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HAMLET

On a dark winter night, a ghost walks the ramparts of Elsinore Castle in Denmark. Discovered first by
a pair of watchmen, then by the scholar Horatio, the ghost resembles the recently deceased King
Hamlet, whose brother Claudius has inherited the throne and married the king’s widow, Queen
Gertrude. When Horatio and the watchmen bring Prince Hamlet, the son of Gertrude and the dead
king, to see the ghost, it speaks to him, declaring ominously that it is indeed his father’s spirit, and
that he was murdered by none other than Claudius. Ordering Hamlet to seek revenge on the man
who usurped his throne and married his wife, the ghost disappears with the dawn.
Prince Hamlet devotes himself to avenging his father’s death, but, because he is contemplative and
thoughtful by nature, he delays, entering into a deep melancholy and even apparent madness.
Claudius and Gertrude worry about the prince’s behavior and attempt to discover its cause. They
employ a pair of Hamlet’s friends, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, to watch him. When Polonius, the
pompous Lord Chamberlain, suggests that Hamlet may be mad with love for his daughter, Ophelia,
Claudius agrees to spy on Hamlet in conversation with the girl. But though Hamlet certainly seems
mad, he does not seem to love Ophelia: he orders her to enter a nunnery and declares that he wishes
to ban marriages.
A group of traveling actors comes to Elsinore, and Hamlet seizes upon an idea to test his uncle’s
guilt. He will have the players perform a scene closely resembling the sequence by which Hamlet
imagines his uncle to have murdered his father, so that if Claudius is guilty, he will surely react. When
the moment of the murder arrives in the theater, Claudius leaps up and leaves the room. Hamlet and
Horatio agree that this proves his guilt. Hamlet goes to kill Claudius but finds him praying. Since he
believes that killing Claudius while in prayer would send Claudius’s soul to heaven, Hamlet considers
that it would be an inadequate revenge and decides to wait. Claudius, now frightened of Hamlet’s
madness and fearing for his own safety, orders that Hamlet be sent to England at once.
Hamlet goes to confront his mother, in whose bedchamber Polonius has hidden behind a tapestry.
Hearing a noise from behind the tapestry, Hamlet believes the king is hiding there. He draws his
sword and stabs through the fabric, killing Polonius. For this crime, he is immediately dispatched to
England with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. However, Claudius’s plan for Hamlet includes more than
banishment, as he has given Rosencrantz and Guildenstern sealed orders for the King of England
demanding that Hamlet be put to death.
In the aftermath of her father’s death, Ophelia goes mad with grief and drowns in the river. Polonius’s
son, Laertes, who has been staying in France, returns to Denmark in a rage. Claudius convinces him
that Hamlet is to blame for his father’s and sister’s deaths. When Horatio and the king receive letters
from Hamlet indicating that the prince has returned to Denmark after pirates attacked his ship en
route to England, Claudius concocts a plan to use Laertes’ desire for revenge to secure Hamlet’s
death. Laertes will fence with Hamlet in innocent sport, but Claudius will poison Laertes’ blade so that
if he draws blood, Hamlet will die. As a backup plan, the king decides to poison a goblet, which he will
give Hamlet to drink should Hamlet score the first or second hits of the match. Hamlet returns to the
vicinity of Elsinore just as Ophelia’s funeral is taking place. Stricken with grief, he attacks Laertes and
declares that he had in fact always loved Ophelia. Back at the castle, he tells Horatio that he believes
one must be prepared to die, since death can come at any moment. A foolish courtier named Osric
arrives on Claudius’s orders to arrange the fencing match between Hamlet and Laertes.
The sword-fighting begins. Hamlet scores the first hit, but declines to drink from the king’s proffered
goblet. Instead, Gertrude takes a drink from it and is swiftly killed by the poison. Laertes succeeds in
wounding Hamlet, though Hamlet does not die of the poison immediately. First, Laertes is cut by his
own sword’s blade, and, after revealing to Hamlet that Claudius is responsible for the queen’s death,
he dies from the blade’s poison. Hamlet then stabs Claudius through with the poisoned sword and
forces him to drink down the rest of the poisoned wine. Claudius dies, and Hamlet dies immediately
after achieving his revenge.
At this moment, a Norwegian prince named Fortinbras, who has led an army to Denmark and
attacked Poland earlier in the play, enters with ambassadors from England, who report that
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead. Fortinbras is stunned by the gruesome sight of the entire
royal family lying sprawled on the floor dead. He moves to take power of the kingdom. Horatio,
fulfilling Hamlet’s last request, tells him Hamlet’s tragic story. Fortinbras orders that Hamlet be carried
away in a manner befitting a fallen soldier.

FATE AND FREE WILL


The Classical tragedians appreciated the conflict between fate and free will. At the heart of every
great tragedy lies the universal struggle between the human inclination to accept fate absolutely and
the natural desire to control destiny. Both Sophocles and Shakespeare would agree that the forces of
destiny and choice continually vie for control of human life. Yet, each of these great playwrights
espouses a perspective on the struggle born of his specific time and culture.

For Shakespeare — a Christian — the choice between good and evil represents man's basic
dilemma; for him, the human will is indomitable. Though fate may ultimately win, a man must fight to
the death, if necessary, in order to remain the master of his own choices — choices that ultimately
decide if and how his fate defeats him.
By contrast, Hamlet remains painfully aware of himself, his shortcomings, and his powerlessness to
right what he perceives to be great wrongs. Poetic, thoughtful, and philosophical, he seeks to thwart
his fate through intellectual maneuvering. Hamlet sees all too clearly the varying shades of gray that
muddy his vision and blur his choices. He resembles the modern tragic hero — the common man
tossed in a turbulent sea of social ills who loses his battle to correct them. He is bound inside himself,
imprisoned by the words in his head that allow him no sleep, and no rest. " . . . There is nothing either
good or bad but thinking makes it so," he says, surrendering to his obsessive thoughts. Hamlet is the
quintessential Shakespearean hero, born of stature but not necessarily powerful, and undone by
external forces as much as by internal ones. The struggle to live between opposing expectations and
to assuage a throbbing conscience constitutes the battle Hamlet cannot win. No one force determines
the outcome for Hamlet. God asks of him one thing, and man demands another.

For Hamlet, the consummate Christian tragic hero, fate exists, but human choices may cancel its
power. Hamlet never stops choosing the paths he will take. Furthermore, his reluctance to succumb
to his fate stems as much from his religious morality as from his intellectual meandering. He is aware
that his father's Ghost expects him to commit murder, that the Bible dictates that murder is wrong,
even when executing an evil man, and that fate desires him to violate his God's Ten Commandments.

In Hamlet, King Hamlet's Ghost, who appears to Hamlet and directs him to punish Claudius,
personifies fate. The Ghost reveals that Claudius, by killing his own brother, has committed a "murder
most foul" and deserves to die. Hamlet can choose to obey his fate or ignore it and then face the
consequences. Hamlet consistently avoids making this choice by refusing to act. However, his need
for self-determination, driven by his psychological conflicts, finally forces him to take vengeance into
his own hands. He finds that the forces of the primal world (which value "an eye for an eye") and the
enlightened world (which legislate "Thou shalt not kill") equally compel him. The Ghost has ordered
Hamlet to act against his conscience, and the diametrically opposed commands paralyze him.

On the other hand, a corrupt society that threatens to compromise his integrity confronts Hamlet. The
King and his cohorts drink too much, and gamble too frequently. King Claudius casts on all of
Denmark the reputation of an indolent wastrel. Hamlet knows that the duty to correct the depravity
that holds his country captive falls to him, but he also knows that, in order to right this wrong, he must
commit the worst of all crimes. He is torn between doing God's work and doing God's bidding, and the
lines of distinction are not clearly recognizable. Were he able to simply reverse his will and submit to
fate, he would find peace more swiftly; but constantly exercising his human will is Hamlet's cross to
bear, and he only finds peace in death. Even making no choice exercises his free will, because
inaction is as much a choice as action. Hamlet cannot ask God to absolve him of choice because the
Christian God requires freely chosen submission. Where Oedipus must relinquish his will and allow
the gods to manipulate him, Hamlet must exercise his will and follow as his God guides him.

Hamlet is an intellectual. He rationalizes his life and all its events and accepts nothing without careful
analysis. Hamlet can blame neither God nor fate. No unseen hand directs Hamlet's life and death; his
own free will determines the results. As Oedipus exemplifies the Greeks' religious conviction that man
is a pawn to the gods, Hamlet illustrates the Christians' fervent belief that man's mind is the master of
self and chooses to follow God.
SONETUL 18

Să te aseamăn cu o zi de vară?
Tu ești mai dulce și surîzi mai blînd!
În Mai e vînt și mugurii-i doboară
Și timpul verii trece prea curînd.

Cerescul ochi e, uneori, fierbinte


Și-ades umbrită-i geana lui de foc,
Căci de frumos frumosul se dezminte
Și-ntîmplător și-n al schimbării joc.

Dar vara ta nu va păli vreodată


Căci frumusețea-i veșnic anotimp;
Nici moartea s-o umbrească n-o să poată
Cînd vers etern o-nalță peste timp.

Cît va fi suflet, văz și versul meu,


Prin tot ce-am scris tu vei trăi mereu.

SONETUL 116

Nu-i între inimi vreun zăgaz înalt


Spre-a le opri. Iubirea nu-i iubire
De-şi schimbă focul după celălalt,
Fugară ca fugarul în neştire;
O,nu ! iubirea-i far nezguduit
Ce străjuieşte-n pîclă şi-n furtună,
O stea ce-ndrumă năvi necontenit
Şi care nu se-ntîmplă să apună.
Iubirea nu-i paiaţa Vremii . Ci
O floare dată coasei ei ce-o curmă.
Dar nu păleşte-abia ce-mboboci,
Ea neschimbată şade pîn’ la urmă.
Şi dacă versu-mi minte şi-i greşit
Nimic n-am scris, şi nimeni n-a iubit
SONETUL 73

În mine vezi tu anotimpul cậnd


Foi galbene pe crengi murind se zbat,
Pe arcul lor in geruri tremurậnd
Vechi coruri unde păsări au cậntat,
In mine vezi murind al serii ceas
Cậnd soarele-ntậrzie-n asfințit
Și noaptea, sora morții, pas cu pas
In beznă totul a pecetluit.
In mine vezi un foc arzậnd pustiu
Pe-a lui cenușă și-i sleit in ea
Și leagănul luminii i-e sicriu
Și mistuie puterea ce-l hrănea.

Tu vezi și mai puternic m-ai cuprins


Vrậnd sa iubești ce mậine fi-va stins.
ROMEO AND JULIET
In the streets of Verona another brawl breaks out between the servants of the feuding noble families of Capulet
and Montague. Benvolio, a Montague, tries to stop the fighting, but is himself embroiled when the rash
Capulet, Tybalt, arrives on the scene. After citizens outraged by the constant violence beat back the warring
factions, Prince Escalus, the ruler of Verona, attempts to prevent any further conflicts between the families by
decreeing death for any individual who disturbs the peace in the future.
Romeo, the son of Montague, runs into his cousin Benvolio, who had earlier seen Romeo moping in a grove of
sycamores. After some prodding by Benvolio, Romeo confides that he is in love with Rosaline, a woman who
does not return his affections. Benvolio counsels him to forget this woman and find another, more beautiful
one, but Romeo remains despondent.
Meanwhile, Paris, a kinsman of the Prince, seeks Juliet’s hand in marriage. Her father Capulet, though happy
at the match, asks Paris to wait two years, since Juliet is not yet even fourteen. Capulet dispatches a servant
with a list of people to invite to a masquerade and feast he traditionally holds. He invites Paris to the feast,
hoping that Paris will begin to win Juliet’s heart.
Romeo and Benvolio, still discussing Rosaline, encounter the Capulet servant bearing the list of invitations.
Benvolio suggests that they attend, since that will allow Romeo to compare his beloved to other beautiful
women of Verona. Romeo agrees to go with Benvolio to the feast, but only because Rosaline, whose name he
reads on the list, will be there.
In Capulet’s household, young Juliet talks with her mother, Lady Capulet, and her nurse about the possibility of
marrying Paris. Juliet has not yet considered marriage, but agrees to look at Paris during the feast to see if she
thinks she could fall in love with him.
The feast begins. A melancholy Romeo follows Benvolio and their witty friend Mercutio to Capulet’s house.
Once inside, Romeo sees Juliet from a distance and instantly falls in love with her; he forgets about Rosaline
completely. As Romeo watches Juliet, entranced, a young Capulet, Tybalt, recognizes him, and is enraged that
a Montague would sneak into a Capulet feast. He prepares to attack, but Capulet holds him back. Soon,
Romeo speaks to Juliet, and the two experience a profound attraction. They kiss, not even knowing each
other’s names. When he finds out from Juliet’s nurse that she is the daughter of Capulet—his family’s enemy—
he becomes distraught. When Juliet learns that the young man she has just kissed is the son of Montague, she
grows equally upset.
As Mercutio and Benvolio leave the Capulet estate, Romeo leaps over the orchard wall into the garden, unable
to leave Juliet behind. From his hiding place, he sees Juliet in a window above the orchard and hears her
speak his name. He calls out to her, and they exchange vows of love.
Romeo hurries to see his friend and confessor Friar Lawrence, who, though shocked at the sudden turn of
Romeo’s heart, agrees to marry the young lovers in secret since he sees in their love the possibility of ending
the age-old feud between Capulet and Montague. The following day, Romeo and Juliet meet at Friar
Lawrence’s cell and are married. The Nurse, who is privy to the secret, procures a ladder, which Romeo will
use to climb into Juliet’s window for their wedding night.
The next day, Benvolio and Mercutio encounter Tybalt—Juliet’s cousin—who, still enraged that Romeo
attended Capulet’s feast, has challenged Romeo to a duel. Romeo appears. Now Tybalt’s kinsman by
marriage, Romeo begs the Capulet to hold off the duel until he understands why Romeo does not want to fight.
Disgusted with this plea for peace, Mercutio says that he will fight Tybalt himself. The two begin to duel.
Romeo tries to stop them by leaping between the combatants. Tybalt stabs Mercutio under Romeo’s arm, and
Mercutio dies. Romeo, in a rage, kills Tybalt. Romeo flees from the scene. Soon after, the Prince declares him
forever banished from Verona for his crime. Friar Lawrence arranges for Romeo to spend his wedding night
with Juliet before he has to leave for Mantua the following morning.
In her room, Juliet awaits the arrival of her new husband. The Nurse enters, and, after some confusion, tells
Juliet that Romeo has killed Tybalt. Distraught, Juliet suddenly finds herself married to a man who has killed
her kinsman. But she resettles herself, and realizes that her duty belongs with her love: to Romeo.
Romeo sneaks into Juliet’s room that night, and at last they consummate their marriage and their love. Morning
comes, and the lovers bid farewell, unsure when they will see each other again. Juliet learns that her father,
affected by the recent events, now intends for her to marry Paris in just three days. Unsure of how to
proceed—unable to reveal to her parents that she is married to Romeo, but unwilling to marry Paris now that
she is Romeo’s wife—Juliet asks her nurse for advice. She counsels Juliet to proceed as if Romeo were dead
and to marry Paris, who is a better match anyway. Disgusted with the Nurse’s disloyalty, Juliet disregards her
advice and hurries to Friar Lawrence. He concocts a plan to reunite Juliet with Romeo in Mantua. The night
before her wedding to Paris, Juliet must drink a potion that will make her appear to be dead. After she is laid to
rest in the family’s crypt, the Friar and Romeo will secretly retrieve her, and she will be free to live with Romeo,
away from their parents’ feuding.
Juliet returns home to discover the wedding has been moved ahead one day, and she is to be married
tomorrow. That night, Juliet drinks the potion, and the Nurse discovers her, apparently dead, the next morning.
The Capulets grieve, and Juliet is entombed according to plan. But Friar Lawrence’s message explaining the
plan to Romeo never reaches Mantua. Its bearer, Friar John, gets confined to a quarantined house. Romeo
hears only that Juliet is dead.
Romeo learns only of Juliet’s death and decides to kill himself rather than live without her. He buys a vial of
poison from a reluctant Apothecary, then speeds back to Verona to take his own life at Juliet’s tomb. Outside
the Capulet crypt, Romeo comes upon Paris, who is scattering flowers on Juliet’s grave. They fight, and
Romeo kills Paris. He enters the tomb, sees Juliet’s inanimate body, drinks the poison, and dies by her side.
Just then, Friar Lawrence enters and realizes that Romeo has killed Paris and himself. At the same time, Juliet
awakes. Friar Lawrence hears the coming of the watch. When Juliet refuses to leave with him, he flees alone.
Juliet sees her beloved Romeo and realizes he has killed himself with poison. She kisses his poisoned lips,
and when that does not kill her, buries his dagger in her chest, falling dead upon his body.
The watch arrives, followed closely by the Prince, the Capulets, and Montague. Montague declares that Lady
Montague has died of grief over Romeo’s exile. Seeing their children’s bodies, Capulet and Montague agree to
end their long-standing feud and to raise gold statues of their children side-by-side in a newly peaceful Verona.

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