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Analysis of William Shakespeare’s Hamlet

By NASRULLAH MAMBROL on July 25, 2020 • ( 2 )

With Shakespeare the dramatic resolution conveys us, beyond the man-made sphere of poetic justice, toward the ever-receding horizons of cosmic irony. This is peculiarly the case with Hamlet , for the same reasons that it excites such intensive empathy from actors and readers, critics and writers alike. There may be other Shakespearean characters who are just as memorable, and other plots which are no less impressive; but nowhere else has the outlook of the individual in a dilemma been so profoundly realized; and a dilemma, by definition, is an all but unresolvable choice between evils. Rather than with calculation or casuistry, it should be met with virtue or readiness; sooner or later it will have to be grasped by one or the other of its horns. These, in their broadest terms, have been—for Hamlet, as we interpret him—the problem of what to believe and the problem of how to act.

—Harry Levin, The Question of Hamlet

Hamlet is almost certainly the world’s most famous play, featuring drama’s and literature’s most fascinating and complex character. The many-sided Hamlet—son, lover, intellectual, prince, warrior, and avenger—is the consummate test for each generation’s leading actors, and to be an era’s defining Hamlet is perhaps the greatest accolade one can earn in the theater. The play is no less a proving ground for the critic and scholar, as successive generations have refashioned Hamlet in their own image, while finding in it new resonances and entry points to plumb its depths, perplexities, and possibilities. No other play has been analyzed so extensively, nor has any play had a comparable impact on our culture. The brooding young man in black, skull in hand, has moved out of the theater and into our collective consciousness and cultural myths, joining only a handful of comparable literary archetypes—Oedipus, Faust, and Don Quixote—who embody core aspects of human nature and experience. “It is we ,” the romantic critic William Hazlitt observed, “who are Hamlet.”

Hamlet also commands a crucial, central place in William Shakespeare’s dramatic career. First performed around 1600, the play stands near the midpoint of the playwright’s two-decade career as a culmination and new departure. As the first of his great tragedies, Hamlet signals a decisive shift from the comedies and history plays that launched Shakespeare’s career to the tragedies of his maturity. Although unquestionably linked both to the plays that came before and followed, Hamlet is also markedly exceptional. At nearly 4,000 lines, almost twice the length of Macbeth , Hamlet is Shakespeare’s longest and, arguably, his most ambitious play with an enormous range of characters—from royals to gravediggers—and incidents, including court, bedroom, and graveyard scenes and a play within a play. Hamlet also bristles with a seemingly inexhaustible array of ideas and themes, as well as a radically new strategy for presenting them, most notably, in transforming soliloquies from expositional and motivational asides to the audience into the verbalization of consciousness itself. As Shakespearean scholar Stephen Greenblatt has asserted, “In its moral complexity, psychological depth, and philosophical power, Hamlet seems to mark an epochal shift not only in Shakespeare’s own career but in Western drama; it is as if the play were giving birth to a whole new kind of literary subjectivity.” Hamlet, more than any other play that preceded it, turns its action inward to dramatize an isolated, conflicted psyche struggling to cope with a world that has lost all certainty and consolation. Struggling to reconcile two contradictory identities—the heroic man of action and duty and the Christian man of conscience—Prince Hamlet becomes the modern archetype of the self-divided, alienated individual, desperately searching for self-understanding and meaning. Hamlet must contend with crushing doubt without the support of traditional beliefs that dictate and justify his actions. In describing the arrival of the fragmentation and chaos of the modern world, Victorian poet and critic Matthew Arnold declared that “the calm, cheerfulness, the disinterested objectivity have disappeared, the dialogue of the mind with itself has commenced.” Hamlet anticipates that dialogue by more than two centuries.

Like all of Shakespeare’s plays, Hamlet makes strikingly original uses of borrowed material. The Scandinavian folk tale of Amleth, a prince called upon to avenge his father’s murder by his uncle, was first given literary form by the Danish writer Saxo the Grammarian in his late 12th century Danish History and later adapted in French in François de Belleforest’s Histoires tragiques (1570). This early version of the Hamlet story provided Shakespeare with the basic characters and relationships but without the ghost or the revenger’s uncertainty. In the story of Amleth there is neither doubt about the usurper’s guilt nor any moral qualms in the fulfillment of the avenger’s mission. In preChristian Denmark blood vengeance was a sanctioned filial obligation, not a potentially damnable moral or religious violation, and Amleth successfully accomplishes his duty by setting fire to the royal hall, killing his uncle, and proclaiming himself king of Denmark. Shakespeare’s more immediate source may have been a nowlost English play (c. 1589) that scholars call the Ur – Hamlet. All that has survived concerning this play are a printed reference to a ghost who cried “Hamlet, revenge!” and criticism of the play’s stale bombast. Scholars have attributed the Ur-Hamle t to playwright Thomas Kyd, whose greatest success was The Spanish Tragedy (1592), one of the earliest extant English tragedies. The Spanish Tragedy popularized the genre of the revenge tragedy, derived from Aeschylus’s Oresteia and the Latin plays of Seneca, to which Hamlet belongs. Kyd’s play also features elements that Shakespeare echoes in Hamlet, including a secret crime, an impatient ghost demanding revenge, a protagonist tormented by uncertainty who feigns madness, a woman who actually goes mad, a play within a play, and a final bloodbath that includes the death of the avenger himself. An even more immediate possible source for Hamlet is John Marston’s Antonio’s Revenge (1599), another story of vengeance on a usurper by a sensitive protagonist.

Whether comparing Hamlet to its earliest source or the handling of the revenge plot by Kyd, Marston, or other Elizabethan or Jacobean playwrights, what stands out is the originality and complexity of Shakespeare’s treatment, in his making radically new and profound uses of established stage conventions. Hamlet converts its sensational material—a vengeful ghost, a murder mystery, madness, a heartbroken maiden, a fistfight at her burial, and a climactic duel that results in four deaths—into a daring exploration of mortality, morality, perception, and core existential truths. Shakespeare put mystery, intrigue, and sensation to the service of a complex, profound epistemological drama. The critic Maynard Mack in an influential essay, “The World of Hamlet ,” has usefully identified the play’s “interrogative mode.” From the play’s opening words—“Who’s there?”—to “What is this quintessence of dust?” through drama’s most famous soliloquy—“To be, or not to be, that is the question.”— Hamlet “reverberates with questions, anguished, meditative, alarmed.” The problematic nature of reality and the gap between truth and appearance stand behind the play’s conflicts, complicating Hamlet’s search for answers and his fulfillment of his role as avenger.

Hamlet opens with startling evidence that “something is rotten in the state of Denmark.” The ghost of Hamlet’s father, King Hamlet, has been seen in Elsinore, now ruled by his brother, Claudius, who has quickly married his widowed queen, Gertrude. When first seen, Hamlet is aloof and skeptical of Claudius’s justifications for his actions on behalf of restoring order in the state. Hamlet is morbidly and suicidally disillusioned by the realization of mortality and the baseness of human nature prompted by the sudden death of his father and his mother’s hasty, and in Hamlet’s view, incestuous remarriage to her brother-in-law:

O that this too too solid flesh would melt, Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew! Or that the Everlasting had not fix’d His canon ’gainst self-slaughter! O God! God! How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable Seem to me all the uses of this world! Fie on’t! ah, fie! ’Tis an unweeded garden That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature Possess it merely. That it should come to this!

A recent student at the University of Wittenberg, whose alumni included Martin Luther and the fictional Doctor Faustus, Hamlet is an intellectual of the Protestant Reformation, who, like Luther and Faustus, tests orthodoxy while struggling to formulate a core philosophy. Brought to encounter the apparent ghost of his father, Hamlet alone hears the ghost’s words that he was murdered by Claudius and is compelled out of his suicidal despair by his pledge of revenge. However, despite the riveting presence of the ghost, Hamlet is tormented by doubts. Is the ghost truly his father’s spirit or a devilish apparition tempting Hamlet to his damnation? Is Claudius truly his father’s murderer? By taking revenge does Hamlet do right or wrong? Despite swearing vengeance, Hamlet delays for two months before taking any action, feigning madness better to learn for himself the truth about Claudius’s guilt. Hamlet’s strange behavior causes Claudius’s counter-investigation to assess Hamlet’s mental state. School friends—Rosencrantz and Guildenstern—are summoned to learn what they can; Polonius, convinced that Hamlet’s is a madness of love for his daughter Ophelia, stages an encounter between the lovers that can be observed by Claudius. The court world at Elsinore, is, therefore, ruled by trickery, deception, role playing, and disguise, and the so-called problem of Hamlet, of his delay in acting, is directly related to his uncertainty in knowing the truth. Moreover, the suspicion of his father’s murder and his mother’s sexual betrayal shatter Hamlet’s conception of the world and his responsibility in it. Pushed back to the suicidal despair of the play’s opening, Hamlet is paralyzed by indecision and ambiguity in which even death is problematic, as he explains in the famous “To be or not to be” soliloquy in the third act:

For who would bear the whips and scorns of time, Th’ oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely, The pangs of despis’d love, the law’s delay, The insolence of office, and the spurns That patient merit of th’ unworthy takes, When he himself might his quietus make With a bare bodkin? Who would these fardels bear, To grunt and sweat under a weary life, But that the dread of something after death— The undiscover’d country, from whose bourn No traveller returns—puzzles the will, And makes us rather bear those ills we have Than fly to others that we know not of? Thus conscience does make cowards of us all, And thus the native hue of resolution Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought, And enterprises of great pith and moment With this regard their currents turn awry And lose the name of action.

The arrival of a traveling theatrical group provides Hamlet with the empirical means to resolve his doubts about the authenticity of the ghost and Claudius’s guilt. By having the troupe perform the Mousetrap play that duplicates Claudius’s crime, Hamlet hopes “to catch the conscience of the King” by observing Claudius’s reaction. The king’s breakdown during the performance seems to confirm the ghost’s accusation, but again Hamlet delays taking action when he accidentally comes upon the guilt-ridden Claudius alone at his prayers. Rationalizing that killing the apparently penitent Claudius will send him to heaven and not to hell, Hamlet decides to await an opportunity “That has no relish of salvation in’t.” He goes instead to his mother’s room where Polonius is hidden in another attempt to learn Hamlet’s mind and intentions. This scene between mother and son, one of the most powerful and intense in all of Shakespeare, has supported the Freudian interpretation of Hamlet’s dilemma in which he is stricken not by moral qualms but by Oedipal guilt. Gertrude’s cries of protest over her son’s accusations cause Polonius to stir, and Hamlet finally, instinctively strikes the figure he assumes is Claudius. In killing the wrong man Hamlet sets in motion the play’s catastrophes, including the madness and suicide of Ophelia, overwhelmed by the realization that her lover has killed her father, and the fatal encounter with Laertes who is now similarly driven to avenge a murdered father. Convinced of her son’s madness, Gertrude informs Claudius of Polonius’s murder, prompting Claudius to alter his order for Hamlet’s exile to England to his execution there.

Hamlet’s mental shift from reluctant to willing avenger takes place offstage during his voyage to England in which he accidentally discovers the execution order and then after a pirate attack on his ship makes his way back to Denmark. He returns to confront the inescapable human condition of mortality in the graveyard scene of act 5 in which he realizes that even Alexander the Great must return to earth that might be used to “stop a beer-barrel” and Julius Caesar’s clay to “stop a hole to keep the wind away.” This sobering realization that levels all earthly distinctions of nobility and acclaim is compounded by the shock of Ophelia’s funeral procession. Hamlet sustains his balance and purpose by confessing to Horatio his acceptance of a providential will revealed to him in the series of accidents on his voyage to England: “There’s a divinity that shapes our ends, / Roughhew them how we will.” Finally accepting his inability to control his life, Hamlet resigns himself to accept whatever comes. Agreeing to a duel with Laertes that Claudius has devised to eliminate his nephew, Hamlet asserts that “There’s a special providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, ’tis not to come. If it be not to come, it will be now. If it be not now, yet it will come. The readiness is all.”

In the carnage of the play’s final scene, Hamlet ironically manages to achieve his revenge while still preserving his nobility and moral stature. It is the murderer Claudius who is directly or indirectly responsible for all the deaths. Armed with a poisonedtip sword, Laertes strikes Hamlet who in turn manages to slay Laertes with the lethal weapon. Meanwhile, Gertrude drinks from the poisoned cup Claudius intended to insure Hamlet’s death, and, after the remorseful Laertes blames Claudius for the plot, Hamlet, hesitating no longer, fatally stabs the king. Dying in the arms of Horatio, Hamlet orders his friend to “report me and my cause aright / To the unsatisfied” and transfers the reign of Denmark to the last royal left standing, the Norwegian prince Fortinbras. King Hamlet’s death has been avenged but at a cost of eight lives: Polonius, Ophelia, Rosencranz, Guildenstern, Laertes, Gertrude, Claudius, and Prince Hamlet. Order is reestablished but only by Denmark’s sworn enemy. Shakespeare’s point seems unmistakable: Honor and duty that command revenge consume the guilty and the innocent alike. Heroism must face the reality of the graveyard.

Fortinbras closes the play by ordering that Hamlet be carried off “like a soldier” to be given a military funeral underscoring the point that Hamlet has fallen as a warrior on a battlefield of both the duplicitous court at Elsinore and his own mind. The greatness of Hamlet rests in the extraordinary perplexities Shakespeare has discovered both in his title character and in the events of the play. Few other dramas have posed so many or such knotty problems of human existence. Is there a special providence in the fall of a sparrow? What is this quintessence of dust? To be or not to be?

Hamlet Oxford Lecture by Emma Smith

Analysis of William Shakespeare’s Plays

Hamlet Themes – Meaning and Main Ideas

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Main Themes in Hamlet

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

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

Hamlet Themes

What are the major themes in Hamlet?

The Uncertainty of Life

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

How Rulership Affects a Nation’s Wellbeing

Genuine Behavior vs. Performance

Indecision leading to madness.

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

How Rulership Affects a Nation’s Well-being

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

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

Themes, Motifs, and Symbols in Hamlet

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Last Updated On: March 1, 2022

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Major Themes in Hamlet

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

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

The Complexity of Mental Illness

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Danger of Deception and Manipulation

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

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

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

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

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

The Futility of Revenge

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

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

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

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

Motifs and Symbols in Hamlet

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

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

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

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

Ears and Hearing

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

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

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

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

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

Works Cited

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

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Hamlet Themes

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

The background to the Hamlet theme structure

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

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

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

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

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

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

6 Major Themes in Hamlet

The theme of revenge in hamlet.

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

The theme of corruption

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

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

The theme of religion

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

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

The Hamlet theme of politics

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

The theme of appearance and reality

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

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

The theme of women

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

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

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

Shakespeare Themes by Play

Hamlet themes , Macbeth themes , Romeo and Juliet themes

Shakespeare Themes by Topic

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

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

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

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

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

Wonderful notes

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

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

151 Hamlet Essay Topics & Thesis Ideas

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

👍 Hamlet Essay Writing – Tips & Ideas

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

Tip #1. Read critically before starting hamlet essay outline

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

Highlighting

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

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

Note-taking

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

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

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

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

Tip #2. Write a detailed outline

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

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

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

Tip #3. Write your Hamlet essay thesis statement

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

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

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

Tip #4. Start writing your Hamlet essay

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

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

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

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Hamlet’s Renaissance Culture Conflict The death of Hamlet as the play ends indicates that though he was the definite answer to all the questions before him as he faced death, he was not in any position to give any […]
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Gender Roles and Representation of Women in “Hamlet” Specifically, the author refers to the problem of being confined in the prison of gender stereotypes that can be experienced when reading Shakespeare’s works.
Is Shakespeare’s Hamlet Really Crazy? According to the first one, Hamlet pretends to be mad, so that he is not taken seriously and is not considered as dangerous, under the guise of a madman, he can say anything.
Oedipus and Hamlet Characters’ Contrast and Comparison The purpose of this essay is to compare and contrast one of the main characters of literature – Oedipus and Hamlet, as well as to determine the qualities and skills of people which make them […]
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Hamlet: Analyzing Various Scenes On top of this, Hamlet hopes that seeing a replay of the murder of his father would move the king’s conscience to a point where he would be forced to admit his crime.
Human Nature in Shakespearean Tragedy “Hamlet” Soliloquies maintain significant place in the play Hamlet, which start with the beginning of the play, and chase the protagonist almost near the close of the end of the play.
Shakespearean Hamlet’s Character Interpretation For example, Hamlet believed that his mother was loyal to his father and to the kingdom, but he felt unhappy with how events unfolded when grieving.
Hamlet’s Relationship With His Mother and Uncle Hamlet’s assessment of his issues is accurate in the sense that he already associates Claudius with problems, but the prince is too quick to judge his mother.
Supporting Characters in “The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark” Shakespeare utilizes secondary characters to depict the theme of friendship and loyalty, as these aspects are influential on the main character.
“Hamlet” by William Shakespeare: Overview In the play Hamlet is a noble soldier with admirable qualities but he avenges the death of his father using his free will.
Genji, Hamlet, Oedipus and Jesus Christ Character Analysis This paper will attempt to asses the characters in the following set of books and plays: The New Testament, Oedipus the King, Shakespeare Hamlet and Shikibu the tale of the Genji.
Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” as the Central Tragedy for Revenge Understanding The core concept of revenge in Hamlet, Shakespeare’s play, is the hesitation of the main character and his doubt moral and philosophical maxims in the whole world; the main idea of the play may be […]
The Vision of the Main Character in Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” The main character of the tragedy is Hamlet, a young man who comes to know about the real reasons of his father’s death from the ghost that claims to be the spirit of his father. […]
Hamlet’s Parental Relationships The death of his father, the actions of his mother and his existing relationship with his uncle all have Hamlet confused regarding the true nature of the world.
The Character of Gertrude in ‘Hamlet’ The character of Ophelia is responsible for projecting an aura of guilt and deception to the role of women in ‘Hamlet.’ She is not treacherous or complicated, but instead weak and insensibly dependent on the […]
Themes in “Hamlet” by William Shakespeare With consideration of critical responses, use of language and structure, and through a close analysis of Hamlet’s soliloquies, the role of Shakespeare’s characterization of Hamlet in shaping the enduring power of the text is appreciated […]
“Hamlet” Scene Comparison: Hawke’s and Gibson’s Films In both Hawke’s and Gibson’s versions of Hamlet, the original text is used for dialogue between Hamlet and Ophelia as she is sent to trap the reasons for Hamlet’s insanity out of him.
William Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” Drama Play These soliloquies are dramatic and ironical, Harold Wilson submits, with an irony that is implicit and eloquent in the extravagances of Hamlet’s rhetoric.
Hamlet: The Circumstances That Lead Hamlet to Soliloquy Out of his anger, he worries about the death of his father and the hasty marriage of his mother to his uncle.
The Reflection of Time in “Hamlet” by Shakespeare Thesis Human existence and purpose of life were considered unimportant because the human soul had a divine nature, thus, they were afraid of death as an unknown state of human existence.
Hesitation and Indeterminacy of Hamlet There is no denying the importance of the fact that the whole fabric of Shakespeare’s tragedy unfolds in Hamlet subjective perception and interpretation of his uncle and mother’ treason.
Hamlet, Ophelia and Insanity in Shakespear’s “Hamlet” The knowledge the Queen has as to the specific nature of Ophelia’s death calls into question her sincerity in her lament.
Gender Equality Question: “Hamlet” by William Shakespeare For the past few centuries, the rise of various movements have marked a certain change in the ideas and philosophies of man regarding the true nature of his existence, the pronounced inequalities of not only […]
Hamlet by William Shakespeare: A Filmic Event In bringing Shakespeare’s classic story of Hamlet to the big screen and reset into a modern context, director Michael Almereyda is forced to reinterpret the role of Ophelia due to significant changes in modern women’s […]
Roles of Poison in Shakespeari’s “Hamlet” It is obvious that Hamlet is the representative of the new world. I think that the answer to this riddle is that his ways of revenge are not good.
Characters in “The Scarlet Letter” and “Hamlet” Film Hester returns to Boston just before her death, in order to be buried in the same grave as Dimmesdale, with ‘A’ inscribed on their tombstone. Much to her son’s anger and disgust, she marries Claudius […]
Comparison of Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” and Perrault’s “Cinderella” The paper also includes the analysis of the narratives in accordance with the epic laws introduced by Axel Olrik. In Cinderella’s story, the presence of royalty is only limited to the prince.
Freud and Hamlet’s Relationship with His Mother When analyzing the relationship between Hamlet and his mother, one can note that even at a young age, the Oedipus complex manifests in the boy, which reflects a number of his conflicting experiences about his […]
Ghost in Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” Play In Shakespeare’s play Hamlet, the titular character begins plotting his revenge after he encounters the ghost of his father, who informs him of the murder as well as the culprits.
Act 1 Scene 2 of the “Hamlet” Play by Shakespeare The use of honorifics, stichomythia, and imagery is discussed, as well as the aside, the motif of spying, and the overall mood of the scene will be discussed and evaluated. The overall mood of the […]
Ophelia and Hamlet’s Dialogue in Shakespeare’s Play In some ways, this scene represents the conflict between Hamlet and the society he lives in, as no one is capable of understanding his concerns.
The Masks of William Shakespeare’s Play “Hamlet” The first thing that has to be determined is the truth behind the claim that Hamlet saw the ghost of his departed father.
Ghosts and Revenge in Shakespeare’s Hamlet Despite the common beliefs concerning the existence of ghosts, it seems that the ghost’s presence is still supported by the testimonies of all characters in the story, including Horatio, Francisco, and the protagonist himself.
Act II of Hamlet by William Shakespeare The King is worried about Hamlet’s madness and starts to suspect that he might have found out the real reasons for his father’s death.
Meditative and Passionate Responses in the Play “Hamlet” This is seen in his soliloquy “to be, or not to be: that is the question; /Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer?
Portrayal of Hamlet in Shakespeare’s Play and Zaffirelli’s Film In fact, Mel Gisbon’s power as an act does not provide a sufficient understanding of his ability to penetrate to Shakespeare’s world and reach the ideas in the play.
Psychiatric Analysis of Hamlet Literature Analysis However, he tells the doctor that he is not actually aware of the reasons that are taking him to his death.
The Value of Source Study of Hamlet by Shakespeare In regards to the intended significance, Stopes, Belleforest, and Shakespeare report that Shakespeare designed the role of the ghost to appear to Hamlet relentlessly to enhance the melancholy motif of the play.
William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Prince of Denmark Generally, the main idea of the play is considered to be the impact of people’s actions on their future.”The ghost of Hamlet’s father does urge him to action”.
Relationships Among Individuals in Shakespeare’s Plays The events that take place in Athens are symbolic in the sense that they represent the sequence of events during the day whereas the events in the forest represent the dream like circumstances.
Canonical Status of Hamlet by William Shakespeare However, the technique has been defended by some of the scholars who argue that Shakespeare’s skill is to develop and emphasize the purpose of duality and dislocation in the play.
Oedipus the King and Hamlet However, the fact is both Oedipus and Claudius managed to get the post of kingship after killing the former kings leaving the seats vacant. In conclusion, both Oedipus and King Claudius attained their crown after […]
How a Film Interprets Hamlet Laurence Olivier’s need to focus on less traditional approaches, his need to shorten the production, and the need to perform a psychological analysis of the characters determine his interpretation of the play ‘Hamlet’.
A Play “Hamlet” by William Shakespear Hamlet decides to prove whether Claudius really killed his father and in act three, he uses the play “The Murder of Gonzago” to get the truth.
Recurring Theme of Revenge in Hamlet On top of this, Laertes wants to revenge the insanity and subsequent death of his sister, which he blames on Hamlet.
How Effectively Does Shakespeare Introduce the Characters and Themes of “Hamlet”?
How Does Shakespeare Present Women and Sex in “Hamlet”?
Is Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” Based on a True Story?
What Are the Symbols in “Hamlet”?
Where Did Shakespeare Get His Inspiration for “Hamlet”?
How Does Shakespeare Use Conflict in “Hamlet” as a Way of Exploring Ideas?
What Is the Language Style in “Hamlet” Play?
How “Hamlet” Was Inspired by an Obscure Tale From Finland’s Kalavala?
How Does Shakespeare Introduce the Theme of Madness in “Hamlet”?
What Does “Hamlet” Teach Us About Humanity?
Did William Shakespeare Really Write “Hamlet”?
How Strange Behavior and Ghosts Are Depicted in “Hamlet”?
What Is the Most Important Theme in “Hamlet”?
What Is the Contrast Between Hamlet and Claudius in “Hamlet”?
What Is the the Meaning of Soliloquy in “Hamlet”?
How Perennial Issues of the Human Condition Are Imaged in “Hamlet”?
What Are the Similar Motifs Between “Wuthering Heights” and “Hamlet”?
Why Did Shakespeare Choose Loyalty and Betrayal as Lead Themes in “Hamlet”?
What Are the Inward and Outward Conflicts in “Hamlet”?
How Does Shakespeare Use Language in “Hamlet” to Teach the Reader?
What Is the Significance of “Hamlet’s” Creating?
How Do “Hamlet” Characters Solve Their Mental Problems?
How Crime Fiction and Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” Are Connected?
What Is Corruption and How Its Rampant Impact Is Depicted in “Hamlet”?
Why Is the Ending of “Hamlet” Ironic?
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Want to Fix Social Security? The Well-Off Must Accept Smaller Checks.

By Peter Coy

Opinion Writer

Eleven years. That’s all that’s left until the combined Social Security accounts — the Old-Age and Survivors Insurance Trust Fund and the Disability Insurance Trust Fund — are likely to run out of money and can no longer pay full scheduled benefits, according to the latest report of the Social Security trustees.

I don’t worry too much that the checks won’t go out after the projected 2035 exhaustion of the funds, which though legally separate are often regarded as a single pool of money. Current beneficiaries wouldn’t stand for it, and neither would their children. (Even with no fix at all — highly unlikely — incoming payroll taxes would cover 83 percent of scheduled benefits.)

What I do worry about is what Washington’s patch for Social Security will look like. Flimsy, I’m afraid.

The cold math shows that fixing Social Security in a lasting way will require a combination of tax increases and benefit cuts. Both. Yet Republicans have been loath to discuss higher taxes. And both parties’ leaders — President Biden and former President Donald Trump — have ruled benefit cuts off the table.

I support benefit cuts, although not for everyone. Lower-income Americans should be spared. If anything, their benefits need to go up. People 55 and older should also be spared, since they’re either retired or close to it, so they can’t offset any reductions by working and saving more.

But upper-income Americans of working age are going to have to get used to the idea that Social Security will be less generous than they expected. They will need to stuff more money into their 401(k)s and maybe delay their retirement by a few years.

Social Security’s maximum benefit is about $48,000 this year for someone retiring at the normal retirement age, rising to around $65,000 (in today’s dollars) by 2050. Double those maximums for two-earner couples.

Democrats who otherwise don’t have any problem with taking a bite out of the rich have historically resisted big changes in the benefit formula for Social Security. The program is already a better deal for the poor than for the rich (although that’s partly offset by rich people’s longer life spans ). They fear that Social Security will lose political support if it comes to be seen even more as a form of redistribution from the rich to the poor rather than a kind of self-insurance.

But that longstanding fear may be unfounded. Means-tested programs, including Medicaid, college aid and nutrition assistance, have grown rapidly over the past half century and for the most part aren’t perceived as unjustified giveaways.

One reason that Social Security didn’t provide more of a safety net to lower-income people when it was enacted in 1935 is that many Southern Democrats thought Black people wouldn’t work if they had a good retirement benefit from the government, Christopher Pope, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, wrote last year in an article on the RealClearPolicy website. The Jackson Daily News wrote at the time , “The average Mississippian can’t imagine himself chipping in to pay pensions for able-bodied Negroes to sit around in idleness on front galleries, supporting all their kinfolks on pensions, while cotton and corn crops are crying for workers to get them out of the grass.” That racist rationale shouldn’t continue to affect the design of the program.

If fixes for Social Security come down to a choice between A: cutting projected benefits for upper-income Americans and B: drastically raising taxes to help keep those benefits high, voters are highly likely to choose A, argues Andrew Biggs, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

Biggs argues that the United States should follow the lead of nations such as Australia, Canada, New Zealand and Britain, which have lower maximum benefits than Social Security provides. “You don’t see Canadians wandering the tundra without any retirement savings,” he told me.

Social Security requires a steady flow of new contributors to make it work. Payroll taxes from young workers go to pay benefits to old recipients. For its first half-century, Social Security was an amazing deal. Retirees received much more in benefits than they paid, even figuring in interest. That’s what made it so popular. But now there are fewer workers per beneficiary, and the trust funds that were built up in a flusher time are running dry. That’s why something needs to change.

Biggs co-wrote a brief in January that called for reducing or eliminating tax preferences for retirement plans, including 401(k)s, and using the savings to shore up Social Security. He and Alicia Munnell, the director of Boston College’s Center for Retirement Research, argued that the tax preferences “seem a bad deal for taxpayers, primarily benefiting high earners while failing to significantly boost national saving.” (The study was cited in a recent article in The New York Times Magazine.)

Biggs is actually optimistic. He argued in a recent essay for The Wall Street Journal that a vast majority of retirees are doing OK and it wouldn’t be expensive to put a safety net under those who aren’t. A Census Bureau report that drew on data about pension plans and other records found that the share of older people in poverty fell to 6.9 percent in 2012 from 9.7 percent in 1990, lower than the official poverty figures.

Only 3 percent of respondents who were 65 to 74 between 2019 and 2022 said they were “finding it difficult to get by,” and an additional 12 percent said they were “just getting by,” according to the Federal Reserve’s Survey of Household Economics and Decision Making. The problem is concentrated, naturally, among those with the least savings. Among people of that age with less than $10,000 in savings, 12 percent said it was difficult to get by, and 30 percent said they were just getting by, Biggs calculated.

That starts to look like a contained problem. People with low incomes clearly need help in their not-so-golden years. They don’t save for retirement mostly because they have no money to spare and partly because they don’t get good advice. “If you cut their benefits, you’re just cutting their incomes,” Biggs said.

Other retirement experts aren’t as confident as Biggs about the financial condition of most older people and the readiness of workers for retirement. “Based on their current account balances, income, saving and investment behavior, three in four workers in our sample are not saving enough for retirement,” a 2022 study published by the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago found. Laurence Kotlikoff, a Boston University economist, said retirees who told surveyors that they were getting by might have actually been living in uncomfortably straitened circumstances.

Still, to the degree that there’s a problem, it’s mostly among the people who earned the least during their working years. Social Security needs a fix, soon. Transforming it gradually into a safety net for the least advantaged is the obvious choice.

Ukraine’s Refinery Attacks Are Working

Ukraine has launched at least 20 strikes on Russian oil refineries since October, destroying about 14 percent of Russia’s oil-refining capacity and forcing the government to impose a six-month ban on gasoline exports, according to a May 8 article in Foreign Affairs magazine. Vice President Kamala Harris and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin have expressed concern that the attacks could drive up global energy prices.

But “with less domestic refining capacity, Russia will be forced to export more of its crude oil, not less, pushing global prices down rather than up,” says the article, by Michael Liebreich of Bloomberg New Energy Finance, Lauri Myllyvirta of the Center for Research on Energy and Clean Air and Sam Winter-Levy of Princeton. They present data showing that that’s already happening and conclude, “Ukraine’s campaign is working.”

Quote of the Day

“The time is out of joint.”

— William Shakespeare, “Hamlet” (1604)

Peter Coy is a writer for the Opinion section of The Times, covering economics and business. Email him at [email protected] . @ petercoy

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Analysis of William Shakespeare's Hamlet
Whether comparing Hamlet to its earliest source or the handling of the revenge plot by Kyd, Marston, or other Elizabethan or Jacobean playwrights, what stands out is the originality and complexity of Shakespeare's treatment, in his making radically new and profound uses of established stage conventions.Hamlet converts its sensational material—a vengeful ghost, a murder mystery, madness, a ...
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Hamlet's dearest friend, Horatio, agrees with him that Claudius has unambiguously confirmed his guilt. Driven by a guilty conscience, Claudius attempts to ascertain the cause of Hamlet's odd behaviour by hiring Hamlet's onetime friends Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to spy on him. Hamlet quickly sees through the scheme and begins to act the part of a madman in front of them.
Hamlet: All You Need To Know About Shakespeare's Hamlet Play
Hamlet is a highly intelligent, introspective young man. He is witty and entertaining, showing a strong sense of humour throughout, even in the midst of his mental suffering. He is sociable but inclined to be cruel in the way he speaks to people he doesn't like. Ultimately, he is a serious, thoughtful man.
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I. Thesis Statement: For many readers, Hamlet's seeming inability to avenge his father's death is the central issue of the play. His indecision is often cited as the "tragic flaw" which ...
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Main Themes in Hamlet. The play takes place in Elsinore, Denmark, which is a military town on the Eastern Coast of Denmark. Overlooking the sea, it is a hub for military watch over the sea to protect against impending attacks. The fortress contains most of the action of the play, which enhances the mood of being trapped.
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Hamlet must get his mother back on his side, since (1) she was a concern of the Ghost, and (2) because Claudius' reaction to the play has confirmed to Hamlet that Gertrude had no part in King ...
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Focused on: Reasons for Hamlet's procrastination and its consequences. Characters mentioned: Hamlet, Claudius, Gertrude, Ophelia, Polonius. Role of Women in Twelfth Night and Hamlet by Shakespeare. Genre: Research Paper. Words: 2527. Focused on: Women in Shakespeare's Twelfth Night and Hamlet.
PDF The Meaning of Death in Shakespeare's Hamlet
ing, seems likely), but King Hamlet is poisoned. Looking at class, Claudius, Queen Gertrude, King Claudius, and Prince Hamlet—all royals—die on-stage, but King Hamlet—also a royal—dies off-stage. Ophelia, Rosencrantz, and Guildenstern—all nobles—die off-stage, but Laertes—also a noble— dies on-stage.
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Motifs and Symbols in Hamlet Death. Death is a regular motif in Shakespeare's Hamlet. A murder occurs even before the play begins, and many more follow as the play progresses. However, death appears as a motif in several different instances, primarily on the topic of suicide.
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The theme of religion. Religion has an impact on the actions of the characters in this play. Hamlet's 'to be or not to be' soliloquy outlines his religious thinking on the subject of suicide. He declines to kill Claudius while he is praying for fear of sending him to heaven when he should be going to hell. Hamlet believes, too, that ...
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151 Hamlet Essay Topics & Thesis Ideas. We know how long students search for interesting Hamlet essay topics. In this post, you will find a list of the most debating Hamlet essay titles and thesis ideas. We've also developed a guide on how to write a Hamlet paper and included some helpful Hamlet essay examples.
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In this thesis, I will argue that Hamlet is not mad—at least no more mad than the rest of us. Rather, I argue that Shakespeare adduces interiority—the quality, state, and ... readers and one realizes that Hamlet's mental battle is evidence of the individual will in faith. In order to simultaneously contextualize and evaluate Shakespeare ...
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Hamlet, written by William Shakespeare, is a tragedy concerning a young prince named Hamlet and his quest to avenge his father's death. One cold night, Hamlet is told by an apparition claiming to be his father that Hamlet's Uncle Claudius murdered King Hamlet. From that point on, Hamlet dedicates himself to this revenge.
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Want to fix Social Security? The Well-Off Must Accept Smaller Checks
— William Shakespeare, "Hamlet" (1604) Peter Coy is a writer for the Opinion section of The Times, covering economics and business. Email him at [email protected] .

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151 Hamlet Essay Topics & Thesis Ideas

👍 Hamlet Essay Writing – Tips & Ideas

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Want to Fix Social Security? The Well-Off Must Accept Smaller Checks.

Ukraine’s Refinery Attacks Are Working

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