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The characters that Shakespeare has chosen for Hamlet are not the type one would find in a typical Greek tragedy, the kind of tragedy that Aristotle was used to criticizing. Oedipus the King, includes a number of elements that Shakespeare does not use in Hamlet. The chorus is used as a character in Oedipus the King to allow us a sympathetic view of Oedipus, in his time of travail. Oedipus has accepted responsibility for his fate and blinded himself. The audience feels sympathy and therefore feels and pity. No such sympathy is given to Hamlet. It is not the fact that he does not have some sympathetic qualities; rather he has too few sympathetic characteristics for us to wish to empathize. Hamlet wishes to do the right thing, it is the way he does the right thing in a wrong way that makes us dislike him. Hamlet also spends much of his time deliberating rather than doing. Hamlet is dour. Almost every character in the play is dour. The only two characters with any sort of joie de vivre are the clowns who are also grave diggers. The irony is that the characters who most enjoy life are those who face death on a regular basis. This juxtaposition not only foreshadows the conclusion of the play but also adds to the mood of disgust. One of the elements contributing to mood is character, however it is used in a non-aristotelian way. Aristotle ignored the concept that a play could take place in many different settings and still retain meaning. In his elements of tragedy Aristotle mentions “Plot, character, diction, thought, spectacle and song.(Aristotle 39).” He does not include setting as a separate entity. It is implicit, however, in his conception of “Unities” that more than one setting was not acceptable. One example may be found in Oedipus the King, where all of the action takes place in one setting, and where the geographical setting of the play, in terms of a historical context, does not in itself add any meaning. Aristotle did, however, believe in “Unity of Time”, where each action follows the previous action, and builds to form a single “thread” of action. We would include the time in play as part of the setting. Another axiom of Unity of time is that one stage minute equals on real minute. It is only by ignoring Aristotelian convention in setting, specifically unity of time, that Shakespeare can properly tell his story. Hamlet takes place entirely in Castle Elsinore and on its grounds. The first scene takes place at approximately midnight as does Act 1,nScene 4. Shakespeare completely ignores the Aristotelian convention of “Unity of Time”. It is only by ignoring this convention that Shakespeare can allow Hamlet to have the scene with the ghost, a twenty minute scene, that Shakespeare elongates from midnight to dawn. By the same token it is this elongation that allows Hamlet to talk with the ghost and gives the ghost a dramatic reason, the dawn, to leave the stage. This allows Shakespeare to develop his plot and therefore to develop his theme. These temporal manipulations do not end here. Hamlet leaves for England by boat, is waylaid by pirates and returns to Elsinore between Act 4nScene 3 and Act 5 Scene 1. This allows Laertes to return and demand revenge, Ophelia to go mad and kill herself and Hamlet to return just in time for the funeral. Without this compression of time, Shakespeare could not have fitted in the plot points he needs to build the theme of revenge. Laertes leaves Denmark in the second scene of the first act, and returns in the fourth act and demands revenge for the death of his father, Polonius. Shakespeare has, again ignored the time frame of the play in order to facilitate the plot. It by ignoring the temporal aspect of setting that Shakespeare has the room he needs to develop the plot , and therefore the theme of Hamlet. Shakespeare uses Castle Elsinore and environs to depict a sordid and depressing place where incest and murder are a part of normal life, where revenge is commonplace motivation, and where the feigning of madness is a normal strategy to dissemble ones feelings. This is the setting for Hamlet. Shakespeare created this setting to tell us a story of revenge gone wrong. He also created a mood of disgust. When at the end of the play, things are brought to their right order and Fortinbras becomes king, we look back and see the depraved way of life that existed at Castle Elsinore and its logical conclusion, a room littered with bodies and Fortinbras taking his lawful place as king, we feel disgust and its purgation.

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