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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.

Publications

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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Khan, Amir. “My Kingdom for a Ghost: Counterfactual Thinking and Hamlet.” Shakespeare Quarerly 66.1 (2015): 29-46.

Keener, Joe. “Evolving Hamlet: Brains, Behavior, and the Bard.” Interdisciplinary Literary Studies 14.2 (2012): 150-163

Kott, Jan. “Hamlet of the Mid-Century.” Shakespeare, Our Contemporary . Trans. Boleslaw Taborski. Garden City: Doubleday, 1964.

Lake, Peter. Hamlet’s Choice: Religion and Resistance in Shakespeare's Revenge Tragedies . New Haven: Yale University Press, 2020.

Lerer, Seth. “Hamlet’s Boyhood.” Childhood, Education and the Stage in Early Modern England , ed. Richard Preiss and Deanne Williams (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017):17-36.

Levy, Eric P. Hamlet and the Rethinking of Man . Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2008.

Lewis, C.S. “Hamlet: The Prince or the Poem?” (1942). Studies in Shakespeare , ed. Peter Alexander (1964): 201-18.

Loftis, Sonya Freeman; Allison Kellar; and Lisa Ulevich, ed. Shakespeare's Hamlet in an Era of Textual Exhaustion . New York, NY: Routledge, 2018.

Luke, Jillian. “What If the Play Were Called Ophelia ? Gender and Genre in Hamlet .” Cambridge Quarterly 49.1 (2020): 1-18.

Gates, Sarah. “Assembling the Ophelia Fragments: Gender, Genre, and Revenge in Hamlet.” Explorations in Renaissance Culture 34.2 (2008): 229-47.

Gottschalk, Paul. The Meanings of Hamlet: Modes of Literary Interpretation Since Bradley . Albequerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1972.

Greenblatt, Stephen. Hamlet in Purgatory . Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2001.

Hunt, Marvin W. Looking for Hamlet . New York and Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan, 2007.

Iyengar, Sujata. "Gertrude/Ophelia: Feminist Intermediality, Ekphrasis, and Tenderness in Hamlet," in Loomba, Rethinking Feminism In Early Modern Studies: Race, Gender, and Sexuality (2016), 165-84.

Iyengar, Sujata; Feracho, Lesley. “Hamlet (RSC, 2016) and Representations of Diasporic Blackness,” Cahiers Élisabéthains 99, no. 1 (2019): 147-60.

Johnson, Laurie. The Tain of Hamlet . Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2013.

Jolly, Margrethe. The First Two Quartos of Hamlet: A New View of the Origins and Relationship of the Texts . Jefferson: McFarland, 2014.

Jones, Ernest. Hamlet and Oedipus . Garden City: Doubleday, 1949.

Keegan, Daniel L. “Indigested in the Scenes: Hamlet's Dramatic Theory and Ours.” PMLA 133.1 (2018): 71-87.

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Kiséry, András. Hamlet's Moment: Drama and Political Knowledge in Early Modern England . Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016.

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Langis, Unhae. “Virtue, Justice and Moral Action in Shakespeare’s Hamlet .” Literature and Ethics: From the Green Knight to the Dark Knight , ed. Steve Brie and William T. Rossiter (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2010): 53-74.

Lawrence, Sean. "'As a stranger, bid it welcome': Alterity and Ethics in Hamlet and the New Historicism," European Journal of English Studies 4 (2000): 155-69.

Lesser, Zachary. Hamlet after Q1: An Uncanny History of the Shakespearean Text . Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015.

Levin, Harry. The Question of Hamlet . New York: Oxford UP, 1959.

Lewis, Rhodri. Hamlet and the Vision of Darkness . Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2017.

Litvin, Margaret. Hamlet's Arab Journey: Shakespeare's Prince and Nasser's Ghost . Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011.

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Marino, James J. “Ophelia’s Desire.” ELH 84.4 (2017): 817-39.

Massai, Sonia, and Lucy Munro. Hamlet: The State of Play . London: Bloomsbury, 2021.

McGee, Arthur. The Elizabethan Hamlet . New Haven: Yale UP, 1987.

Megna, Paul, Bríd Phillips, and R.S. White, ed. Hamlet and Emotion . New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019.

Menzer, Paul. The Hamlets: Cues, Qs, and Remembered Texts . Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2008.

Mercer, Peter. Hamlet and the Acting of Revenge . Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1987.

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Owen, Ruth J. The Hamlet Zone: Reworking Hamlet for European Cultures . Newcastle-Upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2012.

Price, Joeseph G., ed. Hamlet: Critical Essays . New York: Routledge, 1986.

Prosser, Eleanor. Hamlet and Revenge . 2nd ed. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1971.

Rosenberg, Marvin. The Masks of Hamlet . Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1992.

Row-Heyveld, Lindsey. “Antic Dispositions: Mental and Intellectual Disabilities in Early Modern Revenge Tragedy.” Recovering Disability in Early Modern England , ed. Allison P. Hobgood and David Houston Wood. Ohio State University Press, 2013, pp. 73-87.

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Hamlet Essays

I. Introduction Hamlet is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, probably written in 1600 or 1601. It is often considered his supreme achievement, and one of the world’s greatest tragedies. Considered as one of the greatest of Shakespeare’s tragedies, Hamlet is also one of the best-known plays in world...

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Grammaticus The problems related to the origin and sources of Hamlet are no less contentious and inconclusive than the philosophical, moral and structural problems traditionally associated with the play. The present day iconic status of Shakespeare’s ‘Hamlet’ often obscures the...

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Q1) The character of Claudius can be recognized as the major antagonist in the play. Traits such as being cleverly evil, lustful, and conniving were the factors that won him the crown as the King of Denmark. As a king, Claudius focused on protecting his throne from being relinquished from him. He...

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Shakespeare's characterization of Gertrude and Ophelia in Hamlet is paradoxical as it challenges as well as complements the contemporary social traditions and norms. Gertrude is the best example of this paradox that is manifested through her extraordinary supremacy over all the major characters of...

Hamlet is a character with whom most of us could relate not only because of his imperfections but also because of his insecurities. He is imperfect, he has his insecurities, but what is most remarkable in him is his goodness of heart which makes it very difficult for him to think ill of other...

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I) Introduction A. Hamlet is the direct cause of the tragedy i. Charnes; “Hamlet Without Hamlet.” II) First appearance of Hamlet A. Hamlet’s lack of a sense of purpose B. Hamlet’s attempt to relieve his melancholy i. Udo and Fels; "’Suit the Action to the Word, the Word to the Action’: An...

1 780 words

Isabella is a woman with a seemingly over pious regard to herself and her virginity, placing the same over an individual’s life and liberty. This is made evident in her statement “Then, Isabel, live chaste, and, brother, die: More than our brother is our chastity (Measure for measure...

William Shakespeare is perhaps best known for being the father of plays. Of all playwrights, none can compare to Shakespeare’s style, creativity, and wit. A great example would be Hamlet which could perhaps be viewed as the best of all his plays. The lines of the play have been remembered in the...

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Introduction When discussing “Hamlet”, whether in casual company, stage production or academic study, the conversation can quite literally go in a million different directions. Widely regarded as Shakepeare’s most complex play, Hamlet can in fact be deeply examined and extensively interpreted...

Aristotle has written numerous treatises about a variety of topics, one of which is his treatise on Poetics. In this treatise he discusses poetry and the construction of epics, but the treatise focuses heavily on the creation and the definition of a tragedy, especially on the development of the...

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There are a number of reasons why Hamlet has remained a classic and one of these reasons is because of the great characterization that Shakespeare uses in the creation of his characters. It is because of these characters that the play comes alive and the reason why the audience is able to laugh...

It is chiefly character that is responsible for the tragic fate of the hero, but a Shakespearean tragedy also arouses a feeling that there is a mysterious power in this universe, whom we may call Fate or Destiny or Providence that operates in the universe and is responsible for the manner in which...

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1. Hamlet, one of William Shakespeare’s greatest tragedies possesses an intense environment of uncertainty. This sense of “uncertainty” is governed primarily by the indecision and hesitation demonstrated by the protagonist, Hamlet, the prince of Denmark. He is always in two minds and cannot seem...

William Shakespeare once said that “action is eloquence”. Hamlet finds it easy to make a choice to avenge his father’s death, but is unable to execute this choice. Hamlet’s choices and inconsistencies in carrying them out is what will lead to multiple tragedies and ultimately, his redemption...

The 1996 film version of Hamlet directed and starred in by Kenneth Branagh in the title role is a faithful adaptation of William Shakespeare’s famous play. The exposition of the plot occupies the first few minutes of the story. It begins with the appearance of a ghost to the castle guards. This...

Hamlet is a well known character in the body of works of Shakespeare. The soliloquy signifies the derailed and arguments of a wearied soul trying to explain life and the consequences of hardships of thoughts' impacts on decision makings throughout life which end with the beginning of death and the...

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Introduction In order to understand the role of the rites in Hamlet, one must conceptualize the ritual. The rites in Hamlet concern mainly marriage, mourning and funeral. It is crucial to distinguish their specific nature to detect how they participate in the tragedy. Arnold van Gennep identified...

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The first soliloquy of Hamlet occurs (act I, scene ii, lines 129-59) after the King and the Queen have urged Hamlet in the open court to cast off the deep melancholy which, as they think, has taken possession of him as a consequence of his father’s death. In this soliloquy, Hamlet reveals the...

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Introduction Every emotion and feeling of human beings is captured by literary works such as stories, novels and poems. The characters, plot and themes in the stories and novels bring forth the varied emotions experienced by human beings. Two such stories which focus on the feelings and emotions...

This student owes a great deal of intellectual debt to Louise Cowans thanks in great part to the theoretical criticism the author expressed in her introduction to The Comic Terrain. An example of the brilliance of her critical theory is found in an extended quotation from the work’s introduction...

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The dilemma about the intrinsical meaning of the story about the Prince of Denmark is a perturbing issue of discussion. Question about whether Hamlet feels affection to Ophelia is still not answered because the author uses various evasive situations when readers get more and more confused. Those...

The significant tragedy “Hamlet” violates the eternal problems. Those problems are connected with the contradiction between action and ideal, the role of personality in the history of humanity, the meaning of the life of each person, with justice, revenge, betrayal, love, friendship...

Hamlet’s different perspectives of death Death is perceived as different things according to different people. In William Shakespeare’s play “Hamlet,” the title character, Hamlet openly expresses his opinion of death through the various acts he commits and the things he says...

Shakespeare’s early 17th century revenge tragedy “Hamlet” is shaped by our understanding that knowledge of its contextual milieu develops an appreciation for the play’s timeless resonance. We also recognize the play’s textual integrity allows Shakespeare to explore...

Both Hamlet and Frankenstein deal with the concept of revenge. In a well-organized essay discuss the importance of revenge as a central theme in either Frankenstein OR Hamlet . Avoid mere plot summary. You must provide strong textual references to support your ideas. The revenge theme came in both...

“THE DEAD AMONGST THE LIVING” IN HAMLET AND FRANKENSTEIN William Shakespeare’s play Hamlet and Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein are challenging literary works that both have the same theme about the dead amongst the living. Both protagonists Hamlet and Victor Frankenstein...

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Female voices in classic literature are rarely allowed to be heard as they should, especially in a society like Shakespeare’s, where women are expected to make children and hot meals and not much more than that. While Shakespeare does take drastic steps forward in allowing such prominent...

Harold Bloom says the genius of Shakespeare is that “Characters develop rather than unfold, and they develop because they reconceive themselves” (The Invention of the Human XVII). Shakespeare’s tragedy Hamlet, shows the development of Hamlet within the land of Denmark. Hamlet...

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English 30-1 Hamlet Personal Response March 21 2013 Final Draft Interior Monologue My uncle is dead. Along with everyone else I love and the people they care about. My mother Gertrude, Ophelia, Laertes, and their father Polonius. Dead and gone to heaven forever. I finally killed Claudius! He has...

Hamlet: Response To Literature Taking place in Elsinore, Denmark Hamlet by Williams Shakespeare is a remarkable play where love and madness co-exist in an all-out war between family and friends. For many years, literature scholars have viewed Hamlet’s themes in many ways and forms. I intend...

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PRINCE HAMLET   →

“I shall win at the odds.”

KING CLAUDIUS   →

“He is justly served … a poison tempered by himself”

QUEEN GERTRUDE   →

“What devil was’t … That thus hath cozened you at hoodman-blind?”

OPHELIA   →

“Of ladies most deject and wretched … I cannot choose but weep.”

HAMLET AND THE GHOST   →

“Remember me … Rest, rest, perturbed spirit!”

HAMLET AND CLAUDIUS   →

“Thou incestuous, murderous, damned Dane.”

HAMLET AND GERTRUDE   →

“Go not to mine uncle’s bed.”

HAMLET AND OPHELIA   →

“The canker galls the infants of the spring.”

HAMLET AND HORATIO   →

“Those friends thou hast …”

CLAUDIUS AND GERTRUDE   →

“My uncle-father and aunt-mother.”

THE MAIN THEMES OF HAMLET    →

“Purposes mistook / Fallen on th’inventor’s heads.”

THEME OF REVENGE   →

“Show yourself in deed your father’s son.”

THEME OF APPEARANCE VERSUS REALITY   →

“Who’s there? … Stand and unfold yourself.”

THEME OF MADNESS   →

“Howsoever thou pursuest this act, / Taint not thy mind.”

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  Characters

• #1: Prince Hamlet
• #2: King Claudius
• #3: Queen Gertrude
• #4: Ophelia

  Relationships

• #5: Hamlet and the Ghost
• #6: Hamlet and Claudius
• #7: Hamlet and Gertrude
• #8: Hamlet and Ophelia
• #9: Hamlet and Horatio
• #10: Claudius and Gertrude

  Themes

• #11: Main Themes
• #12: Revenge
• #13: Appearance Versus Reality
• #14: Madness

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Hamlet : Model Essays for Students

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Inspiration for exam success: 42 easy-to-read, 1,500-word sample essays on Shakespeare’s Hamlet . Covers characters, relationships, and themes.

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Check out the free essay samples below.

Hamlet Sample Essays: Characters

King Claudius deceives everyone—except Prince Hamlet. Queen Gertrude deceives only herself. From Elsinore’s maddening world of deception and betrayal, Ophelia sees only one route of escape.

#1: The Character of Hamlet

Born a prince, parented by a jester, haunted by a ghost, destined to be killed for killing a king, and remembered as the title character of a play he did not want to be in. If at the cost of his life, Hamlet does in the end “win at the odds. ”

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#2: The Character of Claudius

His “ambition ” for Denmark’s crown leads him to commit one murder only to find that he must plot a second to cover up the first. When this plan fails, his next scheme leads to the death of the woman he loves followed by his own.

#3: The Character of Gertrude

“Have you eyes? ”, Prince Hamlet demands of his mother. Gertrude‘s “o’erhasty marriage ” dooms her life and the lives of everyone around her when her wished-for, happy-ever-after fairytale ends in a bloodbath.

#4: The Character of Ophelia

As she struggles to respond to the self-serving purposes of others, Ophelia’s sanity collapses in Elsinore’s “unweeded garden ” of falsity and betrayal. Her “self-slaughter” is her revenge for her silencing and humiliation.

Hamlet Sample Essays: Relationships

The “mirth in funeral” union of Claudius and Gertrude means another marriage can never happen. In the “unweeded garden” of Elsinore, the unwed couple of Hamlet and Ophelia are united only in death.

#5: Relationship of Hamlet and the Ghost

Hamlet grants the Ghost the atonement his suffering soul needed more than the revenge he demanded: he surrenders Denmark to the son of the man murdered by his father on the day of the prince’s birth.

#6: Relationship of Hamlet and Claudius

Uncle and nephew are two men at war with each other—and themselves. Claudius is haunted by the murder he has committed ( “O heavy burden!” ); Hamlet by the one he hasn’t yet ( “Am I a coward?” ).

#7: Relationship of Hamlet and Gertrude

A haunted-by-the-past Hamlet seeks the truth about his father’s death ( “Do you see nothing there?” ). A live-in-the-present Gertrude seeks to protect her second husband and crown ( “No, nothing but ourselves” ).

#8: Relationship of Hamlet and Ophelia

Their relationship begins in uncertainty, descends into mutual deceit and rejection, and ends with their double surrender to death: Ophelia, to the water; Hamlet, to Claudius’ rigged fencing duel.

#9: Relationship of Hamlet and Horatio

“Those friends thou hast … Grapple them unto thy soul with hoops of steel.” Horatio is Hamlet’s trusted confidant in life and vows to remain the keeper of his memory after the prince’s death.

#10: Relationship of Claudius and Gertrude

A marriage of mutual self-interest: Claudius wanted to become king; Gertrude wanted to remain queen. In the end, both die by the same poison her second husband used to murder her first.

Hamlet Sample Essays: Themes

In “purposes mistook” conflicts between revenge and justice, acceptance and action, and remembering and forgetting, all the characters’ “deep plots” rebound on their “inventors’ heads.”

#11: Main Themes of Hamlet

A king murdered, an inheritance stolen, a family divided: Elsinore’s older generation destroys its younger when two brothers—one living, one undead—battle in a “cursed spite” over a crown and a queen.

#12: The Theme of Revenge

Hamlet and Laertes journey from revenge, through obsession and anger, to forgiveness. And the revenge sought by the Ghost on King Claudius becomes the revenge of Old King Fortinbras on Old King Hamlet.

#13: Deception and Appearance versus Reality

“Who’s there?” The characters struggle to distinguish between truth and falsehood in a play-long triple pun on the verb ‘to act’: to take action, to behave deceitfully, and to perform in theater.

#14: The Theme of Madness

“Your noble son is mad” , Polonius tells Denmark’s king and queen. But is Hamlet ever really insane? If not, why is he pretending to be? And is the prince’s “antic disposition” the cause of Ophelia’s traumatic breakdown?

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Use these 42 model Hamlet essays as:

• Building blocks to help you organize and structure your own personal response to the characters, relationships and themes of Hamlet .
• Starting points for you to express, in your individual writing style, your own thoughts about Shakespeare’s most celebrated but also most challenging play.

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William Shakespeare

Ask litcharts ai: the answer to your questions.

Welcome to the LitCharts study guide on William Shakespeare's Hamlet . Created by the original team behind SparkNotes, LitCharts are the world's best literature guides.

Hamlet: Introduction

Hamlet: plot summary, hamlet: detailed summary & analysis, hamlet: themes, hamlet: quotes, hamlet: characters, hamlet: symbols, hamlet: literary devices, hamlet: quizzes, hamlet: theme wheel, brief biography of william shakespeare.

Historical Context of Hamlet

Other books related to hamlet.

• Full Title: The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark
• When Written: Likely between 1599 and 1602
• Where Written: Stratford-upon-Avon or London, England
• When Published: First Quarto printed 1603; Second Quarto printed 1604; First Folio printed 1623
• Literary Period: Renaissance
• Genre: Tragic play; revenge play
• Setting: Elsinore Castle, Denmark, during the late Middle Ages
• Climax: After seeing Claudius’s emotional reaction to a play Hamlet has had staged in order to make Claudius face a fictionalized version of his own murder plot against the former king, Hamlet resolves to kill the Claudius without guilt.
• Antagonist: Claudius
• Point of View: Dramatic

Extra Credit for Hamlet

The Role of a Lifetime. The role of Hamlet is often considered one of the most challenging theatrical roles ever written, and has been widely interpreted on stage and screen by famous actors throughout history. Shakespeare is rumored to have originally written the role for John Burbage, one of the most well-known actors of the Elizabethan era. Since Shakespeare’s time, actors John Barrymore, Laurence Olivier, Ian McKellen, Jude Law, Kenneth Branagh, and Ethan Hawke are just a few actors who have tried their hand at playing the Dane. When Daniel Day-Lewis took to the stage as Hamlet in London in 1989, he left the stage mid-performance one night after reportedly seeing the ghost of his real father, the poet Cecil Day-Lewis, and has not acted in a single live theater production since.

Shakespeare or Not?  There are some who believe Shakespeare did not actually write many—or any—of the plays attributed to him. The most common “Anti-Stratfordian” theory is that Edward de Vere, the Earl of Oxford, wrote the plays and used Shakespeare as a front man, as aristocrats were not supposed to write plays. Others claim Shakespeare’s contemporaries such as Thomas Kyd or Christopher Marlowe may have authored his works. Most contemporary scholarship, however, supports the idea that the Bard really did compose the numerous plays and poems which have established him, in the eyes of many, as the greatest writer in history.

by William Shakespeare

Hamlet study guide.

The story of the play originates in the legend of Hamlet (Amleth) as recounted in the twelfth-century Danish History, a Latin text by Saxo the Grammarian. This version was later adapted into French by Francois de Belleforest in 1570. In it, the unscrupulous Feng kills his brother Horwendil and marries his brother's wife Gerutha. Horwendil's and Gerutha's son Amleth, although still young, decides to avenge his father's murder. He acts the fool in order to avoid suspicion, a strategy which succeeds in making the others think him harmless. With his mother's active support, Amleth succeeds in killing Feng. He is then proclaimed King of Denmark. This story is on the whole more straightforward than Shakespeare’s adaptation. Shakespeare was likely aware of Saxo's version, along with another play performed in 1589 in which a ghost apparently calls out, "Hamlet, revenge!" The 1589 play is lost, leading to much scholarly speculation as to who might have authored it. Most scholars attribute it to Thomas Kyd, author of The Spanish Tragedy of 1587. The Spanish Tragedy shares many elements with Hamlet , such as a ghost seeking revenge, a secret crime, a play-within-a-play, a tortured hero who feigns madness, and a heroine who goes mad and commits suicide.

The Spanish Tragedy was one of the first and most popular Elizabethan "revenge tragedies," a genre that Hamlet both epitomizes and complicates. Revenge tragedies typically share a few plot points. In all of them, some grievous insult or wrong requires vengeance. Often in these plays the conventional means of retribution (the courts of law, generally speaking) are unavailable because of the power of the guilty person or persons, who is often noble if not royal. Revenge tragedies also emphasize the subjective struggle of the avenger, who often fights (or feigns) madness and generally wallows in the moral difficulties of his situation. Finally, revenge tragedies end up with a dramatic bloodbath in which the guilty party is horribly and often ritualistically killed. Hamlet is not Shakespeare's first revenge tragedy - that distinction belongs to Titus Andronicus , a Marlovian horror-show containing all of the elements just mentioned. But Hamlet is generally considered the greatest revenge tragedy, if not the greatest tragedy, if not the greatest play, ever written.

The central reason for the play's eminence is the character of Hamlet. His brooding, erratic nature has been analyzed by many of the most famous thinkers and artists of the past four centuries. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe described him as a poet - a sensitive man who is too weak to deal with the political pressures of Denmark. Austrian psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud viewed Hamlet in terms of an “Oedipus complex,” an overwhelming sexual desire for his mother. This complex is usually associated with the wish to kill one’s father and sleep with one’s mother. Freud points out that Hamlet's uncle has usurped his father's rightful place, and therefore has replaced his father as the man who must die. However, Freud is careful to note that Hamlet represents modern man precisely because he does not kill Claudius in order to sleep with his mother, but rather kills him to revenge his father’s death. Political interpretations of Hamlet also abound, in which Hamlet stands for the spirit of political resistance, or represents a challenge to a corrupt regime. Stephen Greenblatt, the editor of the Norton Edition of Shakespeare, views these interpretive attempts of Hamlet as mirrors for the interpretation within the play itself - many of the characters who have to deal with Hamlet, including Polonius , Claudius, and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern , also develop theories to explain his behavior, none of which really succeeds in doing so. Indeed, nothing sure can be said about Hamlet except that it has been a perennial occasion for brilliant minds to explore some of the unanswerable questions of human existence.

Hamlet Questions and Answers

The Question and Answer section for Hamlet is a great resource to ask questions, find answers, and discuss the novel.

Closely examine Hamlet’s most famous soliloquy on page 137 (lines 57-91). Summarize the arguments he is contemplating in this speech.

What act and scene are you referring to?

Describe Fortinbras based on what Horatio says.

Do you mean in Act 1? Based upon Horatio's description, young Fortinbras is bold, inexperienced, and willing to do anything to regain his father's lost lands.

Why is a clock mentioned in Hamlet. There weren’t any clock’s in Hanlet’s time.

Yes I've heard this question before. This is called an anachronism. It is an inconsistency in some chronological arrangement. In this case, there were clocks in Shakespeare’s time but not in Hamlet's. Shakespeare wrote it in because he thought it...

Study Guide for Hamlet

Hamlet study guide contains a biography of William Shakespeare, literature essays, a complete e-text, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis.

• About Hamlet
• Hamlet Summary
• Hamlet Video
• Character List

Essays for Hamlet

Hamlet essays are academic essays for citation. These papers were written primarily by students and provide critical analysis of Hamlet by William Shakespeare.

• Through Rose Colored Glasses: How the Victorian Age Shifted the Focus of Hamlet
• Q to F7: Mate; Hamlet's Emotions, Actions, and Importance in the Nunnery Scene
• Before the Storm
• Haunted: Hamlet's Relationship With His Dead Father
• Heliocentric Hamlet: The Astronomy of Hamlet

Lesson Plan for Hamlet

• About the Author
• Study Objectives
• Common Core Standards
• Introduction to Hamlet
• Relationship to Other Books
• Bringing in Technology
• Notes to the Teacher
• Related Links
• Hamlet Bibliography

E-Text of Hamlet

The Hamlet e-text contains the full text of the play Hamlet by William Shakespeare.

• List of Characters

Wikipedia Entries for Hamlet

• Introduction

100+ Hamlet Essay Topics

Table of Contents

What is a Hamlet Essay?

A Hamlet essay is an analytical piece that delves into the themes, characters, plot, motifs, or historical context of William Shakespeare’s iconic tragedy, “Hamlet”. This play, often touted as one of the greatest pieces of literature ever written, is rife with profound topics and subtle nuances. When writing an essay on “Hamlet”, students explore these intricacies, shedding light on the play’s enduring relevance and its multifaceted layers.

Choosing the Right Topic for Your Hamlet Essay: A Quick Guide

In choosing a Hamlet essay topic, consider what aspect of the play intrigues you the most. Is it the psychological torment of Hamlet, the play’s exploration of existentialism, or perhaps its political undertones? Reflect on the themes that resonate with you. Review the play and take notes on pivotal scenes or dialogues. Your passion will come through in your writing, making your essay more engaging. Moreover, ensure your topic is not too broad; narrowing it down will allow for a deeper analysis.

Hamlet Essay Topics to Spark Your Imagination

Character analysis.

• Hamlet : A Study in Paralysis and Procrastination
• Ophelia’s Descent into Madness
• The Dual Nature of King Claudius
• Gertrude: Victim or Villain?
• Horatio: Hamlet’s Constant in a Chaotic World

Thematic Concerns

• The Play Within the Play: Exploring Metatheatre in Hamlet
• Madness vs. Sanity: A Thin Line in Elsinore
• Revenge and Its Consuming Nature
• Death and Decay: Imagery and Symbolism
• Betrayal and Loyalty: Conflicting Values

Symbolism and Motifs

• The Significance of Yorick’s Skull
• The Poisoned Sword and Cup: Instruments of Fate
• The Role of the Ghost in Driving the Plot
• Flowers in Ophelia’s Hands: More Than Just Bloom
• The Omnipresent Notion of Eavesdropping

Historical and Contextual Analysis

• Elizabethan Beliefs About Madness as Reflected in Hamlet
• Hamlet and the Renaissance Man
• The Influence of Greek Tragedy on “Hamlet”
• Political Strife and Its Reflection in Elsinore
• “Hamlet” in the Lens of Protestant Reformation

Comparative Studies

• “Hamlet” and “Oedipus Rex”: Tragedies of Fate
• The Role of Women in “Hamlet” vs. “Macbeth”
• How Film Adaptations Have Interpreted Hamlet’s Soliloquies
• Modern Interpretations of “Hamlet” in Popular Culture
• “Hamlet” and “Lion King”: From Denmark to Pride Rock

Character Exploration

• Hamlet : The Complexity of His Avenging Mission
• Ophelia: Between Love and Loyalty
• The True Intentions of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern
• Laertes: The Counterpart to Hamlet’s Revenge Quest
• Polonius: The Manipulative Councilor

Themes and Philosophical Inquiries

• The Ubiquity of Death in “Hamlet”
• Exploring Existentialism in Hamlet’s Soliloquies
• The Consequences of Deception and Secrets
• The Tragedy of Miscommunication in Elsinore
• Corruption and Moral Degradation in the Danish Court

Symbolism and Literary Devices

• The Role of Ghosts in Elizabethan Drama and “Hamlet”
• The Significance of the Play-within-a-Play Scene
• The Use of Mirrors and Reflections in Character Dynamics
• Gardens as Symbols of Decay and Corruption
• The Sea and its Symbolic Representations

Structural Analysis

• The Role and Impact of Soliloquies in “Hamlet”
• The Use of Foreshadowing in the Tragedy’s Climax
• The Dramatic Ironies that Pervade the Play
• The Significance of Off-Stage Actions in “Hamlet”
• The Role of Acts and Scenes in Pacing the Drama

Comparative Analyses

• Contrasting “Hamlet” with Other Shakespearean Tragedies
• “Hamlet” and “Othello”: Exploring Jealousy and Betrayal
• A Comparative Study of “Hamlet” and its Sources
• The Transformation of the “Hamlet” Story Through Time
• “Hamlet” vs. “Romeo and Juliet”: Love in the Midst of Tragedy

Modern Interpretations and Adaptations

• “Hamlet” in Today’s Pop Culture References
• Cinematic Interpretations of “Hamlet”: From Olivier to Branagh
• “Hamlet” in Non-English Theater: A Global Perspective
• Updating “Hamlet”: The Challenges and Rewards
• The Influence of “Hamlet” on Modern Dramatic Writing

Feminist Perspectives

• The Role and Representation of Women in “Hamlet”
• Gertrude: Passive Queen or Calculative Player?
• Ophelia’s Voice and Silence: A Feminist Reading
• The Paternal Controls Over Ophelia and Gertrude
• Women’s Agency in “Hamlet”: A Critical Exploration

Historical and Contextual Insights

• The Influence of Shakespeare’s Life Events on “Hamlet”
• “Hamlet” and the Elizabethan Worldview on Ghosts and the Supernatural
• Political Undertones in “Hamlet”: The State of Denmark
• Elizabethan Theater and its Reflection in “Hamlet”
• “Hamlet” and the Reflection of Renaissance Humanism

Psychological Angles

• Hamlet’s Oedipal Complex Explored
• The Mental State of Characters: Who’s Truly Mad?
• The Psychological Effects of Grief and Loss in “Hamlet”
• Fear, Paranoia, and Suspicion: A Psychological Dive into Elsinore’s Inhabitants
• Analyzing “Hamlet” Through the Lens of Freudian Psychoanalysis

Miscellaneous Topics

• The Role of Fate vs. Free Will in “Hamlet”
• The Ethical Implications of Revenge in “Hamlet”
• Exploring Religion and Morality in “Hamlet”
• The Concept of Honor in “Hamlet”
• The Nature of True Friendship in the Play

Narrative Techniques and Structure

• The Role of the Chorus in “Hamlet”: Absence and Implication
• Non-linear Storytelling in “Hamlet”: Flashbacks and Memories
• The Significance of Interludes and Their Impact on the Main Plot
• Parallel Plots in “Hamlet”: Subplots and Their Relation to the Central Narrative

Cultural Perspectives

• “Hamlet” from an Eastern Philosophical Perspective
• “Hamlet” in the Context of African Oral Traditions
• Exploring “Hamlet” from a Postcolonial Point of View
• The Play’s Universality: Why “Hamlet” Resonates Globally

Philosophical and Ethical Discussions

• “To Be or Not To Be”: Hamlet’s Exploration of Nihilism
• The Dichotomy of Action vs. Inaction in “Hamlet”
• Ethical Ambiguities: Is Hamlet Justified in His Actions?
• Determinism and Free Will in “Hamlet”

Performance and Stagecraft

• The Evolution of “Hamlet” Stage Productions Over the Centuries
• Modern Theatrical Interpretations of “Hamlet” and their Relevance
• Challenges of Portraying Hamlet: An Actor’s Perspective
• The Role of Stage Directions in Shaping “Hamlet’s” Performances

Secondary Characters and Their Significance

• Fortinbras: The Silent Counterpart to Hamlet
• Gravediggers in “Hamlet”: Humor Amidst Tragedy
• Osric: A Reflection of Elsinore’s Decaying Morality
• Marcellus and Bernardo: The Unsung Heroes of Elsinore

Get Writing Help

Struggling with your “Hamlet” essay? At writeondeadline.com , we offer top-tier essay writing services tailored to your needs. Allow our expert writers to bring your insights to life, delivering a masterpiece worthy of Shakespeare himself. Order your essay now!

Useful References

• William Shakespeare’s Hamlet – Full Text
• Royal Shakespeare Company’s Guide to Hamlet
• Shakespeare Online: Hamlet Essays
• BBC’s In-Depth Look at Hamlet

How to Teach Hamlet

• The Albert Team
• Last Updated On: March 1, 2022

What We Review

Why Teach Hamlet ?

By the time high school students are introduced to  Hamlet , they may have already had their fair share of Shakespearean tragedies and will probably ask, “Let me guess: everyone dies in the end?” 

While this is a fair question, there is so much more to this play than a tragic ending. One of the most valuable takeaways of teaching this play, especially to older students, are the conversations that can be had on mental illness, both during the Elizabethan Era and today. 

In addition to talking about mental illness, students can clearly see the negative effects of deception and manipulation or obsessing over revenge. While revenge or “getting even with someone” may not be at the forefront of teens’ minds, conflict with peers is certainly an ever-present reality throughout high school. Often, teens struggle to understand how to resolve those conflicts, and Hamlet provides an opportunity to discuss how to navigate these situations correctly. 

Universal Themes in Hamlet

The complexity of mental illness.

Shakespeare’s lead character,  Hamlet , pretends to be “mad” to manipulate those around him; however, the reality of his mental illness becomes evident as the play unfolds. While Hamlet’s madness takes some time to become recognizable, Ophelia’s mental illness is clearly visible in her nonsensical speech and distracted singing. This difference in the portrayal of mental illness based on character gender is no accident; Shakespeare understood his time. Women were exceedingly more likely to be diagnosed as “mad” or mentally ill, whereas men were rarely (if ever) given a similar diagnosis. 

The Danger of Deception and Manipulation

A supernatural being shows up and manipulates a lead character to do something sinister. Sound familiar? It should if you have read Shakespeare’s  Macbeth . In  Macbeth , three witches play on Macbeth’s pride and manipulate him to do whatever it takes to become king. Likewise, a ghost of Hamlet’s father appears and manipulates Hamlet to avenge his father’s murder. 

However, ghosts aren’t the only beings manipulating people, and Hamlet isn’t just being influenced. Hamlet is a master manipulator throughout the play, starting with his feigned “madness.” He easily lies to his mother, uncle, and best friends, but the most tragic victim of his lies and manipulation is Ophelia. 

When Hamlet’s carelessness kills both Ophelia and Polonius, Claudius recognizes Hamlet as a personal threat, and he manipulates Laertes’ grief in his favor, encouraging Laertes to take out Hamlet. 

The Futility of Revenge

Hamlet swears to avenge his father’s murder at the beginning of the play but struggles to follow through on his promise until the end. Not only does his oath of vengeance lead to his own mental collapse as he wrestles with his conscience, but nearly everyone around him dies as a result of his oath. Once his father is avenged by the end of the play, several characters, including Hamlet, also lose their lives, proving the pointlessness of revenge.

Cross-Curricular Planning

Students in both Social Studies and Psychology classes can enrich conversations about Hamlet by discussing the history of revenge and the diagnosis and treatment of mental illness. 

Social Studies

Students can find parallels to  Hamlet  within Social Studies, especially as it pertains to family feuds. Throughout time, generations of families have sought to avenge a member of their family by killing a member of someone else’s family. A prime example is the  Hatfields and the McCoys , whose feud continued for nearly thirty years, often over trivial matters like the ownership of a hog. Another example is Wyatt Earp and Billy Clanton. When one of Earp’s brothers was murdered and the other maimed, Earp sought justice through the local courts. When the courts failed, Earp took matters into his own hands to hunt down and take vengeance on his brother’s murderers. While the story of Wyatt Earp is akin to stories of superhero vigilantes for justice, the Hatfield and McCoy feud has many similarities to Hamlet. 

The Hatfields started the feud by killing a McCoy, and when another McCoy pursued vengeance, his wife and children were killed, and his house burned down. Finding real-life instances of the futility of revenge is impactful for students and an even stronger warning against the temporary lure of vengeance. 

Students studying psychology can help their peers better understand why Hamlet spoke and acted the way he did. Students can compare Hamlet’s words and actions with signs of clinical depression to prove the likely presence of a severe mental illness. For instance, the major symptoms of clinical depression are “anxiety, apathy, general discontent, guilt, hopelessness, loss of interest or pleasure in activities, mood swings, or sadness” (“Depression (Major Depressive Disorder)”). Hamlet shows every one of these symptoms in Act 1, Scene 2: 

• Hamlet is sad about his father’s death: “How is it that the clouds still hang on you?” 
• Hamlet is anxious about having a new father so soon: “A little more than kin, and less than kind!” 
• Hamlet is apathetic and hopeless about his life: “How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable seem to me all the uses of this world!” 
• Hamlet feels discontent about his mother’s hasty marriage: “But two months dead — nay, not so much, not two!” 
• Hamlet feels guilt over his lingering grief: “But break my heart, for I must hold my tongue!”

In addition to diagnosing Hamlet, students can discuss ways that Hamlet should have sought help or ways that his friends and family should have sought help for him. Students can also predict how the play’s events could have played out differently if others took Hamlet’s mental illness seriously.

Planning Your Unit

Hamlet  is a dense read, whether you choose to teach the original text, “No Fear Shakespeare” version, or something in between. Regardless of which text is best for your students, take your time moving through this text and remember, this play was meant to be seen and performed, not read while sitting down. 

Encourage your students to read this play aloud or even perform it (the plastic sword fights are especially fun!) to increase understanding. Lean into the characters and encourage your students to infuse desperation into Hamlet’s words, innocence and naivety into Ophelia’s words, and conniving evil into Claudius’ words. As much as possible, bring the text to life and present it in a way that honors how Shakespeare would want it to be presented. 

What standards should I teach?

Hamlet  is typically taught in high school — most commonly 11th or 12th grade — the following standards “buckets” should be addressed. While this section focuses on the language contained within the Common Core Literacy Standards, most states’ standards also address these topics.

Character Development and Setting: 

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.11-12.3

Analyze the impact of the author’s choices regarding how to develop and relate elements of a story or drama (e.g., where a story is set, how the action is ordered, how the characters are introduced and developed).

Relationships Between Themes: 

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.11-12.2

Determine two or more themes or central ideas of a text and analyze their development over the course of the text, including how they interact and build on one another to produce a complex account; provide an objective summary of the text.

Analyzing Imagery and Symbolism: 

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.11-12.4

Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in the text, including figurative and connotative meanings; analyze the impact of specific word choices on meaning and tone, including words with multiple meanings or language that is particularly fresh, engaging, or beautiful. (Include Shakespeare as well as other authors.)

Recording Evidence to Support Claims about the Text: 

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.11-12.1

Cite strong and thorough textual evidence to support analysis of what the text says explicitly as well as inferences drawn from the text, including determining where the text leaves matters uncertain.

Compare/Contrast the Play to a Live or Filmed Interpretation of the Text:

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.11-12.7

Analyze multiple interpretations of a story, drama, or poem (e.g., recorded or live production of a play or recorded novel or poetry), evaluating how each version interprets the source text. 

Essay Writing

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.11-12.1

Write arguments to support claims in an analysis of substantive topics or texts, using valid reasoning and relevant and sufficient evidence.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.11-12.9

Draw evidence from literary or informational texts to support analysis, reflection, and research.

Essential Questions

Essential Question 1: Is Revenge Ever Justified? 

As a central theme of  Hamlet , revenge is continually on the lead character’s mind. Therefore, students will continually be thinking about whether or not Hamlet’s actions are justified. Have students grapple with this question before, during, and after the reading of the play, and take note if their opinion has changed. Have students cite examples from history, from other books, or from movies where revenge was also a major theme, analyzing the reasoning and outcome of each example. 

Essential Question 2: How do we address stigma around mental illness today?  

As another significant theme in  Hamlet  and an incredibly relevant topic, encourage students to discuss why there is a stigma surrounding mental illness today and how we can help diminish that stigma. However, these discussions will certainly require some strict ground rules and teacher supervision; many of our students experience mental illness firsthand and may have even lost a close friend or family member to suicide. 

Encourage students to be kind and non-judgmental. Note that some of these conversations may be triggering to your students, and plan accordingly. 

Achieving Student Buy-In

Shakespeare is often a hard sell, but it doesn’t have to be! Yes, the language is daunting; however, allowing students to listen to this play be read aloud instead of reading it silently on their own does wonders. Having students watch the 1996 movie version with Kenneth Branaugh is especially helpful; the way Branaugh delivers the text is overflowing with emotion allows students to better understand the meaning and rhythm of the language. Plus, you’ll address standard  CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.11-12.7   in the process! 

What background knowledge do my students need?

Students should be familiar with:

• Shakespeare’s biography and writing style 
• The role of the theater in London, namely, the Globe Theater
• The Elizabethan Era 
• Opposition to the theater during Shakespeare’s lifetime 

Assessment Ideas

• Informal Assessment: Symbolism or Theme Collage

To address standards CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.11-12.2 and CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.11-12.4 , have students use images from the internet or old magazines to represent a theme or symbol in Hamlet. Students will be required to incorporate 3-5 quotations from the text to represent their theme alongside the images that they collect. Each collage should be visually appealing, contain images that are both school-appropriate and relevant to the specific theme or symbol, and incorporate 3-5 quotations that represent the specific theme or quote and are cited correctly. 

• Formal Assessment: Literary Analysis Essay

Familiarize students with Aristotle’s Tragic Hero; then, have students write a literary analysis essay on  Hamlet  to prove that Hamlet is an example of Aristotle’s Tragic Hero using evidence from the text. This assessment covers multiple reading and writing standards, including:  CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.11-12.9 ,  CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.11-12.1 , and  CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.11-12.1 . 

• Use Albert’s Chapter Quizzes to Check for Understanding

Each of our literature courses contains reading quizzes that you can use to track your students’ reading progress and comprehension before moving on to a new section of the text. You can find these reading quizzes in the Assessments tab of our Hamlet guide. 

Each chapter of Hamlet has its own 10 question reading quiz, and each quiz is made up of the following:

Suggested Activities

• Write a Sonnet

In order to better understand Shakespeare’s writing style, have students write a sonnet using iambic pentameter. Teachers often have students address these sonnets to something or someone they love, and the subjects they come up with are pretty awesome! Some students have written sonnets to pizza, a best friend, or even their pet turtle.

• Compare the Written Play to a Film or Live Version 

Our personal favorite film version of Hamlet is the 1996 Kenneth Branaugh film. It is long, but Branaugh captures Hamlet’s simultaneous trickery and desperation throughout the play. Have students especially analyze Branaugh’s interpretation of Shakespeare’s original work. Would they have interpreted certain scenes the same way as Branaugh, or differently? 

Conclusion 

Even though it was written to be performed for live, Elizabethan audiences centuries ago,  Hamlet  stands the test of time by representing real issues that humanity continues to struggle with. Encourage your students to see the relevance of this play both for us and Shakespeare’s contemporaries. 

Works Cited

American Psychiatric Association. What Is Mental Illness? , www.psychiatry.org/patients-families/what-is-mental-illness. Common Core State Standards Initiative. “English Language Arts Standards.”  English Language Arts Standards | Common Core State Standards Initiative ,  www.corestandards.org/ELA-Literacy/ . “Depression (Major Depressive Disorder).” Mayo Clinic , Mayo Foundation for Medical Education and Research, 3 Feb. 2018, www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/depression/symptoms-causes/syc-20356007 . 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/ . “The Hatfield & McCoy Feud.” History.com , A&E Television Networks, www.history.com/shows/hatfields-and-mccoys/articles/the-hatfield-mccoy-feud . Shakespeare, William. The Tragedy of Hamlet: with Connections . Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 2000.

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353 Hamlet Essay Topics & Ideas

18 January 2024

last updated

Hamlet essay topics delve into the deep, convoluted world of Shakespearean tragedy, focusing on various themes, such as revenge, mortality, madness, and moral corruption. These topics provide a rich exploration of Hamlet’s internal struggles and existential crises, his complex relationships with characters, like Ophelia, Gertrude, and Claudius, and his philosophically profound soliloquies. They also invite analysis of the play’s symbolism, motifs, and underlying social and political commentary. Delving into these subjects, students can contrast Hamlet’s contemplative nature with the impulsive behavior of other characters, scrutinize the impact of the supernatural, or dissect the tragic elements that lead to Hamlet’s downfall. From examining the ambiguity of characters’ actions to questioning the meaning of life and death, Hamlet essay topics offer many critical lenses through which students can understand and interpret this famous work of literature.

Best Hamlet Essay Topics

• Exploring the Concept of Revenge in Hamlet
• Uncertainty in Decision Making: A Deep Dive Into Hamlet’s Indecisiveness
• Madness as Portrayed in Hamlet: Real or Feigned?
• Polonius as a Catalyst in the Tragedy of Hamlet
• Interpreting the Significance of Ophelia’s Death
• Hamlet and the Oedipus Complex: Analyzing Freudian Themes
• Claudius’ Manipulation Techniques in Power Consolidation
• Betrayal in Hamlet: Who Betrays Whom and Why?
• A Comparative Study: Hamlet and the Elizabethan Era
• Unpacking the Metaphor of Yorick’s Skull
• Aesthetic Symbolism in the Mousetrap Play Within Hamlet
• Laertes and Hamlet: A Study in Contrasts
• Death and the Afterlife: How Does Hamlet Approach Existential Questions?
• Soliloquies in Hamlet: Window Into the Prince’s Soul
• Shakespeare’s Hamlet: A Feminist Interpretation
• Hamlet’s Paralysis of Action: Causes and Consequences
• Exploring Misogyny and Power Structures in Hamlet
• Existential Crisis in Hamlet: A Modern Interpretation
• Supernatural Elements in Hamlet: Apparition as a Narrative Device
• Shakespeare’s Use of Foils in Hamlet: Purpose and Effectiveness

Easy Hamlet Essay Topics

• Hamlet’s Tragic Flaw: Procrastination and Its Consequences
• Understanding the Ghost of Hamlet’s Father
• Analysis of King Claudius as Hamlet’s Adversary
• Significance of the Play-Within-a-Play in Hamlet
• Examining Hamlet’s Relationship With Gertrude
• The Portrayal of Love and Relationships in Hamlet
• Major Themes in Hamlet: A Comprehensive Review
• A Closer Look at Hamlet’s Soliloquies
• Character Analysis: Is Polonius Truly Wise?
• Duplicity and Deception in Hamlet’s Denmark
• Hamlet’s View on Life and Death
• Comparing Hamlet and Laertes: A Study of Similarities
• Symbolism in Hamlet: An In-Depth Study
• Fortinbras as a Parallel Character to Hamlet
• Fate vs. Free Will in Hamlet’s Narrative
• Decoding the Importance of Dreams in Hamlet
• Understanding the Tragic Ending of Hamlet
• Guilt and Regret: Claudius’s Secret Torment
• Hamlet’s Friendship With Horatio: An Analysis

Interesting Hamlet Essay Topics

• Unraveling the Mystery of Hamlet’s Madness
• Deconstructing the Hamartia in Hamlet’s Character
• Dualism in Hamlet: Appearance vs. Reality
• Disease and Decay: A Recurring Imagery in Hamlet
• Analyzing Hamlet’s Misogyny: A Feminist Perspective
• Deciphering the Cryptic Nature of Hamlet’s Soliloquies
• Ophelia’s Descent Into Madness: A Psychological Interpretation
• Insight Into Hamlet’s Melancholic Nature
• Existentialism in Hamlet: A Philosophical Analysis
• Analyzing the Significance of Fortinbras in Hamlet
• Interpreting the Foreshadowing in Hamlet’s Narrative
• Comparative Analysis: Hamlet and Macbeth
• Decoding the Dramatic Irony in Hamlet
• Morality and Ethics in Hamlet’s Denmark
• A Closer Look at Hamlet’s Tragic Redemption
• Significance of the Sea Imagery in Hamlet
• Familial Relationships in Hamlet: An In-Depth Analysis
• Closet Scene in Hamlet: A Turning Point
• Understanding Hamlet Through His Soliloquies
• Exploring the Underlying Theme of Madness in Hamlet

List of Hamlet Essay Topics to Start With

• Understanding Hamlet’s State of Mind: A Psychological Analysis
• Consequences of Revenge in Hamlet’s Story
• Analyzing the Relationship Dynamics Between Ophelia and Hamlet
• Shakespeare’s Usage of Dramatic Irony in Hamlet
• Influence of Supernatural Elements in Hamlet
• Tragic Elements in Hamlet: A Detailed Study
• Unpacking the Concept of Death in Hamlet
• Existential Dilemmas Faced by Hamlet
• Imagery and Metaphors: A Study in Hamlet
• Insights Into the Ghost of King Hamlet
• Shakespeare’s Perspective on Morality in Hamlet
• Tracing the Theme of Deception in Hamlet
• Characters in Hamlet: A Comparative Analysis
• The Portrayal of Power Dynamics in Hamlet
• Feminine Characters in Hamlet: An Analytical Review
• Hamlet and His Tragic Hero Attributes
• King Claudius: An In-Depth Character Study
• Disguise and Deceit in the Court of Denmark
• Exploring the Theme of Loyalty in Hamlet
• Decoding the Symbolism in Hamlet’s Soliloquies

Hamlet Argumentative Essay Topics

• Deconstruction of the Ghost in Hamlet: A Derridean Perspective
• Analyzing Hamlet through Lacanian Psychoanalysis
• The Portrayal of Existentialist Philosophy in Hamlet
• Hamlet’s Madness: A Rorschach Test for Audiences and Readers
• The Politics of Power and Subterfuge in Hamlet
• Ophelia: An Early Feminist Icon or Victim of Patriarchy?
• Applying Carl Jung’s Theory of Archetypes to Characters in Hamlet
• Hamlet’s Tragic Paradox: Intellectual Acumen vs. Emotional Impulsivity
• Closet Scene: Freudian Psychoanalysis of Gertrude and Hamlet’s Relationship
• Justice and Retribution: A Postmodern Reading of Hamlet
• Analyzing Hamlet Using Judith Butler’s Theory of Gender Performativity
• Meta-Theatrical Elements in Hamlet: A Performance Theory Approach
• Hamlet’s Existential Crisis: A Nietzschean Perspective
• Decoding Hamlet’s Tragic Flaw Through Aristotelian Lens
• Hamlet and the Divine Right of Kings: A Political Analysis
• Concept of ‘Delay’ in Hamlet: A Study in Elizabethan Context
• Application of Julia Kristeva’s Intertextuality: Hamlet and Its Sources
• Absurdism in Hamlet: A Comparative Analysis With Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot
• Hamlet: An Eco-Critical Interpretation
• Hamlet’s Soliloquies: A Bakhtinian Dialogic Analysis

Hamlet Research Paper Topics

• Subjectivity and the Self in Hamlet: A Lacanian Analysis
• Hamlet’s Delay: Procrastination or Philosophical Deliberation?
• Gender Dynamics and Power Structures in Hamlet’s Denmark
• Interpretation of Religious Themes in Hamlet
• Understanding Madness in Hamlet: From a Foucauldian Perspective
• Postcolonial Reading of Hamlet: Center and Periphery in Denmark
• Tragic Ambiguity: A Comparative Study of Hamlet and Oedipus Rex
• Interpreting Hamlet’s Indecision Through Sigmund Freud’s Psychoanalysis
• Metafiction in Hamlet: A Study of the Play Within the Play
• Deconstructing the Use of Irony in Hamlet
• Exploring Notions of Honor and Social Hierarchy in Hamlet
• Decoding Hamlet’s Relationship With Ophelia: A Freudian Perspective
• Ethical Dilemmas in Hamlet: A Kantian Interpretation
• Existential Dread in Hamlet: A Study Through Kierkegaard’s Philosophy
• Hamlet’s Soliloquies: A Study in Self and Society
• Revenge Tragedy Elements in Hamlet: A Comparative Study With Spanish Tragedy
• Interpreting the Paradox of Hamlet’s Character: A New Historicist Approach
• Characterization in Hamlet: A Study in Contrast
• The Intertwining of Politics and Morality in Hamlet

Hamlet Essay Questions Examples

• How Does the Character of Hamlet Reflect the Freudian Theory of Psychoanalysis?
• Exploring the Power Dynamics in Hamlet: A Foucauldian Analysis
• Does Hamlet’s Madness Symbolize an Individual’s Struggle Against Society?
• Can Hamlet’s Tragic Flaw Be Seen as a Reflection of His Intelligence?
• How Do Hamlet’s Soliloquies Contribute to the Development of His Character?
• What Makes Hamlet a Tragic Hero in Shakespeare’s Hamlet?
• Interpreting the Theme of Revenge in Hamlet: What Are Its Consequences?
• Is Ophelia a Victim or a Manipulator in Hamlet?
• How Does the Ghost of Hamlet’s Father Influence the Course of the Play?
• To What Extent Does the Theme of Mortality Drive the Narrative of Hamlet?
• Can We Consider Hamlet as a Commentary on the Nature of Acting?
• How Does Hamlet Conform to or Subvert the Conventions of a Revenge Tragedy?
• How Does Hamlet Explore the Idea of the Individual vs. Society?
• In What Ways Do the Other Characters Serve as Foils to Hamlet?
• How Does the Play Within the Play Contribute to the Meta-Theatrical Aspects of Hamlet?
• How Do the Concepts of Honor and Loyalty Manifest in Hamlet?
• What Is the Significance of the Oedipal Complex in Hamlet’s Relationship With Gertrude?
• How Does Hamlet’s Relationship With Ophelia Reflect His Attitude towards Women?
• What Role Does Polonius Play in the Tragedy of Hamlet?
• Can Hamlet Be Seen as an Exploration of the Human Condition?

The Theme of Modern Society for Hamlet Essay Ideas

• Hamlet’s Indecision: A Reflection of Modern-Day Analysis Paralysis
• Relevance of Hamlet’s Existential Crisis in the 21st Century
• Interpreting the Tragic Hero: Hamlet in a Modern Context
• Unpacking the Theme of Surveillance in Hamlet and Its Echoes in Today’s Society
• Interpreting Hamlet’s Madness: A Lens to View Mental Health Stigma in Contemporary Society
• Deception and Duplicity in Hamlet: A Comparison With Modern-Day Politics
• Hamlet’s Struggle With Moral Dilemmas: Parallels in the Modern World
• Tragic Outcomes of Revenge in Hamlet and Its Reflections on Modern Conflicts
• Misogyny in Hamlet: A Dialogue on Current Gender Inequality
• Exploring the Theme of Death in Hamlet: A Contemporary Perspective
• Analyzing the Decay of Political Systems in Hamlet and Its Modern Reflections
• Ophelia’s Madness: A Commentary on Societal Treatment of Women’s Mental Health
• The Role of Conscience in Hamlet and Its Place in Modern Society
• Authority and Power in Hamlet: A Mirror to Modern Political Structures
• Father-Son Relationships in Hamlet and Its Reflections on Contemporary Society
• Hamlet’s Soliloquies: An Exploration of Individualism in the Modern World
• Corruption in Hamlet’s Denmark: Parallels With Contemporary Societies
• Decoding the Concept of Honor in Hamlet and Its Resonance Today
• Hamlet’s Tragic Paradox: Relevance in the Age of Information Overload

Hamlet Essay Topics on Themes and Motifs

• Deconstructing the Motif of Revenge in Hamlet
• Interpreting Death and Mortality in Hamlet: A Comprehensive Analysis
• Unmasking the Theme of Madness in Hamlet
• Tracing the Motif of Disease and Corruption in Hamlet
• Exploring the Theme of Betrayal in Hamlet
• Examining the Recurring Motif of Incest in Hamlet
• Analyzing the Theme of Appearance vs. Reality in Hamlet
• Decoding the Motif of Hesitation and Delay in Hamlet
• Fate and Destiny in Hamlet: A Thematic Exploration
• Understanding the Theme of Action vs. Inaction in Hamlet
• Exploring the Motif of Theatricality in Hamlet
• Analyzing the Theme of Love and Relationships in Hamlet
• Tracing the Motif of Suicide in Hamlet
• Hamlet’s Fear of the Afterlife: A Thematic Study
• Unraveling the Theme of Honor and Reputation in Hamlet
• Identifying the Motif of Ears and Hearing in Hamlet
• The Theme of Loyalty in Hamlet: A Detailed Analysis
• Analyzing the Recurring Motif of Ghosts and the Supernatural in Hamlet
• Interpreting the Theme of Deception and Lies in Hamlet
• Decoding the Motif of Metaphysical Uncertainty in Hamlet

Hamlet Essay Topics on Character Analysis

• Character Study: Hamlet as an Anti-Hero
• Exploring the Contradictions in Hamlet’s Character
• Analysis of Ophelia: Victim or Manipulator?
• Claudius: A Villain or a Tragic Figure?
• Understanding Gertrude: A Complex Character Study
• Fortinbras: A Contrast to Hamlet
• Polonius: Folly or Wisdom?
• Laertes: Revenge, Honor, and Contrast to Hamlet
• Horatio: Friendship and Loyalty Personified
• The Ghost of King Hamlet: More than an Apparition?
• Interpreting the Character of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern
• Gravediggers in Hamlet: Humor amid Tragedy
• Marcellus and Bernardo: Gatekeepers of the Supernatural
• Ophelia’s Madness: A Character Analysis
• Hamlet’s Foils: A Study of Laertes and Fortinbras
• Exploring the Character of Reynaldo in Hamlet
• Decoding the Character of Francisco in Hamlet
• Interpreting the Character of Voltemand in Hamlet
• Understanding the Character of Cornelius in Hamlet

Shakespearean Language and Style for Hamlet Essay Topics

• Metaphysical Imagery in Hamlet: An Analysis
• Exploring the Use of Soliloquies in Hamlet
• Decoding the Symbolism in Hamlet’s Monologues
• Shakespearean Puns in Hamlet: A Study of Linguistic Humor
• Figurative Language in Hamlet: An In-Depth Analysis
• Interpreting the Blank Verse and Prose in Hamlet
• Rhyme and Rhythm in Hamlet: A Study of Shakespeare’s Poetic Style
• Hamlet’s Language: An Indicator of His Madness?
• The Role of Foreshadowing in Hamlet
• Wordplay in Hamlet: A Comprehensive Study
• Analyzing the Use of Irony in Hamlet
• Tracing the Recurring Motifs in Hamlet Through Language
• Analyzing the Use of Alliteration in Hamlet
• Exploring the Use of Paradox in Hamlet
• Deciphering the Cryptic Language of the Ghost in Hamlet
• The Use of Similes and Metaphors in Hamlet
• Understanding the Role of Iambic Pentameter in Hamlet
• Analyzing the Language Patterns of Ophelia in Hamlet
• Exploring the Use of Pathos in Hamlet
• Interpreting the Imagery of Death and Decay in Hamlet

Hamlet Essay Topics on Literary Devices

• Exploring Foreshadowing in Hamlet: A Comprehensive Analysis
• Analyzing Irony in Hamlet: Dramatic, Situational, and Verbal
• Understanding the Significance of Soliloquies in Hamlet
• Tracing the Use of Metaphors and Similes in Hamlet
• Decoding the Role of Allusion in Hamlet
• Dramatic Structure in Hamlet: Freytag’s Pyramid Applied
• Analyzing the Use of Hyperbole in Hamlet
• Interpreting the Use of Symbolism in Hamlet
• Understanding the Significance of Metadrama in Hamlet
• Analyzing the Use of Antithesis in Hamlet
• Exploring the Role of Foils in Hamlet
• Decoding the Use of Puns and Wordplay in Hamlet
• Understanding the Significance of Anaphora in Hamlet
• Interpreting the Use of Synecdoche in Hamlet
• Understanding the Role of Juxtaposition in Hamlet
• Hamlet’s Language: A Study in Oxymoron and Paradox
• The Use of Euphemism in Hamlet: An Analysis
• Exploring the Use of Dramatic Monologue in Hamlet
• Analyzing the Significance of Alliteration in Hamlet

Hamlet Topics on Historical and Cultural Contexts

• Contextualizing Hamlet: Understanding Elizabethan Tragedy
• Hamlet and the Historical Context of the Protestant Reformation
• Exploring the Influence of Renaissance Humanism in Hamlet
• Interpreting Hamlet in the Light of Jacobean Political Intrigue
• Hamlet in Context: The Question of Regicide in Elizabethan England
• Understanding the Influence of Greek Tragedy on Hamlet
• Shakespeare’s Hamlet: An Examination of Renaissance Machiavellian Politics
• The Influence of Medieval Danish History on Hamlet
• Hamlet and the Influence of Elizabethan Views on Madness
• Understanding the Socio-Cultural Context of Ghosts in Hamlet
• Hamlet: A Critique of Courtly Politics in the Elizabethan Era?
• Analyzing the Influence of Elizabethan Gender Norms in Hamlet
• Understanding the Elizabethan Concept of Honor in Hamlet
• Interpreting Hamlet in the Context of Early Modern Attitudes Toward Death
• Hamlet and the Influence of Renaissance Philosophy
• Decoding the Influence of Elizabethan Revenge Tragedy Conventions in Hamlet
• Understanding the Historical Perception of Madness in the Context of Hamlet
• Interpreting the Cultural Symbolism of the Skull in Hamlet
• The Influence of Classical Tragedy on the Structure of Hamlet
• Hamlet and the Question of Loyalty in Elizabethan Society

Themes of Tragedy and Revenge for Hamlet Essay Topics

• Hamlet: Tragedy or Revenge Play?
• Understanding the Concept of Revenge in Hamlet
• Unraveling the Tragic Hero in Hamlet
• Interpreting the Cycle of Revenge in Hamlet
• Analyzing Hamlet as a Tragic Figure
• Exploring the Destructive Nature of Revenge in Hamlet
• The Tragedy of Action vs. Inaction in Hamlet
• Decoding the Link Between Madness and Revenge in Hamlet
• Understanding the Tragic Flaw in Hamlet
• Revenge and Its Consequences in Hamlet
• Tragic Consequences of Deception in Hamlet
• Analyzing the Role of Revenge in Driving the Plot of Hamlet
• Exploring the Impact of Revenge on the Characters of Hamlet
• Understanding the Transformation of Revenge Into Tragedy in Hamlet
• Analyzing the Role of Supernatural in Inciting Revenge in Hamlet
• Exploring the Intersection of Revenge and Madness in Hamlet
• Understanding the Dichotomy of Revenge and Justice in Hamlet
• Hamlet’s Procrastination: The Tragic Delay in Revenge
• Tragic Elements in the Subplot of Hamlet

Hamlet Topics on Feminist Criticism and Gender Roles

• Hamlet: A Feminist Critique
• Exploring the Feminine in Hamlet: Character Analysis of Ophelia
• Understanding Gertrude: A Feminist Perspective
• Hamlet and the Patriarchal Society: A Feminist Reading
• Interpreting Hamlet Through the Lens of Gender Performativity
• Analyzing the Role of Female Agency in Hamlet
• Feminist Criticism of Female Objectification in Hamlet
• Unraveling the Feminine Mystique in Hamlet
• Understanding the Subjugation of Women in Hamlet
• Decoding the Binary Oppositions of Gender in Hamlet
• Unraveling the Silence of Women in Hamlet
• Hamlet: A Study in Gender and Power Relations
• Analyzing the Influence of the Male Gaze in Hamlet
• Understanding the Construction of Femininity in Hamlet
• Exploring the Stereotypes of Madness and Female Weakness in Hamlet
• Unraveling the Madonna-Whore Dichotomy in Hamlet
• Gender and Mortality in Hamlet: A Feminist Study
• The Role of Women in Hamlet: Victims or Villains?
• A Feminist Reading of the Tragic Women in Hamlet
• Analyzing the Role of Virginity and Purity in the Characterization of Ophelia

Hamlet Topics on Mental Health and Illness

• Hamlet and the Spectrum of Madness: A Comprehensive Analysis
• Interpreting Ophelia’s Madness in the Context of Elizabethan Society
• Hamlet’s Melancholia: An Analysis Through Freudian Lens
• Exploring the Representation of Mental Illness in Hamlet
• Depiction of Grief and Loss in Hamlet: A Psychological Perspective
• Hamlet: Tragic Hero or a Victim of Mental Illness?
• Understanding the Representation of Psychosis in Hamlet
• Interpreting the Mental Breakdown of Ophelia: A Psychological Study
• Hamlet’s Soliloquies: Insight Into His Mental State
• Exploring the Impact of Hamlet’s Faked Insanity on His Mental Health
• Analyzing the Theme of Madness and Mental Instability in Hamlet
• Hamlet: A Study of Paranoid Personality Disorder
• Interpreting the Theme of Despair in Hamlet
• Understanding the Depiction of Depression in Hamlet
• Madness Real and Feigned: A Study of Hamlet
• Hamlet: A Case Study in the Stigmatization of Mental Illness
• Ophelia’s Descent Into Madness: A Psychological Analysis
• Understanding the Tragic Consequences of Ignoring Mental Health in Hamlet

Hamlet Topics on the Role of Ghosts

• Hamlet’s Ghost: Messenger or Manipulator?
• Interpreting the Significance of Ghosts in Hamlet
• Ghostly Apparitions and Their Function in Hamlet
• Hamlet and the Supernatural: Analyzing the Ghost’s Influence
• Deciphering the Ghost in Hamlet: A Study of Supernatural Elements
• Understanding the Ethereal: The Ghost’s Existence in Hamlet
• Exploring the Intersection of Supernatural and Reality in Hamlet
• Hamlet: A Study in Spectral Ambiguity
• Interrogating the Ghost’s Veracity in Hamlet
• Hamlet’s Ghost: Symbol of Revenge or Remorse?
• The Ghost in Hamlet: An Embodiment of Fear and Guilt?
• Deconstructing the Role of Ghosts in Shaping Hamlet’s Actions
• Understanding the Narrative Function of the Ghost in Hamlet
• The Ghost as a Catalyst for Tragedy in Hamlet
• Purgatorial Representations: The Ghost in Hamlet
• How the Ghost Alters the Course of Events in Hamlet
• Ghosts and Revenge: Unraveling the Connection in Hamlet
• Investigating the Existential Dread Created by the Ghost in Hamlet
• The Ghost as a Symbol of Unresolved Issues in Hamlet
• Influence of the Ghost on Hamlet’s Perception of Death

Symbolism of Objects and Settings for Hamlet Essay Topics

• Significance of Yorick’s Skull in Hamlet: A Symbolic Analysis
• Interpreting the Symbolism of the Ghost in Hamlet
• Understanding the Role of Denmark’s Court as a Symbol in Hamlet
• Exploring the Symbolism of the Poisoned Sword in Hamlet
• Hamlet’s Soliloquy: Symbolic Representation of His Inner Turmoil
• The Garden Imagery in Hamlet: Symbolizing Corruption and Decay
• Reading the Symbolism in Ophelia’s Flowers in Hamlet
• Decoding the Symbolism of Death and Mortality in Hamlet
• Understanding the Role of Theater in Hamlet: A Symbolic Study
• The Symbolism of Madness in Hamlet: A Thorough Examination
• The Metaphor of the Unweeded Garden in Hamlet: A Symbolic Analysis
• Significance of the Ghostly Apparitions in the Setting of Hamlet
• The Symbolism of the Sea and Voyages in Hamlet: A Detailed Study
• Elucidating the Role of the Graveyard Scene in Hamlet
• Symbolism in Hamlet’s Clothing: A Comprehensive Analysis
• Decoding the Symbolism in the Monarchic Power Struggle in Hamlet
• Interpreting the Symbolic Use of Ophelia’s Death in Hamlet
• The Symbolism of Revenge in Hamlet: An Analytical Study
• Decoding the Symbolic Representation of Power and Betrayal in Hamlet
• The Symbolic Function of the Play-Within-a-Play in Hamlet

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Hamlet - Essay Examples And Topic Ideas For Free

Hamlet, one of William Shakespeare’s most celebrated tragedies, delves into themes of madness, revenge, mortality, and existential despair. Essays could delve into the complex character of Hamlet, his internal struggles, and the philosophical dialogues that pervade the play. They might also explore the political intrigue, the family dynamics, and the elements of tragedy and supernatural in the narrative. Discussions could extend to the play’s enduring appeal, the various interpretations and adaptations over centuries, and its influence on later literature and drama. The discourse may also touch on the larger social and psychological themes explored in “Hamlet” and how they resonate with contemporary audiences. A substantial compilation of free essay instances related to Hamlet you can find at Papersowl. You can use our samples for inspiration to write your own essay, research paper, or just to explore a new topic for yourself.

Hamlet’s Psychoanalytic Analysis

Hamlet stands out as the most popular William Shakespeare's tragedies. The play is categorized as drama, literature, and philosophy and the world admits its artistic stature. Besides the poetic language used in the play, the appeal of the play lies in Hamlet's character. He is obliged to avenge the death of his father and in the process; Hamlet has to face duty, ethics and morality problems. Hamlet has to deal with issues that have been daunting human beings for centuries. […]

Revenge is the Overarching Theme of the Play Hamlet

Revenge is a strange idea. It has been around since the dawn of time. An Eye for an eye, right? If someone hits you, you hit them back harder. In the play, Hamlet, William Shakespeare, Revenge is the overarching theme of the play. It shows what revenge can do to a person. Hamlet views revenge as a good deed: something that he must complete to avenge his dad. Revenge is binary, meaning it isn't only the act of revenge, there […]

Patriarchy and the Shakespearean Woman

William Shakespeare writes during a time when patriarchy was prevalent. Shakespeare includes these personas and attitudes within his plays to illustrate how these ideals played out. He works also to create female characters that hold their male counterparts accountable. In this paper, there will be a review of patriarchal patterns within A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Hamlet, Henry IV, Macbeth, and King Lear but additionally how the female characters counteract the hegemonic masculinity. Because patriarchal patterns were prevalent in the time […]

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Fortinbras Orders a Military Funeral for Hamlet

The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, is a play written by the English writer William Shakespeare who was known for writing plays that specifically demonstrates the complete range of human emotions and conflict. The tragedy of Hamlet explores the themes of vengeance and human emotion, making it one of the most famous tragedies written in history. The tragedy was written in the early modern period around the years 1600 and 1602. This period in time represented an era of […]

Death and Suicide in Hamlet

Lucius Annaeus Seneca once said, Death is the wish of some, the relief of many, and the end of all. In Hamlet, Prince Hamlet struggles to cope with his father's death and his mother's rash decision to marry his uncle, King's Hamlet brother, Claudius, less than a month after his father's death. After an unexpected visit from his father's ghost, Hamlet discovers that his uncle murdered his father. This new information sets Hamlet on a path of revenge that is […]

Destructive Love is an Emotional Process

"Destructive love is an emotional process of tearing down the love and affection between 2 people in a relationship. The idea of knowing the difference between having a disagreement that is trying to clear up something in comparison to a disagreement that is destructive toxicity can come. The theme of destructive love between different relationships in Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre, Shakespeare's Hamlet Robert Browning's My Last Duchess results in the characters having […]

Compare and Contrast: Hamlet and the Lion King

The past can hurt. But the way I see it, you can either run from it, or learn from it. Hamlet, is a tragedy written by William Shakespeare. Set in Denmark, the play dramatises the revenge Prince Hamlet is called to wreak upon his uncle, Claudius, by the ghost of Hamlet's father, King Hamlet. The Lion King is a Disney feature based on a young lion Simba the heir of his father the king Mufasa. Simba's wicked uncle, Scar, plots […]

Hamlet Oedipus Complex

The well known play, Hamlet written by William Shakespeare truly centers on the hardship of Hamlet being pressured to kill his uncle by plead of his dead father. It all began when Hamlet discovers a ghost which embodies the exact features of his recently dead father. The Ghost begs Hamlet to seek revenge for him since he was unfairly killed by his own brother named Claudius. Hamlet’s uncle not only killed his father, but he also had the audacity to […]

Women in the Shakespearean Era

Introduction Why is the fate of women taken carelessly by some actors and actresses? During the Shakespearean era, the role of women in most works was played by men and boys. This was because in the mediaeval world stage acting by women was considered disgraceful. William Shakespeare era considered acting to be a masculine profession rather than feminine. Most acting groups' recruited boys and men often compared to women. This take of women was mostly during the British time which […]

Shakespeare’s Hamlet Character Analysis

Hamlet is Shakespeare’s most extended and probably the most famous English language play ever written. In the script, the character Hamlet is the protagonist. Hamlet’s mother, Gertrude, is the queen of Denmark. His uncle, Claudius recently killed his father, King Hamlet and married Gertrude. Hamlet’s actions depict him to have a lot of contradictions, reckless but cautious. Shakespeare captures the human characteristics perfectly with the character of Hamlet with an inconsistency of emotions such that no one knows what he […]

Hamlet’s Views on Men, Women and the World

When Hamlet is asking questions, he is not asking questions for himself but for man in general. How does Hamlet depict the world through his own problems? What kind of light does it cast on the world/society at large? The Tragedy of Prince Hamlet, a play by William Shakespeare, tells the tale of the youthful Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, who seeks retribution for his dad's murder by his uncle, Claudius, the newly appointed King of Denmark. In this play, it's […]

Shakespeare: Obedience and Powerless in Women

In Hamlet and Othello, Shakespeare criticizes the feminine issues that were present in his time, bringing awareness to the standard roles and ideal expectations of women by characterizing them in a space of being obedient and powerless. As women are portrayed as having ideal feminine values such as chastity and passiveness, the frailty of women is also brought to the surface. On the other hand, Shakespeare also seems to be suggesting that internal destruction is generated in the sense that […]

Hamlet Madness

William Shakespeare is one of the world’s most renowned writers still to date. He is the writer of 37 plays and 154 sonnets. One his most well-known plays is Hamlet, a tragedy filled with drama, revenge, madness, and death. The main character of the play, Hamlet, is the subject of whether he is actually mad or not. His indeed madness can be traced back to the tragic events that have occurred to him such as the death of his father […]

Reasons why Hamlet is not Insane

Though it may seem that Hamlet looks insane sometimes but in reality Hamlet is not insane. Hamlet is trying to seek the revenge that his father wants him to get. The insanity the people think they see in Hamlet, is what Hamlet sees himself as quandaring on what to do. Seeking revenge is hard for Hamlet to do, in the since he is going to end up killing his mother's lover, but on the other hand his father's killer. Hamlet […]

Where Can we Find Hamlet in our Lives

To say that Hamlet bears no resemblance nor relevance to everyday people's lives would be an uninformed statement. When further examined, the intuition into our current society that Hamlet provides becomes abundantly clear. For example, the many themes and motifs present in Shakespeare's Hamlet parallel issues that are relevant in our current society. Themes such as revenge, deception, mental health, etc. Firstly, the theme of revenge appears to be the most notable theme that reflects heavily in both Hamlet and […]

The Female Identities in Shakespeare’s Hamlet

Gender discrimination is based on human prejudice or discrimination against the sexes. This kind of discrimination has been going on for many centuries, and Shakespeare's era is no exception. Sex discrimination may affect anyone, but it mainly affects women and girls, such as Gertrude and Ophelia in Shakespeare's Hamlet. Sexism is fully embodied in this play. In this play, Women are inferior to men in their statements, and women's voices are easily ignored. This shows that Shakespeare is anti-female. In […]

Shakespeare’s Villains

"In two of William Shakespeare’s plays: Hamlet and King Lear, the two characters who are considered villainous with great political ambitions are Claudius, King of Denmark and Edmund, the bastard son of Earl of Gloucester. These two men are resentful, manipulative, and want to ensure they obtain power; nevertheless, Shakespeare provides the audience with an understanding yet unsympathetic perception of their plot to pursue the title and land. Even though these characters are a part of two different tragedies, Shakespeare […]

Hamlet is a Political Tragedy

The country is in the political disturbance. The King who everyone loved is dead. The political system is currently headed by Claudius. The country is in the hands of a man who is untrustworthy, unfair and a murderer. Claudius has killed his own brother. How can he be trusted? There's no balance in the political system. There is no balance in the political system. In Act 1, Scene 2 this is obvious. Even Claudius concedes that the country is disorganized […]

Hamlet Research Paper

In the play, Hamlet, by William Shakespeare, the author uses various literary devices to convey many themes and sentiments to the reader, via his characters’ actions. The play’s focal character - Hamlet - is one that transforms throughout the play quite drastically, yet it can be argued that it was all part of a greater plan. As Hamlet returns to the castle to hear news that his father is dead, it brings a grand amount of grief and sadness to […]

Shakespeare’s Madness Within Hamlet and King Lear

How do you know if a person has gone mad? How do you know if a person is telling the truth? What about intention? Nowadays, we have psychologists, therapists and all kinds of doctors that help to diagnose mental illness. We are now aware of the different types of “craziness” that a person can be. What about hundreds of years ago? Just like today, some people were truly madmen, but of course, anyone has the ability to pretend to be […]

Shakespeare’s Characterization of Hamlet

In the revenge tragedy, Hamlet, Shakespeare characterizes Hamlet as a man with a heightened power of observation, while exploring the unique ways in which his keen eye can interpret the events that occur throughout the play. Hamlet is not an abstract thinker, but he is merely gifted with a greater sense of reality due to his ability to observe and articulate his thoughts and observances. Hamlet's ability to penetrate to the very core of things through his greater power of […]

How does Claudius Manipulate Laertes: Manipulative Machinations

Introduction Maggie MillsBeckerLiterature and composition12 March 2018 "Quintessence of dust" The weight of one's mortality and the complexities of life lead people to question and ponder what their fate will be in the afterlife. In William Shakespeare's play Hamlet, Hamlet questions the meaning of life and grapples to accept his own existence. The motif of death and decay develops throughout the play, starting figuratively and evolving into a more literal interpretation, leading to the conclusion that death is the great […]

Elements of Comedy in the Play Hamlet

Hamlet is one of Shakespeare's' most famous plays, for it revolves around external and internal conflicts or struggles within the main character, Hamlet, which makes it unique from a typical revenge story. Although the genre of the play is a tragedy it contains various elements of comedy throughout the darkest moments of the play. At the start of the play guardsmen at the royal palace have seen a ghost which seems to be former King Hamlet, and convinces noblemen Horatio […]

About Feminism in Hamlet

Ophelia agrees to take Laertes’s advice. She agrees to take his advice because she knows nothing else than to listen a man. She is dependent on men and continues to do whatever they tell her. She saids “this is a good lesson keep, As a watchman to my heart.” (1.3.51) She sees it as he is looking out for her, which he is but it reality he is demanding her to stay away from Hamlet to keep her purity. Laertes […]

The Tragic Flaw of Hamlet

Archetypes are characters, situations, and symbols that can transcend different cultures. Undoubtedly, The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, one of the most influential works written by William Shakespeare”, is a classic dramatic story filled with deceit, trickery, self-doubt, revenge, and death” (J., Clayton.) In this piece, Shakespeare masterfully employs Jung’s archetypes to give personality traits to his characters, such as the hero and the outcast for Prince Hamlet, the villain and the ambitious for Claudius, and the battle between […]

Hamlet’s Insanity the Masterpiece to Great Shakespearean Entertainment

Mental or psychological influence in any literary work can heighten and alter the mood and tone. Some literary works can alter the course of the storyline as is done in Shakespeare's The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. Hamlet's mental state, along with major character influence, has the ability to allow a wide range of unexpected plot twists and a touch of suspense. In Shakespeare's play, Hamlet's revenge demonstrates the extent of one's mental capacity can be found amusing and […]

The Idea of Displacement in Maya Angelou’s Work

Maya Angelou- I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings One of the major ideas we discussed around this book was the idea of displacement. In this passage, Maya and her peers are listening to a white man speak to their class. In this scenario, Maya is feeling displaced in a place where she normally feels at home. When the white man comes into the school, he speaks to them in a condescending way, talking down to not only the students […]

King Claudius and Hamlet

Hamlet is the Prince of Denmark, the son of Queen Gertrude and late King Hamlet and nephew of King Claudius. In the story Hamlet many people are stuck between if he is actually insane or if he is faking his insanity. Some people really do believe he is and some people believe he is absolutely not. The story is very dramatic and a lot goes on. Hamlet has had to deal with a lot throughout the play. The main problems […]

Hamlet Extract Analysis

Jake Bourdages Michael Krause AP Literature November 26th, 2018 Hamlet Extract Analysis Introduction: It is the very beginning of the play at act 1, scene 2, and Claudius, with Gertrude by his side, has just been crowned the new king of Denmark. Claudius's first action as the king is to give his inaugural speech, in which he tells the kingdom that rather than mourning the old king everyone should be celebrating the new marriage between himself and Gertrude. After his […]

Oedipus Vs Hamlet

In Oedipus Rex by Sophocles, when Thebes is struck with the aid of a plague, the human beings ask King Oedipus to supply them from its horrors. Creon, the brother of Jocasta, Oedipus's queen, returns from the oracle of Apollo and discloses that the plague is punishment for the homicide of King Laius, Oedipus's instant predecessor, to whom Jocasta was once married. Creon further discloses that the residents of Thebes need to find out and punish the murderer before the […]

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How To Write an Essay About Hamlet

Introduction to shakespeare's hamlet.

William Shakespeare's "Hamlet" is a timeless work of literature that delves into themes of revenge, tragedy, morality, and the human condition. In the introduction of your essay, briefly summarize the plot of "Hamlet," focusing on the young Prince of Denmark who is the play's central character. Outline the key themes you intend to explore, such as the complexity of action, the mystery of death, and the struggle with moral corruption. This initial section should offer a concise overview of the play’s background and set the stage for a deeper analytical exploration of its characters, themes, and Shakespeare's use of language.

Exploring Themes and Characterization

The body of your essay should focus on a detailed analysis of the major themes in "Hamlet." Examine the theme of revenge and its implications on the characters’ actions and the play’s outcome. Discuss the existential questions raised by Hamlet’s famous soliloquy, "To be, or not to be," and how these reflect his internal conflict. Furthermore, analyze the play’s exploration of madness, both feigned and real, particularly in the characters of Hamlet and Ophelia. In addition to thematic analysis, delve into character studies. Examine Hamlet’s complex personality, his relationship with other characters like Claudius, Gertrude, and Ophelia, and how these relationships drive the plot forward. Use specific examples and quotations from the text to support your analysis, ensuring each paragraph delves into different aspects of Shakespeare’s work.

Shakespeare's Language and Dramatic Techniques

An essay on "Hamlet" should also pay attention to Shakespeare's use of language and dramatic techniques. Discuss the play's structure, its use of soliloquies, and the significance of its metaphors and imagery. Examine how these elements contribute to the play's thematic depth and emotional impact. This analysis can include how Shakespeare builds tension and conveys themes through dialogue, setting, and symbolism. By focusing on these elements, you can provide insight into Shakespeare’s craftsmanship and the ways in which "Hamlet" operates both as a piece of literature and a theatrical performance.

Concluding Thoughts on Hamlet

Conclude your essay by summarizing the key points of your analysis, tying them back to your initial thesis about the play’s themes and significance. Reflect on the enduring relevance of "Hamlet" in modern times, considering why it continues to be a vital part of literary and theatrical discourse. You might also explore the play's influence on later literature and culture. A strong conclusion will not only provide closure to your essay but also extend its relevance, encouraging readers to continue contemplating the complexities of Shakespeare’s masterpiece.

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‘To be or not to be’: Hamlet’s Humanistic Quaestio

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Vanessa Lim, ‘To be or not to be’: Hamlet’s Humanistic Quaestio , The Review of English Studies , Volume 70, Issue 296, September 2019, Pages 640–658, https://doi.org/10.1093/res/hgz005

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Hamlet’s ‘To be or not to be’ speech has long been the subject of intense scholarly attention. By situating the speech against the backdrop of classical and Renaissance rhetorical theory, this essay demonstrates that there is still much more to be said about it. The speech ostensibly examines a quaestio infinita or a thesis , and follows the rhetorical rule that the right way to do so is by the invocation of commonplaces. This reading of Hamlet’s speech is not only consistent with Shakespeare’s characterization of the university-educated prince, who frequently invokes commonplaces, but also has significant implications for our understanding of the play and Shakespeare’s own practice as a writer. The book that Hamlet is reading could well be his own commonplace collection, and it is perhaps in looking up his entries under the heading of ‘Death’ that Hamlet finds what he needs in order to examine his quaestio .

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Home — Essay Samples — Literature — Hamlet — Madness In Shakespeares Hamlet

Madness in Shakespeares Hamlet

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Shakespeare, William. Hamlet. Ed. Ann Thompson and Neil Taylor. London: Arden Shakespeare, 2006. Print.Frye, Northrop. "The Mythos of Autumn." Shakespearean Criticism, edited by Laurie Lanzen Harris, vol. 4, Gale, 1986, pp. [...]

William Shakespeare's play Hamlet is a timeless classic that has captured the hearts of audiences around the world for centuries. The play's protagonist, Hamlet, is a complex and multi-dimensional character, whose significance [...]

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Student Essay: The Qualities of Revenge in Hamlet

Graduate Early Modern Student Society Symposium

The Graduate Early Modern Student Society is hosting its 7th Annual Symposium will take place all day on April 26th. The theme of the symposium is “Renaissance Hybridity.” The symposium will take place in Memorial Library Special Collections from 9:15 am to 5:00 pm. The full schedule can be found below.

8:15am: Registration Open/Breakfast in Memorial Union

9:00am: Transition to Memorial Library special collections

9:15am-10:30am: Panel 1 Early Modern Queer/Gender

• Lucia Cardelli, “Fruitless Passions: Pastoral Drag and Queer (Non-)Reproductive Ecologies in Marlowe’s ‘The Passionate Shepherd to His Love’ and Raleigh’s ‘The Nymph’s Reply to the Shepherd’”
• Evelyn Rose Maude, “Heliogabalus and the Hog: Personal Identity and the Right to Gender Self-Ascription in Locke’s Essay II.27”
• Alice C.M. Kwok, “La France foutue and Noble Culpability for the French Revolution”

10:45am-12:00pm: Panel 2 Hybrid methods and the limits of categorization

• Dalton Edward Greene, “Hybrid Readings: Recovering the Early Modern (Con)texts Beneath Scholarly Editing”
• Mariana Sarkis Olson, “Interethnic ‘Informal’ Families in Early Spanish Indies”
• Sarah Armand, “Hybridity and Anthropomorphism of Figures in Two-body Furniture from the 16th and 17th Centuries in France”

12:00pm-1:00pm: Lunch in Memorial Union. 12:45pm: Transition to Memorial library special collections

1:00pm-2:30pm: Keynote presentation dr. Lindsey Row-Heyveld

“The Crone Wars: Crip-Trans Hybridity in Early Modern Old Age”

2:30pm: Break

2:45pm-4:00pm: Panel 3 Hybridity in Early Modern English Drama

• Andrew Buchheim, “Unserious Magic: Effects of Generic Hybridity in Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus”
• Madeleine Barton, “Passivity and Passive Obedience in Hamlet and Oroonoko”
• Mariana Trujillo Marquez, “Queering Desire: Erotic Gestures and Power Dynamics in The Changeling”

4:15pm-5:15pm: Roundtable conversation Early modernists/Organizers/Activists

5:15pm-6:00pm: Transition to Memorial union, Dinner & Farewell

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Students Are Likely Writing Millions of Papers With AI

Students have submitted more than 22 million papers that may have used generative AI in the past year, new data released by plagiarism detection company Turnitin shows.

A year ago, Turnitin rolled out an AI writing detection tool that was trained on its trove of papers written by students as well as other AI-generated texts. Since then, more than 200 million papers have been reviewed by the detector, predominantly written by high school and college students. Turnitin found that 11 percent may contain AI-written language in 20 percent of its content, with 3 percent of the total papers reviewed getting flagged for having 80 percent or more AI writing. (Turnitin is owned by Advance, which also owns Condé Nast, publisher of WIRED.) Turnitin says its detector has a false positive rate of less than 1 percent when analyzing full documents.

ChatGPT’s launch was met with knee-jerk fears that the English class essay would die . The chatbot can synthesize information and distill it near-instantly—but that doesn’t mean it always gets it right. Generative AI has been known to hallucinate , creating its own facts and citing academic references that don’t actually exist. Generative AI chatbots have also been caught spitting out biased text on gender and race . Despite those flaws, students have used chatbots for research, organizing ideas, and as a ghostwriter . Traces of chatbots have even been found in peer-reviewed, published academic writing .

Teachers understandably want to hold students accountable for using generative AI without permission or disclosure. But that requires a reliable way to prove AI was used in a given assignment. Instructors have tried at times to find their own solutions to detecting AI in writing, using messy, untested methods to enforce rules , and distressing students. Further complicating the issue, some teachers are even using generative AI in their grading processes.

Detecting the use of gen AI is tricky. It’s not as easy as flagging plagiarism, because generated text is still original text. Plus, there’s nuance to how students use gen AI; some may ask chatbots to write their papers for them in large chunks or in full, while others may use the tools as an aid or a brainstorm partner.

Students also aren't tempted by only ChatGPT and similar large language models. So-called word spinners are another type of AI software that rewrites text, and may make it less obvious to a teacher that work was plagiarized or generated by AI. Turnitin’s AI detector has also been updated to detect word spinners, says Annie Chechitelli, the company’s chief product officer. It can also flag work that was rewritten by services like spell checker Grammarly, which now has its own generative AI tool . As familiar software increasingly adds generative AI components, what students can and can’t use becomes more muddled.

Detection tools themselves have a risk of bias. English language learners may be more likely to set them off; a 2023 study found a 61.3 percent false positive rate when evaluating Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) exams with seven different AI detectors. The study did not examine Turnitin’s version. The company says it has trained its detector on writing from English language learners as well as native English speakers. A study published in October found that Turnitin was among the most accurate of 16 AI language detectors in a test that had the tool examine undergraduate papers and AI-generated papers.

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Schools that use Turnitin had access to the AI detection software for a free pilot period, which ended at the start of this year. Chechitelli says a majority of the service’s clients have opted to purchase the AI detection. But the risks of false positives and bias against English learners have led some universities to ditch the tools for now. Montclair State University in New Jersey announced in November that it would pause use of Turnitin’s AI detector. Vanderbilt University and Northwestern University did the same last summer.

“This is hard. I understand why people want a tool,” says Emily Isaacs, executive director of the Office of Faculty Excellence at Montclair State. But Isaacs says the university is concerned about potentially biased results from AI detectors, as well as the fact that the tools can’t provide confirmation the way they can with plagiarism. Plus, Montclair State doesn’t want to put a blanket ban on AI, which will have some place in academia. With time and more trust in the tools, the policies could change. “It’s not a forever decision, it’s a now decision,” Isaacs says.

Chechitelli says the Turnitin tool shouldn’t be the only consideration in passing or failing a student. Instead, it’s a chance for teachers to start conversations with students that touch on all of the nuance in using generative AI. “People don’t really know where that line should be,” she says.

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Common App announces 2024–2025 Common App essay prompts

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We are happy to announce that the Common App essay prompts will remain the same for 2024–2025.

Our decision to keep these prompts unchanged is supported by past research showing that overall satisfaction with the prompts exceeded 95% across our constituent groups - students, counselors, advisors, teachers, and member colleges. Moving forward, we want to learn more about who is choosing certain prompts to see if there are any noteworthy differences among student populations and incorporate feedback into future decisions.

While some schools are beginning discussions with juniors and transfer students about college options, it's important to clarify that this doesn't mean students need to start writing their essays right away. By releasing the prompts early, we hope to give students ample time for reflection and brainstorming. As you guide students with their planning, feel free to use our Common App Ready essay writing resource, available in both English and Spanish .

For students who wish to start exploring the application process, creating a Common App account before August 1 ensures that all their responses, including their personal essays, will be retained through account rollover .

Below is the full set of essay prompts for 2024–2025.

• Some students have a background, identity, interest, or talent that is so meaningful they believe their application would be incomplete without it. If this sounds like you, then please share your story.
• The lessons we take from obstacles we encounter can be fundamental to later success. Recount a time when you faced a challenge, setback, or failure. How did it affect you, and what did you learn from the experience?
• Reflect on a time when you questioned or challenged a belief or idea. What prompted your thinking? What was the outcome?
• Reflect on something that someone has done for you that has made you happy or thankful in a surprising way. How has this gratitude affected or motivated you?
• Discuss an accomplishment, event, or realization that sparked a period of personal growth and a new understanding of yourself or others.
• Describe a topic, idea, or concept you find so engaging that it makes you lose all track of time. Why does it captivate you? What or who do you turn to when you want to learn more?
• Share an essay on any topic of your choice. It can be one you've already written, one that responds to a different prompt, or one of your own design.

We will retain the optional community disruption question within the Writing section. Over the next year, we'll consult with our member, counselor, and student advisory committees to ensure we gather diverse perspectives and make informed decisions.

News and updates

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She used Grammarly to proofread her paper. Now she's accused of 'unintentionally cheating.'

Whatever my school's rule is on artificial intelligence, i will abide by it. but the concern over grammarly makes me think of the debate over calculator use in schools from the 1970s..

Grammarly , the company that provides the eponymous grammar and syntax program, recently announced that it’s getting smarter and now offers “strategic suggestions” for its  30 million users . It might not be an innovation that helps the company.

As Grammarly gains more generative capabilities, its usefulness for students declines because it will place them at risk for unnecessary academic discipline. 

In a story that’s gone viral, University of North Georgia student Marley Stevens ended up on academic probation for using Grammarly on her criminal justice essay. Stevens said her professor accused her of “unintentionally cheating” on her academic work because she used the program to proofread her paper.

Stevens received a zero for the assignment, which she said put her scholarship at risk. Under Stevens’ TikTok video , comments indicated that she’s not the only student who’s been penalized for Grammarly use. 

Stevens’ case shows the murkier world of using artificial intelligence in schools – using it as an aid, a resource, rather than a replacement for one’s work. Until now, discussions of AI’s use in academics focused on its potential for plagiarism, the act of simply representing an AI product as one’s own work, which is admittedly indefensible.  Researchers from Stanford University say that concern is overblown. 

At my school, Deerfield Academy in Massachusetts, the use of generative AI is prohibited .

What's considered cheating may depend on your school

Grammarly hasn’t been necessarily generative in the ways we think of that type of intelligence; it couldn’t write a student’s essay like ChatGPT can. But now the “ strategic suggestions ” make the program more generative in nature – and more likely to fall under general AI bans. 

Here’s the rub, though: Many schools encourage and even pay for students to use Grammarly. It's expressly promoted in at least 3,000 educational institutions that have signed up for institutional accounts, according to Grammarly .

In Stevens’ case, the University of North Georgia promoted Grammarly on its website then removed it , then placed it on its website again. 

High school seniors need help: Why the college application process isn't adding up for students

While individual schools should be allowed to create their own policies, we are headed for a situation where what’s considered cheating is allowed at one school and not at another. Or in one course and not another.

That’s a problem because academic integrity is universal. Or at least it’s supposed to be. 

Whatever the rule is on using Grammarly, I will abide by it, but I notice that the concern over the type of assistance Grammarly provides hearkens back to the debate over calculator use in schools.

How is Grammarly different from a calculator – or autocorrect?

Back in the 1970s, some educators and parents worried that calculators might supplant math lessons . Research shows that they never did. It took 50 years, but with calculators now required in some courses and tests, we know that assistive technology doesn’t necessarily replace basic lessons – or do our work for us. 

We now prioritize agility of thought and creativity over memorization; that’s why some schools rid themselves of  spelling tests  in favor of critical thinking. 

Will my student loan be forgiven? Prepare for disappointment and hardship. Grace period for repayments expires in September.

If anything, these devices and programs allow deeper learning, mostly because they’re used by students who are well past the age of initial math functions and grammar lessons. If anything, Grammarly is a refresher on grammar lessons of years past. 

Technically, autocorrect is a form of AI , but holding its use against a student whose typos were fixed would be overkill and defeat the purpose of these programs, which were created to meet the needs of education’s evolution. 

Whether using Grammarly constitutes cheating is a multibillion dollar question that remains unanswered; it's an ethical question that intersects with school finance. Use of Grammarly might cause students to lose scholarships, and schools don’t refund tuition if a student is expelled and that student may owe student loans. On top of that are the opportunity costs of being accused of cheating.

Marley Stevens’ fight wages on, but Grammarly donated $4,000 to her GoFundMe to assist her education. 

Beyond Stevens’ case, though, technology companies that provide programs to students need to consider how making their products more generative will create more problems for students who use them. And teachers and schools that ban these programs need to consider what kind of learning they want from students.  

Ultimately – in all areas, not just education – AI is a case of making sure our technology does not outpace our integrity or call into question honest work. Otherwise, we all may be cheating. Or worse, not learning as much as we can.

William Tang is a high school junior at Deerfield Academy and serves on the school’s Honor Committee.

Hamlet Analysis Essay: Shakespeare’s Play Analysis Example

Looking for the Hamlet analysis essay? Read this drama analysis essay example and get an insight into Hamlet themes and characters.

Introduction to the Drama Analysis Example

Hamlet themes, analysis of characters in hamlet, conclusion of the hamlet analysis essay.

In the play Hamlet, William Shakespeare who is one of the most influential writers in history has elaborated the contemporary themes in society into a piece of literature as revealed in the drama. Due to his universal way of creating themes, he has been able to influence the western literature. In the contemporary theatre of the western, they still view Shakespeare’s work being relevant.

Shakespeare therefore uses the stylistic device of a play within a play to pass his information to the audience as well as helping him develop his plot. Shakespeare has in this case therefore used the main actor Hamlet in portraying this device. Hamlet who is a character in the play is again seen in another play within the play, which he acts in order to be in a position to kill Claudius.

Hamlet is a play that depicts a vivid drama of melancholy and insanity as well as famous of its ghostliness. In this play, Shakespeare has used various elements of literature to develop the plot of the play. In this case, the writer has used characters, settings, symbols, themes, characterization and other elements of literature in the development of the plot. The writer has used these elements correlatively to achieve his plot.

Themes are used to develop characters in the play. For instance, the writer has used the theme of betrayal to develop the main character Hamlet in the play hence the development of the plot. 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.

Therefore, four main characters have greatly contributed by playing major roles. Hamlet experienced character development through the betrayals of Ophelia with whom he is romantically involved. Gertrude is his mother and Claudius’ wife while Gildernstern and Rosencrantz were his friends from the University of Wittenberg.

When the scene begins, there is a very close relationship between Hamlet and the mother, which later fades off when Gertrude remarries his uncle Claudius two months after his father’s death. This culminated the distrust in women since his mother was the most important female in his life.

He therefore uses mockery phrases like “such dexterity to incestuous sheets” and “frailty, thy name is woman”. Such phrases illustrated how disgusted and disappointed he was towards his mother and women as well as depicting how isolated he was as a young man.

The theme of madness has also played major role in the development of the plot. Insanity was used in many revenge tragedies like in the first revenge tragedy of Shakespeare, Titus Andronicus. Unlike in the case of Hamlet where the madness is ambiguous, other revenge tragedies in the character have been unambiguous.

In the source of Shakespeare’ plot in Hamlet, the main protagonist feigns his madness to be in the position to revenge without being suspected by the king (Claudius) whom he plots to kill. In the play, Hamlet’s madness tends to distract him from accomplishing his mission as it is depicted in the play as being with very little interest in accomplishing the mission of the ghost even after proving that Claudius is guilty (act 4 scene 2).

Hamlet therefore acts like a mad person in the play since he is aware in a bizarre manner that he should act as a mad man to accomplish the role of revenge in Hamlet. He knows the role that he is supposed to play even though to some extent he does not attain it satisfactorily.

This in return built Hamlet as a character who wants to revenge. Ophelia is another character who plays the part of a mad person but in her case, she is innocently mad. Ophelia loses her senses of self-knowledge and composure completely and therefore insane.

Suicide is another theme that has been used by Shakespeare to develop the plot in Hamlet. The play has been shaped using Ophelia as well as Hamlet. Hamlet deeply contemplates about the issue of suicide and this is seen in his soliloquies. He keeps on asking himself questions about the act of murder.

Hamlet had the fear to kill because of his social as well as religious morals. He views suicide as a crime in the societal view and even before God who gives life. He also had the fear of what happens to the person after he has departed from this world and going to the world of the deaths.

Ophelia’s death also arouses many issues where some people say that she died a natural death while others say that she committed suicide. According to Hamlet’s mother, Ophelia’s death was accidental because she drowned while on the other hand, the priest and the gravediggers said it clearly that Ophelia killed herself. This therefore left the people feeling that Gertrude’s narration was just a story to cover up the whole issue of murder since it was viewed as an immoral act in the society (act 5).

In Hamlet, Shakespeare has used women characters in the development of the plot. In the play, women are seen to play minor roles but very essential in development of the plot. In the play, Gertrude and Ophelia are the two women in direct relationship with the main protagonist. The writer develops the theme of love in the play using Gertrude who is the main protagonist’s mother. This is seen when Gertrude tries to stop the death of his son because Hamlet never loved her as a mother.

This is because; he felt that her mother was involved in the murder of his father. She is concerned about the well-being of her son, which proves the reason why Claudius could not inform her about the plot of killing his stepson. Ophelia is portrayed as loving because after the death of her father she became insane.

This is evident when she started using abusive language in public without fear as she used to behave in the previous scene, where Hamlet could abuse her and she could not respond due to the fear she had as woman who was under the power of a man.

The theme of patriarchal is built around the two women to show how they were not allowed to make decisions on their own. For example, in the case of Ophelia, she is forced by the father (Claudius) and her brother Laertes not to love Hamlet because the brother feels that Hamlet is playing with her feelings.

Trying to satisfy the wants of the father and brother, Hamlet blames her and even insults her, but since Ophelia does not have power to explain to him what was underlying the whole issue, she ends up suffering. The husband on the other hand see Gertrude as a less repressed person but Claudius married her so that he can be able to promptly take over the throne after Hamlet’s death and pretend that he is good just like the previous king by remarrying his wife.

Ophelia has been used to develop the stylistic device of symbolism in the play towards the development of the plot. The symbolism of her language in the play increases the range of meanings depicted in the play.

For example, Ophelia is emotional after hearing about the death of her father and throws flowers in every place around her as a sign of purity (act 4 scene 4). On the contrary, this symbolizes her deflowering as a person, on the other scene of her madness.

Lastly, the two characters have contributed in the development of the plot and again helped the writer to portray the fate of his heroes in the play. When Ophelia rejects Hamlet, Hamlet’s disgust his mother’s remarriage, taints the opinion about all women hence making him an isolated man. The madness death of Ophelia fortifies her brother’s determination of revenging on Hamlet, which results to the final catastrophe in the play. Gertrude cared for his son but could not control the tragedy from taking place.

The writer has used Hamlet who is the main character in the play to build other themes hence the development of the plot. After the death of Hamlet’s father, Hamlet plots on how to kill Claudius after the spirit confirmed to him that Claudius is the one who killed his father.

However, in the play Hamlets avenge on Claudius. “… I, his son, do this same villain send to heaven, why, this is hire and salary, not revenge” (Act 3 scene 3 78-84).

Honor is another theme portrayed through Hamlet the main protagonist. This theme is best depicted when Hamlet takes order from the ghost to revenge on Claudius as if the order came from God. “… With wings as swift as meditation or the thoughts of love may sweep to my revenge” (1.v.35-37).

The writer develops the plot using Claudius, Hamlet’s brother the king who later marries Gertrude his brother’s wife. In the play, he is Hamlet’s major avenger who is portrayed as lustful because he took his brother’s wife, Shrewd. He takes the throne that does not belong to him and allows his son revenge on Hamlet.

Due to these characters, he stands out as a man with contrasting characters from other men in the play. The ideas of Hamlet are just, honest and full of revenge but Claudius ensures that his power is maintained. In conclusion, the writer has also used other elements in correlation like the setting of the play to bring out the meaning in Hamlet.

Shakespeare therefore does not present various elements of literature as single entities in the play but he uses his concept of unity to express them as a single entity. Therefore, in this case, he uses characters in the play to develop themes and stylistic devices as well as using the themes to create the characters hence the clear development of the play.

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IvyPanda. (2023, October 28). Hamlet Analysis Essay: Shakespeare’s Play Analysis Example. https://ivypanda.com/essays/drama-analysis-of-hamlet-by-shakespeare/

"Hamlet Analysis Essay: Shakespeare’s Play Analysis Example." IvyPanda , 28 Oct. 2023, ivypanda.com/essays/drama-analysis-of-hamlet-by-shakespeare/.

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IvyPanda . 2023. "Hamlet Analysis Essay: Shakespeare’s Play Analysis Example." October 28, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/drama-analysis-of-hamlet-by-shakespeare/.

1. IvyPanda . "Hamlet Analysis Essay: Shakespeare’s Play Analysis Example." October 28, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/drama-analysis-of-hamlet-by-shakespeare/.

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IvyPanda . "Hamlet Analysis Essay: Shakespeare’s Play Analysis Example." October 28, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/drama-analysis-of-hamlet-by-shakespeare/.

• Gertrude's Character in "Hamlet" by William Shakespeare
• Ophelia from Shakespeare's ”Hamlet”
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Student Opinion

What’s the Greatest Gift Your Parents Have Given You?

A Times Opinion essay argues that giving joy to their children is the one thing parents can control in a challenging world. Do you agree?

By Jeremy Engle

Empathy. Kindness. Hard work. Success. Wonder. What kinds of values and life lessons have your parents shared or taught you? Which have been most meaningful or valuable?

In the Opinion essay “ One Thing Parents Can Control ,” Esau McCaulley writes that parents cannot shield their sons and daughters from the world’s difficulties but can try to counter those things with joy:

My father was a long-haul truck driver. He piloted one of those eighteen-wheelers that had a horn that could raise the dead. As a kid, I longed to join him on his journeys and discover something of the world beyond Huntsville, Ala., where we lived. Despite his numerous promises, he never took me along. That failure, and the addictions of his that defined much of my childhood, gave me an education of a different sort. I learned that the world could be cruel and disappointing. Now that I am a father, I struggle with how much of that hard world to reveal to my sons and daughters. I recognize the privilege in even considering this. Parents of children in Gaza and Ukraine do not have the luxury of deciding whether to tell their young ones of evils done and all the good left undone. Bombs descending from above, indifferent to the innocence of youth, have become their instructors. I believe that we all have a moral duty not to turn away from such suffering. During dinner my family and I have talked and prayed about war, poverty, racism and injustice. My hope is that if we instill a sense of empathy in our children, they might create a better world than the one we have made.

Mr. McCaulley continues:

Since December, my family and I have been abroad while I am on a research sabbatical in England. My 9-year-old son, Peter, a huge soccer fan, dreamed of seeing a Premier League match. He was persistent in the way only elementary school children can be. He arrived in Britain a Manchester City fan, but I couldn’t get tickets. When I managed to secure two Tottenham Hotspur seats, he immediately switched allegiances. Watching Peter’s eyes widen as he approached the stadium, joy emanating from his tiny frame, was like that first ray of light after a downpour. Son Heung-min, who is also a standout on the South Korea national team, is the Spurs’ star and captain. Our seats seemed to be in the part of the stadium filled with Koreans. The red, blue, white and black South Korean flag and the national pride it represented rippled in the wind beside Hotspur flags. The team itself was gloriously international with players from Europe, Asia, the Middle East, Africa and South America all working together on the beautiful game. For a moment, sport had united us, and my son got to see the world as friendly and good.

He concludes the essay:

It is hard to predict the impact of these experiences. Parents can only make deposits of joy. We cannot control when our children will make the withdrawals. Did my mother know that I would always remember that one time she took us all to the (now defunct) Opryland U.S.A. theme park in Nashville? I am not sure what the Hotspur game will mean to my youngest son two decades from now. But that day he was happy, and knowing that will have to be enough. Parenting is always an exercise in hope, a gift given to a future we cannot see to the end. At some point, if God is merciful, our children will continue forward without us, left with the memory of love shared and received. We are entrusted with the awesome responsibility of introducing our children to the world and the world to our children. We cannot and should not shield them from all difficulty. But it’s also necessary, periodically, to be a bit irresponsible, to spend a little too much on a soccer game so they remember that alongside the darkness, sometimes there is light. Come on, you Spurs.

Students, read the entire essay and then tell us:

What’s the greatest gift your parents have given you? Explain why it stands out among the many values and life lessons they have bestowed.

What aspects of Mr. McCaulley’s essay resonate most? Do you agree with his contention that joy is an essential gift that parents should give to their children? In what ways is joy present in your own life?

If you become a parent, what gift or lesson would you most want to give to your children?

While Mr. McCaulley believes parents should center joy in their children’s lives, he says, “We cannot and should not shield them from all difficulty.” How much of the suffering and injustice in today’s world do your parents share and discuss with you? Do you think that is the right amount?

Mr. McCaulley concludes his essay with a parent’s lament: “It is hard to predict the impact of these experiences. Parents can only make deposits of joy. We cannot control when our children will make the withdrawals.” Do your parents know any of the joys, gifts or magical moments they have given you? Consider sharing your writing with them. They will likely cherish it!

Students 13 and older in the United States and Britain, and 16 and older elsewhere, are invited to comment. All comments are moderated by the Learning Network staff, but please keep in mind that once your comment is accepted, it will be made public and may appear in print.

Find more Student Opinion questions here. Teachers, check out this guide to learn how you can incorporate these prompts into your classroom.

Jeremy Engle joined The Learning Network as a staff editor in 2018 after spending more than 20 years as a classroom humanities and documentary-making teacher, professional developer and curriculum designer working with students and teachers across the country. More about Jeremy Engle

CREEES Professional Resources Forum

Center for Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies at The University of Texas at Austin

Undergraduate and Graduate Student Essay Prize Competition (Midwest Slavic Association, ASEEES)

Deadline: may 1, 2024.

2024 Midwest Slavic Association Student Essay Prize Competition

The Midwest Slavic Association, with support from the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies (ASEEES), is now accepting submissions for its annual essay prize competition for undergraduate and graduate students. Students can submit a paper on any topic related to Slavic, East European, and Eurasian studies to the Midwest Slavic Association for consideration. The best undergraduate paper received will win a one-year membership to ASEEES, and the graduate winner will receive a one-year membership to ASEEES, as well as then being considered for the ASEEES Graduate Student Essay Prize national level competition. The graduate winner of the ASEEES Student Essay Prize at the national level wins travel, lodging, and registration for the Annual ASEEES Convention and membership for the following year. The prize is presented during the awards presentation at the Annual Convention.

Undergraduate paper submissions can be in a variety of formats, including: conference paper, thesis, course paper, or article. They should be no longer than 20 double-spaced pages including notes and bibliography. Entries must be submitted electronically and written in English.   

Graduate essay submissions can be of several formats: expanded versions of conference papers, graduate level seminar papers, Master’s thesis chapters, or dissertation chapters. The student should indicate what type of paper they are submitting and provide an abstract. Essays should have a minimum word count of 7,500 and a maximum word count of 14,000 (25 to 50 pages approximately) inclusive of footnotes and bibliography. Submissions must be written in English, double-spaced, and include footnotes or endnotes.  

All submissions are due Wednesday, May 1, 2024, and should be emailed to The Ohio State University’s Center for Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies at  [email protected] . Students who wish to submit an essay should have participated in the 2024 Midwest Slavic Conference or be from an institution in the Midwest (defined as any college or university in the states of Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Ohio, Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin). With your submission, please also include the following:a short bio of the author an abstract of the essayindicate the format of the essay

Please visit ASEEES’ website for full information on the national level competition:  http://aseees.org/programs/aseees-prizes/graduate-student-essay-prize .

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