Hamlet and Relationships | Hamlet and Relationships

Hamlet, Shakespeare's most famous tragedy play is full of violence, vengeance and madness. As the Denmark prince seeks for revenge for his father, the play had showed us no admirable human relationships. In the play, the failure of the relationships between Hamlet and Ophelia, Ophelia and Polonius, and Hamlet and his two friends Rosencrantz and Guildenstern had demonstrated the most unworthy relationships between lovers, families, and friends. By showing us those Hamlet with those inestimable human relationships, Shakespeare had make Hamlet become a literature of eternity because those relationships showed reality of collapse of human relationships which remained through out the centuries.

In the play, Hamlet's lover Ophelia turned mad and suicide in the end of play, which demonstrated the most pitiable relationship between lovers. The relationship between Hamlet and Ophelia had always been questioned by people, because the dramatically development of the relationship, yet none of the readers had doubt Hamlet's feeling toward Ophelia. In Act 2 scene 2, in Hamlet's letter to Ophelia he wrote "that I love thee best." This is the first time Hamlet admits his feeling for Ophelia in the play, yet after he became "mad", his speech and actions had lead to Ophelia's madness and pitiful death in the end of the play. In the play, the relationship between Ophelia and Hamlet is pathetic. After Hamlet cruelly killed Ophelia's father Polonius, and been sent to England, Ophelia became mad and suicides because her father's sudden death and Hamlet's subsequent exile. Ophelia's piteous end which was caused by her relationship with Hamlet made the readers realising the failure of lover relationships.

The relationship between Ophelia and her father in Hamlet had also showed the readers how wretched could the relationship between father and children became. In the play, Polonius had used Ophelia to spy on Hamlet; Ophelia's treatment from her father had showed us how Ophelia was used by her father as a tool instead of treated as a person. In Act 1. Scene 3, Polonius referred Ophelia as the "green girl" and describe her as "thinking as a baby." In order to get the truth about Hamlet's madness, he told Ophelia to "slander any moment leisure/as to give words or talk with Lord Hamlet." Ophelia became more pitiful, as she took her father as orders instead of advice where she replied "I shall obey, my lord." By display how Polonius manipulate Ophelia, Shakespeare showed the readers the fiasco relationship between family members.

Friendship is also become malicious in the play, where Hamlet indirectly killed his two betrayed friends Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. As Hamlet's two school friends, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are manipulated by all of the members of the royal family. Without knowing the content of the letter Claudius sent to King of England, they are used as a tool by Claudius to kill Hamlet. They had given their loyalty to Claudius, as they said they had given up themselves "in the full bent" (to Claudius), yet this also emphases they had betrayed Hamlet. Hamlet on the other hand had never truly valued his friendship with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern as much as he valued his friendship with Horatio. Although he described Rosencrantz and Guildenstern as his "excellent good friends", he told his mother Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are like "adders fand'd." His merciless action of indirectly send Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to death had illustrated the crash of friendships.

In conclusion, through Shakespeare's tragedy play Hamlet, we as the readers saw only the failure of human relationships. Where relationships between lovers, families and friends been defamed by Shakespeare through his plot. With his demonstrations of the three most important human relationships Hamlet had leaded the reader in many critical thinking and forces the readers to revaluate the relationship in nowadays society.