3/ What are Shakespeare’s great tragedies and what do they reflect?

The drama The Merchant of Venice  and the two early tragedies Romeo and Juliet and Juliet and Julius Caesar, also written in the 90s, show a change in the play wright’s reality becomes more pessimistic.

The main works written by Shakespeare during the second period (1601 – 1608) are his 4 great tragedies: Hamlet, Prince of Denmark (1601), Othello, the Moor of Venice (1604), King Lear (1605), Macbeth (1605)

The tragedies reflect the deep, unsolvable contradictions of life, the falsehood, injustice and tyeany existing in society. They show people who perish in the struggle against Evil.

In what way does the tragedy of Hamlet differ from other tragedies of that time?

-         The tragedy Hamlet is an outstanding play because unlike other “bloody tragedies” written before and in Shakespeare’s time, it is “a tragedy of thought” and Hamlet is the first thinker that has ever appeared on the stage.

-         The tragedy of Hamlet is caused not so much by the discord between Hamlet and the evil outer world, as by the discord within his own soul.

-         Seeing the evil he does not want to put up with it. He meditates upon the cause of evil and the ways of fighting it. And being unable to find these ways, he suffers, reproaches himself with being passive, irresolute, weak-willed. He hesitates and delays his actions. And he fights with words, cries out bitter truths, expose evil. The tragedy of Hamlet has always excited the minds of people. It stirs people’s conscience, make them fight against Evil for the triumph of justice and God. Many personages in world literature are discontented with reality like Hamlet but they do not see any ways of changing.