hamlet themes thesis

Hamlet Themes

Want to know more about the Hamlet theme? This page discusses a number of the major Hamlet themes that are evident in the play.

The background to the Hamlet theme structure

When Shakespeare arrived in London and began his acting career he made many friends among the theatre community. Before long he tried his hand at working on plays with the play writers who welcomed anyone who could help them fulfill the voracious hunger for plays. His talent was soon recognised and he became a regular member of their fraternity.

One of the writers he worked with was Thomas Kyd , who was responsible for scores of plays, although only one has survived to be regularly performed in the 21st century – The Spanish Tragedy . Kyd and Shakespeare became friends, and it is thought that working with Kyd, first on an earlier play, Ur-Hamlet , one of Shakespeare’s earliest forays into playwriting, and then The Spanish Tragedy, formed a very significant part of Shakespeare’s apprenticeship.

The Spanish Tragedy was very popular. It caught the late Elizabethan taste for violence informed by revenge, a model that became full-blown in the Jacobean theatre, subsequently known as the genre of ‘Revenge Tragedy.’

Shakespeare’s Hamlet is a revenge tragedy but, being by the mature Shakespeare, it is very much more than that. Nevertheless, the play hangs on the skeleton of the then fashionable revenge story – in this case, a young man told by his late father’s ghost that he has been murdered by his brother and so, according to convention, the young man has the obligation to seek and achieve revenge. There is no doubt that in that sense, Hamlet is the simple story of a man avenging his father’s death. It is in the telling of that story, though, that Shakespeare made this play what is so often described as the most famous play ever written.

Hamlet is a play about so many things that they can’t be reckoned. Those things that the play is about are the themes. One can name them as themes but it should be remembered that all each Hamlet theme interacts and resounds with all the others.

Here are brief accounts of a selection of the major Hamlet themes of revenge, corruption; religion, politics, appearance and reality, and women.

6 Major Themes in Hamlet

The theme of revenge in hamlet.

There are two young men bent on avenging their father’s death in this play. Hamlet and Laertes are both on the same mission, and while Hamlet is pondering his approach to the problem Laertes is hot on his heels, determined to kill him as Hamlet has killed his father, Polonius. This is, therefore, a double revenge story. Shakespeare examines the practice of revenge by having two entirely different approaches to it – the hot-headed abandon of Laertes and the philosophical, cautious approach by Hamlet. The two strands run parallel – invoking comparisons, each one throwing light on the other – until the young men’s duel and both their deaths. The revenge theme feeds into the religious element of the play as Hamlet is conflicted by his Christian aversion to killing someone and his duty to avenge his father’s death, whereas it is not a consideration for Laertes, whose duty is clear to him, and he acts on it immediately.

The theme of corruption

Corruption is a major concern in this play. The text is saturated with images of corruption, in several forms – decay, death, poison. From the very first moments of the play the images start and set the atmosphere of corruption which is going to grow as Shakespeare explores this theme. The tone is set when Marcellus says, ‘Something is rotten in the state of Denmark,’ after seeing the ghost of Hamlet’s father. What Shakespeare is doing here, and in using the image structure of corruption, is addressing the broadly held view that a nation’s health is connected to the legitimacy of its king. Here we have the ghost of a murdered king, and his murderer – a decidedly illegitimate king – is sitting on his throne. All through the play, Hamlet is preoccupied with rot and corruption – both of the body and the soul, reflecting the way in which society is destroyed by the corruption of its inner institutions – in this case, the court, which is the government.

Decay, rot and mould are always in Hamlet’s mind, and his language is full of those images – ‘an unweeded garden that grows to seed – things rank and gross possess it,’ and countless images of death and disease. He hides Polonius’ body in a place where it will decay rapidly and stink out the castle. It’s an image of the corruption in secret places that is going to contaminate the whole country.

The theme of religion

Religion has an impact on the actions of the characters in this play. Hamlet’s ‘to be or not to be’ soliloquy outlines his religious thinking on the subject of suicide. He declines to kill Claudius while he is praying for fear of sending him to heaven when he should be going to hell. Hamlet believes, too, that ‘there is a destiny that shapes our ends.’

One of the most important things of all in this play is the Christian idea of making a sacrifice to achieve healing. Hamlet is Christ-like in his handling of the crisis. The court is rotten with corruption and the people in it are almost all involved in plotting and scheming against others. Hamlet’s way of dealing with it is to wait and watch as all the perpetrators fall into their own traps –‘hauled by their own petards,’ as he puts it. All he has to do is be ready – like Christ. ‘The readiness is all,’ he says. And then, all around him, the corruption collapses in on itself and the court is purified. Like Christ, though, he has to be sacrificed to achieve that, and he is, leaving a scene of renewal and hope.

The Hamlet theme of politics

Hamlet is a political drama. Hamlet’s uncle has murdered his father, the king. He has subsequently done Hamlet out of his right of succession and become king. Hamlet’s mother has married the king while the rest of the palace is engaged in palatial intrigues, leading to wider conspiracies and murders. The king, Claudius, determined to safeguard his position in the face of the threat Hamlet presents, plots in several ways to kill Hamlet. Polonius plots against Hamlet to ingratiate himself with Claudius. Characters, including Hamlet’s mother, Gertrude, spy on each other. This is all to do with power and the quest to achieve and hold it.

The theme of appearance and reality

This is a major theme in every one of Shakespeare’s plays. The text of Hamlet is saturated with references to the gap that exists between how things seem to be and how they really are. Very little in this play is really as it seems. That is bound to be so in a play in which there are so many murderous plots and schemes by those who, on the surface, strive to appear innocent, like Claudius, who, behind his charismatic smile, is a damned villain. He is, as Hamlet puts it, a ‘smiling villain.’ Although Ophelia loves Hamlet she pretends to spurn his affections. Hamlet pretends to be mad so that he can explore the ghost’s assertion that Claudius killed him. All the characters, in one way or another, are hiding their true intentions.

What makes this theme particularly interesting and different in this play is that as the play develops the gap between appearance and reality narrows by the characters becoming more like the masks they are using than any reality that may lie behind that so the identities they have assumed eventually become their realities.

The theme of women

For much of the play, Hamlet is in a state of agitation. It is when he is talking to either of the two female characters that he is most agitated – so much so that he is driven to violence against them. He cares about both but does not trust either. He feels his mother, Gertrude, has let him down by her ‘o’er hasty marriage’ to Claudius. To him, it means that she didn’t really love his father. In the case of Ophelia, he is suspicious that she is part of the palace plot against him.

Both women die in this play. Ophelia is driven mad by the treatment she receives from the three men – Claudius, Polonius and Hamlet – and takes her own life. Gertrude’s death is more complex because it raises the question: how far is she responsible for the corruption that Hamlet has to deal with?

Whilst the play features the meeting and falling in love of the two main protagonists, to say that love is a theme of Romeo and Juliet is an oversimplification. Rather, Shakespeare structures Romeo and Juliet around several contrasting ideas, with a number of themes expressed as opposites. To say that the tension between love and hate is a major theme in Romeo and Juliet gets us closer to what the play is about. These – and other – opposing ideas reverberate with each other and are intertwined through the text.

Shakespeare Themes by Play

Hamlet themes , Macbeth themes , Romeo and Juliet themes

Shakespeare Themes by Topic

Ambition, Appearance & Reality , Betrayal , Conflict , Corruption , Death , Deception , Good & Evil , Hatred , Order & Disorder , Revenge , Suffering , Transformation

Kenneth Brannagh looks at skull as he considers the Hamlet theme of death

Kenneth Brannagh looks at skull, symbolising the recurring Hamlet theme of death

What do you think of these Hamlet themes – any that you don’t agree with, or would add? Let us know in the comments section below!

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Don’t bereavement and madness feature in Hamlet too or are they subsumed by themes you identify?

Wonderful notes

I believe the king Claudius is frevolous. Logacious and cantacarous as reflected by his mean personality and in terms of psychoanalysis as he asserts assert his dominance and show superiority as an alpha-male.

What if the character of hamlet was not pointed sheakspear..

Hamlet: Key Themes

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

There are a number of prominent themes of William Shakespeare’s Hamlet . Each of the key themes we have identified in the following article, though, throws out some surprising details and interpretations, so it’s worth probing some of the play’s most important themes and subjects in more detail.

Revenge is obviously an important theme in Hamlet , if not the most important theme of all. Indeed, Hamlet is not just a tragedy but an example of a ‘revenge tragedy’, a subgenre of play which was already established when Shakespeare wrote Hamlet . Shakespeare’s own dramatising of the Hamlet story was itself a reworking of an earlier (sadly lost) play, probably by Thomas Kyd, which had been performed around a decade before.

Only two words of dialogue of this Ur- Hamlet have survived: ‘Hamlet, revenge!’ Kyd’s other plays included The Spanish Tragedy , which, as we’ve discussed here , helped to make this kind of play popular on the Elizabethan stage.

Hamlet is told by the Ghost to ‘Revenge his [i.e., King Hamlet’s] foul and most unnatural murder.’ The Ghost identifies the King’s own brother, Claudius, as the murderer, and Hamlet Junior swears to avenge his father’s death. But as Hamlet will later confide in a soliloquy , he struggles to act and spends more time contemplating his revenge than he does actually carrying it out:

Why, what an ass am I! This is most brave, That I, the son of a dear father murder’d, Prompted to my revenge by heaven and hell, Must, like a whore, unpack my heart with words, And fall a-cursing, like a very drab.

Ultimately, of course, Hamlet does succeed in avenging his father’s murder, when he stabs Claudius with the poisoned sword and forces him to drink from the poisoned chalice for good measure. But in a sense, by this point his actions are as much a revenge-killing for his own murder (Claudius poisoned Laertes’ sword used in combat with Hamlet), so the motive behind the act is more complex.

Of course, Laertes conspired with Claudius to use a poisoned sword during his duel with Hamlet in order to carry out his own revenge: he wants Hamlet dead for killing his father, Polonius, and driving his sister, Ophelia, mad following his callous treatment of her. So Laertes, like Hamlet, is a son bent on revenge for the murder of his father. However, a third character, the Norwegian prince Fortinbras, is out to avenge the death of his father, who was killed by King Hamlet.

Hamlet does technically get his revenge, ultimately, but only at the end of the play. He spends four acts of this long tragedy putting off his task: the killing of Claudius. Hamlet’s delaying tactics, his inability to carry out vengeance, is one of the most famous themes of Hamlet . He seems incapable of acting on his promise to avenge his father’s murder.

But does Hamlet even delay? Technically, we might answer ‘yes’, but in another sense, there are good reasons for his caution. First, as we mention below, Hamlet cannot be sure the Ghost is who it says it is. It claims to be his father, but there’s always a chance the Ghost is some demon sent to trick Hamlet into killing an innocent man.

He needs to establish that Claudius really is guilty. He hears Claudius confessing to his ‘offence’ while at prayer, and only fails to kill his uncle then because he doesn’t want Claudius to be sent straight to heaven. He puts on the play, The Murder of Gonzago , in order to trick Claudius into revealing his guilt. And he even stabs Polonius, who’s hiding behind the arras, convinced that Polonius is Claudius.

Clearly, as soon as he’s gathered the evidence that Claudius is guilty as the Ghost claims he is, Hamlet is prepared to carry out his revenge. But then he stabs the wrong man and is then sent away by Claudius before he has a chance to kill him. Indeed, Hamlet talks about not being capable of action, but his actions themselves show him to be more decisive than he lets on in his soliloquies.

One of the uncomfortable truths about Hamlet is that Claudius may well be a better king than his predecessor. Of course, this wouldn’t make it right for him to have ousted his brother in order to seize the throne for himself, but it may nevertheless be the case that Denmark is better off with Claudius on the throne than King Hamlet.

After all, King Hamlet killed Old Fortinbras, prompting Prince Fortinbras, his son, to invade Denmark in revenge; and we know (because he tells Hamlet this himself) that he was known to spend the afternoons asleep in his orchard (where he was murdered by Claudius) rather than attending to the affairs of state.

Another question which we are invited to ponder is this: when a king dies, in most countries the crown automatically passes to his oldest son, if he has one. When King Hamlet died, why did Hamlet not become king? Why is Claudius on the throne at all? The play does not broach this issue, but it is one of many intriguing puzzles about it. Was Hamlet deemed not fit to be king? Did Claudius insist?

The very first line Hamlet utters in Hamlet is (probably) an aside, muttered under his breath, in response to his uncle’s overly familiar greeting: ‘ A little more than kin, and less than kind ’. Family is clearly an important theme in Hamlet , from Hamlet’s duty to avenge his father, his fraught relationship with his uncle (even before he learns Claudius was probably the one responsible for his father’s death), and, most of all, his curious bond with his mother.

Does Hamlet’s anger at his mother’s hasty re-marrying stem purely from Hamlet’s loyalty to his father, or is Hamlet a mother’s son who has never quite cut the apron strings? And that’s to say nothing of Sigmund Freud’s Oedipal interpretation of their relationship.

Death and the afterlife.

Hamlet’s most famous speech in the play, his ‘ To be, or not to be ’ soliloquy, is one of the great meditations on what happens when we die. His other most famous line in the play is probably ‘ Alas, poor Yorick ’: words delivered over the skull of the dead jester, beginning one of the most famous meditations on mortality in the English language.

These things are especially on Hamlet’s mind because of the task he must carry out. What if the Ghost is not really his dead father, but has merely assumed the appearance of King Hamlet so it can trick him into performing evil deeds?

This depends in part on one’s Christian beliefs: the Ghost announces that it has come from Purgatory, which is a specifically Catholic doctrine: it’s where souls go to be purged of their sins before being sent on to heaven (or, if the sins are too vast, to hell).

The appearance of the Ghost has prompted Hamlet to consider what will happen to him if he murders Claudius and Claudius turns out to be innocent. His own soul will be in jeopardy. These are big questions for Hamlet to weigh up, and so it’s hardly a surprise that he ‘delays’ his revenge initially, while he endeavours to discover the truth.

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Hamlet Themes – Meaning and Main Ideas

Home » Literature Explained – Literary Synopses and Book Summaries » Hamlet » Hamlet Themes – Meaning and Main Ideas

Main Themes in Hamlet

The play takes place in Elsinore, Denmark, which is a military town on the Eastern Coast of Denmark. Overlooking the sea, it is a hub for military watch over the sea to protect against impending attacks. The fortress contains most of the action of the play, which enhances the mood of being trapped. Many of the characters retreat to private places to give monologues, but a lot of the play occurs where other characters are present, creating an atmosphere that each character must be performing some version of themselves at all times, rather than giving in to authenticity.

The play’s motifs mostly revolve around issues of desire. One such issue is incestuous desire. The most obvious occurrence is with Claudius marrying his late brother’s wife, Gertrude. Although not strictly incestuous, it comes pretty close in a lot of people’s eyes. Less obvious is Hamlet’s obsession with his mother’s sexuality. He resents her for marrying Claudius so quickly after his father’s death and is tormented by the implications of this. Furthermore, Laertes has a suspicious fixation on his sister, and when she dies, he proclaims his deep love for her and even jumps into her grave to embrace her one last time. Related to this is the motif of misogyny. Most of the male characters of this play try to control the women in their families. Polonius and Laertes manipulate and control Ophelia. Hamlet wishes to control his mother and is hurt that he ultimately cannot because another man, Claudius, has stepped into her life.

Hamlet Themes

What are the major themes in Hamlet?

The Uncertainty of Life

The complexity of action vs. inaction, death and what is means for life.

How Rulership Affects a Nation’s Wellbeing

Genuine Behavior vs. Performance

Indecision leading to madness.

As is seen throughout the play, failing to action when action is due can create a slew of problems. Hamlet questions, again and again, how he can ever know when it is the right time to take action, and whether that action is truly the best course. This creates an emotional and psychological conundrum for poor Hamlet as he feels bound by honor to get revenge but just doesn’t know how to do it. He finds himself going mad after some time unable to make a decision and stick with it about how to act. However, some of the more impulsive characters like Claudius, Polonius, and Laertes all find tragedies coming their way due to their excessive willingness to just act. So where is the sweet spot?

How Rulership Affects a Nation’s Well-being

A common theme in Shakespeare’s play, Hamlet is no exception to speaking on this theme. When a nation’s rulership is under attack, the nation seems to suffer as well. For example, in Hamlet this is a lot of anxiety around the transfer of rulership once King Hamlet dies. This anxiety touches each character profoundly as they feel both lost and trapped at the same time, unable to control much beyond their own little personal sphere of influence.

In this play there are instances of characters acting either for show or for a play-within-the-play. Hamlet notices several times that people seem to behave differently around certain individuals than they would just alone. He finds it hard to know who to believe and who to trust, uncertain of who is genuine with him and who is acting. At one part of the play, Hamlet asks a troupe of traveling actors to put on a play that acts out how he imagines Claudius murdered his father. All of this relates back to Hamlet trying to decipher what is real and what is fake because it is closely tied in to how he proceeds in his quest for revenge.

Themes, Motifs, and Symbols in Hamlet

The Albert Team
Last Updated On: March 1, 2022

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Major Themes in Hamlet

Even though Shakespeare wrote this great drama for Elizabethan audiences over 400 years ago, the themes presented in this tragedy are still relevant for 21st-century audiences today. The usual themes of deception and vengeance are clearly portrayed throughout Hamlet and many of Shakespeare’s tragedies (think Othello , Romeo and Juliet, or Titus Andronicus ).

However, Hamlet stands out among the rest of Shakespeare’s tragedies in its depiction of mental illness throughout the play, even portraying the lead character as overcome with “madness” as the events of the play progress.

The Complexity of Mental Illness

The American Psychiatry Association defines mental illnesses as “ health conditions involving changes in emotion, thinking or behavior (or a combination of these). Mental illnesses are associated with distress and/or problems functioning in social, work or family activities. ”

Both Hamlet and Ophelia suffer from some form of mental illness, and their conditions are only exacerbated by the trauma that they experience before and during the play.

At the start of the play, Hamlet is crippled by the trauma of suddenly losing his father, and instead of comforting him, his uncle rebukes him and calls his grief “unmanly” (Shakespeare 14). Because he is under emotional distress, Hamlet reacts to his uncle’s words drastically but still in private, seeing life as pointless and wishing for death (Shakespeare 15). Even though Hamlet feigns “madness” to manipulate those around him, the reality of his mental illness becomes clearly apparent, especially as the tragedy progresses.

On the other hand, Ophelia is traumatized by two separate events; first, Hamlet’s rejection of her love, and secondly, the murder of her father by Hamlet’s careless hand. Ophelia’s mental illness, likely depression, is clearly visible to all in her unkempt hair and inability to hold meaningful conversation.

It is unusual that Shakespeare would include both male and female characters in his depiction of mental illness, especially since women were perceived as primarily prone to this type of illness. Additionally, mental illness in women was typically misdiagnosed and mistreated. For example, a woman who disobeyed her husband was quickly labeled as mad and sometimes even sent away for harsh and ineffective “treatment.” Shakespeare treads carefully by first introducing Hamlet’s “madness” as an act, but as the play progresses, the reader can clearly see the reality of his affliction.

In her essay, “Shakespeare’s Madwomen: How Elizabethan Theatre Challenged the Perception of Mental Afflictions,” Hannah Dhue explains that Shakespeare “ endeavors to prove that madness in women can be a perfectly legitimate, logically explained affliction that is not specific to gender ” (2). In his play, Shakespeare radically redefined mental illness for both men and women through his portrayal of both Hamlet and Ophelia.

The Danger of Deception and Manipulation

Deception and manipulation run rampant in Shakespeare’s Hamlet , beginning with the murder of the late king by his brother. Hamlet and his mother have both been deceived as to the actual cause of the king’s death. Even when Hamlet learns the true reason from his father’s ghost, Horatio and Marcellus still warn him against so quickly believing the ghost’s words, as they fear some demon is manipulating him.

Hamlet’s closest friends, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, arrive in Denmark and appear to be concerned with Hamlet’s well-being; however, Hamlet quickly determines that these friends are merely spying on him at the request of his uncle.

However, Hamlet is not just a victim but also a perpetrator of deception. Hamlet also puts on a play that reenacts his father’s murder as a means to catch his uncle as soon as he shows any signs of guilt. Additionally, Hamlet plays with Ophelia’s emotions and leads her to believe that he is genuinely interested in her, but he also manipulates her and others by pretending to be mad.

In a weak attempt to be a helpful father, Polonius decides that the best way to confront Hamlet is by concealing himself behind a tapestry, using his own daughter to attempt to entrap him. This is not the first time Polonius is deceptive; earlier in the play, he snuck around behind his son Laertes’ back and sent Reynaldo to spy on him in Paris.

Every instance of deception in this play causes lasting damage: Polonius is mistaken for the king and murdered by Hamlet. Ophelia takes her own life, while Hamlet has his best friends murdered, and Laertes dies after becoming entangled in Hamlet and Claudius’ dispute.

The Futility of Revenge

Hamlet is a prime candidate for manipulation after his father’s sudden death. He knows something is wrong, but he cannot quite place a finger on it. Upon seeing the ghost and recognizing his father, he abandons his fears that the ghost is a demon and never questions whether the ghost is real or whether the ghost’s words are true.

Even Horatio describes his friend as “ desperate with imagination ” (Shakespeare 32). When the ghost confirms Hamlet’s fears that his uncle murdered his father, Hamlet is more than willing to swear to avenge his father.

However, Hamlet is so much in his own head that he fails to put action to his promise until the play’s very end. When he has a prime opportunity to murder Claudius while he is praying, Hamlet hesitates, fearful that Claudius might go to heaven. His father’s ghost even appears midway through the play to remind Hamlet of his oath to avenge his murder.

However, throughout the course of the play, one by one, the people around Hamlet serve as casualties to his plan. Hamlet impulsively kills Polonius behind a tapestry, and Hamlet’s rejection of Ophelia leads her to die. Laertes becomes involved because both his father and sister are dead, but he too ends up dying at Hamlet’s hand, as well as Hamlet’s mother and Hamlet himself. Even though vengeance is served by the end of the play, it is futile, and no one wins.

Motifs and Symbols in Hamlet

Death is a regular motif in Shakespeare’s Hamlet . A murder occurs even before the play begins, and many more follow as the play progresses. However, death appears as a motif in several different instances, primarily on the topic of suicide. Overcome with grief at his father’s sudden death, Hamlet wishes he could die, saying, “O, that this too too solid flesh would melt, thaw, and resolve itself into a dew!” (Shakespeare 15). He sees life as pointless but refuses to take his own life because he fears eternal repercussions (the church preached that those who took their own lives could not enter heaven).

When Hamlet is given the order to avenge his father’s death, his life has a new purpose; however, those heavy thoughts still remain. In Act 3, Hamlet gives his famous soliloquy, asking whether it is better “to be” (to live) or “not to be” (to die) (Shakespeare 77). However, once Hamlet is assured of Claudius’ guilt, his will to live is renewed, and his ideas about death are disguised as irreverent jokes.

When he murders Polonius, he has no compassion and feels no remorse for his actions. Instead, he jokes about Polonius being “ at supper; not where he eats, but where he is eaten ” (Shakespeare 119). Later, when Ophelia dies, whether by suicide or by accident, the grave diggers argue back and forth whether or not Ophelia deserves a “Christian burial” since it is possible that she killed herself. Hamlet makes light of the grave scene, picking up skulls and talking to them. However, his mood quickly changes when Ophelia is brought to be buried. Hamlet seems to snap out of his feigned madness by expressing his love for Ophelia; however, her death clearly has exacerbated his mental illness, as shown by his fighting with Laertes in Ophelia’s grave.

The play both begins and ends with death; even though Hamlet’s father is avenged and Claudius dies, so does Hamlet’s mother, Polonius, Laertes, Ophelia, Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, and Hamlet. Fortinbras overtake Denmark, and even though Fortinbras honors Hamlet as a hero, he is also astounded at the scene before him, likening it to a battlefield.

Ears and Hearing

When Claudius kills Hamlet’s father by pouring poison into his ear, this act incites the play’s action and is also highly symbolic. The ghost enforces that the spread of the lie that a snake killed him “rankly abus[es} the whole ear of Denmark” (Shakespeare 34). Later in the play, when Hamlet attacks his mother for marrying his uncle, his mother cries out that “these words, like daggers, enter in mine ears,” symbolizing the judgment and hurt she feels (Shakespeare 109).

However, hearing is also a common motif throughout the play, specifically overhearing and eavesdropping. Multiple characters spy on one another: Polonius spies on both Laertes and Hamlet, Hamlet spies on the king, and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are commanded to spy on Hamlet. None of these situations end well, as they all enforce distrust within the kingdom.

It is more than a little strange that Hamlet is obsessed with his mother’s, ahem, love life. He is disgusted that his mother married and was intimate so quickly with Claudius after her husband’s death. He even dares to command his mother not to sleep with Claudius anymore. In Act 3, scene 4, Hamlet goes directly against the ghost’s words and attacks his mother, likening her marriage bed to a pigsty.

In a previous scene, Laertes tells his sister Ophelia not to sleep with Hamlet because he fears Hamlet is not genuine. He is correct, but Ophelia sleeps with him anyway. When Ophelia realizes that Hamlet does not care about her, she is devastated. She sings, “before you tumbled me, you promised me to wed” (Shakespeare 128). Ophelia feels heartbreak but also shame, especially considering Laertes’ previous warnings about retaining her honor.

Hamlet carries with it both heavy themes and symbols. It is not a light read by any means! However, with a mature group of students, there are plenty of opportunities for meaningful discussion on any of these themes or motifs.

Works Cited

American Psychiatric Association. What Is Mental Illness? , www.psychiatry.org/patients-families/what-is-mental-illness. Dhue, Hannah, and Dani Snyder. “Shakespeare’s Madwomen: How Elizabethan Theatre Challenged the Perception of Mental Afflictions.” Digital Commons @ IWU , digitalcommons.iwu.edu/jwprc/2014/oralpres9/1/. Shakespeare, William. The Tragedy of Hamlet: with Connections . Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 2000.

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Read our detailed notes below on the play Hamlet by William Shakespeare. Our notes cover Hamlet summary, themes, characters and analysis.

Introduction

Hamlet is a tragic play written by William Shakespeare somewhat in 1599. The exact date of publication is unknown, however, many believe that it was published between 1601 and 1603. The play is set in Denmark.

Hamlet, the prince of Denmark, is Shakespeare’s longest play and is well-thought-out as the most influential literary work of literature. The play stages the revenge that Hamlet is to wreak upon his uncle, Claudius, for killing his (Hamlet’s) father.

The story of Hamlet, by William Shakespeare, is supposed to be derived from the fable of Amleth, written in the 13th century and reiterated in the 16th century by a scholar named Francois de Belleforest. We can assume the popularity of the play by this that throughout centuries, the role of Hamlet is staged by the highly skillful artist.

Hamlet has different version published at different ages. Each version is different from others as it includes lines or excludes them making them entirely different from other. The main characters of the play are Hamlet, the protagonist; Claudius, Hamlet’s uncle; Queen Gertrude; Polonius; Ophelia; Laertes. The major themes of the play include fate, free will, revenge, political instability, mortality, and madness. Yorick’s skull is the major symbol used by the writer to introduce artistic effect in the play.

Hamlet by William Shakespeare Summary

The play opens with Prince Hamlet being summoned to Denmark from Germany for his father’s funeral. When he reaches there, he finds that his mother Queen Gertrude has already remarried to his fraternal uncle, Claudius. For Hamlet, this marriage was a big shock and considered it “foul incest”. Even worse than this, Claudius has crowned himself disregard of the fact that being King’s son, this crown belongs to Hamlet. Hamlet doubts the whole scenario as foul play.

All of Hamlet’s doubts and suspicions are confirmed when his father’s ghost visits the Castle and complains that because he is murdered, he is unable to rest in peace. Moreover, the ghost claims that Claudius had poured poison in the ear of King Hamlet when he was sleeping causing his death. The king’s ghost, impotent to confess and find redemption, is now condemned to pass his days in despair and walk on earth at night. He persuades and begs his son Hamlet to take revenge from Claudius, however, he asks to spare Gertrude and let her fate decided by heaven.

Hamlet pledges to avenge his father’s death and wears a mask of madness so that he would be able to observe the interactions among people in the castle. However, by doing so, Hamlet finds himself somewhat very confused and questions the trustworthiness of the ghost. What if the ghost is a devil’s agent directed to allure him? What if by killing Claudius consequences Hamlet to revive his memory throughout for life? Hamlet cannot stop himself from over-thinking and worries over his thought and perceive them as his cowardice. Words restrict action, however, the world in which he lives pay back every action.

To test the sincerity of the Ghost. Hamlet takes help from the troupe of actors who staged a play named The Murder of Gonzago. Hamlet added few scenes to play that resembles the murder of the King Hamlet as described by the ghost. Hamlet named this revised play as “The Mousetrap”. The play is proved successful as the Claudius reacted to the play and seems to be conscience-stricken, as hoped by Prince Hamlet. Claudius immediately leaves the place as he faces difficulty to breathe. Prince Hamlet, being convinced by the sincerity of the ghost, vows to avenge his father’s death and decided to kill Claudius. But “conscience doth make cowards of us all”, as observed by Hamlet.

Hamlet, by his unwillingness to avenge Claudius, causes six subsidiary deaths. The first victim is Polonius, an old man, who is stabbed by Hamlet through a wall hanging as Polonius spies on hamlet and his mother. Claudius banishes Hamlet to England to punish him for Polonius’ death and instructs Hamlet’s school chums, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, to handover him to English king for execution. Hamlet, during the journey, discovers what is going on and arranges a plot for the execution of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Ophelia, highly upset on her father’s death and Hamlet’s behavior, drown herself while singing a song and lamenting over the fate of a despised lover. Laertes, her brother, follows next.

When Laertes returned to Denmark to kill Claudius to avenge his father’s death, sees that Ophelia, his sister, has drowned by madness. Laertes, in the love of her sister, pledges to kill Hamlet for being the cause of Ophelia’s death. Through his creative words, Laertes convinced Claudius to kill Hamlet. Hamlet and Laertes have a sword fight. In the middle of the fight, Laertes drops his poisoned sword that is retrieved by Hamlet and wounds Laertes. Laertes tells Hamlet of the poisoned sword and as Hamlet is already been wounded by the sword, he, too, will die soon. Meanwhile, Horatio informs Hamlet that “Queen Falls”. Gertrude has drunk a sip from the poisoned cup, that was prepared by Claudius for Hamlet and she dies.

Laertes, before he dies, made another confession to Hamlet of his part in the plot and tell him the Claudius is responsible for Gertrude’s death. Enraged Hamlet stabs the poisoned sword into Claudius and pours the remaining poisoned wine into Claudius’ throat.

Before he dies, the throne should pass to the Prince Fortibras of Norway, declares Hamlet. He also begs his friend Horatio to tell him accurately the events that lead to such bloodshed.

The play ends with a grand funeral for Prince Hamlet as ordered by King Fortinbras of Denmark.

Themes in Hamlet

The question of life and death is introduced just as the play opens. Hamlet, throughout the play, ponders the complexity of life and considers the meaning of life. Throughout the play, many questions emerge as what happens when one dies? Will someone directly goes to heaven, if he/she is murdered? etc. Furthermore, Hamlet is very uncertain about the afterlife and causes him to quit suicide. The death of almost all the major characters of the play, towards the end of the play, doesn’t fully answer the question of mortality. The character of Hamlet represents exploration and discussion disregard of a true perseverance.

Hamlet, after hearing confessions from the ghost acts like a mad person to fool people in order to know the reality of the people around him. He acts so to prove himself harmless. However, this madness was recognized by Polonius. The irony arises when he falsely believes that Hamlet’s method stems from his love for Ophelia. It was impressive of Polonius that he recognizes the method behind Hamlet’s madness.

However, Hamlet starts losing his hold on reality by acting mad. He faces difficulty in handling the circumstances that are emotionally driven. Surrendering himself to physical violence displays that he has more issues than merely acting mad. This all scenario comes up with a question that what compels Hamlet to act such without considering the consequences?

There are only two female characters in the play Gertrude, Hamlet’s mother and Ophelia, Polonius’ daughter and Hamlet’s beloved.

Hamlets seem to be nervous while communicating with both of the women. In Hamlet’s life, both of these women have a special position, however, he is suspicious of both. The too early remarriage of her made him very suspicious of her mother. Secondly, Ophelia is in cahoots with her family and Hamlet realizes it when he starts acting mad.

Both of the ladies let Hamlet down. However, Ophelia is viewed as a victim of Hamlet brutality while Gertrude is represented as the more flexible character.

Political Livelihood

With the death of King Hamlet, the nation of Denmark starts deteriorating as the death of a king causes political turmoil in the country. Hamlet erratic behavior leads to unrest in the country. At various points in the play, the mad behavior of Hamlet is linked with the political livelihood of the country.

Hamlet Characters Analysis

He is the Prince of Denmark and son of the deceased king. He is called from Wittenberg University in Germany to attend his father’s funeral. When he reaches Denmark, he comes to know that his mother has remarried very soon to his uncle. Moreover, his uncle has crowned himself. This makes Hamlet very suspicious. These suspicious changes to reality when Hamlet encounters his father’s ghost. After hearing his father’s confession he vows to avenge his father’s death. Hamlet, in the play, is a highly confused person that leads to the bloody end of the play. To be or not to be is one the most celebrated dialogue of Hamlet and representation of his confused state of mind.

He is the present king of Denmark and brother of the deceased king, King Hamlet. He is accused of killing his brother and remarries widow of the Queen.

She is the Queen of Denmark and also the wife of deceased King Hamlet. She immediately remarries to Claudius, brother of King Hamlet.

He is a son of Polonius and brother of Ophelia. He is a student in Paris. Who first appears at the funeral of the King Hamlet and secondly at the death of his sister, Ophelia.

He is a loyal friend and a schoolmate of Prince Hamlet.

He is an old chief counselor of Claudius. He is murdered by Prince Hamlet when caught him spying.

She is the daughter of Polonius, sister of Laertes and Hamlet’s beloved. She commits suicide after her father’s death.

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern

The classmates of Hamlet at Wittenberg whom Claudius called to spy on him.

The minor characters of the play are:

He is King of Norway, who vows to avenge his father’s death who was killed by the Danes’ hands.

A minor character who acts as the messenger between Hamlet and Laertes.

Voltimand and Cornelius

They are the courtiers of Danish kingdom who are directed as diplomats to the Courtyard of Norway.

Marcellus and Barnardo

They are Danish officers who guard the castle of Elsinore.

A Danish soldier to guard castle of Elsinore.

A young man whom Polonius trains to spy on his son and report him.

Hamlet Literary Analysis

Throughout the play, Hamlets seems to be highly confused regarding the idea of death. His famous soliloquies line “to be or not to be” shows Hamlet confused mindset for suicide; whether he should suicide or not; what would be an afterlife.

The play has a turning point where Hamlet realizes at the graveyard and encounters the skull of a man whom he is fond of. In his contemplation, Hamlet realizes that death vanishes the class difference among society. Everything is created by man himself. All these differences are illusions that diminish with death.

The play demonstrates a conflict between fate and free will and this what the classical tragedians appreciated. In every great tragedy, there lies a struggle between the predisposition a man to accept the fate and his natural desire to control his destiny.

Whether it is Sophocles or Shakespeare, both demonstrate that there is a continuous struggle between destiny and choice to control human life. To Shakespeare, man’s dilemma is represented when he is given to choose between good and bad. In the play, Hamlet was well aware of his shortcomings and his powerlessness to stand for what is right and to correct what seems to be wrong to him.

He, through his intellectual guidance, tries to pursue his fate. Hamlet resembles a modern man who is tossed between good and bad. To him, there is nothing good or bad, it is what our thinking makes it so. Like Hamlet, every man struggles to live between what he expects and what he gets; the battle that a man never wins. God asks man one thing and he demands another.

151 Hamlet Essay Topics & Thesis Ideas

We know how long students search for interesting Hamlet essay topics. In this post, you will find a list of the most debating Hamlet essay titles and thesis ideas. We’ve also developed a guide on how to write a Hamlet paper and included some helpful Hamlet essay examples.

👍 Hamlet Essay Writing – Tips & Ideas

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Here, at IvyPanda, we know how daunting can be the task of writing a Hamlet Essay. In this post, you will find out how to write a paper that would get top marks.

Tip #1. Read critically before starting hamlet essay outline

Critical reading will help you to prepare for writing your paper. There are a lot of techniques that can increase your reading speed. You may try some of them, described below:

Highlighting

Grab a few highlighters and use them to underline things that might suit for various topics. For example, use green when you see something pertaining to a tragic hero character analysis; pink for a particular symbol, etc. Don’t forget to make a key, so you know what each color means.

This method helps you to organize your evidence and allows you to see if you have enough support to write your essay.

Note-taking

Take notes and record your ideas and critical aspects while reading the plot. This approach will help you to avoid multiple re-readings. However, be sure to remark what part of the essay your notes pertain to.

Making annotations in the margins of the book, you will ensure that you understand what is happening in a text after you’ve read it. Note the author’s key points, central areas of focus, and your thoughts.

Annotating will help you to summarize, highlight crucial pieces of information, and prepare yourself for writing Hamlet essay prompts that your professor may give you

You can use the methods mentioned above or try any other, or even come up with your own technique. This simple exercise will help you to recall which points to write about in your paper.

Tip #2. Write a detailed outline

Now, when you’ve done the prewriting work, it’s time to focus on what you’re going to write in and create your Hamlet essay outline.

Here’s the trick: the more detailed your outline will be, the less time you will spend on the writing process. If you put a lot of detail in the outline, all you will have to do is connect arguments and make it readable.

If you have to turn in a formal outline, as part of your essay, check that each level has at least two parts.

Tip #3. Write your Hamlet essay thesis statement

A thesis statement is among the crucial parts of your entire essay. It tells your readers what you will write in the rest of the paper. It should correspond with the essay title and act as a short preview of the assignment.

You will bring up may points in the paper, although the thesis should tie all of them together.

Write your Hamlet essay thesis statement during outlining and refine it when you start writing. It is possible to revise it when the essay is already finished, and you see ways to improve the thesis.

Tip #4. Start writing your Hamlet essay

When you begin to write an essay, you can check available samples and titles to get inspiration. However, make it personal. Ask yourself questions.

Here are some question examples: What interests me about the play? Is it Hamlet’s monologues? Is it the figure of the Ghost of Hamlet’s father? Or is it something even more obscure?

If you are still struggling to find your Hamlet essay topics or ideas to add to the paper, check these free samples of high-quality papers!

Hamlet’s Relationship with His Mother (Gertrude) – Attitude Towards Her The conversation between Hamlet and his mother brings back Gertrude to her senses where she feels guilty and ashamed of her actions.
A Critical Analysis of Hamlet’s Constant Procrastination in Shakespeare’s Hamlet Claudius is successful in his ambition and Hamlet is left with the decision on whether or not to kill his uncle so as to avenge his father’s death.
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Gertrude’s Character in “Hamlet” by William Shakespeare However, in the second part of the play, when Gertrude faces the truth of her first husband’s dead, she immediately stands a reformed character, sympathetic to Hamlet’s cause.
Shakespeare: Hamlet The scene that is the subject of this report refers to a scene in the play that takes place at the graveyard following the death of Ophelia.
Why Is Hamlet a Complex Character: Critical Analysis When Hamlet’s father requests him to avenge his death against King Claudius, he is unable to carry out his revenge. In addition, Shakespeare mission to delay Hamlet’s plan to avenge his father’s death highlights the […]
Shakespeare’s “Hamlet”: The Use of Allusion and Metaphors Shakespeare’s use of allusion and metaphors in Hamlet is vital to creating the dramatic imagery surrounding the play and foreshadowing the extent of the growing conflict.
William Shakespeare: Hamlet and Macbeth It is important to examine the role that the setting plays in Hamlet and Macbeth in relation to the tragic flaw and developments of the plot.
Hamlet’s Attitude Toward Women in Shakespear’s “Hamlet” The event that gives birth to his hatred is Gertrude’s marriage to her brother-in-law Claudius very soon after the untimely death of her husband, King Hamlet.
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Hamlet Analysis Essay: Shakespeare’s Play Analysis Example The writer used the name of the play as the name of the main actor while other characters in the play helped in development of the predominant theme in the main character.
Minor Characters in Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” Some of the stories that the reader comes to know, about some people or events in the play, come inform of narrations from the minor characters. The minor characters give most of the information known […]
Hamlet & Laertes: Fathers’ Death Reactions King Hamlet’s ghost then informs prince Hamlet of the person who killed him; consequently, Hamlet accepts the ghost’s demands, swears his accomplices to secrecy and reveals to them his intention of killing the king to […]
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Hamlet vs. Oedipus Compare and Contrast Essay In his speech to his brother-in-law Creon, the proud king voices the desire to find the murderer to secure not only the wellbeing of his state but his safety as a ruler as well.
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Literary Analysis of “Hamlet” by William Shakespeare They are the symbolic image of Hamlet’s father the ghost of the King, the flowers and Ophelia, the skull, and the grave of Yorick.
Lying, Acting, Hypocrisy in Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” This paper will argue that, although the concepts of hypocrisy, lying, and acting are brought up directly only a few times in Hamlet, the manifestations thereof can be found throughout the poem, the Dutch prince […]
Hamlet’s Choice of Fortinbras as His Successor Choice of Fortinbras is an act to usurp his place as the rightful king and avenge for the injustice done to Fortinbras, as well as him. Another reason could be an act to reconcile with […]
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Characterization of Hamlet When Hamlet learns in a dream that he is supposed to revenge the death of his father, he promises to do so “with wings as swift as meditation or the thoughts of love, may sweep […]
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The Theme of Revenge in Shakespeare’s Hamlet The latter, after seeing his father’s ghost and learning the truth, feels that he is taken over by revenge and sets up a performance that copies Claudius’s, the murderer’s, plan and results in a tragic […]
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Hamlet And Laertes: A Comparison Hamlet, shocked by the revelation and shaken to the core by the knowledge of his mother’s role in the act, immediately makes his intention clear in the presence of the ghost.
Creative Process in William Shakespeare Works Creativity in his works, Merchant of Venice and Hamlet, is portrayed by the manner he makes choice of characters, the way themes are tied up with stylistic language to reflect hidden meanings reflective of the […]
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Horatio (Hamlet): Character Analysis Hamlet does not follow his friend’s caution and goes with the ghost, where he learns of his father’s murder and swears to avenge him.
“Hamlet and His Problems” by Thomas Stearns Eliot Hamlet assumes the role of both the father and the son and the need to detect his identity about his idea of the father becomes problematic in the presence of his mother.
Shakespeare versus Olivier: A Depiction of ‘Hamlet’ The presentation of the Ghost in the film builds the main theme of revenge and tragedy. Olivier shows that the Oedipus complex is a crucial aspect in understanding the play especially the character of Hamlet […]
Elements of Literature Used in Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” The audience may be able to show a degree of empathy with Hamlet as the play was written in a slightly satirical manner and shows that he is very much human in his qualities and […]
Macbeth and Hamlet Characters Comparison The queens in Hamlet and Macbeth play a pivotal role in the life of the heroes of the play. She is portrayed as a mother who, in her awareness of Hamlet’s crisis, feels guilty and […]
Resilience of Hamlet and Oedipus The plot of the tragedy of Sophocles is built on a chain of accidents, which are in fact the fatal will of the powerful gods.
William Shakespeare: Hamlet’s Actions and Inactions This paper is an attempt to analyze Hamlet’s actions and inactions to prove the authenticity of the application of these maxims to the protagonist.
Hamlet’s Hesitation in Revenge: Four Separate Theories The play within a play is one of many tactics Hamlet employs over the course of the play to delay the revenge and therefore avoid his own death.
Hamlet’s Mental State and Issues That Affected Him To begin with, it is evident to the reader that the main character is overwhelmed by the grief and mourning of his father.
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Hamlet in the Film and the Play: Comparing and Contrasting There is a certain discrepancy in the way Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Gibson’s hero unveil the tragic style of the play. This assumption is justified by the scenes from the movie because many of the dialogues […]
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Consideration of the Ghost in “Hamlet” by Shakespeare The Ghost in the play is charitable because it helps Hamlet to know the truth about the way his father died and to begin finding clues for the murder.
Canonical Status of Hamlet by William Shakespeare However, the technique has been defended by some of the scholars who argue that Shakespeare’s skill is to develop and emphasize the purpose of duality and dislocation in the play.
The Hamlet’s Emotional Feelings in the Shakespearean Tragedy The grief that Hamlet feels at the death of his father is tempered by a Claudius’s statement to him that grief is ‘unmanly.’ He also associates women with deception beginning with his mother with whom […]
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Comparing Dr. Faustus and Hamlet Hamlet kills numerous characters in the play and this goes to show his excessive pride or in other words his sin of pride.
Hamlet: Gertrude’s Complicit Character However, Queen Gertrude seems to be more on the inside of the plotting and scheming occurring within the castle than an innocent woman should have.
“Hamlet” by William Shakespeare: To Be or Not to Be It begins with supernatural such as the presence of the ghost and Hamlet attempting to glance into Claudius’ soul, to the mystery of the crime and the need for revenge. The masterful use of style, […]
Hamlet and King Oedipus Literature Comparison This essay compares the characters and roles of both Hamlet and King Oedipus as the sons who have to deliver justice to their fathers’ killers.
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Themes in “Hamlet” by William Shakespeare With consideration of critical responses, use of language and structure, and through a close analysis of Hamlet’s soliloquies, the role of Shakespeare’s characterization of Hamlet in shaping the enduring power of the text is appreciated […]
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Hamlet’s Parental Relationships The death of his father, the actions of his mother and his existing relationship with his uncle all have Hamlet confused regarding the true nature of the world.
The Reflection of Time in “Hamlet” by Shakespeare Thesis Human existence and purpose of life were considered unimportant because the human soul had a divine nature, thus, they were afraid of death as an unknown state of human existence.
Hesitation and Indeterminacy of Hamlet There is no denying the importance of the fact that the whole fabric of Shakespeare’s tragedy unfolds in Hamlet subjective perception and interpretation of his uncle and mother’ treason.
Gender Equality Question: “Hamlet” by William Shakespeare For the past few centuries, the rise of various movements have marked a certain change in the ideas and philosophies of man regarding the true nature of his existence, the pronounced inequalities of not only […]
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Depression and Melancholia Expressed by Hamlet The paper will not attempt and sketch the way the signs or symptoms of depression/melancholia play a part in the way Shakespeare’s period or culture concerning depression/melancholia, but in its place portrays the way particular […]
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How a Film Interprets Hamlet Laurence Olivier’s need to focus on less traditional approaches, his need to shorten the production, and the need to perform a psychological analysis of the characters determine his interpretation of the play ‘Hamlet’.
Recurring Theme of Revenge in Hamlet On top of this, Laertes wants to revenge the insanity and subsequent death of his sister, which he blames on Hamlet.
Appearance vs. Reality in Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” and Sophocles’ “Oedipus Rex” In preparing for the performance, Hamlet provides the players with specific lines and actions to include within the overall play they are about to perform and gives them lengthy instructions as to the acting of […]
Anti-Heroism in Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Cervantes’ Don Quixote This ghost will only talk to Hamlet, and when the time is right, he will share his side of the account with the prince.
A Play Within a Play: Hamlet and Second Shepherd’s Play In contrast to Hamlet, the role of ‘a play within a play’ is to underline onstage and offstage characters and their qualities.
Hamlet and Forgiveness: A Personal Reflection Some of the most prominent themes in the story are the ideas of mutual forgiveness, people’s motivation to be proactive and take risks, and their willingness to forgive and ask for forgiveness.
Resiliency in Sophocles’ Oedipus and Shakespeare’s Hamlet According to the information provided the reader rises with the question dealing with the resiliency of both Hamlet and Oedipus and what does it mean to them.
Hamlet: A New Type of Independent Thinker Hamlet considers the plan to disturb Claudius and convince the audience of his guilt distracting attention from prayer and confession. Such innovations permeate the entire text, which allows the reader to assert that Hamlet did […]
Hamlet’s Descent Into Darkness: A Tale of Revenge, Death, and Uncertainty Hamlet was thinking about the afterlife and suicide to achieve peace, and during this speech, a reader might feel the pain and despair of the main character.
Hamlet vs. Oedipus Rex: Who Is More Resilient? In Sophocles’ Oedipus the King, Oedipus is a protagonist; he is seeking the truth and is unconcerned about the harm it may pose.
Reality and Illusion in Shakespeare’s Hamlet The last and the greatest deceiving character is Claudius, who is far from being the brave brother of the monarch who ascended to the throne in order to protect the kingdom. It is evident that […]
Shakespeare’s “Hamlet”: Hamlet as a Masculine Character Initially, the themes and scenes of the play were designed for staging at the Shakespeare theatre, and the costumes and the actors’ play were supposed to evoke awe for the rich life of medieval nobles.
Coping With Changes in Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” and O’Connor’s “A Good Man…” Tragedies in “Hamlet” and “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” lead characters to rely on the change as a coping mechanism.”Hamlet” narrates the story of an individual dealing with a loss which leads him […]
“The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark” and “A Raisin in the Sun” In this regard, the decisions of Hamlet, Claudius, Walter, and Lena illustrate the character’s commitment to family despite differences of opinion and disagreements.
Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” Play: Then and Now Hamlet’s cynicism, as well as his sense of meaning, distinguish him as a uniquely contemporary figure and a watershed moment in the theatrical past.
Does Shakespearean Hamlet Love Ophelia? The love that Hamlet has for Ophelia is demonstrated in letters that he wrote to her. Hamlet reminds Ophelia that he is in love with her in the later stages of Act 3 of the […]
Hamlet and Gertrude Relationships in Shakespeare’s Play However, even though Hamlet threatens to murder Gertrude to “wring” her heart, the audience can understand that he loves his mother and wants her to repent of her sins and end the relationship with Hamlet’s […]
Power and Importance of Hamlet’s Role in Shakespeare’s Play The first striking problem of Hamlet is the one of choice, which may be considered a reflection of the main conflict of the tragedy.
Gender Roles and Representation of Women in “Hamlet” Specifically, the author refers to the problem of being confined in the prison of gender stereotypes that can be experienced when reading Shakespeare’s works.
Is Shakespeare’s Hamlet Really Crazy? According to the first one, Hamlet pretends to be mad, so that he is not taken seriously and is not considered as dangerous, under the guise of a madman, he can say anything.
“Oedipus King” by Sophocles and “Hamlet” by Shakespeare The protagonist is on the verge of madness: an intelligent and unexcelled humanist in the world, which is an enemy to his ideas. However, Oedipus later comes to terms with his fate and takes responsibility […]
Hamlet: Analyzing Various Scenes On top of this, Hamlet hopes that seeing a replay of the murder of his father would move the king’s conscience to a point where he would be forced to admit his crime.
Human Nature in Shakespearean Tragedy “Hamlet” Soliloquies maintain significant place in the play Hamlet, which start with the beginning of the play, and chase the protagonist almost near the close of the end of the play.
Hamlet’s Relationship With His Mother and Uncle Hamlet’s assessment of his issues is accurate in the sense that he already associates Claudius with problems, but the prince is too quick to judge his mother.
Supporting Characters in “The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark” Shakespeare utilizes secondary characters to depict the theme of friendship and loyalty, as these aspects are influential on the main character.
“Hamlet” by William Shakespeare: Overview In the play Hamlet is a noble soldier with admirable qualities but he avenges the death of his father using his free will.
Genji, Hamlet, Oedipus and Jesus Christ Character Analysis This paper will attempt to asses the characters in the following set of books and plays: The New Testament, Oedipus the King, Shakespeare Hamlet and Shikibu the tale of the Genji.
Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” as the Central Tragedy for Revenge Understanding The core concept of revenge in Hamlet, Shakespeare’s play, is the hesitation of the main character and his doubt moral and philosophical maxims in the whole world; the main idea of the play may be […]
The Vision of the Main Character in Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” The main character of the tragedy is Hamlet, a young man who comes to know about the real reasons of his father’s death from the ghost that claims to be the spirit of his father. […]
Protagonist in Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” The Protagonist plays a major part to achieve the goals of the story while the antagonist is an adversary who struggles against the efforts of the protagonist.
The Character of Gertrude in ‘Hamlet’ The character of Ophelia is responsible for projecting an aura of guilt and deception to the role of women in ‘Hamlet.’ She is not treacherous or complicated, but instead weak and insensibly dependent on the […]
William Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” Drama Play These soliloquies are dramatic and ironical, Harold Wilson submits, with an irony that is implicit and eloquent in the extravagances of Hamlet’s rhetoric.
Hamlet: The Circumstances That Lead Hamlet to Soliloquy Out of his anger, he worries about the death of his father and the hasty marriage of his mother to his uncle.
The Issue of Human Manipulation in ‘Hamlet’ by W. Shakespeare It seems the love he contains in his heart is not enough for him to forgive and forget what has happened.
Hamlet, Ophelia and Insanity in Shakespear’s “Hamlet” The knowledge the Queen has as to the specific nature of Ophelia’s death calls into question her sincerity in her lament.
Hamlet by William Shakespeare: A Filmic Event In bringing Shakespeare’s classic story of Hamlet to the big screen and reset into a modern context, director Michael Almereyda is forced to reinterpret the role of Ophelia due to significant changes in modern women’s […]
Aeschylus’ Oresteia and Shakespeare’s Hamlet One such device in Hamlet is Shakespeare’s placing of the Danish prince in the context of Fortinbras and Laertes as the characters that, like Hamlet, find themselves in the role of having to avenge their […]
Roles of Poison in Shakespeari’s “Hamlet” It is obvious that Hamlet is the representative of the new world. I think that the answer to this riddle is that his ways of revenge are not good.
Comparison of Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” and Perrault’s “Cinderella” The paper also includes the analysis of the narratives in accordance with the epic laws introduced by Axel Olrik. In Cinderella’s story, the presence of royalty is only limited to the prince.
Freud and Hamlet’s Relationship with His Mother When analyzing the relationship between Hamlet and his mother, one can note that even at a young age, the Oedipus complex manifests in the boy, which reflects a number of his conflicting experiences about his […]
Act 1 Scene 2 of the “Hamlet” Play by Shakespeare The use of honorifics, stichomythia, and imagery is discussed, as well as the aside, the motif of spying, and the overall mood of the scene will be discussed and evaluated. The overall mood of the […]
Ophelia and Hamlet’s Dialogue in Shakespeare’s Play In some ways, this scene represents the conflict between Hamlet and the society he lives in, as no one is capable of understanding his concerns.
The Masks of William Shakespeare’s Play “Hamlet” The first thing that has to be determined is the truth behind the claim that Hamlet saw the ghost of his departed father.
Ghosts and Revenge in Shakespeare’s Hamlet Despite the common beliefs concerning the existence of ghosts, it seems that the ghost’s presence is still supported by the testimonies of all characters in the story, including Horatio, Francisco, and the protagonist himself.
Act II of Hamlet by William Shakespeare The King is worried about Hamlet’s madness and starts to suspect that he might have found out the real reasons for his father’s death.
Meditative and Passionate Responses in the Play “Hamlet” This is seen in his soliloquy “to be, or not to be: that is the question; /Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer?
Portrayal of Hamlet in Shakespeare’s Play and Zaffirelli’s Film In fact, Mel Gisbon’s power as an act does not provide a sufficient understanding of his ability to penetrate to Shakespeare’s world and reach the ideas in the play.
Psychiatric Analysis of Hamlet Literature Analysis However, he tells the doctor that he is not actually aware of the reasons that are taking him to his death.
The Value of Source Study of Hamlet by Shakespeare In regards to the intended significance, Stopes, Belleforest, and Shakespeare report that Shakespeare designed the role of the ghost to appear to Hamlet relentlessly to enhance the melancholy motif of the play.
William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Prince of Denmark Generally, the main idea of the play is considered to be the impact of people’s actions on their future.”The ghost of Hamlet’s father does urge him to action”.
Relationships Among Individuals in Shakespeare’s Plays The events that take place in Athens are symbolic in the sense that they represent the sequence of events during the day whereas the events in the forest represent the dream like circumstances.
The Play “Hamlet Prince of Denmark” by W.Shakespeare Hamlet, a Denmark Prince, is the main character in the play. In the climax of the play, Claudius appears to be responsible for the death of King Hamlet.
Oedipus the King and Hamlet However, the fact is both Oedipus and Claudius managed to get the post of kingship after killing the former kings leaving the seats vacant. In conclusion, both Oedipus and King Claudius attained their crown after […]
A Play “Hamlet” by William Shakespear Hamlet decides to prove whether Claudius really killed his father and in act three, he uses the play “The Murder of Gonzago” to get the truth.
How Effectively Does Shakespeare Introduce the Characters and Themes of “Hamlet”?
How Does Shakespeare Present Women and Sex in “Hamlet”?
Is Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” Based on a True Story?
What Are the Symbols in “Hamlet”?
Where Did Shakespeare Get His Inspiration for “Hamlet”?
How Does Shakespeare Use Conflict in “Hamlet” as a Way of Exploring Ideas?
What Is the Language Style in “Hamlet” Play?
How “Hamlet” Was Inspired by an Obscure Tale From Finland’s Kalavala?
How Does Shakespeare Introduce the Theme of Madness in “Hamlet”?
What Does “Hamlet” Teach Us About Humanity?
Did William Shakespeare Really Write “Hamlet”?
How Strange Behavior and Ghosts Are Depicted in “Hamlet”?
What Is the Most Important Theme in “Hamlet”?
What Is the Contrast Between Hamlet and Claudius in “Hamlet”?
What Is the the Meaning of Soliloquy in “Hamlet”?
How Perennial Issues of the Human Condition Are Imaged in “Hamlet”?
What Are the Similar Motifs Between “Wuthering Heights” and “Hamlet”?
Why Did Shakespeare Choose Loyalty and Betrayal as Lead Themes in “Hamlet”?
What Are the Inward and Outward Conflicts in “Hamlet”?
How Does Shakespeare Use Language in “Hamlet” to Teach the Reader?
What Is the Significance of “Hamlet’s” Creating?
How Do “Hamlet” Characters Solve Their Mental Problems?
How Crime Fiction and Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” Are Connected?
What Is Corruption and How Its Rampant Impact Is Depicted in “Hamlet”?
Why Is the Ending of “Hamlet” Ironic?
Death of a Salesman Ideas
Call of the Wild Questions
Grapes of Wrath Ideas
Allegory of the Cave Topics
Heart of Darkness Essay Ideas
Much Ado About Nothing Paper Topics
Oedipus the King Essay Topics
Antigone Ideas
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Jeffrey R. Wilson

Essays on hamlet.

Written as the author taught Hamlet every semester for a decade, these lightning essays ask big conceptual questions about the play with the urgency of a Shakespeare lover, and answer them with the rigor of a Shakespeare scholar. In doing so, Hamlet becomes a lens for life today, generating insights on everything from xenophobia, American fraternities, and religious fundamentalism to structural misogyny, suicide contagion, and toxic love.

Prioritizing close reading over historical context, these explorations are highly textual and highly theoretical, often philosophical, ethical, social, and political. Readers see King Hamlet as a pre-modern villain, King Claudius as a modern villain, and Prince Hamlet as a post-modern villain. Hamlet’s feigned madness becomes a window into failed insanity defenses in legal trials. He knows he’s being watched in “To be or not to be”: the soliloquy is a satire of philosophy. Horatio emerges as Shakespeare’s authorial avatar for meta-theatrical commentary, Fortinbras as the hero of the play. Fate becomes a viable concept for modern life, and honor a source of tragedy. The metaphor of music in the play makes Ophelia Hamlet’s instrument. Shakespeare, like the modern corporation, stands against sexism, yet perpetuates it unknowingly. We hear his thoughts on single parenting, sending children off to college, and the working class, plus his advice on acting and writing, and his claims to be the next Homer or Virgil. In the context of four centuries of Hamlet hate, we hear how the text draws audiences in, how it became so famous, and why it continues to captivate audiences.

At a time when the humanities are said to be in crisis, these essays are concrete examples of the mind-altering power of literature and literary studies, unravelling the ongoing implications of the English language’s most significant artistic object of the past millennium.

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Why is Hamlet the most famous English artwork of the past millennium? Is it a sexist text? Why does Hamlet speak in prose? Why must he die? Does Hamlet depict revenge, or justice? How did the death of Shakespeare’s son, Hamnet, transform into a story about a son dealing with the death of a father? Did Shakespeare know Aristotle’s theory of tragedy? How did our literary icon, Shakespeare, see his literary icons, Homer and Virgil? Why is there so much comedy in Shakespeare’s greatest tragedy? Why is love a force of evil in the play? Did Shakespeare believe there’s a divinity that shapes our ends? How did he define virtue? What did he think about psychology? politics? philosophy? What was Shakespeare’s image of himself as an author? What can he, arguably the greatest writer of all time, teach us about our own writing? What was his theory of literature? Why do people like Hamlet ? How do the Hamlet haters of today compare to those of yesteryears? Is it dangerous for our children to read a play that’s all about suicide?

These are some of the questions asked in this book, a collection of essays on Shakespeare’s Hamlet stemming from my time teaching the play every semester in my Why Shakespeare? course at Harvard University. During this time, I saw a series of bright young minds from wildly diverse backgrounds find their footing in Hamlet, and it taught me a lot about how Shakespeare’s tragedy works, and why it remains with us in the modern world. Beyond ghosts, revenge, and tragedy, Hamlet is a play about being in college, being in love, gender, misogyny, friendship, theater, philosophy, theology, injustice, loss, comedy, depression, death, self-doubt, mental illness, white privilege, overbearing parents, existential angst, international politics, the classics, the afterlife, and the meaning of it all.

These essays grow from the central paradox of the play: it helps us understand the world we live in, yet we don't really understand the text itself very well. For all the attention given to Hamlet , there’s no consensus on the big questions—how it works, why it grips people so fiercely, what it’s about. These essays pose first-order questions about what happens in Hamlet and why, mobilizing answers for reflections on life, making the essays both highly textual and highly theoretical.

Each semester that I taught the play, I would write a new essay about Hamlet . They were meant to be models for students, the sort of essay that undergrads read and write – more rigorous than the puff pieces in the popular press, but riskier than the scholarship in most academic journals. While I later added scholarly outerwear, these pieces all began just like the essays I was assigning to students – as short close readings with a reader and a text and a desire to determine meaning when faced with a puzzling question or problem.

The turn from text to context in recent scholarly books about Hamlet is quizzical since we still don’t have a strong sense of, to quote the title of John Dover Wilson’s 1935 book, What Happens in Hamlet. Is the ghost real? Is Hamlet mad, or just faking? Why does he delay? These are the kinds of questions students love to ask, but they haven’t been – can’t be – answered by reading the play in the context of its sources (recently addressed in Laurie Johnson’s The Tain of Hamlet [2013]), its multiple texts (analyzed by Paul Menzer in The Hamlets [2008] and Zachary Lesser in Hamlet after Q1 [2015]), the Protestant reformation (the focus of Stephen Greenblatt’s Hamlet in Purgatory [2001] and John E. Curran, Jr.’s Hamlet, Protestantism, and the Mourning of Contingency [2006]), Renaissance humanism (see Rhodri Lewis, Hamlet and the Vision of Darkness [2017]), Elizabethan political theory (see Margreta de Grazia, Hamlet without Hamlet [2007]), the play’s reception history (see David Bevington, Murder Most Foul: Hamlet through the Ages [2011]), its appropriation by modern philosophers (covered in Simon Critchley and Jamieson Webster’s The Hamlet Doctrine [2013] and Andrew Cutrofello’s All for Nothing: Hamlet’s Negativity [2014]), or its recent global travels (addressed, for example, in Margaret Latvian’s Hamlet’s Arab Journey [2011] and Dominic Dromgoole’s Hamlet Globe to Globe [2017]).

Considering the context and afterlives of Hamlet is a worthy pursuit. I certainly consulted the above books for my essays, yet the confidence that comes from introducing context obscures the sharp panic we feel when confronting Shakespeare’s text itself. Even as the excellent recent book from Sonya Freeman Loftis, Allison Kellar, and Lisa Ulevich announces Hamlet has entered “an age of textual exhaustion,” there’s an odd tendency to avoid the text of Hamlet —to grasp for something more firm—when writing about it. There is a need to return to the text in a more immediate way to understand how Hamlet operates as a literary work, and how it can help us understand the world in which we live.

That latter goal, yes, clings nostalgically to the notion that literature can help us understand life. Questions about life send us to literature in search of answers. Those of us who love literature learn to ask and answer questions about it as we become professional literary scholars. But often our answers to the questions scholars ask of literature do not connect back up with the questions about life that sent us to literature in the first place—which are often philosophical, ethical, social, and political. Those first-order questions are diluted and avoided in the minutia of much scholarship, left unanswered. Thus, my goal was to pose questions about Hamlet with the urgency of a Shakespeare lover and to answer them with the rigor of a Shakespeare scholar.

In doing so, these essays challenge the conventional relationship between literature and theory. They pursue a kind of criticism where literature is not merely the recipient of philosophical ideas in the service of exegesis. Instead, the creative risks of literature provide exemplars to be theorized outward to help us understand on-going issues in life today. Beyond an occasion for the demonstration of existing theory, literature is a source for the creation of new theory.

Chapter One How Hamlet Works

Whether you love or hate Hamlet , you can acknowledge its massive popularity. So how does Hamlet work? How does it create audience enjoyment? Why is it so appealing, and to whom? Of all the available options, why Hamlet ? This chapter entertains three possible explanations for why the play is so popular in the modern world: the literary answer (as the English language’s best artwork about death—one of the very few universal human experiences in a modern world increasingly marked by cultural differences— Hamlet is timeless); the theatrical answer (with its mixture of tragedy and comedy, the role of Hamlet requires the best actor of each age, and the play’s popularity derives from the celebrity of its stars); and the philosophical answer (the play invites, encourages, facilitates, and sustains philosophical introspection and conversation from people who do not usually do such things, who find themselves doing those things with Hamlet , who sometimes feel embarrassed about doing those things, but who ultimately find the experience of having done them rewarding).

Chapter Two “It Started Like a Guilty Thing”: The Beginning of Hamlet and the Beginning of Modern Politics

King Hamlet is a tyrant and King Claudius a traitor but, because Shakespeare asked us to experience the events in Hamlet from the perspective of the young Prince Hamlet, we are much more inclined to detect and detest King Claudius’s political failings than King Hamlet’s. If so, then Shakespeare’s play Hamlet , so often seen as the birth of modern psychology, might also tell us a little bit about the beginnings of modern politics as well.

Chapter Three Horatio as Author: Storytelling and Stoic Tragedy

This chapter addresses Horatio’s emotionlessness in light of his role as a narrator, using this discussion to think about Shakespeare’s motives for writing tragedy in the wake of his son’s death. By rationalizing pain and suffering as tragedy, both Horatio and Shakespeare were able to avoid the self-destruction entailed in Hamlet’s emotional response to life’s hardships and injustices. Thus, the stoic Horatio, rather than the passionate Hamlet who repeatedly interrupts ‘The Mousetrap’, is the best authorial avatar for a Shakespeare who strategically wrote himself and his own voice out of his works. This argument then expands into a theory of ‘authorial catharsis’ and the suggestion that we can conceive of Shakespeare as a ‘poet of reason’ in contrast to a ‘poet of emotion’.

Chapter Four “To thine own self be true”: What Shakespeare Says about Sending Our Children Off to College

What does “To thine own self be true” actually mean? Be yourself? Don’t change who you are? Follow your own convictions? Don’t lie to yourself? This chapter argues that, if we understand meaning as intent, then “To thine own self be true” means, paradoxically, that “the self” does not exist. Or, more accurately, Shakespeare’s Hamlet implies that “the self” exists only as a rhetorical, philosophical, and psychological construct that we use to make sense of our experiences and actions in the world, not as anything real. If this is so, then this passage may offer us a way of thinking about Shakespeare as not just a playwright but also a moral philosopher, one who did his ethics in drama.

Chapter Five In Defense of Polonius

Your wife dies. You raise two children by yourself. You build a great career to provide for your family. You send your son off to college in another country, though you know he’s not ready. Now the prince wants to marry your daughter—that’s not easy to navigate. Then—get this—while you’re trying to save the queen’s life, the prince murders you. Your death destroys your kids. They die tragically. And what do you get for your efforts? Centuries of Shakespeare scholars dumping on you. If we see Polonius not through the eyes of his enemy, Prince Hamlet—the point of view Shakespeare’s play asks audiences to adopt—but in analogy to the common challenges of twenty-first-century parenting, Polonius is a single father struggling with work-life balance who sadly choses his career over his daughter’s well-being.

Chapter Six Sigma Alpha Elsinore: The Culture of Drunkenness in Shakespeare’s Hamlet

Claudius likes to party—a bit too much. He frequently binge drinks, is arguably an alcoholic, but not an aberration. Hamlet says Denmark is internationally known for heavy drinking. That’s what Shakespeare would have heard in the sixteenth century. By the seventeenth, English writers feared Denmark had taught their nation its drinking habits. Synthesizing criticism on alcoholism as an individual problem in Shakespeare’s texts and times with scholarship on national drinking habits in the early-modern age, this essay asks what the tragedy of alcoholism looks like when located not on the level of the individual, but on the level of a culture, as Shakespeare depicted in Hamlet. One window into these early-modern cultures of drunkenness is sociological studies of American college fraternities, especially the social-learning theories that explain how one person—one culture—teaches another its habits. For Claudius’s alcoholism is both culturally learned and culturally significant. And, as in fraternities, alcoholism in Hamlet is bound up with wealth, privilege, toxic masculinity, and tragedy. Thus, alcohol imagistically reappears in the vial of “cursed hebona,” Ophelia’s liquid death, and the poisoned cup in the final scene—moments that stand out in recent performances and adaptations with alcoholic Claudiuses and Gertrudes.

Chapter Seven Tragic Foundationalism

This chapter puts the modern philosopher Alain Badiou’s theory of foundationalism into dialogue with the early-modern playwright William Shakespeare’s play Hamlet . Doing so allows us to identify a new candidate for Hamlet’s traditionally hard-to-define hamartia – i.e., his “tragic mistake” – but it also allows us to consider the possibility of foundationalism as hamartia. Tragic foundationalism is the notion that fidelity to a single and substantive truth at the expense of an openness to evidence, reason, and change is an acute mistake which can lead to miscalculations of fact and virtue that create conflict and can end up in catastrophic destruction and the downfall of otherwise strong and noble people.

Chapter Eight “As a stranger give it welcome”: Shakespeare’s Advice for First-Year College Students

Encountering a new idea can be like meeting a strange person for the first time. Similarly, we dismiss new ideas before we get to know them. There is an answer to the problem of the human antipathy to strangeness in a somewhat strange place: a single line usually overlooked in William Shakespeare’s play Hamlet . If the ghost is “wondrous strange,” Hamlet says, invoking the ancient ethics of hospitality, “Therefore as a stranger give it welcome.” In this word, strange, and the social conventions attached to it, is both the instinctual, animalistic fear and aggression toward what is new and different (the problem) and a cultivated, humane response in hospitality and curiosity (the solution). Intellectual xenia is the answer to intellectual xenophobia.

Chapter Nine Parallels in Hamlet

Hamlet is more parallely than other texts. Fortinbras, Hamlet, and Laertes have their fathers murdered, then seek revenge. Brothers King Hamlet and King Claudius mirror brothers Old Norway and Old Fortinbras. Hamlet and Ophelia both lose their fathers, go mad, but there’s a method in their madness, and become suicidal. King Hamlet and Polonius are both domineering fathers. Hamlet and Polonius are both scholars, actors, verbose, pedantic, detectives using indirection, spying upon others, “by indirections find directions out." King Hamlet and King Claudius are both kings who are killed. Claudius using Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to spy on Hamlet mirrors Polonius using Reynaldo to spy on Laertes. Reynaldo and Hamlet both pretend to be something other than what they are in order to spy on and detect foes. Young Fortinbras and Prince Hamlet both have their forward momentum “arrest[ed].” Pyrrhus and Hamlet are son seeking revenge but paused a “neutral to his will.” The main plot of Hamlet reappears in the play-within-the-play. The Act I duel between King Hamlet and Old Fortinbras echoes in the Act V duel between Hamlet and Laertes. Claudius and Hamlet are both king killers. Sheesh—why are there so many dang parallels in Hamlet ? Is there some detectable reason why the story of Hamlet would call for the literary device of parallelism?

Chapter Ten Rosencrantz and Guildenstern: Why Hamlet Has Two Childhood Friends, Not Just One

Why have two of Hamlet’s childhood friends rather than just one? Do Rosencrantz and Guildenstern have individuated personalities? First of all, by increasing the number of friends who visit Hamlet, Shakespeare creates an atmosphere of being outnumbered, of multiple enemies encroaching upon Hamlet, of Hamlet feeling that the world is against him. Second, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are not interchangeable, as commonly thought. Shakespeare gave each an individuated personality. Guildenstern is friendlier with Hamlet, and their friendship collapses, while Rosencrantz is more distant and devious—a frenemy.

Chapter Eleven Shakespeare on the Classics, Shakespeare as a Classic: A Reading of Aeneas’s Tale to Dido

Of all the stories Shakespeare might have chosen, why have Hamlet ask the players to recite Aeneas’ tale to Dido of Pyrrhus’s slaughter of Priam? In this story, which comes not from Homer’s Iliad but from Virgil’s Aeneid and had already been adapted for the Elizabethan stage in Christopher Marlowe’s The Tragedy of Dido, Pyrrhus – more commonly known as Neoptolemus, the son of the famous Greek warrior Achilles – savagely slays Priam, the king of the Trojans and the father of Paris, who killed Pyrrhus’s father, Achilles, who killed Paris’s brother, Hector, who killed Achilles’s comrade, Patroclus. Clearly, the theme of revenge at work in this story would have appealed to Shakespeare as he was writing what would become the greatest revenge tragedy of all time. Moreover, Aeneas’s tale to Dido supplied Shakespeare with all of the connections he sought to make at this crucial point in his play and his career – connections between himself and Marlowe, between the start of Hamlet and the end, between Prince Hamlet and King Claudius, between epic poetry and tragic drama, and between the classical literature Shakespeare was still reading hundreds of years later and his own potential as a classic who might (and would) be read hundreds of years into the future.

Chapter Twelve How Theater Works, according to Hamlet

According to Hamlet, people who are guilty of a crime will, when seeing that crime represented on stage, “proclaim [their] malefactions”—but that simply isn’t how theater works. Guilty people sit though shows that depict their crimes all the time without being prompted to public confession. Why did Shakespeare—a remarkably observant student of theater—write this demonstrably false theory of drama into his protagonist? And why did Shakespeare then write the plot of the play to affirm that obviously inaccurate vision of theater? For Claudius is indeed stirred to confession by the play-within-the-play. Perhaps Hamlet’s theory of people proclaiming malefactions upon seeing their crimes represented onstage is not as outlandish as it first appears. Perhaps four centuries of obsession with Hamlet is the English-speaking world proclaiming its malefactions upon seeing them represented dramatically.

Chapter Thirteen “To be, or not to be”: Shakespeare Against Philosophy

This chapter hazards a new reading of the most famous passage in Western literature: “To be, or not to be” from William Shakespeare’s Hamlet . With this line, Hamlet poses his personal struggle, a question of life and death, as a metaphysical problem, as a question of existence and nothingness. However, “To be, or not to be” is not what it seems to be. It seems to be a representation of tragic angst, yet a consideration of the context of the speech reveals that “To be, or not to be” is actually a satire of philosophy and Shakespeare’s representation of the theatricality of everyday life. In this chapter, a close reading of the context and meaning of this passage leads into an attempt to formulate a Shakespearean image of philosophy.

Chapter Fourteen Contagious Suicide in and Around Hamlet

As in society today, suicide is contagious in Hamlet , at least in the example of Ophelia, the only death by suicide in the play, because she only becomes suicidal after hearing Hamlet talk about his own suicidal thoughts in “To be, or not to be.” Just as there are media guidelines for reporting on suicide, there are better and worse ways of handling Hamlet . Careful suicide coverage can change public misperceptions and reduce suicide contagion. Is the same true for careful literary criticism and classroom discussion of suicide texts? How can teachers and literary critics reduce suicide contagion and increase help-seeking behavior?

Chapter Fifteen Is Hamlet a Sexist Text? Overt Misogyny vs. Unconscious Bias

Students and fans of Shakespeare’s Hamlet persistently ask a question scholars and critics of the play have not yet definitively answered: is it a sexist text? The author of this text has been described as everything from a male chauvinist pig to a trailblazing proto-feminist, but recent work on the science behind discrimination and prejudice offers a new, better vocabulary in the notion of unconscious bias. More pervasive and slippery than explicit bigotry, unconscious bias involves the subtle, often unintentional words and actions which indicate the presence of biases we may not be aware of, ones we may even fight against. The Shakespeare who wrote Hamlet exhibited an unconscious bias against women, I argue, even as he sought to critique the mistreatment of women in a patriarchal society. The evidence for this unconscious bias is not to be found in the misogynistic statements made by the characters in the play. It exists, instead, in the demonstrable preference Shakespeare showed for men over women when deciding where to deploy his literary talents. Thus, Shakespeare's Hamlet is a powerful literary example – one which speaks to, say, the modern corporation – showing that deliberate efforts for egalitarianism do not insulate one from the effects of structural inequalities that both stem from and create unconscious bias.

Chapter Sixteen Style and Purpose in Acting and Writing

Purpose and style are connected in academic writing. To answer the question of style ( How should we write academic papers? ) we must first answer the question of purpose ( Why do we write academic papers? ). We can answer these questions, I suggest, by turning to an unexpected style guide that’s more than 400 years old: the famous passage on “the purpose of playing” in William Shakespeare’s Hamlet . In both acting and writing, a high style often accompanies an expressive purpose attempting to impress an elite audience yet actually alienating intellectual people, while a low style and mimetic purpose effectively engage an intellectual audience.

Chapter Seventeen 13 Ways of Looking at a Ghost

Why doesn’t Gertrude see the Ghost of King Hamlet in Act III, even though Horatio, Bernardo, Francisco, Marcellus, and Prince Hamlet all saw it in Act I? It’s a bit embarrassing that Shakespeare scholars don’t have a widely agreed-upon consensus that explains this really basic question that puzzles a lot of people who read or see Hamlet .

Chapter Eighteen The Tragedy of Love in Hamlet

The word “love” appears 84 times in Shakespeare’s Hamlet . “Father” only appears 73 times, “play” 60, “think” 55, “mother” 46, “mad” 44, “soul” 40, “God" 39, “death” 38, “life” 34, “nothing” 28, “son” 26, “honor” 21, “spirit” 19, “kill” 18, “revenge” 14, and “action” 12. Love isn’t the first theme that comes to mind when we think of Hamlet , but is surprisingly prominent. But love is tragic in Hamlet . The bloody catastrophe at the end of that play is principally driven not by hatred or a longing for revenge, but by love.

Chapter Nineteen Ophelia’s Songs: Moral Agency, Manipulation, and the Metaphor of Music in Hamlet

This chapter reads Ophelia’s songs in Act IV of Shakespeare’s Hamlet in the context of the meaning of music established elsewhere in the play. While the songs are usually seen as a marker of Ophelia’s madness (as a result of the death of her father) or freedom (from the constraints of patriarchy), they come – when read in light of the metaphor of music as manipulation – to symbolize her role as a pawn in Hamlet’s efforts to deceive his family. Thus, music was Shakespeare’s platform for connecting Ophelia’s story to one of the central questions in Hamlet : Do we have control over our own actions (like the musician), or are we controlled by others (like the instrument)?

Chapter Twenty A Quantitative Study of Prose and Verse in Hamlet

Why does Hamlet have so much prose? Did Shakespeare deliberately shift from verse to prose to signal something to his audiences? How would actors have handled the shifts from verse to prose? Would audiences have detected shifts from verse to prose? Is there an overarching principle that governs Shakespeare’s decision to use prose—a coherent principle that says, “If X, then use prose?”

Chapter Twenty-One The Fortunes of Fate in Hamlet : Divine Providence and Social Determinism

In Hamlet , fate is attacked from both sides: “fortune” presents a world of random happenstance, “will” a theory of efficacious human action. On this backdrop, this essay considers—irrespective of what the characters say and believe—what the structure and imagery Shakespeare wrote into Hamlet say about the possibility that some version of fate is at work in the play. I contend the world of Hamlet is governed by neither fate nor fortune, nor even the Christianized version of fate called “providence.” Yet there is a modern, secular, disenchanted form of fate at work in Hamlet—what is sometimes called “social determinism”—which calls into question the freedom of the individual will. As such, Shakespeare’s Hamlet both commented on the transformation of pagan fate into Christian providence that happened in the centuries leading up to the play, and anticipated the further transformation of fate from a theological to a sociological idea, which occurred in the centuries following Hamlet .

Chapter Twenty-Two The Working Class in Hamlet

There’s a lot for working-class folks to hate about Hamlet —not just because it’s old, dusty, difficult to understand, crammed down our throats in school, and filled with frills, tights, and those weird lace neck thingies that are just socially awkward to think about. Peak Renaissance weirdness. Claustrophobicly cloistered inside the castle of Elsinore, quaintly angsty over royal family problems, Hamlet feels like the literary epitome of elitism. “Lawless resolutes” is how the Wittenberg scholar Horatio describes the soldiers who join Fortinbras’s army in exchange “for food.” The Prince Hamlet who has never worked a day in his life denigrates Polonius as a “fishmonger”: quite the insult for a royal advisor to be called a working man. And King Claudius complains of the simplicity of "the distracted multitude.” But, in Hamlet , Shakespeare juxtaposed the nobles’ denigrations of the working class as readily available metaphors for all-things-awful with the rather valuable behavior of working-class characters themselves. When allowed to represent themselves, the working class in Hamlet are characterized as makers of things—of material goods and services like ships, graves, and plays, but also of ethical and political virtues like security, education, justice, and democracy. Meanwhile, Elsinore has a bad case of affluenza, the make-believe disease invented by an American lawyer who argued that his client's social privilege was so great that it created an obliviousness to law. While social elites rot society through the twin corrosives of political corruption and scholarly detachment, the working class keeps the machine running. They build the ships, plays, and graves society needs to function, and monitor the nuts-and-bolts of the ideals—like education and justice—that we aspire to uphold.

Chapter Twenty-Three The Honor Code at Harvard and in Hamlet

Students at Harvard College are asked, when they first join the school and several times during their years there, to affirm their awareness of and commitment to the school’s honor code. But instead of “the foundation of our community” that it is at Harvard, honor is tragic in Hamlet —a source of anxiety, blunder, and catastrophe. As this chapter shows, looking at Hamlet from our place at Harvard can bring us to see what a tangled knot honor can be, and we can start to theorize the difference between heroic and tragic honor.

Chapter Twenty-Four The Meaning of Death in Shakespeare’s Hamlet

By connecting the ways characters live their lives in Hamlet to the ways they die – on-stage or off, poisoned or stabbed, etc. – Shakespeare symbolized hamartia in catastrophe. In advancing this argument, this chapter develops two supporting ideas. First, the dissemination of tragic necessity: Shakespeare distributed the Aristotelian notion of tragic necessity – a causal relationship between a character’s hamartia (fault or error) and the catastrophe at the end of the play – from the protagonist to the other characters, such that, in Hamlet , those who are guilty must die, and those who die are guilty. Second, the spectacularity of death: there exists in Hamlet a positive correlation between the severity of a character’s hamartia (error or flaw) and the “spectacularity” of his or her death – that is, the extent to which it is presented as a visible and visceral spectacle on-stage.

Chapter Twenty-Five Tragic Excess in Hamlet

In Hamlet , Shakespeare paralleled the situations of Hamlet, Laertes, and Fortinbras (the father of each is killed, and each then seeks revenge) to promote the virtue of moderation: Hamlet moves too slowly, Laertes too swiftly – and they both die at the end of the play – but Fortinbras represents a golden mean which marries the slowness of Hamlet with the swiftness of Laertes. As argued in this essay, Shakespeare endorsed the virtue of balance by allowing Fortinbras to be one of the very few survivors of the play. In other words, excess is tragic in Hamlet .

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Home — Essay Samples — Literature — Plays — Hamlet

Essays on Hamlet

Hamlet essay topics and outline examples, essay title 1: the tragic hero in "hamlet": analyzing the complex character of prince hamlet.

Thesis Statement: This essay delves into the character of Prince Hamlet in Shakespeare's "Hamlet," examining his tragic flaws, internal conflicts, and the intricate web of relationships that contribute to his downfall, ultimately highlighting his status as a classic tragic hero.

Introduction
Defining Tragic Heroes: Characteristics and Literary Tradition
The Complex Psychology of Prince Hamlet: Ambiguity, Doubt, and Melancholy
The Ghost's Revelation: Hamlet's Quest for Justice and Revenge
The Theme of Madness: Feigned or Real?
Hamlet's Relationships: Ophelia, Gertrude, Claudius, and Horatio
The Tragic Climax: The Duel, Poisoned Foils, and Fatal Consequences

Essay Title 2: "Hamlet" as a Reflection of Political Intrigue: Power, Corruption, and the Tragedy of Denmark

Thesis Statement: This essay explores the political dimensions of Shakespeare's "Hamlet," analyzing the themes of power, corruption, and political manipulation as portrayed in the play, and their impact on the fate of the characters and the kingdom of Denmark.

The Political Landscape of Denmark: Claudius's Ascension to the Throne
The Machiavellian Villainy of Claudius: Murder, Deception, and Ambition
Hamlet's Struggle for Justice: The Role of Political Morality
The Foils of Polonius and Laertes: Pawns in Political Games
The Fate of Denmark: Chaos, Rebellion, and the Climactic Tragedy
Shakespeare's Political Commentary: Lessons for Society

Essay Title 3: "Hamlet" in a Contemporary Context: Adaptations, Interpretations, and the Play's Enduring Relevance

Thesis Statement: This essay examines modern adaptations and interpretations of "Hamlet," exploring how the themes, characters, and dilemmas presented in the play continue to resonate with audiences today, making "Hamlet" a timeless and relevant work of literature.

From Stage to Screen: Iconic Film and Theater Productions of "Hamlet"
Contemporary Readings: Gender, Race, and Identity in "Hamlet" Interpretations
Psychological and Existential Interpretations: Hamlet's Inner Turmoil in the Modern World
Relevance in the 21st Century: Themes of Revenge, Justice, and Moral Dilemma
Adapting "Hamlet" for New Audiences: Outreach, Education, and Cultural Engagement
Conclusion: The Timelessness of "Hamlet" and Its Place in Literature

Revenge Symbolism in Hamlet

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Comparison Between Hamlet and Ophelia

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The Tragic Story of Hamlet

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"Act": The Theme of "Acting" in Hamlet

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1603, William Shakespeare

Play; Shakespearean tragedy

Hamlet, Claudius, Gertrude, Polonius

The play Hamlet is the most cited work in the English language and is often included in the lists of the world's greatest literature.

"Frailty, thy name is woman!" "Brevity' is the soul of wit" "To be, or not to be, that is the question" "I must be cruel to be kind" "Why, then, ’tis none to you, for there is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so. To me, it is a prison."

1. Wright, G. T. (1981). Hendiadys and Hamlet. PMLA, 96(2), 168-193. (https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/pmla/article/abs/hendiadys-and-hamlet/B61A80FAB6569984AB68096FE483D4FB) 2. Leverenz, D. (1978). The woman in Hamlet: An interpersonal view. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 4(2), 291-308. (https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/493608?journalCode=signs) 3. Lesser, Z., & Stallybrass, P. (2008). The first literary Hamlet and the commonplacing of professional plays. Shakespeare Quarterly, 59(4), 371-420. (https://academic.oup.com/sq/article-abstract/59/4/371/5064575) 4. De Grazia, M. (2001). Hamlet before its Time. MLQ: Modern Language Quarterly, 62(4), 355-375. (https://muse.jhu.edu/article/22909) 5. Calderwood, J. L. (1983). To be and not to be. Negation and Metadrama in Hamlet. In To Be and Not to Be. Negation and Metadrama in Hamlet. Columbia University Press. (https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.7312/cald94400/html) 6. Kastan, D. S. (1987). " His semblable is his mirror":" Hamlet" and the Imitation of Revenge. Shakespeare Studies, 19, 111. (https://www.proquest.com/openview/394df477873b27246b71f83d3939c672/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=1819311) 7. Neill, M. (1983). Remembrance and Revenge: Hamlet, Macbeth and The Tempest. Jonson and Shakespeare, 35-56. (https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-349-06183-9_3) 8. Gates, S. (2008). Assembling the Ophelia fragments: gender, genre, and revenge in Hamlet. Explorations in Renaissance Culture, 34(2), 229-248. (https://go.gale.com/ps/i.do?id=GALE%7CA208534875&sid=googleScholar&v=2.1&it=r&linkaccess=abs&issn=00982474&p=AONE&sw=w&userGroupName=anon%7Eebb234db)

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William Shakespeare

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Hamlet is part of a literary tradition called the revenge play, in which a person—most often a man—must take revenge against those who have wronged him. Hamlet , however, turns the genre on its head in an ingenious way: Hamlet , the person seeking vengeance, can't actually bring himself to take his revenge. As Hamlet struggles throughout the play with the logistical difficulties and moral burdens of vengeance, waffling between whether he should kill Claudius and avenge his father once and for all, or whether to do so would be pointless, cruel, or even self-destructive, William Shakespeare’s unique perspective on action versus inaction becomes clear. Ultimately, as the characters within the play puzzle, pontificate, and perish, Shakespeare suggests that there is no inherent morality in either action or inaction, insofar as each option is tied to vengeance: whether one acts or does not, death inevitably comes for everyone.

There are two major arenas in which Hamlet’s ability to take decisive action are played out: the first being the question of whether or not he will kill Claudius and avenge his father, and the second being the question of whether Hamlet will take his own life in order to avoid making the former decision. When Hamlet’s father’s ghost appears to him and charges him with taking vengeance upon Claudius for murdering him, Hamlet is determined to do the ghost’s bidding—but as Hamlet (often purposefully) misses opportunity after opportunity to kill Claudius, he begins to wonder what his own inability to act says about him, and whether he is as weak and mad as he has led everyone to believe. Hamlet has faked madness as a cover for his investigations into Claudius, taking one small action in order to stall having to take a larger, riskier one. However, as Hamlet languishes in indecision, even that small action becomes too frightening, and he begins contemplating suicide, asking, in a famous line, whether it is better “to be or not to be.” On the matter of suicide, even, Hamlet cannot make a decision—to take his own life would be to fail his father, but to stay alive means reckoning with his own inaction day after day. Ultimately, Hamlet resolves too late to kill Claudius—Claudius and Laertes have already put a plan to kill Hamlet as revenge for the deaths of Polonius and Ophelia into action. Hamlet succeeds in killing Claudius—but not before realizing that his own death from being slain by Laertes’s poisoned rapier is imminent. Hamlet has acted at last, but has staved off his actions for so long that Shakespeare seems to be using Hamlet’s idleness to suggest that neither action nor inaction has any bearing on morality, or any influence on the ultimate outcome of one’s life.

It is also significant that in the background of the main drama of Hamlet , Elsinore swirls with rumors of the approach of Fortinbras , the young prince of Norway who has succeeded his father (also named Fortinbras), on the Norwegian throne. Fortinbras is determined to take back lands his father lost in battle—including Denmark—and marches relentlessly across Europe as he sets his eyes on lands in Poland and beyond. Hamlet overhears these murmurings of Fortinbras’s campaign, and though he never comes face-to-face with his foil and opposite, the audience (and Hamlet himself) recognize Fortinbras’s decisive action on his late father’s behalf as all that Hamlet is unable to bring himself to do. In the end, when Fortinbras arrives at Elsinore to find a massacre before him, he accepts Horatio ’s (and the late Hamlet’s) nomination to the Danish throne. For his decisive action, Fortinbras is rewarded with the one thing Hamlet partly longed for but could never take the action necessary to secure: political and social control of his country—and yet other characters who have taken the same decisive actions as Fortinbras, such as Claudius and Laertes, have met their deaths as well.

By the end of the play, all of the major characters are dead, and a new leader has come to Denmark to seize the throne. While Hamlet’s great inner moral struggles—“to be or not to be,” to take revenge or to stay his hand, to ascend to the throne or to languish in obscurity—have been slowly unfolding, the wheels of the world have kept turning. Death has come for all the major players, and while some have been slain as a result of Hamlet’s actions, others have been killed by his inaction. Death is humanity’s great equalizer, and Shakespeare shows that it does not discriminate between the valiant and the cowardly, the motivated and the fearful, or the good and the wicked.

Action and Inaction ThemeTracker

Action and Inaction Quotes in Hamlet

O, that this too, too sullied flesh would melt, Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew.

Therefore, since brevity is the soul of wit, And tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes, I will be brief.

There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.

O God, I could be bounded in a nutshell, and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams.

What’s Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba, That he should weep for her?

The play’s the thing, Wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the king.

To be or not to be—that is the question: Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, Or to take arms against a sea of troubles And, by opposing, end them.

Get thee to a nunnery. Why wouldst thou be a breeder of sinners? I am myself indifferent honest, but yet I could accuse me of such things that it were better my mother had not borne me…

My words fly up, my thoughts remain below; Words without thoughts never to heaven go.

We defy augury. There is a special providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, ’tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come. The readiness is all.

Now cracks a noble heart. Good night, sweet prince, And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.

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Hamlet: Themes
In Hamlet, the question of how to act is affected not only by rational considerations, such as the need for certainty, but also by emotional, ethical, and psychological factors. Hamlet himself appears to distrust the idea that it's even possible to act in a controlled, purposeful way. When he does act, he prefers to do it blindly, recklessly ...
Hamlet Themes
Hamlet is part of a literary tradition called the revenge play, in which a person—most often a man—must take revenge against those who have wronged him. Hamlet, however, turns the genre on its head in an ingenious way: Hamlet, the person seeking vengeance, can't actually bring himself to take his revenge. As Hamlet struggles throughout the ...
Hamlet
Vengeance, Action, and Inaction. Hamlet belongs to a literary category known as the "revenge play," which features a person—usually a man—seeking revenge against those who have somehow done him wrong. Shakespeare's interpretation of this theme, however, is an original one: Hamlet, the one who must avenge his father's death, is unable to do so.
Hamlet Research Paper & Essay Examples
Focused on: Reasons for Hamlet's procrastination and its consequences. Characters mentioned: Hamlet, Claudius, Gertrude, Ophelia, Polonius. Role of Women in Twelfth Night and Hamlet by Shakespeare. Genre: Research Paper. Words: 2527. Focused on: Women in Shakespeare's Twelfth Night and Hamlet.
Hamlet Themes: 6 Major Themes In Shakespeare's Hamlet ️
The theme of religion. Religion has an impact on the actions of the characters in this play. Hamlet's 'to be or not to be' soliloquy outlines his religious thinking on the subject of suicide. He declines to kill Claudius while he is praying for fear of sending him to heaven when he should be going to hell. Hamlet believes, too, that ...
Themes in Hamlet with Examples and Analysis
Theme #1. Madness. Madness is one of the dominant themes of Hamlet. Hamlet displays many sides of his personality since the death of his father. He appears as a philosopher, a sage, a mad as well as a mentally disturbed person. He also expresses that there is a "method in my madness.".
Hamlet Themes
The main themes in Hamlet are deception and false appearances, spirituality and revenge, and misogyny and gender. Deception and False Appearances: Many characters in the play practice deception ...
PDF Themes in Hamlet
of old Hamlet. Horatio is skeptical until the ghost appears. Act 1 Scene 4: Horatio, Marcellus and Hamlet meet the ghost. Hamlet is unsure whether this is truly his father or an evil spirit, but insists that either way it cannot harm his immortal soul. Act 3 Scene 1: Hamlet debates the question of whether suicide is an effective
Hamlet: Key Themes
Revenge is obviously an important theme in Hamlet, if not the most important theme of all.Indeed, Hamlet is not just a tragedy but an example of a 'revenge tragedy', a subgenre of play which was already established when Shakespeare wrote Hamlet.Shakespeare's own dramatising of the Hamlet story was itself a reworking of an earlier (sadly lost) play, probably by Thomas Kyd, which had been ...
Hamlet Themes
Main Themes in Hamlet. The play takes place in Elsinore, Denmark, which is a military town on the Eastern Coast of Denmark. Overlooking the sea, it is a hub for military watch over the sea to protect against impending attacks. The fortress contains most of the action of the play, which enhances the mood of being trapped.
Hamlet Critical Essays
One may smile, and smile, and be a villain' (1.5.109). Hamlet is determined to act without delay, and swears as much to his father. We know, however, that if this is all there is, this is going to ...
Themes, Motifs, and Symbols in Hamlet
Major Themes in Hamlet. The Complexity of Mental Illness. The Danger of Deception and Manipulation. The Futility of Revenge. Motifs and Symbols in Hamlet. Death. Ears and Hearing. Sexuality. Conclusion.
Hamlet by William Shakespeare Summary, Themes, and Analysis
Hamlet is a tragic play written by William Shakespeare somewhat in 1599. The exact date of publication is unknown, however, many believe that it was published between 1601 and 1603. The play is set in Denmark. Hamlet, the prince of Denmark, is Shakespeare's longest play and is well-thought-out as the most influential literary work of literature.
Hamlet: Study Guide
Hamlet by William Shakespeare was first published in 1603. Set in the Kingdom of Denmark, the play follows Prince Hamlet as he grapples with grief, betrayal, and the pursuit of justice after the sudden death of his father, the King. The story unfolds against a backdrop of political intrigue and familial conflict, with Hamlet's inner turmoil ...
151 Hamlet Essay Titles, Examples, & Thesis Ideas
151 Hamlet Essay Topics & Thesis Ideas. We know how long students search for interesting Hamlet essay topics. In this post, you will find a list of the most debating Hamlet essay titles and thesis ideas. We've also developed a guide on how to write a Hamlet paper and included some helpful Hamlet essay examples.
Appearance vs. Reality Theme in Hamlet
The ThemeTracker below shows where, and to what degree, the theme of Appearance vs. Reality appears in each scene of Hamlet. Click or tap on any chapter to read its Summary & Analysis. How often theme appears: scene length: Act 1, Scene 1. Act 1, Scene 2. Act 1, Scene 3.
Poison, Corruption, Death Theme in Hamlet
An atmosphere of poison, corruption, and death lingers over Hamlet from the play's very first moments. The citizens of Denmark—both within the castle of Elsinore and beyond its walls—know that there is something "rotten" in their state. Marcellus, Barnardo, and Francisco —three watchmen at Elsinore—greet one another as they arrive ...
Essays on Hamlet
Essays on Hamlet. Written as the author taught Hamlet every semester for a decade, these lightning essays ask big conceptual questions about the play with the urgency of a Shakespeare lover, and answer them with the rigor of a Shakespeare scholar. In doing so, Hamlet becomes a lens for life today, generating insights on everything from ...
Hamlet: Themes
The theme of rеvеngе serves as a driving forcе bеhind many of thе charactеrs' actions and dеcisions, ultimatеly lеading to thеir downfall. Ophеlia's madnеss and dеath, Polonius's murdеr, thе poisoning of Gеrtrudе, Laеrtеs, Claudius, and ultimately Hamlet's own death arе all еmblеmatic of the destructive power of rеvеngе.
Hamlet Essay
Thesis Statement: This essay examines modern adaptations and interpretations of "Hamlet," exploring how the themes, characters, and dilemmas presented in the play continue to resonate with audiences today, making "Hamlet" a timeless and relevant work of literature.
Action and Inaction Theme in Hamlet
Below you will find the important quotes in Hamlet related to the theme of Action and Inaction. Act 1, Scene 2 Quotes. O, that this too, too sullied flesh would melt, Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew. Related Characters: (speaker) Related Themes: Page Number and Citation: 1.2.133-134. Cite this Quote. Explanation and Analysis:
What is the theme of death in Hamlet?
Claudius's murder leads Hamlet to revenge which in turn must end in death. Hamlet does often reflect on both spiritual and physical death. He reflects on physical death in the classic Yorick scene ...

Hamlet Themes

The background to the Hamlet theme structure

6 Major Themes in Hamlet

The theme of corruption

The theme of religion

The Hamlet theme of politics

The theme of appearance and reality

The theme of women

Shakespeare Themes by Play

Shakespeare Themes by Topic

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Hamlet Themes – Meaning and Main Ideas

Main Themes in Hamlet

Hamlet Themes

The Uncertainty of Life

Genuine Behavior vs. Performance

How Rulership Affects a Nation’s Well-being

Themes, Motifs, and Symbols in Hamlet

Major Themes in Hamlet

The Complexity of Mental Illness

The Danger of Deception and Manipulation

The Futility of Revenge

Motifs and Symbols in Hamlet

Ears and Hearing

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Introduction

Hamlet by William Shakespeare Summary

Themes in Hamlet

Political Livelihood

Hamlet Characters Analysis

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern

Voltimand and Cornelius

Marcellus and Barnardo

Hamlet Literary Analysis

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151 Hamlet Essay Topics & Thesis Ideas

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Essays on Hamlet

Essay Title 2: "Hamlet" as a Reflection of Political Intrigue: Power, Corruption, and the Tragedy of Denmark

Essay Title 3: "Hamlet" in a Contemporary Context: Adaptations, Interpretations, and the Play's Enduring Relevance

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The Tragic Story of Hamlet

"Act": The Theme of "Acting" in Hamlet

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Action and Inaction Quotes in Hamlet

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