Why does Hamlet is one of the most important tragedies in the world, and maybe the tragedy “par excellence” in European literature?

The character of Hamlet is one of the most studied figures in literature; he’s almost considered a legend who faced an heroic reality, unveiling his modernity

But what kind of modernity? First of all he’s put at the center of investigation by Shakespeare and, to be more precise, he puts himself under focus, he poses questions (especially on the human being’s nature) and he uses his fake madness to hear what other people think about him.

Hamlet is the only shakespearean tragedy with a proper protagonist, who doesn’t give space to secondary characters or plots during the narration, making the reader focusing only on its figure, on its problems. Each word, action, gesture is dependent and linked with Hamlet and his questions, so the whole tragedy rings around the main doubt: “to be or not to be?”.

The plot’s structure is based on the heart of the matter: wondering about the sense of life. This way Hamlet’s thoughts come to surface from his subconscious, which becomes the center of the tragedy; this leads the man to investigate and to pose himself questions about existence. Life can be seen as a theatre, made up of more synchronized scenes, as Shakespeare reports in Act 3, Scene 2, when it’s played a theatrical representation inside another theatrical representation, which contains a “total” screen of  life. On the stage there’s both past and present: the dead king Hamlet, the future successor Claudius, the Queen who married Hamlet and the one wife of Claudius.

This concept of life and the centrality of the character of Hamlet better represent what it was previously meant for modernity.