Shakespeare Hamlet images of heroes. The image of Hamlet in Shakespeare's tragedy of the same name. Federal Agency for Education

Shakespeare is the creator of an entire artistic universe, he had incomparable imagination and knowledge of life, knowledge of people, therefore the analysis of any of his plays is extremely interesting and instructive. However, for Russian culture, of all Shakespeare’s plays, the first in importance was "Hamlet", which can be seen at least by the number of its translations into Russian - there are over forty of them. Using this tragedy as an example, let us consider what new Shakespeare contributed to the understanding of the world and man in the late Renaissance.

Let's begin with plot of "Hamlet", like virtually all of Shakespeare's other works, is borrowed from a previous literary tradition. Thomas Kidd's tragedy Hamlet, presented in London in 1589, has not reached us, but it can be assumed that Shakespeare relied on it, giving his version of the story, first told in the Icelandic chronicle of the 12th century. Saxo Grammaticus, author of the "History of the Danes", tells an episode from the Danish history of the "dark time". The feudal lord Khorwendil had a wife, Geruta, and a son, Amleth. Horwendil's brother, Fengo, with whom he shared power over Jutland, was jealous of his courage and glory. Fengo killed his brother in front of the courtiers and married his widow. Amlet pretended to be crazy, deceived everyone and took revenge on his uncle. Even before that, he was exiled to England for the murder of one of the courtiers, and there he married an English princess. Amlet was subsequently killed in battle by his other uncle, King Wiglet of Denmark. The similarity of this story with the plot of Shakespeare's Hamlet is obvious, but Shakespeare's tragedy takes place in Denmark only in name; its problematics go far beyond the scope of the tragedy of revenge, and the types of characters are very different from the solid medieval heroes.

Premiere of "Hamlet" at the Globe Theater took place in 1601, and this is a year of well-known upheavals in the history of England, which directly affected both the Globe troupe and Shakespeare personally. The fact is that 1601 is the year of the “Essex Conspiracy,” when the young favorite of the aging Elizabeth, Earl of Essex, took his people to the streets of London in an attempt to rebel against the queen, was captured and beheaded. Historians regard his speech as the last manifestation of medieval feudal freemen, as a rebellion of the nobility against the absolutism that limited its rights, which was not supported by the people. On the eve of the performance, the Essex envoys paid the Globe actors to perform an old Shakespearean chronicle, which, in their opinion, could provoke discontent with the queen, instead of the play scheduled in the repertoire. The owner of Globus later had to give unpleasant explanations to the authorities. Along with Essex, the young nobles who followed him were thrown into the Tower, in particular the Earl of Southampton, Shakespeare's patron, to whom his cycle of sonnets is believed to be dedicated. Southampton was later pardoned, but while Essex's trial was going on, Shakespeare's mind must have been particularly dark. All these circumstances could further thicken the general atmosphere of the tragedy.

Its action begins in Elsinore, the castle of the Danish kings. The night watch informs Horatio, Hamlet's friend, about the appearance of the Ghost. This is the ghost of Hamlet’s late father, who in the “dead hour of the night” tells his son that he did not die a natural death, as everyone believes, but was killed by his brother Claudius, who took the throne and married Hamlet’s mother, Queen Gertrude. The ghost demands revenge from Hamlet, but the prince must first make sure of what has been said: what if the ghost is a messenger from hell? To gain time and not be discovered, Hamlet pretends to be crazy; the incredulous Claudius conspires with his courtier Polonius to use his daughter Ophelia, with whom Hamlet is in love, to check whether Hamlet has actually lost his mind. For the same purpose, Hamlet's old friends, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, are called to Elsinore, and they willingly agree to help the king. Exactly in the middle of the play is the famous “Mousetrap”: a scene in which Hamlet persuades the actors who came to Elsinore to perform a performance that exactly depicts what the Ghost told him about, and by Claudia’s confused reaction he is convinced of his guilt. After this, Hamlet kills Polonius, who overhears his conversation with his mother, in the belief that Claudius is hiding behind the carpets in her bedroom; Claudius, sensing danger, sends Hamlet to England, where he is to be executed by the English king, but on board the ship Hamlet manages to replace the letter, and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, who accompanied him, are executed instead. Returning to Elsinore, Hamlet learns of the death of Ophelia, who has gone mad, and becomes a victim of Claudius's latest intrigue. The king persuades the son of the late Polonius and Ophelia's brother Laertes to take revenge on Hamlet and hands Laertes a poisoned sword for a court duel with the prince. During this duel, Gertrude dies after drinking a cup of poisoned wine intended for Hamlet; Claudius and Laertes are killed, Hamlet dies, and the troops of the Norwegian prince Fortinbras enter Elsinore.

Hamlet- the same as Don Quixote, the “eternal image” that arose at the end of the Renaissance almost simultaneously with other images of the great individualists (Don Quixote, Don Juan, Faust). All of them embody the Renaissance idea of ​​limitless personal development, and at the same time, unlike Montaigne, who valued measure and harmony, these artistic images, as is typical in Renaissance literature, embody great passions, extreme degrees of development of one side of the personality. Don Quixote's extreme was idealism; Hamlet's extreme is reflection, introspection, which paralyzes a person's ability to act. He performs many actions throughout the tragedy: he kills Polonius, Laertes, Claudius, sends Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to their deaths, but since he hesitates with his main task - revenge, the impression of his inactivity is created.

From the moment he learns the secret of the Ghost, Hamlet's past life collapses. What he was like before the start of the tragedy can be judged by Horatio, his friend at the University of Wittenberg, and by the scene of the meeting with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, when he sparkles with wit - until the moment when the friends admit that Claudius summoned them. The indecently quick wedding of his mother, the loss of Hamlet Sr., in whom the prince saw not just a father, but an ideal person, explain his gloomy mood at the beginning of the play. And when Hamlet is faced with the task of revenge, he begins to understand that the death of Claudius will not correct the general state of affairs, because everyone in Denmark quickly consigned Hamlet Sr. to oblivion and quickly got used to slavery. The era of ideal people is in the past, and the theme of Denmark-prison runs through the whole tragedy, set by the words of the honest officer Marcellus in the first act of the tragedy: “Something has rotted in the Danish kingdom” (Act I, Scene IV). The prince comes to realize the hostility, the “dislocation” of the world around him: “The century has been shaken - and worst of all, / That I was born to restore it” (Act I, Scene V). Hamlet knows that his duty is to punish evil, but his idea of ​​evil no longer corresponds to the straightforward laws of family revenge. Evil for him is not limited to the crime of Claudius, whom he ultimately punishes; Evil is spread throughout the world around him, and Hamlet realizes that one person cannot resist the whole world. This internal conflict leads him to think about the futility of life, about suicide.

The fundamental difference between Hamlet from the heroes of the previous revenge tragedy in that he is able to look at himself from the outside, to think about the consequences of his actions. Hamlet's main sphere of activity is thought, and the sharpness of his introspection is akin to Montaigne's close introspection. But Montaigne called for introducing human life into proportionate boundaries and depicted a person occupying a middle position in life. Shakespeare draws not only the prince, that is, a person standing at the highest level of society, on whom the fate of his country depends; Shakespeare, in accordance with literary tradition, depicts an extraordinary character, large in all its manifestations. Hamlet is a hero born of the spirit of the Renaissance, but his tragedy indicates that at its later stage the ideology of the Renaissance is experiencing a crisis. Hamlet takes upon himself the work of revising and revaluing not only medieval values, but also the values ​​of humanism, and the illusory nature of humanistic ideas about the world as a kingdom of boundless freedom and direct action is revealed.

Hamlet's central storyline is reflected in a kind of mirror: the lines of two more young heroes, each of which sheds new light on Hamlet’s situation. The first is the line of Laertes, who, after the death of his father, finds himself in the same position as Hamlet after the appearance of the Ghost. Laertes, in everyone’s opinion, is a “worthy young man,” he takes the lessons of Polonius’s common sense and acts as the bearer of established morality; he takes revenge on his father's murderer, not disdaining an agreement with Claudius. The second is the line of Fortinbras; Despite the fact that he has a small place on the stage, his significance for the play is very great. Fortinbras is the prince who occupied the empty Danish throne, Hamlet's hereditary throne; he is a man of action, a decisive politician and military leader; he realized himself after the death of his father, the Norwegian king, precisely in those areas that remain inaccessible to Hamlet. All the characteristics of Fortinbras are directly opposite to the characteristics of Laertes, and we can say that the image of Hamlet is placed between them. Laertes and Fortinbras are normal, ordinary avengers, and the contrast with them makes the reader feel the exceptionality of Hamlet’s behavior, because the tragedy depicts precisely the exceptional, the great, the sublime.

Since the Elizabethan theater was poor in decorations and external effects of theatrical spectacle, the strength of its impact on the viewer depended mainly on the word. Shakespeare is the greatest poet in the history of the English language and its greatest reformer; Shakespeare's word is fresh and succinct, and in Hamlet it is striking stylistic richness of the play. It is mostly written in blank verse, but in a number of scenes the characters speak in prose. Shakespeare uses metaphors especially subtly to create the general atmosphere of tragedy. Critics note the presence of three groups of leitmotifs in the play. Firstly, these are images of illness, an ulcer that wears away a healthy body - the speeches of all the characters contain images of rotting, decomposition, decay, working to create the theme of death. Secondly, images of female debauchery, fornication, fickle Fortune, reinforcing the theme of female infidelity running through the tragedy and at the same time pointing to the main philosophical problem of the tragedy - the contrast between appearance and the true essence of the phenomenon. Thirdly, there are numerous images of weapons and military equipment associated with war and violence - they emphasize the effective side of Hamlet’s character in the tragedy. The entire arsenal of artistic means of the tragedy was used to create its numerous images, to embody the main tragic conflict - the loneliness of a humanistic personality in the desert of a society in which there is no place for justice, reason, and dignity. Hamlet is the first reflective hero in world literature, the first hero experiencing a state of alienation, and the roots of his tragedy were perceived differently in different eras.

For the first time, naive audience interest in Hamlet as a theatrical spectacle gave way to attention to the characters at the turn of the 18th-19th centuries. I.V. Goethe, an ardent admirer of Shakespeare, in his novel Wilhelm Meister (1795) interpreted Hamlet as “a beautiful, noble, highly moral creature, deprived of the power of feeling that makes a hero, he perishes under a burden that he could neither bear nor throw off.” . U I.V. Goethe's Hamlet is a sentimental-elegiac nature, a thinker who cannot handle great deeds.

The romantics explained the inactivity of the first in a series of “superfluous people” (they were later “lost”, “angry”) by the excessiveness of reflection, the disintegration of the unity of thought and will. S. T. Coleridge in “Shakespeare's Lectures” (1811-1812) writes: “Hamlet hesitates due to natural sensitivity and hesitates, held back by reason, which forces him to turn his effective forces to the search for a speculative solution.” As a result, the romantics presented Hamlet as the first literary hero in tune with modern man in his preoccupation with introspection, which means that this image is the prototype of modern man in general.

G. Hegel wrote about Hamlet’s ability - like other most lively Shakespearean characters - to look at himself from the outside, to treat himself objectively, as an artistic character, and to act as an artist.

Don Quixote and Hamlet were the most important "eternal images" for Russian culture of the 19th century. V.G. Belinsky believed that Hamlet's idea consists "in weakness of will, but only as a result of decay, and not by its nature. By nature, Hamlet is a strong man... He is great and strong in his weakness, because a strong-spirited man and in his very fall is higher than a weak man, in his very fall his uprising." V.G. Belinsky and A.I. Herzen saw in Hamlet a helpless but stern judge of his society, a potential revolutionary; I.S. Turgenev and L.N. Tolstoy is a hero rich in intelligence that is of no use to anyone.

Psychologist L.S. Vygotsky, bringing to the fore the final act of the tragedy in his analysis, emphasized Hamlet’s connection with the other world: “Hamlet is a mystic, this determines not only his mental state on the threshold of double existence, two worlds, but also his will in all its manifestations.”

English writers B. Shaw and M. Murray explained Hamlet's slowness by unconscious resistance to the barbaric law of family revenge. Psychoanalyst E. Jones showed that Hamlet is a victim of the Oedipus complex. Marxist criticism saw him as an anti-Machiavellian, a fighter for the ideals of bourgeois humanism. For Catholic K.S. Lewis's Hamlet is a "everyman", an ordinary person, depressed by the idea of ​​original sin. In literary criticism there has been a whole gallery of mutually exclusive Hamlets: an egoist and a pacifist, a misogynist, a brave hero, a melancholic incapable of action, the highest embodiment of the Renaissance ideal and an expression of the crisis of humanistic consciousness - all this is a Shakespearean hero. In the process of comprehending the tragedy, Hamlet, like Don Quixote, broke away from the text of the work and acquired the meaning of a “supertype” (Yu. M. Lotman’s term), that is, it became a socio-psychological generalization of such a wide scope that its right to timeless existence was recognized.

Today in Western Shakespeare studies the focus is not on “Hamlet”, but on other plays of Shakespeare - “Measure for Measure”, “King Lear”, “Macbeth”, “Othello”, also, each in its own way, consonant with modernity, since in each Shakespeare's play poses eternal questions of human existence. And each play contains something that determines the exclusivity of Shakespeare's influence on all subsequent literature. American literary critic H. Bloom defines his author’s position as “disinterest”, “freedom from any ideology”: “He has no theology, no metaphysics, no ethics, and less political theory than modern critics “read” into him. Based on the sonnets it is clear that, unlike his character Falstaff, he had a superego; unlike Hamlet of the final act, he did not cross the boundaries of earthly existence; unlike Rosalind, he did not have the ability to manage his own life at will. But since he invented them, we can assume that he deliberately set certain boundaries for himself. Fortunately, he was not King Lear and refused to go mad, although he could perfectly imagine madness, like everything else. His wisdom is endlessly reproduced in our sages from Goethe to Freud, although Shakespeare himself refused to be considered a sage"; "You cannot limit Shakespeare to the English Renaissance any more than you can limit the Prince of Denmark to his play."

Shakespeare's greatest tragedy was created in 1600-1601. The plot was based on the legend of the Danish ruler. This is a tragic story that tells of the protagonist's revenge for the murder of his father. This work touched upon such important topics as duty and honor, the issue of death and thoughtful discussions about life. The image and characteristics of Hamlet from Shakespeare's tragedy will be revealed throughout the play. Hamlet's multifaceted and ambiguous nature embodies the complexity of a contradictory soul, torn by doubts and the problem of the choice facing him.

Hamlet- Prince of Denmark, heir to the throne.

Image

The prince's life was serene. Love and harmony reigned in the family in which he lived. He was surrounded by friends, ready to support him at any moment. Nearby is the girl he is in love with. He was characterized by hobbies, like all young men of his age: theater, poetry, scientific research. He was full of energy and vitality. The soul was open to everyone. He loved his country and the people living in it. Hamlet's fate was predetermined. He was supposed to become a ruler, taking the throne, but everything changed overnight.

Trouble entered their home. Hamlet's father dies in the prime of his life. Before he has time to recover from one shock, another comes to replace him. A month after his father's death, his mother marries someone else. Hamlet wonders how she could do this. She was for him the ideal woman, and then “not having had time to wear out the shoes” in which she accompanied her husband on his last journey, she gives her heart to another. The third blow was the fact of the murder of his father by his brother Claudius for the sake of the crown and the hand of Hamlet's mother. Because of his mother's betrayal, Hamlet concludes that all women are the same.

O pernicious woman! Scoundrel, smiling scoundrel, damned scoundrel.

There is only betrayal, betrayal and deceit all around. He is disappointed in his mother, his traitorous uncle, and in his despicable love.

How boring, dull and unnecessary everything in the world seems to me! O abomination! This lush garden, bearing only one seed; wild and evil...

Due to the death of his father, Hamlet leaves his studies at Wittenburg University and returns to Elsinore. From that moment on, everything collapses in his life. The ghost of his dead father appears to him and tells him who is responsible for his death, urging him to take revenge. Hamlet is confused. He's on the verge of madness. A bright and consummate humanist found himself in a world around him that was hostile to his ideas. His desire to find the guilty grows into a social duty, leading him to fight for justice. Hamlet hesitates to fight, reproaching himself for inactivity. He is torn by doubts whether he is capable of any action at all.

Vulnerable nature protests against struggle. He is a completely different kind of person. Hurting other people is not his thing, but he was given no choice. He must act, but how? He is not used to wielding a sword, but something needs to be done in order to restore the balance that has been shaken in the world.

The century has been shaken - and the worst thing is that I was born to restore it!

Hamlet understands that by killing Claudius, nothing will change in the world around him. He sets himself an impossible task, to counteract universal evil. This is not a single enemy, not a random crime, but a large enemy society. The scale of evil depresses him, causing disappointment in life and awareness of the insignificance of his own strength.

Character

The character of the main character is multifaceted. He knew how to be different. Hate and love, be rude and polite at the same time. Witty. Masterfully wields a rapier. He is afraid of God's punishment, but can afford to blaspheme on occasion. She loves her mother no matter what. Not arrogant. His authority was his father, whom he remembered with pride. He lives by his thoughts and judgments. Likes to philosophize. I often thought about the meaning of human existence. He had the ability to feel other people's pain and suffering as if it were his own. He was acutely aware of injustice and evil.

(301 words) The medieval legend of Prince Hamlet, revised by Shakespeare, laid the foundations for many fundamentally new problems in literature, filling the tragic world with new characters. The main one is the image of a thinking humanist.

The Prince of Denmark is a largely ambiguous character, an image that embodies all the complex inconsistency of the human soul, torn by doubts and the problem of choice. Thinking and analyzing his every action, Hamlet is another victim of the tragedy of life that is characteristic of many of Shakespeare’s plays. Having its own literary prehistory, the tragedy raises to the surface a whole range of themes, universal and literary.
Hamlet is a revenge tragedy. Shakespeare here turns to the most ancient crime - fratricide, creating the image of Hamlet as an avenger for the death of his father. But the deep, doubtful character hesitates. A highly moral worldview and a primitive thirst for retribution, largely based on the existing order, the conflict of duty and morality become the cause of Hamlet’s torment. The plot of the tragedy is constructed in such a way that the motive of revenge on Claudius slows down and moves into the background, giving way to deeper and more insoluble reasons and contradictions.

Hamlet is a tragedy of personality. The Shakespearean age is the time of the birth of humanist thinkers who dream of fair relations between people, built on universal equality. However, they are powerless to make such a dream come true. “The whole world is a prison!” - the hero repeats the words of another great humanist of his time, Thomas More. Hamlet does not understand the cruel contradictions of the world in which he lives; he is sure that man is the “crown of creation,” but in reality he encounters the opposite. The boundless possibilities of knowledge, the inexhaustible powers of Hamlet’s personality are suppressed in him by the environment of the royal castle, by people living in rough complacency and the ossified atmosphere of medieval traditions. Acutely feeling his foreignness, the discrepancy between the inner world and the outer world, he suffers from loneliness and the fall of his own humanistic ideals. This becomes the cause of the hero’s internal discord, which will later take the name “Hamletism,” and leads the plot of the play to a tragic denouement.

Hamlet faces a hostile world, feeling his inadequacy in the face of evil, becomes a symbol of a tragic humanist, an opponent - a loser, in whom disappointment and awareness of the insignificance of his own powers give rise to an internal conflict that is destructive in its power.

The image of Hamlet in Shakespeare's tragedy is central. He enters into a struggle with reality, which requires the hero to think about existence. Philosophical thoughts become central to the work.

Character

The main character of the tragedy is an intelligent person. This is manifested not only in the fact that he studied at the university, but also in the fact that he constantly strives for the truth. He does not consider himself better than everyone else, because he knows that he has room to strive. Hamlet is far from being a smug and far from arrogant person.

Hamlet is a man of honor. He will never be able to forgive lies and close his eyes to the deception of loved ones. This speaks of the inflexibility of the protagonist’s character. The clash between the character and the outside world reveals the main conflict of the work: man and society. Hamlet cannot live in such a contradictory world in which evil and cruelty reign. The image of the central character is determined by the social picture, Hamlet is the birth of an era.

The external conflict of the tragedy develops into an internal one. Hamlet feels his loneliness; he is not like the people around him. This becomes the reason for constant reflection about one’s own presence in the world.

Philosophical content

Hamlet is a very smart and educated person. In his mouth, the author puts serious thoughts about the essence of society and the world as a whole. In Shakespeare's tragedy there are quite a few monologues of Hamlet, among which the well-known reflections stand out: “To be or not to be?

" All monologues reveal the essence of the image, its internal contradictions.

Hamlet is a man of a new era, expressing the philosophical worldview of the Renaissance. The hero of Shakespeare's tragedy is a philosophical category, an “eternal image” that is interesting for its psychological traits.

Ambiguity of the image

Analysis of the image of Hamlet allows us to say that the hero is ambiguous. Internally he is very contradictory. The search for truth and truth lead to deep thoughts that force Hamlet to make a choice. The desire for revenge constantly fades into the background; the hero’s reasoning, which is the central link in the tragedy, comes to the fore.

External circumstances, which include the death of his father, the betrayal of his uncle and mother, become the reason for the destruction of all Hamlet’s moral principles. The reality with which the main character entered into a struggle destroys all ideals: love, friendship, and honor. However, Hamlet wants to resist evil, so he decides to avenge his father's death. Hamlet's revenge is not a sign of cruelty, it is a desire for justice. One small detail is important: the hero does not want to kill his father’s killer when he is praying. All this speaks of the purity of the hero’s intentions. And the fact that Hamlet wants to take revenge contradicts his worldview and view of his own life. This reveals all the inconsistency of the image, which carries both individual traits and traits of the era.

W. Shakespeare is the most famous writer in England. He was a great poet and playwright and wrote in his works about eternal problems that concern people: life and death, love, loyalty and betrayal. Therefore, today the works of Shakespeare, especially his tragedies, are popular, although he died almost 400 years ago.

"Hamlet, Prince of Denmark" is the most significant of the tragedies

W. Shakespeare. He wrote a tragedy about a medieval prince, but it reflected what was happening in England in his time. But the meaning of “Hamlet” is not in this, but in the problems raised there, which do not depend on time.

Hamlet is a single center in which all lines of tragic action converge. This is a hero who is remembered. His words make you empathize with him, think with him, argue and object, or agree with him. At the same time, Hamlet is a person who thinks and reasons, and does not perform actions. He stands out among the other heroes of the tragedy: it is to him, and not to King Claudius, that the guards speak through their friend Horatio about the appearance of the Phantom. He alone mourns his deceased father.

Only the story of the Ghost of the Father motivates the philosopher prince to action. And Hamlet draws conclusions from events common to the Middle Ages - the murder of a king by a rival, the remarriage of his mother, who “had not yet worn out the shoes in which she followed the coffin,” when “even the salt of her dishonest tears had not disappeared from her reddened eyelids.” The mother’s behavior is quite understandable, because for a woman, moreover, the wife of a murdered king, there are only two roads - a monastery or marriage - a sign of female betrayal. The fact that the murder was committed by an uncle, a “smiling scoundrel,” is a sign of the rotting of the whole world, in which the foundations have been shaken - family relationships, family ties.

Hamlet's tragedy is so great because he doesn't just look and analyze. He feels, passes all the facts through his soul, takes them to heart. Even the closest relatives cannot be trusted, and Hamlet transfers the color of mourning to everything that surrounds him:

How boring, dull and unnecessary

It seems to me that everything in the world!

O abomination! This lush garden, fruitful

Just one seed; wild and evil

It dominates.

But what’s worse is that he, a man who is used to wielding a pen rather than a sword, needs to do something to restore balance in the world:

The century has been shaken - and worst of all,

That I was born to restore it!

The only available way that will work against court scoundrels and liars is lies and hypocrisy. Hamlet, “a proud mind,” “an emboss of grace, a mirror of taste, an exemplary example,” as his beloved Ophelia says about Hamlet, turns their own weapons against them. He poses as a madman, which the courtiers believe. Hamlet's speeches are contradictory, especially in the eyes of the surrounding courtiers, who are accustomed to believing what the king says. Under the guise of crazy delirium, Hamlet says what he thinks, because this is the only way to deceive hypocrites who do not know how to tell the truth. This is especially clearly seen in the scene of Hamlet’s conversation with the courtiers Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.

The only way out for Hamlet is to kill Claudius, because his actions are the root of all troubles, he drags everyone around him into this (Polonius, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, even Ophelia).

Hamlet struggles with himself. It is impossible for him to fight against evil by killing, and he hesitates, although there is no other way. As a result, he goes against his inner principles and dies at the hands of Laertes. But with the death of Hamlet, old Elsinore, the “lush garden” where only evil and betrayal grow, also perishes. The arrival of the Norwegian Fortinbras promises changes to the Danish kingdom. Hamlet's death at the end of the tragedy, it seems to me, is necessary. This is retribution for the sin of murder, for the evil caused to the world and people (Ophelia, mother), for a crime against oneself. The death of the Prince of Denmark is a way out of the vicious circle of evil and murder. Denmark has hope for a bright future.

Hamlet is one of the eternal images of world culture. Associated with it is the concept of “Hamletism,” internal contradictions that torment a person before making a difficult decision. In his tragedy, Shakespeare showed the struggle between evil and good, darkness and light within a person. This tragedy affects many of us, and when making difficult decisions, we must remember the fate of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark.