1. HAMLET DELAY IN REVENGE
NAME :- SHEIKH NUSRATJAHA R.
SEM:- 1
ROLL NO. :- 32
ENROLLMENT NO. :- 2069108420180047
EMAIL ID :- nususheikh1@gmail.com
SUBJECT :- PAPER NO:- 1 THE RENAISSANCE LITERATURE
BATCH :- 2017-2019
SUBMITTED TO :- DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH , MAHARAJA KRISHNAKUMARSINHJI ,
BHAVNAGAR
3. Definition
• Shakespearian scholar Ashley Thorndike defines a revenge play as this:
• "A tragedy whose leading motive is revenge and whose main action deals
with the progress of this revenge, leading to the death of the murderers and
often to the death of the avenger himself" (125).
4. Earliest precursor
Roman Playwright
• Playwright Lucius Seneca (4BC — 65AD)
• The Renaissance: Latin plays were popular at English universities during the
latter half of the sixteenth century
5. Typical features
Roman revenge plays included:
• Graphic violence
• Blood revenge for murder
• Characters tricked into becoming accomplices in the act of revenge
• Ghosts of the dead clamor for revenge
6. Chain of events
• Exposition (usually by the ghost)
• Anticipation (detailed planning)
• Confrontation (of the avenger and the intended victim)
• Partial Execution (or temporary thwarting of the plan)
• Completion (of the act of vengeance)
7. Precursors to Hamlet
• Thyestes by Lucius Seneca
• Gorboducby Thomas Norton and Thomas Sackville
• The Spanish Tragedy by Thomas Kyd
• Titus Andronicus by William Shakespeare
8. Early Modern revenge plays featured:
• A hesitating revenger
• A villain
• Complex plotting
• Murderers
• Characters of noble birth
• A play within a play
• A ghost
• A suffering heroine
• Madness, real and feigned
• Lust
• Physical violence, such as torture and poisoning
9. Likely plot source
• "Amleth"
• HistoricaeDanicae: Latin history of Denmark
• Plot closely matches that of Hamlet
• King murdered by brother (Feng), marries sister in law, Gerutha
• Prince Amleth feigns madness; tested by "fair woman"
• Kills and eavesdropping friend of Feng's
• Sent to Britain with two companions who carry a letter ordering his execution
• He alters the letter and returns to Denmark
• He kills Feng and is accepted as the rightful ruler
10. Shakespeare's genius
• Thorndike writes, "We may conclude that in building on an old story and
reconstructing an old
• play [the original Hamlet, possibly authored by Thomas Kyd], Shakespeare used the
old dramatic
• motives because they were still popular on the stage and because they stirred him as
they did other poets to imaginative expression. He developed these motives
without fundamental change but with a power of expression and
characterization which they tried in vain to attain [emphasis mine]" (206).
11. Leaning on his forefathers
• "Shakespeare's Hamlet is final, not only in the sense that he is made for all
time, but also in the sense that he is the complete and final representative of
a type that grew up among peculiar stage conventions and was developed by
poets of no mean imaginative power. The final Hamlet is the result of a
growth which other men than Shakespeare planted and which others
fostered" (Thorndike 217).
