Hamlet's Good Play

Hamlet Is Right
The concept of a good play is a subjective topic. There is people that have the right to say whether a play is good or not, but it doesn’t mean that everybody will think the same. The play Hamlet, by Shakespeare, written by the English author in 1603 relates Hamlet’s life, the Prince of Denmark, and shows what it takes to be a good play. Hamlet, who is the main character in theplay, reflects his melancholy about his father’s sudden death. In the play, Hamlet soliloquizes in certain occasions, and he gives his opinion about a particular concern or subject always related to his feelings. In one of those soliloquizes, he expresses his opinion about what a good play needs to include. Would the Hamlet’s elitist point of view consider Shakespeare’s masterpiece an excellent oran average play? Would Hamlet be worth the watch for the Prince of Denmark?
Hamlet was a play written during Shakespeare’s literary peak. It was written when Shakespeare reached his greatest technical perfection. In Hamlet, Shakespeare excels for studying more psychologically his characters than in his previous plays. As we can read, he even lets one of his characters analyze what is goodtheater for him. In accordance with this fact, would the play Hamlet be a good play in Hamlet’s opinion? The answer is definitely yes. Hamlet thinks a good play of a performance that is in short; well-ordered, instructive, elegant, written with decorum, and brilliant itself. And, in Hamlet play, we can find those characteristics.
Hamlet, the main character of the play, thinks that an excellent playis that play that is “well digested in the scenes” (2.2.464) and “as wholesome as sweet, and very much, more handsome than fine” (2.2.468-469). For him, a play needs to be like a body that eats healthy food and three times per day. Also it needs to be “fed” with good topics and worked characters in it. Hamlet also says that a good play needs to be elegant. To maintain a sense of decorum in everyscene of the play, it needs to be” well dressed” with proper words. Hamlet thinks that instructive plays are good plays; the plays that teach from experience a lesson. A play needs to be “educated” as much as a person needs to have culture to be interesting. When Hamlet tells the speech about what a good play is from his point of view, he says “more handsome than fine” (2.2.469). This quote shows ametaphor that the Prince of Denmark makes referring that a play needs to have a “good appearance” to the audience to be well performed and to link the scenes themselves with property. A play needs to be liked by the public in order to be successful. Therefore why would it need to be fine? Instead of fine, a play needs more to be beautiful because what we first see in a play or in a person is goingto have an influence in what we will think of it. Theater is an artistic activity that uses visual performances as its main way to express or reflect a situation.

Hamlet prefers plays that are well ordered, and well presented. Shakespeare wrote Hamlet in accordance to the classical model of drama’s writing, established in the Humanistic drama during the Renaissance, with five acts per play.Since he follows the classical statements for writing drama, he is well-ordering his play according to the times when Hamlet “lived”. The Renaissance artists also use the language as a pleasure itself for them. Shakespeare alternates prose with verse in his play, as noticed in 2.2.545-634. In that passage the dialogue between Polonius, the King’s advisor, and Hamlet is written in prose whileHamlet’s soliloquy at the end of the scene is written in verse form. That extract is an example of Shakespeare’s brilliant writing skills.
The demand of elegance is another Hamlet’s characteristic to have good play. For example, the dialogue between Laertes and Ophelia (1.3.6-56) shows elegance in Hamlet. Laertes is Hamlet’s friend as well as Ophelia’s brother. At the same time, Ophelia is Hamlet’s...