The Theme of Revenge and William Shakespeare’s Hamlet

Abstract

BLOOD-REVENGE as a definite code appears sporadically in contemporary times; but it was universal among primitive peoples and strongly influenced their religion, law, and customs. The mod ern theory of crime presupposes the existence of a State whose laws or regulation are broken , and punishment inflicted by this State for the breach of its rules. But in the earliest times there CQuid be no crime because there was n o State. Instead , a simple injury was inflicted by one individual on another or on a group of individuals bound together by the tie of relationship. F or redress of this personal injury, in present times distinguished as a tort, the only possible action for the primitive individual was a direct revenge upon his injurer. Since an act of violence was not a crime but merely a personal injury, the revenge for it in kind was the first manifestation of a consciousness of justice, for private revenge was the mightiest, the only possible form in which a wrong could be righted .