David Schumann

Conscience Does Make Cowards of Us All. Hamlet the Sceptic Thinker - an Anti-hero? David Schumann

Seminar paper from the year 2013 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Comparative Literature, grade: 1,0, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, language: English, abstract: As the protagonist of Shakespeare's play Hamlet, the young Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, is popularly considered a heroic figure, revenging the murder of his father who was poisoned by Claudius, Hamlet's uncle. He appears to be an archetypical Renaissance figure, a versatile character that contains something of everything within him: "He is the sophisticated thinker and the powerless politician; the resentful child and the sober student; the moral Puritan and the deranged Prince; the witty murderer and the cold-blooded jester." Since Michael Davies speaks of Hamlet's supposed renaissance variety "as a compendium of selves" and therefore of a rather "modern man of no fixed identity", we will in the context of this work examine the question whether Hamlet could be considered an anti-hero by pointing out certain traits of his introverted nature and the significant impact of self-reflection on Hamlet's behaviour throughout the play.