He Waited Until the Last Second. (Act V)

One thing that I noticed throughout Hamlet was that it felt like something was missing the whole time. When I reached the end of Act V, I realized exactly what that missing bit was - death. William Shakespeare is notorious for killing off many of his characters throughout his tragedies, and Hamlet - one of his most acclaimed works - is no exception. However, what I couldn't understand was why exactly he waited until the very end of the play to kill off several characters. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that I didn't like it, but to me the rapid killing of four main characters in the last 1/7 of Act V was a bit much. Perhaps the reason why this was strange and new for me - causing me to go back and re-read it in order to figure out what had happened - was because I was not used to it. From the past few plays which I have read by Shakespeare, he often will "spread out" the deaths a bit - providing a more consistent stream of morbid entertainment for the audience. A prime example of this is another acclaimed work of Shakespeare's - Romeo and Juliet. This tragedy has a similar number of character deaths, however they occur periodically within the play: Mercutio and Tybalt die in an exciting duel in the middle of the play, Paris dies in the middle of Act V, Romeo and Juliet die near the end, and then Lady Montague dies at the very end. However, despite the fact that it may seem as if I am attacking the way that Shakespeare mapped out the deaths in Hamlet, that is most definitely not the case - in fact, I believe that he had good reasons for doing so. The first of these reasons is the idea of a "Grand Finale" of sorts. Just like in a good fireworks show, Shakespeare saved the best part for last - he put in a huge show at the end to send out the play with a "bang." Similarly, it is likely that a large portion of Shakespeare's audience had/has seen some of his work at some point in there life, and therefore were waiting for something exciting to happen (the death of Polonius was not nearly enough for the insatiable thirst for blood that the audience so often has), so they would remain focused on the play as not to miss the "best part." Finally, it makes sense that Shakespeare would want to change up the layout of his play - if all of his work was essentially the same storyline with a different setting and characters, then the public would have lost interest in his work and he would not be nearly as famous as he is today.

Final Word Count (Not Including this Footer): 468 Words.