ENGLISH LITERATURE (CBSE/UGC NET)

Detailed explanation-1: -Hamlet is a revenge tragedy. It features the elements of a tragedy common in his time such as a murder, ghosts, and someone seeking revenge, but it also has elements of a tragedy such as the main character having a fatal flaw.

Detailed explanation-2: -Hamlet is tragedy because the want of poetic justice, for them and the hero, keeps it a painful mystery; and because the chain of cause and effect prevents it equally from being ‘Absurd’ drama, as does Hamlet’s final acceptance of Providence at work in it to ‘shape our ends’.

Detailed explanation-3: -Tragedy (from the Greek: , tragōidia) is a genre of drama based on human suffering and, mainly, the terrible or sorrowful events that befall a main character. Traditionally, the intention of tragedy is to invoke an accompanying catharsis, or a “pain [that] awakens pleasure", for the audience.

Detailed explanation-4: -This doesn’t mean that Hamlet is a tragicomedy, which is an entirely different genre with a different history. A tragicomedy is a tragedy with a happy ending or a comedy that successfully exploits tragic materials for a comic purpose. Hamlet is not that kind of play at all.