... The mousetrap was invented, prepared and worked, Hamlet finally gained confidence that he had grounds for action, but at the same time he betrayed and his secret and thereby lost no less than one move in the game. His attempt to act resulted in him killing the wrong person; before he can strike again, he will be sent to England."

The culmination of the tragedy, its three scenes have the following meaning: 1) Hamlet is finally convinced of Claudius’s guilt, 2) Claudius himself realizes that his secret is known to Hamlet and 3) Hamlet finally “opens Gertrude’s eyes” to the true state of affairs - she has become his wife the one who killed her husband!

Two moments are decisive in the scenes of the climax: the fact that the king guesses that Hamlet knows the secret of his father’s death, and that during a conversation with his mother, Hamlet kills Polonius, who is eavesdropping on them. Now the king has no doubt that Hamlet intends to kill him too.

4) Freitag’s definition of “decline” is in no way applicable to the beginning of the fourth stage of action. On the contrary, new events arise with increasing tension: Hamlet’s sending to England (IV, 3), the passage of Fortinbras’s troops to Poland (IV, 4), Ophelia’s madness and the return of Laertes, breaking into the palace at the head of the rioters (IV, 5), the news about the return of Hamlet (IV, 6), the king’s agreement with Laertes, the death of Ophelia (IV, 7), Ophelia’s funeral and the first fight between Laertes and Hamlet (V, 1).

All these incident-filled scenes lead to the final part of the tragedy - its denouement (V, 2).

Freitag limited the development of the plot of a well-constructed drama to three “exciting moments.” But Shakespeare’s tragedy, so to speak, is constructed “wrongly,” or rather, not according to the rules. In the first two parts there is only one such moment - the story of the Ghost (I, 5). During the climax, as already noted, there are three moments of acute tension. If Shakespeare followed any rule, it was to increase the tension as the action progresses, introducing more and more events so that the viewer's attention does not weaken. This is exactly what happens in Hamlet. At the fourth stage, much more significant and dramatic events happen than at the beginning. As for the denouement, as the reader knows, four deaths occur in it one after another - the queen, Laertes, the king, Hamlet. It is noteworthy that it is not only the blows of the sword, but the poison that is primarily responsible for the death of all four. Let us remember that Hamlet’s father also died from poison. This is one of the cross-cutting details connecting the beginning and end of the tragedy.

Another similar circumstance: the first person about whom we hear a detailed story from Horatio is Fortinbras. He appears at the very end of the tragedy, and the last words in it belong to him. Shakespeare loved this “ring” construction. These are a kind of “hoops” with which he fastened the broad action of his plays.

It is impossible not to pay attention to the fact that throughout the tragedy the entire royal court and all the main characters appear before the audience three times. This happens in the beginning (I, 2), at the climax of the tragedy during the court performance (III, 2) and at the denouement (V, 2). Let us note, however, that neither in the second scene of the first act, nor in the second scene of the fifth act is Ophelia. This grouping of characters was, of course, intentional.

It is estimated that the central event of the play is the “mousetrap”, and this is confirmed by the following figures:

The court performance thus falls approximately in the middle of the tragedy.

Readers and spectators are so, one might say, accustomed to Hamlet that everything that happens in the tragedy seems natural and self-evident. Sometimes we are too prone to forget that the action of a tragedy is structured and developed down to the details. “Hamlet” is one of those masterpieces of world art in which the highest degree of artistic perfection has been achieved, when the skill is hidden from the superficial eye.

We remember, however, that the play contains some inconsistencies, inconsistencies, even absurdities. We will talk about them later. Now our task was to show that, for all its complexity, Hamlet is not chaotic, but a deeply thought-out artistic creation, achieving effect precisely because its individual parts are carefully adjusted to each other, forming an artistic whole.

Let us now see how the main characters are connected to the action of the tragedy as a whole. Shakespeare was a master of multifaceted composition, in which the play has several independent lines of action that intersect with each other. At the center of the tragedy is the royal family: Claudius, Gertrude, Hamlet and the Ghost of the murdered king hovering over the entire action. Nearby is the family of the royal minister Polonius: he, his son and daughter. The third line of action is formed by the history of the Norwegian royal dynasty; Only Prince Fortinbras is the only one who speaks about her more and is directly involved in the action, while his late father and living uncle are only mentioned.

From the very beginning, Shakespeare begins to connect different lines of action with various strokes. From Horatio's story in the first scene, we learn that Fortinbras's father challenged Hamlet's father to a duel and, having lost, was forced to give up his lands to the Danish crown. Now Denmark fears that Fortinbras might decide to take by force what his father lost.

In the second scene, Claudius first sends envoys to the Norwegian king to stop Fortinbras' plans. Having finished with state affairs, he begins to listen to the requests of those close to him, and his first word is addressed to Laertes. He grants the request to let him go to France no sooner than asking what Polonius thinks about it. The king clearly favors Polonius, for, as we can guess, when the throne suddenly became vacant, the minister apparently contributed to the election of Claudius to the throne.

In the third scene we learn that Hamlet is paying attention to Polonius's daughter, with her brother advising her and her father ordering her to break off her relationship with the prince. So already in the first three scenes of the first act, Shakespeare intertwined three main lines of action. Further, the relationship between the royal family and the minister's family becomes more and more dramatic. Polonius helps the king in the fight against Hamlet, and the unsuspecting Ophelia is also involved in this. Hamlet kills Polonius. Ophelia goes crazy after this. Laertes returns from France to avenge his father. At Ophelia's open grave, Hamlet and Laertes have their first confrontation, then the king conspires with Laertes to kill the prince. The intertwining of the destinies of these two families runs through the entire tragedy.

What does Fortinbras have to do with the plot of the tragedy? After the Norwegian king dissuades him from attacking Denmark, Fortinbras goes on a campaign to Poland. To do this, he needs to pass through Danish territory, for which he receives permission. At an important moment in the action, the two princes almost come face to face. The example of Fortinbras, active in the fight for his interests, has great moral significance for Hamlet.

Returning from the Polish campaign, Fortinbras sees the complete destruction of the entire Danish dynasty. By feudal law, since the lands belonging to his father are part of the Danish domain, he is the only legitimate claimant to the crown of Denmark, and it, we guess, will pass to him.

The background of the tragedy, the real basis for its action, is formed by the intertwining of the destinies of three families, and personal relationships are combined with great political interests. In a certain sense, we can say that the political center of the events of the tragedy is the question of the throne of Denmark: Claudius usurped it, depriving Hamlet of the right to inherit his father, both die, leaving the crown to the Norwegian prince. The listed elements of action seem simple; readers, and especially viewers, pass by them, taking everything for granted. Meanwhile, all this is the result of a carefully developed plan, translated into dramatic action. Nothing should have been superfluous; everything was designed to achieve a certain effect.

Not only does the playwright carefully “fit” one line of action to another. He makes sure that the episodes are varied in tone.

The gloomy night scene of the Phantom's appearance is followed by a formal scene in the palace. The solemn atmosphere of the monarch's reception of his entourage is replaced by the intimate home atmosphere of Laertes' farewell to Polonius and Ophelia. After two scenes in the "interior" we are again on the site of the castle, where the Phantom is expected to appear at midnight. Finally, the Ghost's terrible discovery of the secret of the death of the late king.

If the first scene in Polonius’s house was completely calm, then the second begins with Polonius’s concern about how Laertes behaves without his father’s supervision, then Ophelia learns alarming news - Prince Hamlet is not himself, apparently, he has lost his mind. The large scene that follows is equal in volume to a whole act and consists of several phenomena: Claudius instructs Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to find out the reason for the strange change that has occurred with Hamlet, the embassy returning from Norway reports that the danger of Fortinbras's invasion has been removed, Polonius informs the royal couple that The reason for Hamlet's insanity is his unhappy love for Ophelia. If the first two parts of this scene were in a serious tone, then Polonius’s reasoning exposes him in a comic form; the comedy intensifies when Hamlet, talking with Polonius, showers him with ridicule. And not just small talk, Hamlet’s meeting with Rosecranz and Guildenstern begins, the meeting with the actors takes place in a lively tone, it gives way to tragedy when the actor reads a monologue from an ancient tragedy, the act ends with Hamlet’s meaningful monologue about Hecuba. It is worth noting all this, and it will become obvious how well thought out the construction of the action is, not only from the point of view of the variety of events, but also the differences in tonality between the individual parts of this act.

1) The history of the plot of “Hamlet” and “King Lear”. The prototype is Prince Amleth (the name is known from the Icelandic sagas of Snorri Sturluson). 1 lit. a monument in which this plot is found is “History of the Danes” by Saxo Grammar (1200). Differences in the plot from “G”: the murder of King Gorwendil by brother Fengon takes place openly, at a feast; before this, F. and Queen Geruta had nothing to do with each other. Amlet takes revenge like this: having returned from England (see Hamlet) for a funeral feast regarding his own death (they still thought that he was killed), he gets everyone drunk, covers them with a carpet, nails them to the floor and sets them on fire. Geruta blesses him, because she repented of marrying F. In 1576, Fr. writer François Belfort published this story in French. language. Changes: connection between F. and Geruta before the murder, strengthening of Geruta’s role as an assistant in the matter of revenge.

Then (before 1589) another play was written, which was published, but the author did not (most likely it was Thomas Kyd, from whom “The Spanish Tragedy” remained). The tragedy of bloody revenge, the founder of which was Kid. The secret murder of a king reported by a ghost. + motive of love. The villain's machinations, directed against the noble avenger, turn against him. Sh. left the whole plot.

Since tragedy "Hamlet" (1601) a new stage in Shakespeare's creative development begins. Sh. lost faith in the ideal monarch. He reflected on the disorder of the world, on the tragedy of an individual living in a transitional era, when “the connection of times fell apart” and “time dislocated the joints.” The world of Elizabethan England was becoming a thing of the past, replaced by a world of cynical predators making their way through crimes, regardless of morality. Time moved inevitably. And the heroes of Shakespeare's tragedies cannot stop him. Hamlet cannot restore the “time that has escaped from the joints.”

The tragic consciousness of the playwright reaches its culmination in the play "G". Dramatic events unfold behind the heavy stone walls of the royal castle in Elsinore. Plot The tragedy goes back to the medieval tale of the Danish prince Hamlet, avenging the treacherous murder of his father. (…) But Shakespeare's Hamlet– a complex personality, deeply thinking, striving to understand people’s lives. The conflict between the humanist Hamlet and the immoral world of Claudius, who is so different from his brother, Hamlet’s father. From the ghost, young Hamlet learned that his father was killed during his sleep by his brother Claudius, who seized the Danish throne and married the widow of the murdered man, Gertrude, Hamlet's mother. Endowed with insight and a comprehensive mind, Hamlet sees in this single event an alarming sign of the times. Elsinore has become a reserve of hypocrisy, deceit, and evil. Hamlet calls Denmark a prison. G. perceives the crimes, lies, hypocrisy that reign in Elsinore as the state of the whole world. A perceptive man, Hamlet feels his tragic loneliness. His beloved mother became the wife of the main villain, sweet Ophelia does not find the strength to resist her father’s will, childhood friends Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are ready to serve the tyrant, only Horatio is faithful to Hamlet and understands him.

Hamlet is a man of modern times, a man of thought. Reflection is his natural need. His disappointment is deep. He reproaches himself for inaction and despises himself for not knowing what to do. In the famous monologue “To be or not to be,” Hamlet seems to settle scores with his own thought. The eternal question: Will you accept or fight? G does not want and cannot submit to evil. He is ready to fight, although he realizes that he will die. He doubts the effectiveness of those methods of struggle that the cat can try, doubting - he hesitates; thinking, he is inactive (this is how thinking makes us cowards). Suicide is not a solution; it will not destroy evil. He hesitates because he wants to make sure and convince everyone of Claudius’s guilt. The arrival of traveling actors in Elsinore helps him find out the truth. Hamlet instructs the actors to perform the play "The Murder of Gonzago", in which the circumstances closely resemble the murder of Hamlet's father. Claudius cannot stand it and leaves the auditorium in excitement. Now Hamlet knows for sure that Claudius is a murderer. To mislead him, Hamlet puts on the guise of a madman. It's easier to tell the truth. His ideal is a beautiful human personality, although “not a single person makes me happy” in Elsinore.

Tragic accidents play an important role in the development of the plot. There are especially many of them in the finale: they accidentally exchange rapiers, a glass with a poisoned drink accidentally ends up with the queen. The tragic outcome is approaching with inevitability. Hamlet reveals himself as a heroic personality in the finale. At the cost of his life, he established the truth, he is ready for this. Before his death, he asks Horatio to reveal to the world the cause of the tragic events, the truth about the Danish prince.

The fatal blow strikes Claudius when he, filled with deceit, is ready to commit a new crime. At the end of the tragedy, the young Norwegian prince Fortinbras orders military honors to be given to the deceased Hamlet. Hamlet is a hero. Only for the viewer he is no longer the hero of an ancient legend who lived in pagan times, but a hero of new times, educated, intelligent, who rose to fight against the dark kingdom of selfishness and deceit.

The text of the tragedy expresses thoughts about art and its tasks that are close to Shakespeare himself. In a conversation with the actors, G talks about art as a reflection of life.

Tragedy has been addressed at all times and the hero has been interpreted in different ways. Goethe: Hamlet's weakness of will. Belinsky: G is a naturally strong personality; the fact that he does not kill his father is the greatness of his spirit. Contradiction between ideals and reality. Turgenev: G is an egoist and a skeptic, doubts everything, believes in nothing; procrastination is a sign of weakness, not greatness. You can’t love him because he doesn’t love himself. Intransigence with evil.

The main conflict is the violation of harmony and the desire to restore it.

2) History of the study of the tragedy “G”. There were two concepts regarding G. – subjectivist and objectivist. Subjectivist points of view: Thomas Hammer in the 18th century. was the first to notice G.'s slowness, but said that G. was brave and decisive, but if he had acted immediately, there would have been no play. Objectivist point of view: They believed that G. does not take revenge, but creates retribution, and for this it is necessary that everything looks fair, otherwise G. will kill justice itself: “The century has been shaken - And the worst thing is that I was born to restore it.” That is, he administers the highest court, and does not just take revenge.

Another concept: G.'s problem is related to the problem of interpreting time. A sharp shift in chronological perspective: the clash of heroic time and the time of absolutist courts. The symbols are King Hamlet and King Claudius. Both of them are characterized by Hamlet - “the chivalrous king of exploits” and the “smiling king of intrigue.” 2 duels: King Hamlet and the Norwegian king (in the spirit of the epic, “honor and law”), 2 – Prince Hamlet and Laertes in the spirit of the policy of secret murders. When G. finds himself faced with irreversible time, Hamletism begins.

4) The image of the protagonist. The hero is a highly significant and interesting character. A tragic situation is his destiny. The protagonist is endowed with a “fatal” nature, rushing against fate. Everyone except G. starts with illusions; he has illusions in the past. For him the tragedy is knowledge, for others it is knowledge.

5) The image of the antagonist. The antagonists are various interpretations of the concept of “valor.” Claudius - Energy of mind and will, the ability to adapt to circumstances. Strives to “appear” (imaginary love for nephew).

7) Features of the composition. Hamlet: the beginning is a conversation with a ghost. The climax is the “mousetrap” scene (“The Murder of Gonzago”). The denouement is clear.

8) The motive of madness and the motive of life-theater. For G. and L., madness is the highest wisdom. In madness they understand the essence of the world. True, G.’s madness is fake, L.’s is real. The image of the world-theater conveys Shakespeare's view of life. This is also manifested in the vocabulary of the characters: “stage”, “jester”, “actor” are not just metaphors, but words-images-ideas (“My mind had not yet composed a prologue before I began to play” - Hamlet, V, 2, etc.). d.). The tragedy of the hero is that he must play, but the hero does not want to, but is forced to (Hamlet). This polysemic image expresses the humiliation of man by life, the lack of freedom of the individual in a society unworthy of man. Hamlet’s words: “The purpose of acting was and is to hold up a mirror in front of nature, to show every time and class its likeness and imprint” - also has the opposite effect: life is acting, the theatricality of art is a small resemblance to the great theater of life.