HAMLET:
Shakespeare’s Masterpiece
Shakespeare’s Canon
Today scholars tend to subdivide Shakespeare's Canon into groups according to their
structure, year of composition, style, and main themes.
English History Plays: Shakespeare wrote many plays about English history, covering
the reigns of English kings from the 12th to the 16th centuries.
Roman Plays: among Shakespeare's historical plays, three deal with events and
characters taken from Roman history. They are Julius Caesar, Antony and Cleopatra and
Consolanus.
Comedies: Shakespeare's comedies defy any form of classification and categorisation.
They represent a corpus of their own, with their own features and characteristics.
Dark Comedies: this group refers to some plays - All's Well that Ends Well Troilus and
Cressida Measure for Measure -written at the end of the 16th century. The phrase 'dark
comedies' underlines the fact that these plays cannot be considered as proper
tragedies, but are more like comedies with a dark, pessimistic side.
Tragedies: After Hamlet, Shakespeare wrote his most famous tragedies - Othello, King
Lear, and Macbeth.
Romances: Shakespeare's later plays are called "romances" and include plays which
contain elements of tragedy and comedy - tragi-comedies - and are characterised by
fictional, almost improbable plots.
Place and Time
Hamlet is a play written by William Shakespeare. It is estimated to have been written
between 1599 and 1601. One of Shakespeare’s best-known and most highly regarded
works, it is also his longest. Interestingly, there are three different versions of the play
which have survived to this day. The First Quarto, published in 1603, is only just over
half as long as the Second Quarto, which was printed a year later in 1604. The First
Folio was published in 1623, as part of the first version of Shakespeare’s Complete
Works.
The version most of us know today is a combination of the second two versions. Hamlet
is widely recognized as one of the most powerful plays in English theatre history. The
story might have a specific place and time, but it's not exactly a historical drama: the
play has a distinct 17th-century aura. Denmark was a Protestant nation at the time
Shakespeare wrote the play, and Hamlet seems to be a typical Protestant child—he
goes to school in Wittenberg, Germany, and is also sceptical of the Ghost who claims to
be the one of his father.
Shakespeare
The Plot
The play revolves around the main character, Hamlet, the prince of Denmark. When
Hamlet's father dies, Hamlet's uncle Claudius marries his mother and takes the throne
for himself. Hamlet's father appears to the young prince as a ghost and tells his son
that he was murdered by Claudius and wants Hamlet to kill Claudius to avenge his
death.
Feeling he needs proof before taking any drastic action, when a company of travelling
actors appears at court, Hamlet invites them to perform a play. The story of this playwithin-a-play is similar to the story of the murder of the old king and Hamlet believes
it will cause Claudius to reveal his guilt. Hamlet's suspicions are confirmed by Claudius'
reactions. Hamlet feigns mental illness while investigating the claims of his father's
ghost. However, the situation really affects him deeply mentally, and he ends up
accidentally killing another man, Polonius, thinking he is Claudius. Polonius was the
father of Hamlet's girlfriend, Ophelia, and when she finds out, she kills herself by
drowning.
The story culminates in a sword fight between Hamlet and Laertes, Ophelia's brother.
Laertes dipped his sword in poison, which he also added to the wine. This results in
the deaths of Hamlet, his mother Gertrude, and Claudius at the end of the play. In the
final scene young Fortinbras, the prince of Norway, arrives and claims the throne of
Denmark.
Main Characters
As the name of the play suggests, the main character of the play is Hamlet, the prince
of Denmark and one of the most famous and important theatre characters of all time.
Hamlet is a unique character in the panorama of Western drama for many reasons: he
is an extremely talkative character, and his excellent verbal skills allow him to hide his
intentions and pretend to be what he is not throughout the play. Hamlet is also the
prototypical melancholic character: his grief is not only dependent on the death of his
father but is a condition that profoundly affects his soul on an existential level, causing
him to constantly ponder and question the workings of his mind.
Another important character is Ophelia. She’s Polonius’ daughter and Laertes’ sister.
Hamlet has been in love with her for a while before the play starts and has given her
several gifts during their courtship until her father warns her away from him and tells
her not to see him anymore. Polonius also misjudges many situations throughout the
play and is eventually killed by Hamlet while hiding behind an arras, or screen.
Claudius is the brother of Old Hamlet and Hamlet's uncle. After his brother’s death, he
married Gertrude and became the King of Denmark and criticises Hamlet for being
too upset over the death of his father. Gertrude is the Queen of Denmark and is the
mother of Hamlet. Within two months of her husband dying, she married Claudius.
Hamlet does not like this new marriage and criticises her choice to remarry.
Hamlet
Main Themes
Medieval and Renaissance Man: The characters of Hamlet bring a number of
Renaissance attributes into play. Hamlet’s a philosopher, inspired by humanist ideas:
a man who has lost his faith in religion, reflects on the extraordinary abilities of the
human mind and the meaning of life and death as in “To be or not to be…”. Hamlet is a
prince, a person of action but at the same time a sceptic, a man torn between action
and thought in events which highlight a contrast between appearance and reality and
between the individual and society.
Action and Hesitation: A central theme of the play is hesitation and indecision. Why
didn't Hamlet act quickly to avenge his father's death? In part, because circumstances
present so much doubt and uncertainty. Can we get real knowledge from a ghost? The
play raises many important questions to consider, including the value of life itself and
the inability to know what will happen after life.
Role of Women: Only two women have names and roles in Hamlet. his mother, Queen
Gertrude, and Ophelia. There are two central issues that concern these women: the
way Hamlet sees them and their role in society. Hamlet is suspicious of both, and his
pretended madness seems to come close to real madness in his angry treatment of
them.
Justice and Honour: The nobility's rule of justice and honour demanded revenge when
honour was lost. The murder of a king corrupts society and must be dealt with
properly. However, the concepts of justice become confused and in the end at the cost
of innocent lives and the life of Hamlet himself.
Technique and Language
Hamlet has a layered structure, typical of Shakespeare's more mature plays. The first
dramatic action level deals with events involving Hamlet and his attempt to avenge his
father's death. Here, Hamlet uses drama as a tool to re-enact the scene of his father's
death, becoming the director of a play within the play, and turning the actual actors of
the main play into the audience. This creates a kaleidoscope effect that blurs the lines
between actor, audience, director, and author, and at the same time stands for one of
the main modern features of the entire play. There are many elements that associate
Hamlet with the Renaissance genre of revenge tragedy. Everything in the play seems
to suggest that Hamlet will soon avenge his father's death, but there is one obstacle:
Hamlet's indecision.
Iambic pentameter is the name given to the rhythm that Shakespeare uses in his plays.
The rhythm of iambic pentameter is like a heartbeat, with one soft beat and one strong
beat repeated five times. Shakespeare writes in a combination of prose and verse.
Prose is a conversational way of speaking which doesn’t have a set rhythm or structure.
Verse always has a set rhythm and structure. Rhyming couplets are two lines written
in iambic pentameter that end in the same sound, or a rhyme. They are often used to
sum up the end of a character’s speech.
Monologue or Soliloquy? A monologue refers to a long speech delivered by a character
during a conversation while a soliloquy refers to the act of speaking one's thoughts
aloud when by oneself or regardless of listeners and a formal speech is made directly
to an audience. The most famous example of soliloquy (very often used into the play)
is the high speech of “To be or not to be…” that we analysed for this literature research.
Shakespeare
To be or not to be - Analysis
The expression «To be or not to be» is taken from the first line of Hamlet's monologue
that appears in Act 3, Scene 1 of Hamlet. The monologue is 33 lines long. It takes two
to four minutes to make. In this passage, Hamlet is contemplating the meaning of life
and death. He's talking to himself, so it's a soliloquy, but the audience can share his
thoughts. The questions he asked himself were: Had I better continue living or to
commit suicide? Why should we accept life's difficulties, when we can end them by
suicide? Hamlet initially argued that death would indeed be better. However, he quickly
changed his mind, saying that no one knows for sure what will happen after death.
Hamlet's thoughts on life and death are general,
The first line is called chiasmus because of its balance and structure, and that's what
makes it so memorable. Chiasma is always short, snappy, and says a lot in the repetition
of words and their balance. And so, Hamlet's speech begins to 'to be or not to be',
arguably Shakespeare's most memorable line - in the collective conscience centuries
after these words were written and performed.
Shakespeare uses several metaphors in this soliloquy. One of the first metaphors lies
in the line «to take arms against the sea of troubles», where this «sea of troubles»
represents the anguish of life, namely Hamlet's own struggle with life and death.
Shakespeare also used metonymy as when he used the concept of sleep as a substitute
for death when Hamlet said, "To die, to sleep." The phrase «to die, to sleep» is an
example of repetition, as it occurs once on line 5 and once on line 9.
The "To be or not to be" soliloquy in Shakespeare's Hamlet is one of the most famous
passages in English literature, and its opening line is one of the most quoted in modern
English. Many people who have not even read Hamlet know about «To be or not to be».
This is mainly because the symbolic line is often quoted in other works of art and
literature⁠—even popular culture. And it's not just quoted; some people use it
sarcastically or ironically.
Curiosities
I.
II.
III.
There are significant differences between the versions of the play. The
phrase ‘To be or not to be: that is the question‘ was ‘To be or not to be, I
there’s the point’ in the First Quarto. Even Polonius, earlier, was called
Corambis
This play was based on an earlier play and the earlier play was itself based
on an older legend. In the original story, a thirteenth-century chronicle
written by Saxo Grammaticus, Hamlet is Amleth and is only a little boy – and
it’s common knowledge that his uncle has killed his father.
Hamlet has been translated into Klingon. The Klingon Hamlet was
translated by Nick Nicholas and Andrew Strader of the ‘Klingon
Shakespeare Restoration Project’, using the fictional language from the
television series Star Trek.
Hamlet
Personal Considerations
Although it was hard work, we think Hamlet is really a magnificent play and everyone
should know it. Hamlet's own inner dissension is a bit like what we human beings all
feel. The passage of "to be or not to be" is really the culmination of an agony that at
least once in a lifetime everyone has experienced, especially in adolescence. So, we
believe that everyone can find themselves in Hamlet and Shakespeare's words and can
see something beautiful in this play
Sources
Amazing Minds: New Generation 1, Lang, Pearson
interestingliteraure.com
blog.prepscholar.com
poemanalysis.com
nosweatshakespeare.com
toppr.com
rsc.org.uk
twinkl.it
sparknotes.com
shakespeare.org.uk
shmoop.com
Ameli Luigi
Maroni Morgan
Maroni Samuel
Paci Nicolò
Sacripanti Matteo