of foul play has been committed. This sets up for the major theme in the play which is of course revenge. The ghost appears to talk to Hamlet. It is quite obvious that the play had a gruesome, violent death and the sexual aspect of the play was clearly introduced when Claudius married Hamlet s mother Gertrude. The ghost tells Hamlet that he has been given the role of the person who will take revenge upon Claudius. Hamlet must now think of how to take revenge on Claudius, although he doesn t know what to do about it. He ponders his thoughts for a long period of time, expecting to do the deed immediately, but instead he drags it on until the end of the play. Although what was important to note was that all tragic heroes of plays at that time delayed their actual revenge until the end of the play. In most revenge plays, the revenger was often anonymous and well disguised, stalking the enemy about to be killed, but Hamlet started a battle of wits with Claudius by acting mad and calling it his "antic disposition", although the whole thing was a ploy to get closer to Claudius to be able to avenge his father s death more easily. The tactic was a disadvantage in that it drew all attention upon himself. More importantly though it was an advantage that his "antic disposition", isolated him from the rest of the court because of the people not paying attention to what he thought or did because of his craziness.important part of all revenge plays is that after the revenge is finally decided upon, the tragic hero delays the actual revenge until the end of the play. Hamlet s delay of killing Claudius takes on three distinct stages. Firstly he had to prove that the ghost was actually telling the truth, and he did this by staging the play "The Mousetrap" at court. When Claudius stormed out in rage, Hamlet knew that he was guilty. The second stage was when Hamlet could have killed Claudius while he was confessing to god. If Hamlet had done it here then Claudius would have gone to heaven because he confessed while Hamlet s father was in purgatory because he did not get the opportunity to confess. So Hamlet therefore decided not to murder Claudius at this point in the play. The third delay was the fact that he got side tracked. He accidentally killed Polonius which created a whole new problem with the fact that Laertes now wanted Hamlet dead. After he commit this murder he was also sent off and unable to see the king for another few weeks until he could finally do the job. "What makes Hamlet stand out from many other revenge plays of the period is not that it rejects the conventions of its genre but that it both enacts and analyses them." It can be easily understood that Hamlet very closely follows the regular conventions for all Elizabethan tragedies.Hamlet is faced with the fact that he has to avenge the murder of his father and since there is no fair justice available, he must take the law into his own hands. The ghost of his father appears to guide Hamlet to Claudius and inform Hamlet of the evil that Claudius has committed. Then Hamlet constantly delays his revenge and always finds a way to put it off until he finally does it in Act V, Scene 2. Hamlet at the same time continues to keep a close relationship with the audience with his seven main soliloquies including the famous, "To be, or not to be ..." (Act 3 Scene 1). The play also consists of a mad scene where Ophelia has gone mad because her father Polonius had been killed and because Hamlet was sent off to England. The sexual aspect of the play was brought in when Claudius married Gertrude after he had dreadfully killed Old Hamlet and taken his throne. Hamlet also follows almost every aspect of Thomas Kyd s formula for a revenge tragedy. The only point that can be argued is that the accomplices on both sides were not killed because at the end of the play, Horatio was the only one to survive, although if it wasn t for Hamlet, Horatio would have commit suicide when he said, "I am more an antique Roman than a Dane. Here s some liquor left. "(Act V Scene 2, 346-347). If Horatio had killed himself, then Hamlet would have followed the Kydian formula as well as the regular conventions for Elizabethan revenge tragedy. Hamlet is definitely a great example of a typical revenge tragedy of the Elizabethan theater era. It followed every convention required to classify it as a revenge play quite perfectly. Hamlet is definitely one of the greatest revenge stories ever written and it was all influenced first by Sophocles, Euripides and other Greeks, and then more importantly by Seneca. Hamlet as well as The Spanish Tragedy tackled and conquered all areas that were required for the consummation of a grea...
