Literature is one of the main treasures of modern art. Literature helps people relax, helps them come into the new world of imagination and fantasy. Literature may also give some food for thought and present some ideas about problems. There are a lot of great writers who made an invaluable contribution to world literature. One of them is William Shakespeare. He is a famous writer, who created lots of plays and sonnets. “Hamlet” is one of his tragedies, which was created in the Elizabethan time. Our task is to indicate the effect of the play on the audience of those times.
It is not a secret that there is a relationship between dramatic works and their target audience. The social, cultural, and economic values and perspectives of the audience also influence the themes and interpretations of a text. The modern audience is rather different from Elizabethan one. “Hamlet” makes rather a different impression on modern viewers than on that audience. The language was different, the time was different, and so it is impossible to compare the impression which creates “Hamlet” on the modern viewer and Elizabethan one if the modern viewer does not take into consideration the historical events which occur in the time of the play appearance.
The understanding of “Hamlet” is impossible without understanding time, people’s cultural and political views of the time when the play was created. “Hamlet” was directed at that viewer, the target was the Elizabethan era. So, the modern understanding of the play may be a little bit different from what the author wanted to tell if the audience does not take into consideration the historical background of the play.
Turning to history, we may find out that women were dependent on men in the Elizabethan era. The patriarchal society of that time is presented best of all on the character of Ophelia. The people of those times were very religious.
“The Elizabethan playgoer required that dramatic form of the well-known tale should contain all the most popular episodes” (Draper 1999-8) from the life of that society. Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” was the first that portrayed the political problems of a court fully and realistically. The center of Renaissance society was the court, its power, and its success. In creating “Hamlet”, Shakespeare wanted to depict regicide, revolt, dynastic succession, intrigue, and accompanying police of the court system in the Elizabethan time. (Draper 1999)
The play tells us the story about the Prince of Denmark, Hamlet, who wants to take an act of revenge on his uncle, who had killed his father and became a King. The attitude to the revenge was different than we perceive it now. “The contradiction between the official code and the undercurrent of feeling derived from feudal tradition caused the audience to have mixed feelings towards the revenger in the revenge plays” (Nicoll 2002-17). The revenge, presented in the play could be understood by the audience in different ways, as “the average spectator at a revenge play was probably trapped in the ethical dilemma – a dilemma between what he believed and what he felt” (Nicoll 2002-24).
Shakespeare’s audience was not well behaved as modern. There were two ways to involve the audience in the play: the actors’ play and the script, the actors had to work harder. There are a lot of differences between modern viewers and the audience of those times, but there is one common trade – people of all times went to the theater to be entertained by the play they have chosen and they had come to love. (Bowlers)
The words, the behavior, the clothes of Hamlet are different from the other characters in the play. Hamlet’s soliloquies are emotional, full of sense and information. Every word that is said has some aim or profit. ”When he needs what you have gleaned, it is but squeezing you, and, sponge, you shall be dry again” (Shakespeare 2000), these words about the double nature of King, his usage of people, have the metaphorical meaning. The audience understands his idea as they lived in the era of Kings and knew their habits and sins.
The text of the play could be interpreted in different ways by the Elizabethan audience. The perception depended on people’s cultural, political views, on their financial and social position in that society. Every layer of people had their own understanding of the play.
So, the play’s target has reached the Elizabethan audience with the help of several items. The first one is the expressive means and stylistic devices which abound in Hamlet’s speech. The others depended on the social position of people. The present understanding of the play cannot be correct without the understanding of the historical background, of the time when the play was written. The play wanted to show lots of items and life examples. The tragedy was supposed to reach the viewer not just as an entertaining play, but as a play with great social and moral meaning.
References
Bowlers, Samuel. “Shakespeare’s Elizabethan Audience”. 2009. Web.
Draper, John William. The Hamlet of Shakespeare’s Audience Routledge, 1999.
Nicoll, Allardyce. Wells, Stanley. Shakespeare Survey. Cambridge University Press, 2002.
Shakespeare, William. Hamlet. Courier Dover Publications, 2000.