Hamlet Vs. Romeo And Juliet
It is clear that Shakespeare intended these creative names to evoke certain fragments of meaning. For instance, Hamlet’s name recalls the phrase: ‘If you are not getting to eat that ham, let your sister have some,’ while Fortinbras clearly implies ‘Hello, I’m An eccentric old woman, I’m trying to find tin bras.’ There’s another similarity, the element of language. In both Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet, the characters are constantly chatting with one another or taking note of someone speaking, or lecturing themselves, or whatever. Here we see Shakespeare’s characteristic penchant for words, more specifically, his habit of using words to suggest things.
One can see how Shakespeare’s growing up as a person’s boy in England may have influenced this aspect of his artistry. Another obvious parallel between the 2 plays is that of the recurring motif of gravity. Both the Verona of Romeo and Juliet and therefore the Denmark of Hamlet are worlds during which objects are pulled towards the world by a force proportional to their mass. Thus, in Hamlet act II scene iii, as Hamlet and Laertes engage during a quite verbal ‘jousting match’, both characters remain firmly attached to the ground. Moreover, when Polonius drops his keys in line 187, it’s implied that the keys then fall to, and make contact with, the ground. This seems analogous to the instant in Romeo and Juliet when Juliet attempts to pass her hand through a wall, and therefore the Friar Laurence appears in her chambers, remarking that his feet ‘seem well stuck to the bottom as if it twere the very quality of nature.’
This, in turn, foreshadows the instant in Act V scene iii when Friar Laurence remarks, ‘I dropped my keys on the bottom .’ Thus in Hamlet, as in Romeo and Juliet, no stable objects rise spontaneously into the air, nor do any dropped objects remain eerily suspended in mid-air. Another major motif running through both plays is that the concept of your time. In Hamlet, Shakespeare depicts a tragic world during which time passes continually, such that, in Act IV scene iii, Polonius remarks that ‘it…’ is later than it had been before. Similarly, within the balcony scene of Romeo and Juliet, we learn from Romeo that it’s ‘…night,’ while Juliet observes that it’s ‘4:36 A.M.’ With this recurring theme of the passage of your time, Shakespeare weaves a thread of continuity throughout (and in) the play. Lastly, in both Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet, Shakespeare ironically suggests a tragic universe during which the important and therefore the imagined coexist, and yet it’s relatively easy to draw a boundary between them, such that, on some level, Shakespeare has written the best book of all time.
The worlds of these two stories have very specific things that go along with them. They both have the king and queen, a prince, and a princess. Romeo and Juliet’s world was a stressful one they both had to overcome challenges so that they could end up being together. In Hamlet, His world was the worst. Hamlet had to deal with the loss of his father and his mother remarrying not even a year after his father had died. the world in which both of the stories lived in they had to learn for themselves and grow into their own personalities. Romeo and Juliet had to figure out how to make things work so that they could be together like they always envisioned, whereas Hamlet had to figure out how to get revenge on his uncle for killing his father. Birth stories take place in rough times for the main characters.
