William Shakespeare’s Hamlet
• Over twenty film versions of Hamlet have been produced just since World War II.
• More has been written about Hamlet than about any other literary character.
• Is Hamlet the most intelligent character in literature?

William Shakespeare’s Hamlet
• Notice the ambiguities in the play
• Why does it take Hamlet so long to try to kill
Claudius?
• Why does Hamlet decide to act insane?
• Does Hamlet really go insane?
• What does Gertrude know?

William Shakespeare’s Hamlet
• Deception / Appearance and Reality
• Passion and Reason
• Decay and Corruption
• Melancholy
• Madness and Sanity
• Revenge (Hamlet, Fortinbras, Laertes)
• Misogyny

William Shakespeare’s Hamlet
• What does the literary term “foil” refer to, and who are two of the primary foils to Hamlet in William
Shakespeare’s Hamlet? What about these characters makes them foils?
• “Foil” = “any person that enhances or underscores the distinctive characteristics of another”
• The terms comes from something similar to the foil used around the bulb in a flashlight.
• Who are the primary foils to Hamlet in the play, and why?
• Laertres and Fortinbras: How are they similar to and different from Hamlet?

William Shakespeare’s Hamlet
• Page 5: Introduction to Hamlet (“Take thy fair hour,
Laertes”)
• Page 6: Hamlet’s first soliloquy (“O, that this too too solid flesh would melt”)
• Page 10-11: Ophelia and Polonius (“Farewell, Ophelia; and remember well”)

William Shakespeare’s Hamlet
• Page 25: Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, and Hamlet
(“What should we say, my lord?”)
• Page 31: Hamlet’s second soliloquy (“Now I am alone”)
• Page 33: Hamlet’s third soliloquy (“To be, or not to be: that is the question”)

William Shakespeare’s Hamlet
• Page 33: Hamlet and Ophelia (“The fair Ophelia!”)
• Page 36: Hamlet and Horatio (“Here, sweet lord, at your service”)
• Page 44: Claudius’ confession (“O, my offense is rank”)

William Shakespeare’s Hamlet
• Hamlet’s bitter argument with Ophelia
• Hamlet’s cruelty
• Ophelia’s mistake
• Ophelia’s comments after Hamlet leaves: “O, what a noble mind is here o’erthrown!” (page 34)
• The play within the play (“The Mouse-trap”) and what it reveals
• Claudius’s confession in soliloquy
• The killing of Polonius

William Shakespeare’s Hamlet
• Hamlet sent to England and what happens on the way there
• Laertes returns from France and demands justice from Claudius
• Ophelia goes mad and drowns
• Hamlet returns
• Laertes conspires with Claudius to kill Hamlet

William Shakespeare’s Hamlet
Changes in Hamlet
• Hamlet seeing Fortinbras: “How all occasions do inform against me” (page 54)
• The graveyard scene (pages 68-69)
• Hamlet and Horatio (page 70, page 74): very important!
• “There’s a divinity that shapes our ends, / Roughhew them as we will”
• “There is special providence in the fall of a sparrow”

William Shakespeare’s Hamlet
Summary of Events
• All hell breaks loose at the end
• Claudius’ callousness
• Many characters die
• Fortinbras takes over after Hamlet names him as his successor
• The catharsis. (Aristotle—the end of a tragedy involves a catharsis = a purging or cleansing of the emotions of pity and fear. Tragedy arouses the emotions of pity and fear in order to purge away their excess)

William Shakespeare’s Hamlet
• Polonius
• Rosencrantz and Guildenstern
• Ophelia
• Gertrude
• Laertes
• Claudius
• Hamlet