CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
Vengeance is depicted in William Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Merchant of Venice the major theme was a social phenomenon during Shakespeare’s days. England then was a proud nation and Queen Elizabeth who was the symbol of England would not tolerate her rivals. She destroyed her enemies and in 1587,she had Mary Queen of Scots executed for treason.Also in 1588, her navy defeated a huge armada of ships from Spain.Both acts were prompted by religion.Her power was threatened for other reason. In 1594, her doctor was executed for attempting to poison her. When she died in 1603, James1 succeeded her and brought a change. He was a Scottish.At that time Scotland and England were not in good terms. If Shakespeare needed example of life at its extremes, he had them all around him. His depicting the theme of vengeance in both plays could be traced to the life in England during Queen Elizabeth’s reign. This closeness to the count
means that the understood all that was going on very well. Without reading history books,Shakespeare’s days can clearly be seen in his plays because his plays are written by one who knows the tragedy of sudden death, illness, the splendor of the life of the court in contrast to urban and rural poverty. Shakespeare’s plays contains all the hustle and bustle of normal life at the time we see the courtfool, aristocracy, roguery merchants and the servant classes.We hear of bear-baiting, fortune telling, entertainment,drinking,dancing and singing. As changes happen, they are brought into the plays.Shakespeare wrote to perform. He studied his audience closely and produced what they wanted,His play reflects Elizabethan life and times.In Shakespeare’s time,there were confiscatory attitude towards vengeance there was more sympathy than there might be nowadays for people who took private vengeance. These attitude was left over from the days when taking personal revenge was seen as defending one’s
honour. However, the law of the court and the church were quite clear in condemning this.
Interest in the theme of vengeance was wide spread and led playwrights of this time to develop a genre of play known as “Revenge Tragedies”. Revenge Tragedies have many features of the plays of Seneca, a Roman Playwright who lived in the first century A.D. Examples of a few of the popular Elizabethan revenge Tragedies include the Spanish Tragedy, The Revenger’s Tragedy, The White Devil, The Duchess of Malfi. In Shakespeare’s revenge plays, the offence is described,the revenger starts planning his revenge or vengeance, he goes ahead to confront the offender, the revenge is partly completed and finally, revenge or vengeance, is carried out.
This study therefore is aimed at focusing on the theme of vengeance in William Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Merchant of Venice. By focusing on these issues, we hope to arrive at an evaluation of Shakespeare novel by looking at the theme of
revenge in his novel. And since the focus is on the works of Williams Shakespeare, we need to look at his background and his work as a prelude to understanding the elements in his work.
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