Term Paper on "Hamlet and the Renaissance"

Term Paper 3 pages (1029 words) Sources: 3 Style: MLA

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Hamlet & the Renaissance

If the Italians rediscovered Humanity trough the Greek and Roman antiquity, the English rediscovered it through the Italians, by the time the Italian Renaissance was already going through its third century.

Renaissance, rinascimento, rebirth, these are all the same name for an epoch where humanity rediscovered itself by going two millennia back to its ancestors, the classic Greeks and Romans. Arts and science changed dramatically and unprecedented discoveries were made starting by the end of the fourteenth century. Machiavelli, Pico della Mirandolla, Michelangelo, Leonardo Da Vinci, Galileo and Columbus, Donatello are just a few names in a long list of Genius Men of the Renaissance era.

One of the most famous plays of all times, Hamlet, by Shakespeare, probably written around 1601, has as protagonist a Renaissance Man. It may be arguable that there was an English Renaissance, but prince Hamlet was undoubtedly a man of Renaissance education. He studied philosophy, at the University of Wittenberg, a name that brings us to Martin Luther, the reformer, the father of Protestantism.

The voice of the past, belonging to his father's ghost, a symbol of the Dark Ages, makes itself heard for a son educated in the spirit of humanism. There are also other characters in this play that ponder the matter of death, suicide, Scripture, things that were unquestionable in the Dark Ages, but very much debatable in the Renaissance. Two clowns are arguing in the churchyard: "First Clown: How can that be, unless she drowned herself in her own defense? Second Clown: Why 'tis found so. First Clown: It must be "se ofendendo"; it cannot be else. For here lies the point: if I drown myself wittingly, it argues an act: and an act has three branches: it is, to act, to do to perform: argal she drowned herself wittingly."..."Second Clown: But is this law? First Clown: Ay, marry, is't; crowner's quest law."(Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act V, Scene I, (http://www.online-literature.com/shakespeare/hamlet/20/)

Hamlet himself is pondering the subject of death, in his famous soliloquy: " to be, or not to be..." His thoughts go as far as remembering two of the classic genius names: Alexander and Caesar. He even seems to go beyond the philosophy of Renaissance, when asking about the person who will be buried in the grave the Clowns are digging.

Imperious Caesar, dead and turn'd to clay / Might stop a hole to keep the wind away: O, that that earth, which kept the world in awe, / Should patch a wall to expel the winter flaw." (Shakespeare, hamlet, Act V, Scene I, (http://www.online-literature.com/shakespeare/hamlet/20/).

Hamlet, more than all the other figures in the Shakespearean play, starts his young adult life like a true man of the Renaissance: brilliant, strongly believing in the human values and in the power of free will. but, unfortunately, he has to act according to the cruel reality and that is not according to the ideal humanistic picture. His struggle between acting in the sense of reason and wisdom on one hand and the sense of justice in the name of his father, the former king… READ MORE

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