An Elizabethan spectator of Shakespeare’s Hamlet.

The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark is written by William Shakespearebetween 1599 and 1602. it is setet in the Kingdom of Denmark, the play dramatizes the revengePrince Hamlet exacts on his uncle Claudius for murdering King Hamlet, Claudius's brother and Prince Hamlet's father, and then succeeding to the throne and taking as his wifeGertrude, the old king's widow and Prince Hamlet's mother. Hamlet is Shakespeare's longest play and among the most powerful and influential tragedies in English.

For me as a spectator Hamlet is often perceived as a philosophical character, expounding ideas that are now described as relativist, existentialist, and sceptical. He expresses a subjectivistic idea when he says to Rosencrantz: "there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so". The idea that nothing is real except in the mind of the individual finds its roots in the Greek Sophists. Nothing can be perceived except through the senses and since all individuals sense, and therefore perceive, things differently there is no absolute truth, only relative truth, "to be, or not to be" speech, where Hamlet is thought by some to use "being" to allude to life and action, and "not being" to death and inaction.

The expectations that a Thomas Kyd fan might have brought to Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Thomas Kyd was an English dramatist, the author of The Spanish Tragedy, and one of the most important figures in the development of Elizabethan drama. The Spanish Tragedie was probably written in the mid to late 1580s. The Spanish Tragedie, Containing the lamentable end of Don Horatio, and Bel-imperia: with the pittifull death of olde Hieronimo. However, the play was usually known simply as "Hieronimo", after the protagonist. It was arguably the most popular play of the "Age of Shakespeare" and set new standards in effective plot construction and character development.

The most important influence on the play is the work of the Roman playwright, Lucius Annaeus Seneca. Seneca was the Roman playwright and his plays provided the Elizabethan playwrights with ideas that they incorporated into their own works.

• First of all, Seneca was the principal writer of revenge plays of classic times. The lust for revenge is the central motivating force in most of Seneca’s plays, including the two best-known ones, Agamemnon and Thyestes. By writing a play with two lines of action driven by revenge (Andrea’s, Hieronimo’s, and, if you count Bel-Imperia, a third), Kyd is clearly working from a Senecan model.
• The framing device of a ghost in the underworld which has a direct interest in the deeds of living people.
• The use of direct quotations from Seneca and the use of Senecan stylistic devices, especially stichomythia (see the exchange between Bel-Imperia and Balthazar.
• The recreation of the emotional and political climate of a Senecan play. Eugene Hill has commented that a Senecan play conveys "the texture of evil in a hopelessly corrupt polity".
  
• Don Andrea seeks revenge. He was killed in battle, went to the underworld and was initially denied admittance because he had not had a proper funeral. That was performed by Horatio, Hieronimo’s son:
  

"Then was the ferryman of hell content
To pass me over the slimy strond" (1.1.27-28, p.6)

He goes to Pluto and his "doom" (fate) is pronounced by Proserpine, Pluto’s consort. Her order is that he should be led by Revenge to view the death of Balthazar.

• Bel-Imperia also seeks vengeance. After learning from Horatio the circumstances of Don Andrea’s death, she, alone on the stage, thinks about her growing love for Horatio. Then she asks "But how can love find harbour in my breast,/Till I revenge the death of my beloved?" (1.4.64-65, p.24)
  

• The third revenge seekers are Balthazar and Lorenzo, who work together to exact vengeance from Horatio for winning Bel-Imperia’s love. Balthazar says that he will try to cause Horatio’s fall—"But in his fall I’ll tempt the destinies/And either lose my life, or win my love"—and Lorenzo answers "Let’s go, my lord, your staying stays revenge" (2.2.132-136, p.38)
  

• Finally, of course, there is Hieronimo, who seeks revenge for the murder of his son Horatio. After considering the Christian injunction against personal vengeance, Hieronimo rejects it and chooses instead to avenge Horatio’s death himself. Even if he is to die in carrying out his revenge, he says, he will still seek vengeance on Horatio’s murderers:
  

If destiny deny thee life, Hieronimo,
Yet shalt thou be assured of a tomb;
If neither, yet let this thy comfort be,
Heaven covereth him that hath no burial.
And to conclude, I will revenge his death! (3.13.16-20, p 86).

As I said earlier, though, Kyd’s story is not just the tale of single-minded quests for revenge; he complicates the issue in the story of Hieronimo. Hieronimo’s first reaction, in fact, is to seek justice, not revenge.

• He enters at the beginning of Act 3, grieving for his dead son. He calls on heaven to being about the punishment of those who have killed Horatio and cannot conceive of such a vile deed going unpunished:
  

O sacred heavens! If this unhallowed deed,
If this inhuman and barbarous attempt,
If this incomparable murder thus
Of mine, but now no more my son,
Shall unrevealed and unrevenged pass,
How should we term your dealings to be just,
If you unjustly deal with those that in your justice trust? (3.1.5-11, pp. 52-53).

• Later, as he prepares to conduct the trial of Pedringano, he is still questioning why heaven has not given him justice:
  

Thus must we toil in other men’s extremes,
That know not how to remedy our own;
And do them justice, when unjustly we,
For all our wrongs, no compass can redress.
But shall I never live to see the day
That I may come, by justice of the heavens,
To know the cause that may my cares allay [To experience the circumstances that will ease my emotional distress] (3.6.1-6, p.64)

     He hears no answer from heaven, however. His sighs, he says, mount to heaven and

Beat the windows of the brightest heavens
Soliciting for justice and revenge;
But they [justice and revenge] are placed in those empyreal heights,
Where, counter-mured with walls of diamond,
I find the place impregnable. . . . (3.7.13-17, p. 70)

• Then he makes repeated efforts to find justice from the king (See 3.12.1-78, but especially ll. 63-66, p.83).
• It is the failure to find justice either through divine means or through the human legal system that finally convinces Hieronimo to seek personal vengeance. Look again at Act 3, Scene 13, p. 85. Note his careful consideration of the Christian prohibition against personal revenge and his reasons for rejecting it.
  

Elizabethans were well aware of the Church’s stand on personal revenge and there are numerous instances in which individuals were punished by the legal system for taking the law into their own hands. Yet there was understanding, too, that in some instances the law provided no justice; this was especially true in those cases in which the evildoer was immune to punishment because of his position in society.