Title: What Incident Serves to Initiate the Conflict in "Hamlet"? | Pen and the Pad
Headings: What Incident Serves to Initiate the Conflict in "Hamlet"?
What Incident Serves to Initiate the Conflict in "Hamlet"?
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Content: What Incident Serves to Initiate the Conflict in "Hamlet"? | Pen and the Pad
What Incident Serves to Initiate the Conflict in "Hamlet"? Jennifer Spirko Updated April 17, 2017
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“Hamlet” has become the prime test of an actor’s skills and of a reader’s perceptiveness. William Shakespeare’s longest play, “Hamlet” is also his most complex, yet much of its action and angst stems from a single incident that has happened before the play begins: the murder of Hamlet’s father. The play revolves around a web of conflicts, including person against person, person against environment and person against himself. Hamlet-Claudius
The most obvious conflict is between Hamlet and his uncle Claudius, who inherited the throne; only a month after the death of Hamlet’s father, Claudius married Queen Gertrude, Hamlet’s mother and his sister-in-law. It is clear from his very first scene that Hamlet resents the suddenness of the marriage. When the ghost of his father tells Hamlet that Claudius murdered him, this resentment coalesces into a promise of revenge.