The Kinship and The Political Background of Shakespeare's tragedies: Hamlet and Macbeth

Abstract

There are so many studies have been written about Shakespeare's plays and life such as Shakespeare's History Plays (1944) by E.M.W. Tillyard, Elizabethan Psychology and Shakespeare (1972) by Ruth L. Anderson, Shakespeare's Philosophical Patterns (1973) by W.C. Curry, (Lal. 1985. P26) and others, but few have been written in the political side of the tragedies, and particularly about the relationship between kingdom and power. This paper is an attempt to cover this area.In Shakespeare's tragedies: Hamlet and Macbeth one notices that the main element of the collapse of the kingdom was the king's kinship but not the king. The political struggle to seize power mainly stands on the military powers, This paper tries to find out the main political, social, and religious factors that lead to political conflict in the kingdoms in Hamlet and Macbeth, the elements of similarity and dissimilarity of the political fight to seize the power of kingship in the two plays and whether this way of political conflict to seize power a universal fact that stick to the nature of kingship and its continuity. The Lahjian Arab poet was right when he advised his Sultan of Lahij saying:“It's said: Do not fear the King but be afraid of his relatives and servants.”