Hamlet
William Shakespeare
General Background
1600 – Sometime around 1600 a.d., William Shakespeare,
already a successful playwright, wrote Hamlet.
 1601 – The play was probably first performed in 1601 on the
stage of the Globe Theater on London’s Bankside.
 First Quarto, the Second Quarto, and the First Folio – Three
published versions of the play –
 Second Quarto of 1604 – considered the “official” version
 1623 – First Folio was published seven years after
Shakespeare’s death.
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Shakespeare’s Sources for Hamlet
 A story of revenge – Saxo Grammaticus
 Hamlet is based on a twelfth-century story about an
early Prince of Denmark, Amleth. The tale, by Saxo
Grammaticus, was published in Latin in 1514, but most
scholars believe that Shakespeare read a 1570 French
version of the story by Francois Belleforest. The old
story has many similarities with Shakespeare’s Hamlet.
Shakespeare’s Sources cont.
 In the original story, Amleth’s father is King of
Denmark. He defeats the King of Norway in a duel,
but is murdered by Feng, his own brother. Feng
quickly marries the queen, Gerutha, Amleth’s mother.
In pursuit of revenge, Amleth feigns madness (In
Danish, Amleth meant ‘simpleton’ or idiot). But his
language in such a mixture of insanity and cleverness
that he is tested in various ways.
Theatrical Influences
Shakespeare’s production of Hamlet is also influenced by:
 Tragedies of the Roman dramatist, Seneca
 Thomas Kyd’s hugely popular play The Spanish Tragedy
 Play, now lost, which is known as the Ur-Hamlet (Ur means
early) – a play of Hamlet that existed at least 10 years before
Shakespeare’s Hamlet, but Shakespeare transformed the
genre as well as the character of Hamlet.
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Metafiction/Metadrama
Metafiction as a play or has occasion to It is a kind of fiction
that comments on the very devices of fiction it employs. It
usually involves irony and is self-reflective.
 Metadrama is similar. It is drama that calls attention to itself
as a play or has occasion to comment on its own actions and
devices.
 These devices are most apparent in the play-within-the play
in Hamlet but also subtlety throughout the play as a whole in
the constant juxtaposition of appearance vs. reality as well as
the many faces of Hamlet, himself.
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Shakespeare’s Language (stylistic devices)
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Imagery
Doubling (pairing of characters and situations)
Puns
Syntactic inversion
Repetition
Verse vs. prose
Soliloquy (abounds in this play)
Pronoun Selection (royal we)
Setting
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The story takes place
in the country of
Denmark in the late
medieval period.
Motifs in Hamlet
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Action vs Inaction
Madness
Death and Decay
Disease
Appearance vs.
Reality
Revenge
Incest
Theater
Political Corruption
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Honor and Revenge
The Supernatural
Certainty and
Uncertainty
Questions
Misogyny and Gender
Language and
Meaning
Tragic hero
A tragic hero has the potential for
greatness but is doomed to fail.
 He makes some sort of tragic flaw, and
this causes his fall from greatness.
 Realizes he has made an irreversible
mistake
 Faces and accepts death with honor
 Meets a tragic death
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Tragic heroes are:
Born into nobility
 Responsible for their own fate
 Endowed with a tragic flaw
 Doomed to make a serious error in
judgment
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The End
The Revenge Tragedy
Seneca – Roman playwright (4 b.c. – 65 a.d)
 1581- A collection of Seneca’s tragedies was published in 1581.
 Seneca found material for his tragic dramas in Greek mythology.
 Many revenge plays imitated his example.
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The Senecan Revenge Tragedy Features
A ghost appears calling for revenge.
Revenge dominates characters’ motives, and provides dramatic suspense.
 Revengers use exaggerated and hyperbolic language.
 Characters descend into madness.
 The use of a play-within-a play.
 Much tragic loss
 Five-part structure:
 Act I – ghost appeals for vengeance
 Act II – the revenger plots revenge
 Act III – the confrontation of avenger and victim
 Act IV – vengeance is prevented
 Act V – revenge is completed
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Hamlet
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The Prince of Denmark,
the title character, and
the protagonist. About
thirty years old at the
start of the play, Hamlet
is the son of Queen
Gertrude and the late
King Hamlet, and the
nephew of the present
king, Claudius.
Hamlet continued
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Hamlet is melancholy, bitter, and cynical,
full of hatred for his uncle's scheming and
disgust for his mother's sexuality. A
reflective and thoughtful young man who
has studied at the University of
Wittenberg, Hamlet is sometimes
indecisive and hesitant, but at other times
prone to rash and impulsive acts.
Claudius
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The King of Denmark,
Hamlet's uncle, and the
play's antagonist. The
villain of the play,
Claudius is a calculating,
ambitious politician,
driven by his sexual
appetites and his lust for
power, but he
occasionally shows signs
of guilt and human
feeling—his love for
Gertrude, for instance,
seems sincere.
Gertrude
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The Queen of Denmark,
Hamlet's mother, recently
married to Claudius.
Gertrude loves Hamlet
deeply, but she is a
shallow, weak woman
who seeks affection and
status more urgently than
moral rectitude or truth.
Polonius
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The Lord Chamberlain
of Claudius's court, a
pompous, conniving
old man. Polonius is
the father of Laertes
and Ophelia.
Horatio
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Hamlet's close friend,
who studied with the
prince at the university in
Wittenberg. Horatio is
loyal and helpful to
Hamlet throughout the
play. After Hamlet's
death, Horatio remains
alive to tell Hamlet's
story.
Ophelia
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Polonius's daughter, a
beautiful young
woman with whom
Hamlet has been in
love. Ophelia is a
sweet and innocent
young girl, who obeys
her father and her
brother, Laertes.
Ophelia continued
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Dependent on men to tell her how to
behave, she gives in to Polonius's schemes
to spy on Hamlet. Even in her lapse into
madness and death, she remains
maidenly, singing songs about flowers and
finally drowning in the river amid the
flower garlands she had gathered.
Laertes
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Polonius's son and
Ophelia's brother, a
young man who
spends much of the
play in France.
Passionate and quick
to action, Laertes is
clearly a foil for the
reflective Hamlet.
Fortinbras
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The young Prince of
Norway, whose father the
king (also named
Fortinbras) was killed by
Hamlet's father (also
named Hamlet). Now
Fortinbras wishes to
attack Denmark to
avenge his father's honor,
making him another foil
for Prince Hamlet.
The Ghost
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The specter of
Hamlet's recently
deceased father. The
ghost, who claims to
have been murdered
by Claudius, calls
upon Hamlet to
avenge him.
The Ghost continued
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It is not entirely certain whether the ghost
is what it appears to be, or whether it is
something else. Hamlet speculates that
the ghost might be a devil sent to deceive
him and tempt him into murder, and the
question of what the ghost is or where it
comes from is never definitively resolved.
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern
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Two slightly bumbling
courtiers, former
friends of Hamlet
from Wittenberg, who
are summoned by
Claudius and Gertrude
to discover the cause
of Hamlet's strange
behavior.