Natalia BELYAEVA

Shakespeare. "Hamlet": problems of the hero and the genre

Hamlet is the most difficult of all Shakespeare's tragedies to interpret because of the extreme complexity of its concept. Not a single work of world literature has caused so many conflicting explanations. Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, learns that his father did not die of natural causes, but was treacherously killed by Claudius, who married the widow of the deceased and inherited his throne. Hamlet vows to devote his whole life to the cause of revenge for his father - and instead, for four acts, he reflects, reproaches himself and others, philosophizes, without taking anything decisive, until at the end of the fifth act he finally kills the villain purely impulsively, when he finds out that he poisoned him. What is the reason for such passivity and apparent lack of will of Hamlet? Critics saw it in the natural gentleness of Hamlet's soul, in his excessive "intellectualism", which allegedly kills the ability to act, in his Christian meekness and inclination to forgiveness. All these explanations contradict the clearest indications in the text of the tragedy. By nature, Hamlet is not at all weak-willed and passive: he boldly rushes after the spirit of his father, without hesitation, kills Polonius, who hid behind a carpet, shows extraordinary resourcefulness and courage during the voyage to England. The point is not so much in the nature of Hamlet, but in the special position in which he finds himself.

From a student at the University of Wittenberg, all gone to science and reflection, kept away from court life, Hamlet suddenly opens up aspects of life that he had never "dreamed of" before. A veil is lifted from his eyes. Even before he was convinced of the villainous murder of his father, he discovers the horror of the inconstancy of his mother, who remarried, "before having time to wear out the shoes" in which she buried her first husband, the horror of the incredible falsehood and depravity of the entire Danish court (Polonius, Guildenstern and Rosencrantz , Osric and others). In the light of his mother's moral weakness, it also becomes clear to him the moral impotence of Ophelia, who, with all her spiritual purity and love for Hamlet, is not able to understand him and help him, because she believes in everything and obeys the pitiful intriguer - her father.

All this is generalized by Hamlet into a picture of the corruption of the world, which seems to him "a garden overgrown with weeds." He says: "The whole world is a prison, with many locks, dungeons and dungeons, and Denmark is one of the worst." Hamlet understands that the point is not in the very fact of his father's murder, but in the fact that this murder could be carried out, go unpunished and bear fruit to the killer only thanks to the indifference, connivance and servility of all those around him. Thus, the whole court and all of Denmark are participants in this murder, and Hamlet would have to take up arms against the whole world in order to take revenge. On the other hand, Hamlet understands that he was not the only one who suffered from the evil poured around him. In the monologue "To be or not to be?" he lists the scourges tormenting humanity: "... the whip and mockery of the age, the oppression of the strong, the mockery of the proud, the pain of contemptible love, the judges of untruth, the arrogance of the authorities and the insults inflicted on meek merit." If Hamlet were an egoist pursuing exclusively personal goals, he would quickly deal with Claudius and regain the throne. But he is a thinker and a humanist, concerned about the common good and feeling himself responsible for everyone. Hamlet therefore must fight against the untruths of the whole world, speaking in defense of all the oppressed. This is the meaning of his exclamation (at the end of the first act):

The century was shaken; and worst of all
That I was born to restore it!

But such a task, according to Hamlet, is unbearable even for the most powerful person, and therefore Hamlet retreats before it, going into his thoughts and plunging into the depths of his despair. However, showing the inevitability of such a position of Hamlet and his deep reasons, Shakespeare by no means justifies his inactivity and considers it a painful phenomenon. This is precisely the spiritual tragedy of Hamlet (what was called "Hamletism" by the critics of the 19th century).

Shakespeare very clearly expressed his attitude to Hamlet's experiences by the fact that Hamlet himself laments his state of mind and reproaches himself for inaction. He sets himself as an example of the young Fortinbras, who "because of a blade of grass, when honor is hurt," leads twenty thousand people to a mortal battle, or an actor who, while reading a monologue about Hecuba, was so imbued with "fictitious passion" that "the whole became pale "while he, Hamlet, like a coward, "takes away the soul with words." Hamlet's thought expanded so much that it made direct action impossible, since the object of Hamlet's aspirations became elusive. This is the root of Hamlet's skepticism and his visible pessimism. But at the same time, such a position of Hamlet unusually sharpens his thoughts, making him a sharp-sighted and impartial judge of life. The expansion and deepening of the knowledge of reality and the essence of human relations becomes, as it were, Hamlet's life's work. He unmasks all the liars and hypocrites he meets, exposes all old prejudices. Often Hamlet's utterances are full of bitter sarcasm and, as it may seem, gloomy misanthropy; for example, when he says to Ophelia: “If you are virtuous and beautiful, your virtue should not allow conversations with your beauty ... Go to a monastery: why do you produce sinners?”, Or when he declares to Polonius: “If you take everyone according to their deserts then who will escape the whip?" However, the very passion and hyperbolism of his expressions testify to the ardor of his heart, suffering and sympathetic. Hamlet, as shown by his relationship to Horatio, is capable of deep and faithful friendship; he passionately loved Ophelia, and the impulse with which he rushes to her coffin is deeply sincere; he loves his mother, and in a nightly conversation, when he torments her, traits of touching filial tenderness slip through him; he is genuinely delicate (before the fatal rapier match) with Laertes, of whom he frankly asks for forgiveness for his recent harshness; his last words before his death are a greeting to Fortinbras, to whom he bequeaths the throne for the good of his homeland. It is especially characteristic that, taking care of his good name, he instructs Horatio to tell everyone the truth about him. Thanks to this, while expressing thoughts of exceptional depth, Hamlet is not a philosophical symbol, not a mouthpiece for the ideas of Shakespeare himself or his era, but a specific person whose words, expressing his deep personal feelings, acquire special persuasiveness through this.

What features of the revenge tragedy genre can be found in Hamlet? How and why does this play transcend this genre?

Hamlet's revenge is not decided by a simple blow of a dagger. Even its practical implementation encounters serious obstacles. Claudius is heavily guarded and cannot be approached. But the external obstacle is less significant than the moral and political task facing the hero. To carry out revenge, he must commit murder, that is, the same crime that lies on the soul of Claudius. Hamlet's revenge cannot be a secret murder, it must become a public punishment for the criminal. To do this, it is necessary to make it obvious to everyone that Claudius is a vile murderer.

Hamlet has a second task - to convince the mother that she committed a serious moral violation by entering into an incestuous marriage. Hamlet's revenge must be not only a personal, but also a state act, and he is aware of this. Such is the outer side of the dramatic conflict.

Hamlet has his own ethics of revenge. He wants Claudius to know what punishment awaits him for. For Hamlet, true revenge is not physical murder. He seeks to arouse in Claudius the consciousness of his guilt. All the hero's actions are devoted to this goal, up to the "mousetrap" scene. Hamlet strives to make Claudius imbued with the consciousness of his crime, he wants to punish the enemy first with internal torments, pangs of conscience, and only then strike a blow so that he knows that he is punished not only by Hamlet, but by the moral law, universal justice.

Having struck down Polonius, who was hiding behind a curtain, with his sword, Hamlet says:

As for him
Then I mourn; but heaven said
They punished me and me him,
So that I become their scourge and servant.

In what seems to be an accident, Hamlet sees the manifestation of a higher will. Heaven has entrusted him with the mission to be the scourge and the executor of their destiny. This is how Hamlet looks at the matter of revenge.

A variety of tonality of tragedies has long been noticed, a mixture of the tragic with the comic in them. Usually in Shakespeare, the carriers of the comic are low-ranking characters and jesters. There is no such jester in Hamlet. True, there are third-rate comic figures of Osric and the second nobleman at the beginning of the second scene of the fifth act. The comical Polonius. They are all ridiculed and laughable themselves. Serious and funny interspersed in "Hamlet", and sometimes merge. When Hamlet describes to the king that all people are food for worms, the joke is at the same time a threat to the enemy in the struggle that takes place between them. Shakespeare constructs the action in such a way that the tragic tension is replaced by calm and mocking scenes. The fact that the serious is interspersed with the funny, the tragic with the comic, the sublime with the everyday and the base, creates the impression of a genuine vitality of the action of his plays.

Mixing the serious with the funny, the tragic with the comic is a long-noted feature of Shakespeare's dramaturgy. In Hamlet, you can see this principle in action. Suffice it to recall at least the beginning of the scene in the cemetery. Comic figures of gravediggers appear before the audience; both roles are played by jesters, but even here the clowning is different. The first gravedigger belongs to the witty jesters, who know how to amuse the audience with clever remarks, the second jester is one of those comic characters who serve as the subject of ridicule. The first gravedigger shows before our eyes that this simpleton is easily fooled.

Before the final catastrophe, Shakespeare again introduces a comic episode: Hamlet makes fun of Osric's excessive court gloss. But in a few minutes there will be a catastrophe in which the entire royal family will die!

How relevant is the content of the play today?

Hamlet's monologues evoke in readers and viewers the impression of the universal significance of everything that happens in the tragedy.

"Hamlet" is a tragedy, the deepest meaning of which lies in the awareness of evil, in the desire to comprehend its roots, to understand different forms its manifestations and find means of combating it. The artist created the image of a hero, shocked to the core by the discovery of evil. The pathos of tragedy is indignation against the omnipotence of evil.

Love, friendship, marriage, relations between children and parents, external war and rebellion within the country - such is the range of topics directly addressed in the play. And next to them are the philosophical and psychological problems over which Hamlet's thought struggles: the meaning of life and the purpose of man, death and immortality, spiritual strength and weakness, vice and crime, the right to revenge and murder.

The content of the tragedy has eternal value and will always be relevant, regardless of time and place. The play poses eternal questions that have always worried and worried all of humanity: how to fight evil, by what means and is it possible to defeat it? Is it worth living at all if life is full of evil and it is impossible to defeat it? What is true in life and what is false? How can true feelings be distinguished from false ones? Can love be eternal? What is the meaning of human life?

“That strange world in which he lives is, after all, our world. He is the gloomy one that we can all become under a certain set of circumstances ... He embodies the dissatisfaction of the soul with life, where there is no harmony it needs.
Victor Hugo
creation. Hamlet (1600-1601) is one of the most striking examples of world drama. Ivan Franko emphasized that this one is rightfully considered the most brilliant work of Shakespeare. It should be noted that, as a rule, he borrowed plots for his plays from other authors. The tragedy in question was no exception. The source of the story was a legend first recorded by the Danish chronicler of the 12th century, Saxo Grammatik. It tells about the young prince Amlet, who lived in pagan times in Jutland (Denmark). His father, together with his younger brother, ruled the country. Deciding to completely seize power, Amlet's uncle kills the king and marries his widow. The prince yearns to avenge his father's death and, in order to keep his enemies on guard, pretends to be insane. He manages to deal with the murderer and the courtiers who betrayed his father. He rules Jutland happily for a long time, but fate does not give him the opportunity to die a natural death: Amlet dies on the battlefield at the hands of his other uncle.

This chronicle legend was reworked in his Tragic Stories (1876) by the French Francois de Belfort. And an unknown English playwright wrote the play "Hamlet", which was in London in the 80s. 16th century Shakespeare's tragedy was created on the basis of these sources. Plot. The events of the play take place in the city of Elsinore, in the residence of the Danish kings. A Ghost appears on the territory of the royal castle, "just like the deceased king was." Prince Hamlet, the son of the recently deceased ruler, learns about this news. He meets with the Ghost, and he tells him about the terrible events:

... Listen, Hamlet:
There is a rumor that I, having fallen asleep in the garden,
Stung by a snake; so ear denmark
A fake fable about my demise
Deceived; but know that my son is worthy:
The serpent that struck your father

Put on his crown. So the prince learns that his father killed him native uncle, who soon after the funeral married his mother. The ghost asks for revenge for the crime. Hamlet, struck by what happened, decides to make sure of the authenticity of what he heard at all costs. In order not to arouse suspicion among the newly-minted king and his retinue, he pretends to be insane.

At this time, a traveling theater comes to the castle. Hamlet asks the actors to act out a murder scene based on the events told by the Ghost. He assumes that during the performance, Claudius will somehow definitely give himself away. Hamlet is tormented by the question: what to do in this difficult situation, whether he has the right to take the life of this person:

To be not to be is the question;
What is nobler in spirit - to submit
Slings and arrows of a furious fate
Or, taking up arms against the sea of ​​troubles, slay them
Confrontation? Die, sleep
But only; and say you end up sleeping
Longing and a thousand natural torments,
Legacy of the flesh - how such a denouement
Don't crave? Die, sleep. - Fall asleep!
And dream, maybe? That's the difficulty;
What dreams will dream in a death dream,
When we drop this mortal noise
That's what brings us down; that's where the reason

The text of the tragedy "Hamlet" is given in the translation of Mikhail Lozinsky.

That calamities are so enduring; Who would take down the whips and mockery of the century, The oppression of the strong, the mockery of the proud, The pain of contemptible love, the judges of falsehood, The arrogance of the authorities and the insults Inflicted by meek merit, If he himself could give himself a calculation With a simple dagger? Who would trudge with a burden, To groan and sweat under a tedious life, Whenever the fear of something after death, An unknown land from which there is no return to Earthly wanderers, would not embarrass the will, Inspiring us to endure our hardships And not rush to others, from us hidden? Thus thought makes us cowards, And thus the natural color of determination Weakens under the veneer of thought, pale, And undertakings, rising powerfully, Turning their course aside, Lose the name of action. But be quiet! ? - In your prayers, nymph, May my sins be remembered.

The king carefully watches the play and, unable to withstand the test of the “mousetrap” prepared for him, leaves immediately after the murder scene. Hamlet understands that this fact proves the guilt of Claudius. In desperation, he reproaches his mother for having offended the honor of the late king by marrying a murderer. Fearing Hamlet's actions, Claudius sends him to England. There he sends a letter with an order to kill his nephew. The prince still manages to escape and return to his homeland. But an insidious relative brings him a cup of poisoned wine. Dying, Hamlet manages to mortally wound the king. The Danish throne goes to the Norwegian prince Fortinbras. Why did Hamlet think so long and painfully over the question: to avenge or not to avenge the death of his father? What stopped him, a man who lived in the Middle Ages, when blood feud was considered commonplace?

Nor is Hamlet an inactive person. Is it possible to call spiritual quests inaction? After all, thought is also a form of human activity, and Hamlet, as we know, is endowed with this ability to a particularly large extent. However, we do not want to say by this that Hamlet's activity occurs only in the intellectual sphere. It operates continuously. Each of his encounters with other persons, with the exception of Horatio, is a duel of views and feelings.
Finally, Hamlet acts in the most direct sense of the word. One can only wonder that he deserved the fame of a man incapable of action. After all, before our eyes, he kills Polonius, sends Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to certain death, defeats Laertes in a duel and finishes off Claudius. Not to mention that indirectly Hamlet is responsible for the madness and death of Ophelia. Is it possible, after all this, to consider that Hamlet does nothing and throughout the whole tragedy only indulges in reflections?

Although we see that Hamlet committed more murders than his enemy Claudius, nevertheless, as a rule, no one notices and does not take into account. We ourselves are more interested and excited about what Hamlet thinks than what he does, and therefore we do not notice the active character of the hero. Shakespeare's skill was manifested in that he directed our attention not so much to external events as to the emotional experiences of the hero, and they are full of tragedy. The tragedy for Hamlet lies not only in the fact that the world is terrible, but also in the fact that he must rush into the abyss of evil in order to fight it. He realizes that he himself is far from perfect, and, indeed, his behavior reveals that the evil that reigns in life, to some extent, stains him too. The tragic irony of life circumstances leads Hamlet to the fact that he, acting as an avenger for the murdered father, himself also kills the father of Laertes and Ophelia, and the son of Polonius takes revenge on him.

The tragedy of William Shakespeare "Hamlet" was written in 1600 - 1601 and is one of the most famous works of world literature. The plot of the tragedy is based on the legend of the ruler of Denmark, dedicated to the story of the protagonist's revenge for the death of his father. In "Hamlet" Shakespeare raises a number of important themes concerning the issues of morality, honor and duty of the characters. The author pays special attention to the philosophical theme of life and death.

Main characters

Hamlet – prince of danish, son of the former and nephew of the present king, was killed by Laertes.

Claudius- Danish king, killed Hamlet's father and married Gertrude, was killed by Hamlet.

Polonium- the chief royal adviser, the father of Laertes and Ophelia, was killed by Hamlet.

Laertes- the son of Polonius, brother of Ophelia, a skilled swordsman, was killed by Hamlet.

Horatio close friend of Hamlet.

Other characters

Ophelia- the daughter of Polonia, sister of Laertes, after the death of her father went crazy, drowned in the river.

Gertrude- The Danish queen, mother of Hamlet, wife of Claudius, died after drinking wine poisoned by the king.

The Ghost of Hamlet's Father

Rosencrantz, Guildenstern - former university comrades of Hamlet.

Fortinbras- Norwegian prince.

Marcellus, Bernardo - officers.

Act 1

Scene 1

Elsinore. Square in front of the castle. Midnight. Officer Bernardo relieves soldier Fernardo, who is on duty. Officer Marcellus and Hamlet's friend Horatio appear on the square. Marcellus asks Bernardo if he has seen a ghost, which the castle guards have already noticed twice. Horatio finds this to be just a figment of the imagination.

Suddenly, a ghost resembling the deceased king appears. Horatio asks the spirit who he is, but he, offended by the question, disappears. Horatio believes that the appearance of a ghost is "a sign of the upheavals threatening the state."

Marcellus asks Horatio why the kingdom has been actively preparing for war lately. Horatio says that Hamlet killed the “ruler of the Norwegians Fortinbras” in battle and, under the agreement, received the lands of the vanquished. However, the "younger Fortinbras" decided to recapture the lost lands, and this is precisely the "pretext for confusion and turmoil in the region."

Suddenly, the ghost reappears, but disappears with the crowing of a rooster. Horatio decides to tell Hamlet about what he saw.

Scene 2

Hall for receptions in the castle. The king announces his decision to marry his late brother's sister Gertrude. Outraged by the attempts of the prince Fortinbras to regain power in the lost lands, Claudius sends courtiers with a letter to his uncle, the king of the Norwegians, to nip his nephew's plans in the bud.

Laertes asks the king for permission to leave for France, Claudius allows. The Queen advises Hamlet to stop mourning for his father: “This is how the world was created: what is alive will die / And after life it will depart into eternity.” Claudius informs that he and the queen are against the return of Hamlet for teaching in Wittenberg.

Left alone, Hamlet is outraged that his mother, a month after the death of her husband, stopped mourning and married Claudius: “O women, your name is treachery!” .

Horatio informs Hamlet that for two nights in a row he, Marcellus and Bernardo saw the ghost of his father in armor. The prince asks to keep this news a secret.

Scene 3

A room in Polonius' house. Saying goodbye to Ophelia, Laertes asks his sister to avoid Hamlet, not to take his advances seriously. Polonius blesses his son on the road, instructing him how to behave in France. Ophelia tells her father about Hamlet's courtship. Polonius forbids his daughter to see the prince.

Scene 4

Midnight, Hamlet and Horatio and Marcellus are on the platform in front of the castle. A ghost appears. Hamlet addresses him, but the spirit, without answering, beckons the prince to follow him.

Scene 5

The ghost informs Hamlet that he is the spirit of his deceased father, reveals the secret of his death and asks his son to avenge his murder. Contrary to popular belief, the former king did not die from a snakebite. His brother Claudius killed him by pouring henbane infusion into the king's ear when he was sleeping in the garden. In addition, even before the death of the former king, Claudius "led the queen into a shameful cohabitation."

Hamlet warns Horatio and Marcellus that he will deliberately behave like a madman and asks them to swear that they will not tell anyone about their conversation and that they saw the ghost of Hamlet's father.

Act 2

Scene 1

Polonius sends his close associate Reynaldo to Paris to deliver a letter to Laertes. He asks to find out as much as possible about his son - about how he behaves and who is in his circle of friends.

A frightened Ophelia tells Polonius about Hamlet's insane behavior. The councilor decides that the prince has gone mad with love for his daughter.

Scene 2

The king and queen invite Rosencrantz and Guildenstern (former university friends of Hamlet) to find out the reason for the prince's madness. Ambassador Voltimand reports the answer of the Norwegian - having learned about the actions of Fortinbras' nephew, the king of Norway forbade him to fight with Denmark and sent the heir on a campaign against Poland. Polonius shares with the king and queen the assumption that the reason for Hamlet's madness is his love for Ophelia.

Conversing with Hamlet, Polonius is amazed at the accuracy of the prince's statements: "If this is madness, then it is consistent in its own way."

In a conversation between Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, Hamlet calls Denmark a prison. The prince realizes that they did not come of their own accord, but on the orders of the king and queen.

Actors invited by Rosencrantz and Guildenstern arrive in Elsinore. Hamlet welcomes them kindly. The prince asks to read Aeneas' monologue to Dido, which refers to the murder of Priam by Pyrrhus, and also to play at tomorrow's performance "The Murder of Gonzago", adding a small passage written by Hamlet.

Left alone, Hamlet admires the skill of the actor, blaming himself for impotence. Fearing that the Devil appeared to him in the form of a ghost, the prince decides to first follow his uncle and check his guilt.

Act 3

Scene 1

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern report to the king and queen that they could not find out from Hamlet the reason for his strange behavior. Having set up a meeting between Ophelia and Hamlet, the king and Polonius hide, watching them.

Hamlet enters the room, pondering what stops a person from committing suicide:

“To be or not to be, that is the question.
Is it worthy
Humble under the blows of fate
I must resist
And in mortal combat with a whole sea of ​​troubles
Do away with them? Die. Forget it."

Ophelia wants to return Hamlet's gifts. The prince, realizing that they are being overheard, continues to behave like a madman, telling the girl that he never loved her and no matter how much virtue they instilled in her, “the sinful spirit cannot be smoked out of her.” Hamlet advises Ophelia to go to a monastery so as not to produce sinners.

Hearing Hamlet's speeches, the king understands that the reason for the prince's madness is different: "he is not cherishing / In the dark corners of his soul, / Hatching something more dangerous." Claudius decides to protect himself by sending his nephew to England.

Scene 2

Preparations for the play. Hamlet asks Horatio to look carefully at the king when the actors play a scene similar to the episode of his father's death.

Before the play begins, Hamlet places Ophelia's head on her knees. Beginning with pantomime, the actors imitate the scene of the poisoning of the former king. During the performance, Hamlet informs Claudius that the play is called The Mousetrap and comments on what is happening on the stage. At the moment when the actor on the stage was about to poison the sleeping man, Claudius abruptly got up and left the hall with his retinue, thereby betraying his guilt in the death of Hamlet's father.

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern tell Hamlet that the king and queen are very upset about what happened. The prince, holding a flute in his hand, replied: “Look at what dirt you have mixed me with. You are going to play me." "Declare me any instrument you want, you can upset me, but you can't play me."

Scene 3

The king tries to atone for the sin of fratricide by prayer. Seeing Claudius praying, the prince hesitates, because he can avenge his father's murder right now. However, Hamlet decides to delay the punishment so that the king's soul does not go to heaven.

Scene 4

Queen's room. Gertrude called Hamlet to her for a conversation. Polonius, eavesdropping, hides in her bedroom behind the carpet. Hamlet is rude to his mother, accusing the queen of insulting his father's memory. Frightened, Gertrude decides that her son wants to kill her. Polonius calls the guards from behind the carpet. The prince, thinking he is the king, stabs the carpet and kills the royal adviser.

Hamlet accuses the mother of the fall. Suddenly, a ghost appears, which only the prince can see and hear. Gertrude is convinced of the madness of her son. Dragging the body of Polonius, Hamlet leaves.

Act 4

Scene 1

Gertrude informs Claudius that Hamlet killed Polonius. The king orders to find the prince and take the body of the murdered adviser to the chapel.

Scene 2

Hamlet tells Rosencrantz and Guildenstern that he "mixed the body of Polonius with the earth, to which the corpse is akin." The prince compares Rosencrantz "with a sponge that lives with the juices of royal favors."

Scene 3

Amusingly, Hamlet tells the king that Polonius is at dinner - "at one where he does not dine, but eats him himself", but after that he admits that he hid the adviser's body near the gallery stairs. The king orders that Hamlet be immediately lured onto a ship and taken to England, accompanied by Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Claudius decides that the Briton should repay his debt by killing the prince.

Scene 4

Plain in Denmark. The Norwegian army is passing through local lands. They explain to Hamlet that the military are going to "tear away a place that is not noticeable by anything." Hamlet reflects on the fact that the “resolute prince” is “glad to sacrifice his life”, for the sake of a cause that is “not worth a damn”, but he still did not dare to take revenge.

Scene 5

Upon learning of the death of Polonius, Ophelia goes crazy. The girl grieves for her father, sings strange songs. Horatio shares his fears and fears with the queen - “the people grumble”, “all the dregs have surfaced from the bottom”.

Secretly returned from France, Laertes breaks into the castle with a crowd of rebels who proclaim him king. The young man wants to avenge the death of his father, but the king pacifies his ardor, promising to compensate for the loss and help "to achieve the truth in alliance." Seeing the insane Ophelia, Laertes burns even more with a thirst for revenge.

Scene 6

Horatio receives a letter from Hamlet from the sailors. The prince informs that he came to the pirates, asks to convey the letters sent by him to the king and rush to his aid as soon as possible.

Scene 7

The king finds an ally in Laertes, pointing out to him that they have a common enemy. Letters from Hamlet are delivered to Claudius - the prince writes that he was landed naked on Danish soil and asks the king to receive him tomorrow.

Laertes is waiting for a meeting with Hamlet. Claudius offers to direct the actions of the young man so that Hamlet would die "of his own free will." Laertes agrees, deciding to be sure before the battle with the prince to smear the tip of the rapier with a poisonous ointment.

Suddenly, the queen appears with the news that Ophelia has drowned in the river:

“She wanted to entwine willow with herbs,
I took hold of the bitch, and he broke down,
And, as it was, with a shock of colored trophies,
She fell into the stream.

Act 5

Scene 1

Elsinore. Cemetery. The gravediggers are digging a grave for Ophelia, discussing whether it is possible to bury a suicide in a Christian way. Seeing the skulls thrown out by the gravedigger, Hamlet ponders who these people were. The gravedigger shows the prince the skull of Yorick, the king's coward. Taking it in his hands, Hamlet turns to Horatio: “Poor Yorick! “I knew him, Horatio. He was a man of infinite wit, "and now this very disgust and nausea rises to the throat."

Ophelia is buried. Wanting to say goodbye to his sister for the last time, Laertes jumps into her grave, asking to be buried with his sister. Outraged by the falsity of what is happening, the prince standing aside jumps into the grave into the ice behind Laertes and they fight. By order of the king, they are separated. Hamlet announces that he wants to "resolve the rivalry" with Laertes in a fight. The king asks Laertes not to take any action for the time being - “pat it. Everything is coming to an end."

Scene 2

Hamlet tells Horatio that he found a letter from Claudius on the ship, in which the king ordered the prince to be killed upon arrival in England. Hamlet changed its content, ordering the immediate death of the bearers of the letter. The prince realizes that he sent Rosencrantz and Guildestern to their deaths, but his conscience does not bother him.

Hamlet confesses to Horatio that he regrets the quarrel with Laertes and wants to make peace with him. Ozdric, an associate of the king, reports that Claudius bet Laertes with six Arabian horses that the prince would win the battle. Hamlet has a strange premonition, but he brushes it off.

Before the duel, Hamlet asks Laertes for forgiveness, saying that he did not wish him harm. Unnoticed, the king throws poison into the prince's glass of wine. In the midst of the battle, Laertes wounds Hamlet, after which they exchange rapiers and Hamlet wounds Laertes. Laertes realizes that he himself is "caught in the net" of his deceit.

The Queen accidentally drinks from Hamlet's glass and dies. Hamlet orders to find the culprit. Laertes reports that the rapier and drink were poisoned and the king is to blame for everything. Hamlet kills the king with a poisoned rapier. Dying, Laertes forgives Hamlet. Horatio wants to drink the rest of the poison from the glass, but Hamlet takes the cup from his friend, asking him to tell the uninitiated "the truth about him."

Shots are heard in the distance and a march - Fortinbras returns victorious from Poland. Dying, Hamlet recognizes the right of Fortinbras to the Danish throne. Fortinbras orders the prince to be buried with honor. Cannon fire is heard.

Conclusion

In Hamlet, using the example of the Danish prince, Shakespeare portrays the personality of the new time, whose strength and weakness lie in his morality and sharp mind. Being a philosopher and humanist by nature, Hamlet finds himself in circumstances that force him to revenge and bloodshed. This is the tragedy of the hero's position - having seen the gloomy side of life, fratricide, treason, he became disillusioned with life, lost an understanding of its value. Shakespeare does not give in his work a definite answer to the eternal question "To be or not to be?", leaving it to the reader.

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Shakespeare is the creator of an entire artistic universe, he possessed an incomparable imagination and knowledge of life, knowledge of people, so the analysis of any of his plays is extremely interesting and instructive. However, for Russian culture, of all Shakespeare's plays, the first in importance was "Hamlet", which can be seen at least by the number of his translations into Russian - there are over forty of them. On the example of this tragedy, let's consider what new Shakespeare brought to the understanding of the world and man in the late Renaissance.

Let's begin with plot of Hamlet, like almost all other works of Shakespeare, is borrowed from the previous literary tradition. Thomas Kidd's tragedy Hamlet, presented in London in 1589, has not come down to us, but it can be assumed that Shakespeare relied on it, giving his version of the story, first told in the Icelandic chronicle of the 12th century. Saxo Grammaticus, author of The History of the Danes, relates an episode from the Danish history of the "dark time". The feudal lord Horvendil had a wife Gerut and a son Amlet. Horvendil's brother, Fengo, with whom he shared power over Jutland, envied his courage and glory. Fengo killed his brother in front of the courtiers and married his widow. Amlet pretended to be crazy, deceived everyone and took revenge on his uncle. Even before that, he was exiled to England for the murder of one of the courtiers, where he married an English princess. Subsequently, Amlet was killed in battle by his other uncle, King Wiglet of Denmark. The similarity of this story with the plot of Shakespeare's "Hamlet" is obvious, but Shakespeare's tragedy unfolds in Denmark only in name; its problematic goes far beyond the tragedy of revenge, and the types of characters are very different from the solid medieval heroes.

Premiere of "Hamlet" at the Globe Theater took place in 1601, and this is the year of well-known upheavals in the history of England, which directly affected both the Globe troupe and Shakespeare personally. The fact is that 1601 is the year of the "Essex conspiracy", when the young favorite of the aging Elizabeth, the Earl of Essex, led his people into the streets of London in an attempt to raise a rebellion against the queen, was captured and beheaded. Historians regard his speech as the last manifestation of the medieval feudal freemen, as a rebellion of the nobility against the absolutism that limited its rights, not supported by the people. On the eve of the performance, Essex's messengers paid the actors of the Globe to perform an old Shakespearean chronicle, which, in their opinion, could provoke discontent with the queen, instead of the play planned in the repertoire. The owner of the "Globe" then had to give unpleasant explanations to the authorities. Together with Essex, young nobles who followed him were thrown into the Tower, in particular, the Earl of Southampton, the patron of Shakespeare, to whom, as it is believed, the cycle of his sonnets is dedicated. Southampton was later pardoned, but while Essex's trial was going on, Shakespeare's heart must have been especially dark. All these circumstances could further thicken the general atmosphere of the tragedy.

Its action begins in Elsinore, the castle of the Danish kings. The night watch informs Hamlet's friend Horatio about the appearance of the Phantom. This is the ghost of Hamlet's late father, who at the "dead hour of the night" tells his son that he did not die a natural death, as everyone believes, but was killed by his brother Claudius, who took the throne and married Hamlet's mother, Queen Gertrude. The ghost demands revenge from Hamlet, but the prince must first make sure of what has been said: what if the ghost is a messenger from hell? In order to gain time and not reveal himself, Hamlet pretends to be crazy; incredulous Claudius conspires with his courtier Polonius to use his daughter Ophelia, with whom Hamlet is in love, to check whether Hamlet has really lost his mind. For the same purpose, Hamlet's old friends, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, are summoned to Elsinore, who willingly agree to help the king. Exactly in the middle of the play is the famous "Mousetrap": a scene in which Hamlet persuades the actors who have arrived in Elsinore to play a performance that accurately depicts what the Ghost told him about, and Claudius is convinced of his guilt by the confused reaction. After that, Hamlet kills Polonius, who is eavesdropping on his conversation with his mother, in the belief that Claudius is hiding behind the carpets in her bedroom; Sensing danger, Claudius sends Hamlet to England, where he is to be executed by the English king, but on board the ship Hamlet manages to replace the letter, and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, who accompanied him, are executed instead. Returning to Elsinore, Hamlet learns of the death of Ophelia, who has gone mad, and becomes the victim of Claudius' last intrigue. The king persuades the son of the late Polonius and brother of Ophelia Laertes to take revenge on Hamlet and hands Laertes a poisoned sword for a court duel with the prince. During this duel, Gertrude dies after drinking a cup of poisoned wine intended for Hamlet; Claudius and Laertes are killed, Hamlet dies, and the troops of the Norwegian prince Fortinbras enter Elsinore.

Hamlet- the same as Don Quixote, the "eternal image" that arose at the end of the Renaissance almost simultaneously with other images of the great individualists (Don Quixote, Don Juan, Faust). All of them embody the Renaissance idea of ​​the unlimited development of the personality, and at the same time, unlike Montaigne, who valued measure and harmony, in these artistic images, as is typical of the literature of the Renaissance, great passions are embodied, extreme degrees of development of one side of the personality. The extreme of Don Quixote was idealism; Hamlet's extreme is reflection, introspection, which paralyzes a person's ability to act. He does many things throughout the tragedy: he kills Polonius, Laertes, Claudius, sends Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to death, but since he delays with his main task - revenge, one gets the impression of his inactivity.

From the moment he learns the secret of the Ghost, Hamlet's past life collapses. What he was like before the action in the tragedy can be judged by Horatio, his friend at the University of Wittenberg, and by the scene of the meeting with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, when he shines with wit - until the moment when friends admit that Claudius called them. The indecently fast wedding of his mother, the loss of Hamlet Sr., in whom the prince saw not just a father, but an ideal person, explain his gloomy mood at the beginning of the play. And when Hamlet is faced with the task of revenge, he begins to understand that the death of Claudius will not fix general position affairs, because everyone in Denmark quickly consigned Hamlet Sr. to oblivion and quickly got used to slavery. The era of ideal people is in the past, and the motive of Denmark-prison runs through the whole tragedy, set by the words of the honest officer Marcellus in the first act of the tragedy: "Something has rotted in the Kingdom of Denmark" (act I, scene IV). The prince comes to realize the hostility, the "dislocation" of the world around him: "The age has been shaken - and worst of all, / That I was born to restore it" (act I, scene V). Hamlet knows that it is his duty to punish evil, but his idea of ​​evil no longer corresponds to the straightforward laws of tribal revenge. Evil for him is not reduced to the crime of Claudius, whom he ultimately punishes; evil is spilled in the world around, and Hamlet realizes that one person is not capable of confronting the whole world. This internal conflict leads him to think about the futility of life, about suicide.

The fundamental difference between Hamlet from the heroes of the previous tragedy of revenge in that he is able to look at himself from the outside, to think about the consequences of his actions. Main sphere Hamlet's activity is thought, and the sharpness of his introspection is akin to Montaigne's close self-observation. But Montaigne called for the introduction of human life within proportionate boundaries and painted a person who occupies a middle position in life. Shakespeare paints not only a prince, that is, a person standing at the highest level of society, on which the fate of his country depends; Shakespeare, in accordance with the literary tradition, draws an outstanding nature, large in all its manifestations. Hamlet is a hero born of the spirit of the Renaissance, but his tragedy testifies to the fact that at its late stage the ideology of the Renaissance is in crisis. Hamlet undertakes the task of revising and reevaluating not only medieval values, but also the values ​​of humanism, and the illusory nature of humanistic ideas about the world as a kingdom of unlimited freedom and direct action is revealed.

The central storyline of Hamlet reflected in a kind of mirror: the lines of two more young heroes, each of which sheds New World to the situation of Hamlet. The first is the line of Laertes, who, after the death of his father, finds himself in the same position as Hamlet after the appearance of the Ghost. Laertes, by all accounts, is a "worthy youth", he takes the lessons common sense Polonia and acts as the bearer of the established morality; he takes revenge on the murderer of his father, not disdaining collusion with Claudius. The second is the line of Fortinbras; despite the fact that he owns a small place on the stage, his significance for the play is very great. Fortinbras - the prince who occupied the empty Danish throne, the hereditary throne of Hamlet; this is a man of action, a decisive politician and military leader, he realized himself after the death of his father, the Norwegian king, in precisely those areas that remain inaccessible to Hamlet. All the characteristics of Fortinbras are directly opposed to those of Laertes, and it can be said that the image of Hamlet is placed between them. Laertes and Fortinbras are normal, ordinary avengers, and the contrast with them makes the reader feel the exceptional behavior of Hamlet, because the tragedy depicts precisely the exceptional, the great, the sublime.

Since the Elizabethan theater was poor in scenery and external effects of the theatrical spectacle, the strength of its impact on the audience depended mainly on the word. Shakespeare is the greatest poet in history in English and his greatest reformer; the word in Shakespeare is fresh and succinct, and in Hamlet it is striking stylistic richness of the play. It is mostly written in blank verse, but in a number of scenes the characters speak prose. Shakespeare uses metaphors especially subtly to create a general atmosphere of tragedy. Critics note the presence of three groups of leitmotifs in the play. Firstly, these are images of a disease, an ulcer that wears away a healthy body - the speech of all actors contain images of decay, decay, decay, working to create the theme of death. Secondly, the images of female debauchery, fornication, fickle Fortune, reinforcing the theme of female infidelity passing through the tragedy and at the same time pointing to the main philosophical problem of the tragedy - the contrast between appearance and the true essence of the phenomenon. Thirdly, these are numerous images of weapons and military equipment associated with war and violence - they emphasize the active side of Hamlet's character in the tragedy. The entire arsenal of artistic means of tragedy is used to create its numerous images, to embody the main tragic conflict - the loneliness of a humanistic personality in the desert of a society in which there is no place for justice, reason, dignity. Hamlet is the first reflective hero in world literature, the first hero who experiences a state of alienation, and the roots of his tragedy were perceived differently in different eras.

For the first time, the naive audience interest in Hamlet as a theatrical spectacle was replaced by attention to the characters at the turn of the 18th-19th centuries. I.V. Goethe, a zealous admirer of Shakespeare, in the novel "Wilhelm Meister" (1795) interpreted Hamlet as "a beautiful, noble, highly moral being, devoid of the power of feeling that makes a hero, he perishes under a burden that he could neither bear nor throw off" . I.V. Goethe Hamlet is a sentimental-elegiac nature, a thinker who is not up to the task of great deeds.

Romantics explained the inactivity of the first in a series of "superfluous people" (they were later "lost", "angry") by excessive thinking, the collapse of the unity of thought and will. S. T. Coleridge in Shakespeare's Lectures (1811-1812) writes: "Hamlet hesitates due to natural sensitivity and hesitates, held by reason, which makes him turn effective forces in search of a speculative solution." As a result, the Romantics presented Hamlet as the first literary hero, consonant with modern man in his preoccupation with introspection, which means that this image is a prototype. modern man at all.

G. Hegel wrote about the ability of Hamlet - as well as other most vivid Shakespearean characters - to look at oneself from the outside, treat oneself objectively, as an artistic character, and act as an artist.

Don Quixote and Hamlet were the most important "eternal images" for Russian culture in the 19th century. V.G. Belinsky believed that Hamlet's idea consists "in the weakness of the will, but only as a result of disintegration, and not by its nature. By nature, Hamlet is a strong man ... He is great and strong in his weakness, because a strong man in his revolt." V.G. Belinsky and A.I. Herzen saw in Hamlet a helpless but stern judge of his society, a potential revolutionary; I.S. Turgenev and L.N. Tolstoy - a hero, rich in mind, of no use to anyone.

Psychologist L.S. Vygotsky, bringing the final act of the tragedy to the fore in his analysis, emphasized the connection between Hamlet and other world: "Hamlet is a mystic, this determines not only his state of mind on the threshold of a double being, two worlds, but also his will in all its manifestations."

The English writers B. Shaw and M. Murray explained Hamlet's slowness by unconscious resistance to the barbaric law of tribal vengeance. Psychoanalyst E. Jones showed that Hamlet is a victim of the Oedipus complex. Marxist criticism saw him as an anti-Machiavellian, a fighter for the ideals of bourgeois humanism. For Catholic K.S. Lewis Hamlet - "Evrimen", an ordinary person, suppressed by the idea of ​​original sin. In literary criticism, a whole gallery of mutually exclusive Hamlets: an egoist and pacifist, a misogynist, a brave hero, a melancholic incapable of action, the highest embodiment of the Renaissance ideal and an expression of the crisis of humanistic consciousness - all this is a Shakespearean hero. In the process of understanding the tragedy, Hamlet, like Don Quixote, broke away from the text of the work and acquired the meaning of "supertype" (Yu.

Today, in Western Shakespeare studies, the focus is not on "Hamlet", but on other plays by Shakespeare - "Measure for Measure", "King Lear", "Macbeth", "Othello", also, each in its own way, consonant with modernity, since in each Shakespeare's play poses the eternal questions of human existence. And each play contains something that determines the exclusivity of Shakespeare's influence on all subsequent literature. The American literary critic H. Bloom defines his author's position as "disinterest", "freedom from any ideology": "He has no theology, no metaphysics, no ethics, and less political theory than modern critics "read" into him. According to sonnets it can be seen that, unlike his character Falstaff, he had a superego, unlike the Hamlet of the final act, he did not cross the boundaries of earthly existence, unlike Rosalind, he did not have the ability to control his own life at will. invented them, we can assume that he deliberately put himself certain boundaries. Fortunately, he was not King Lear and refused to go mad, although he could imagine madness just as well as everything else. His wisdom is endlessly reproduced in our sages from Goethe to Freud, although Shakespeare himself refused to be known as a sage "; "You cannot limit Shakespeare to the framework of the English Renaissance, just as it is impossible to limit the Prince of Denmark to the framework of his play."

Yesterday I was at the premiere of Valery Fokin's performance based on William Shakespeare's Hamlet at the Alexandrinsky Theatre.
Hamlet is a classic that tests the director's talent.
Attempts to make Hamlet modern have been made more than once. The last production known to me by Peter Stein with Yevgeny Mirov in the title role.
I understand the desire to modernize the action of the play, but Valery Fokin's performance modernized the play almost beyond recognition.
The performance begins with a cynologists with dogs examining the stage, apparently for the presence of bombs. After Nord-Ost, such an entry seems unsuccessful.
History, as you know, repeats itself twice: first as a tragedy, then as a comedy.
This is some kind of postmodernism: the tragedy has turned into a tragicomedy; on the stage is the ultra-modern Middle Ages; the text is full of modern jargon: “joking”, “pinned”, “sexy”, etc.

Judging by the interpretation of Fokin, the assassination of the king was initiated by the Danish queen Gertrude, and Claudius was only an obedient performer. She also gives Laertes the idea of ​​killing her son Hamlet.

Hamlet of the 21st century is a neurasthenic rushing around the hall and on the stage with a saucepan on his head in a fluttering ala straitjacket and proclaiming: “I have an intellectual’s liver!”

The theater is dead!
Apparently, no one can write plays of this magnitude. There is a lack of big ideas, the poverty of stage designs. That is probably why the drunken Hamlet appears on the stage.

This performance is as much William (our) Shakespeare as Valery Fokine.
However, this is not a tragedy. Shakespeare is also not the real author of the tragedy Hamlet.

April 23 marks the 445th anniversary of the birth of William Shakespeare. This year also marks the 400th anniversary of the first edition of his famous sonnets.
Shakespeare is the most reprinted author. His works have withstood the greatest number of productions and adaptations. Shakespeare continues to be relevant today.

What is the appeal of Shakespeare's works that still remains?
In my opinion, in that they are written about eternal questions and eternal answers, about the essence human nature. This is what allows us to put these works in a modern interpretation.
Recently, at the Lensoviet Theater, I watched Shakespeare's drama Measure for Measure, also in a modern interpretation. The fate of an unjust judge is still relevant. Also relevant are Othello, Richard III, Romeo and Juliet...

When I was in school, I was one of the few in the class who read Hamlet (studying Shakespeare was not compulsory). Then I bought the book Foreign literature Middle Ages”, I was surprised to read in it that Shakespeare was not the author of the idea of ​​this tragedy, it has roots in historical myths, and Shakespeare only literary processed and recreated a long history.

Hamlet had a real prototype - the Danish prince Amlet, who lived earlier than 826. Approximately 400 years later, the skald poet Snorri Sturluson (1178–1241), the most famous of the Icelanders, according to the inhabitants of this northern island, mentions him in one of the Icelandic sagas.
It took 400 years for history real person became the material of literature. For another 400 years, he gradually acquired the features of a popular literary hero.

Shakespeare wrote the tragedy Hamlet around 1600. It is considered to be his deepest work. Perhaps because it was the most unfortunate in terms of completeness.

From the very beginning, Shakespeare set himself the task of creating a "general human type", an "eternal image". Hamlet is not the usual tragic hero, carrying out revenge for the sake of Divine justice. Coming to the conclusion that it is impossible to restore harmony with one blow, he experiences the tragedy of alienation from the world and dooms himself to loneliness.

For several centuries, writers, critics, scientists have been trying to unravel the mystery of this image, to answer the question of why Hamlet, having learned the truth about the murder of his father at the beginning of the tragedy, postpones revenge and at the end of the play kills King Claudius almost by accident.

The plot connects the play "Hamlet" with the tradition of the English "revenge tragedy". The main plot of the "great tragedies" is the discovery by the hero of the true face of the world, in which evil is more powerful than it was imagined by the humanists.

Hamlet makes a tragic discovery: having learned about the death of his father, the hasty marriage of his mother, having heard the story of the Ghost, he discovers the imperfection of the world. "Time is dislocated", evil, crimes, deceit, betrayal - the normal state of the world.
In order to correct the world, to defeat evil, Hamlet himself is forced to take the path of evil.

Revenge, as a form of restoring justice, was such only in the good old days, and now that evil has spread, it does not solve anything. Hamlet makes the solution of this problem dependent on the general idea of ​​the world and its laws.

Shakespeare kept the plot of the well-known tragedy of revenge, but shifted all his attention to spiritual discord, the inner drama of the protagonist. This is the first reflective hero of world literature.

Hamlet has a philosophical mindset: he always moves from a particular case to the general laws of the universe. He views the family drama of his father's murder as a portrait of a world in which evil thrives. The frivolity of the mother, who so quickly forgot about her father and married Claudius, leads him to generalize: "O women, your name is treachery." The sight of Yorick's skull makes him think about the frailty of the earth.

Hamlet acts as a fate that everyone has prepared for himself, preparing his death: Laertes dies from a sword, which he smeared with poison in order to kill Hamlet under the guise of a fair and safe duel; the king - from the same sword (according to his proposal, it should be real, unlike Hamlet's sword) and from the poison that the King had prepared in case Laertes could not inflict a mortal blow on Hamlet. Queen Gertrude drinks poison by mistake because she mistakenly trusted the king.
Justice triumphs!

However, how fair is it that William Shakespeare is not at all the author of the tragedy "Hamlet", as well as "Romeo and Juliet", and numerous other dramatic works?

There is a point of view, the supporters of which deny the authorship of Shakespeare (Shakspere) from Stratford and believe that "William Shakespeare" is a pseudonym under which another person or group of persons was hiding.
In 2008, Marina Litvinova's book "The Justification of Shakespeare" was published, where the author defends the version that the works of W. Shakespeare were created by two authors - Francis Bacon and Manners, the fifth Earl of Rutland.

According to the official biography, William Shakespeare was born on April 23, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon to a wealthy but not noble family. On November 27, 1582, 18-year-old William married a girl who was eight years older than him. Soon they had a daughter, and later two more children. There is no reliable data on Shakespeare's life in the next 7-8 years.
It is believed that in his youth Shakespeare was first a butcher's assistant. He had to leave his hometown of Stratford because he killed a deer in the domain of Sir Thomas Lucy Charlicote.
Shakespeare went to London and at first made a living by guarding horses at the theater. Soon he began to write plays. Since 1595, the playwright is mentioned as a co-owner of the Lord Chamberlain's Troupe, and four years later - as a co-owner of the Globe Theatre. A few years later, Shakespeare returned to Stratford and began to live in a house that he bought with his theatrical earnings, where he died on April 23, 1616.

Scientists have put forward more than fifty versions of who could be hiding under the pseudonym Shakespeare.
Scientists are embarrassed that the description of the playwright's life contradicts the scale of his work. It follows from Shakespeare's work that he knew French, Italian, Latin, Greek well, was fluent in the history of England and ancient world. In addition, the playwright was well versed in jurisprudence, music, botany, medicine, military and naval affairs.
Meanwhile, according to some reports, all members of his family were illiterate. There is no evidence that he himself received any education.

The lexical dictionary of the works of William Shakespeare is 15 thousand different words, while the contemporary English translation The King James Bible is only 5,000.
Many experts doubt that the poorly educated son of an artisan could have such a rich vocabulary. Shakespeare never studied at universities or traveled abroad; his education in the "grammar school" is also in question.

During Shakespeare's lifetime and for several years after his death, no one ever called him a poet and playwright.

Performances based on Shakespeare's plays took place at Oxford and Cambridge, while according to the rules, only the works of their graduates could be staged within the walls of these ancient universities.

Contrary to the customs of Shakespeare's time, no one in the whole of England responded with a single word to Shakespeare's death.

Shakespeare's testament is a very voluminous and detailed document, but it does not mention any books, papers, poems, plays. When Shakespeare died, 18 plays remained unpublished; however, nothing is said about them in the will either.

The famous American historian and writer Paul Straits claims that the great playwright William Shakespeare is actually Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford. He wrote under the pseudonym Shakespeare and was the illegitimate son of Queen Elizabeth.

There is even a hypothesis according to which Shakespeare was a woman. In June 2004, American scholar Robin Williams stated that Shakespeare was in fact a woman, namely the Oxford Countess Mary Pembroke (1561-1621). According to the scientist, the countess composed magnificent literary works, but she could not openly write for the theater, which at that time was considered immoral in England. So she decided to compose plays under the pseudonym Shakespeare.

There is a version that in fact Shakespeare was Italian. Allegedly, he was born in Sicily and his name was Michelangelo Crolalanza. Then, fleeing the Inquisition, he moved to England and changed his surname.

The most famous portrait of Shakespeare, the so-called Flower portrait, which bears the date "1609", has been found to be a forgery. The painting, which was previously considered a portrait of William Shakespeare, depicts someone other than the great playwright. This was stated by the experts of the National Portrait Gallery in London.

One of my acquaintances, who wrote one play, also considers himself an outstanding playwright. But I don’t consider myself a critic, a poet, or a writer. “A true master is always aware of his own imperfection and therefore strives for the ideal. And then the poet knows how and can pause. The graphomaniac would not even think of it!”

When I worked at school, I once organized a screening and discussion of Grigory Kozintsev's film Hamlet. When the movie ended, I asked:
- Well, how did anyone understand the phrase "to be or not to be?"?
- Being yourself means standing up for your truth and fighting to the end; not to be - to submit, to adapt.
- So put up with evil or fight?
- To submit to evil means to start serving it.
“He has a hopeless situation,” said seventh-grader Vova. - Or resist evil or submit. It's better to fight.
- But what makes people cowardly and adapt? - Dmitry asked leading questions, together with the children, looking for the answer that the children, he was sure, would prompt him. What makes people do evil?
- Fear of death.
- And I'm not afraid of death, - the fifth grader Sasha suddenly said. - To die anyway; sooner or later, it doesn't matter.
- When evil people die, they can look at themselves from the outside and assess for themselves how evil hurts, so that in the next life they can fix it and not go to hell.
“It seems to me that hell is the pain of those misfortunes that you did to other people,” said third grader Sasha.
(from my true-life novel "The Wanderer" (mystery) on the site New Russian Literature http://www.newruslit.nm.ru