Standard 17: Students will identify, analyze, and apply knowledge of the themes, structure, and
elements of drama and provide evidence from the text to support their understanding.
Core Value: Communication
The play suggests that our lives may
be controlled by a divine power
(fate).
Do you believe in fate? Why or why
not? Why do you think people
believe in fate?
Standard 17: Students will identify, analyze, and apply knowledge of the themes, structure, and
elements of drama and provide evidence from the text to support their understanding.
Core Value: Communication
Hamlet may be the greatest English play ever
written. The character of Hamlet is so
ambiguous, so contradictory that we are not
sure if he is really good or if he is bad. Does he
deserve his fate or is he heroic?
This ambiguity of character lends the play its
depth.
Standard 17: Students will identify, analyze, and apply knowledge of the themes, structure, and
elements of drama and provide evidence from the text to support their understanding.
Core Value: Communication

Using the members of your
group as characters, outline a
brief revenge story. What
caused the situation to turn to
revenge? What was the nature
of the revenge? How does the
revenge turn out?
Standard 17: Students will identify, analyze, and apply knowledge of the themes, structure, and
elements of drama and provide evidence from the text to support their understanding.
Core Value: Communication

The Law of Unintended Consequences
states that almost all human actions have
at least one unintended consequence:
"There shall be some unexpected result."
In other words, each cause has more
than one effect, and will include
unforeseen effects. Less of a law or rule
itself, it is more a call to rulers and law
makers [and decision makers] to beware.
Standard 17: Students will identify, analyze, and apply knowledge of the themes, structure, and
elements of drama and provide evidence from the text to support their understanding.
Core Value: Communication


So in a story where a character sets out to get
revenge, and devises a plan specifically to get
revenge, will that plan play out perfectly?
What are other possible outcomes that could
occur? (This is a rhetorical question, no
answers are needed.)
Standard 17: Students will identify, analyze, and apply knowledge of the themes, structure, and
elements of drama and provide evidence from the text to support their understanding.
Core Value: Communication
In his famous short story “The Cask of Amontillado”
Poe’s main character, Montresor, claims that in
order to get “real” revenge, one must fulfill 3
criteria.



One must make oneself known as an avenger on
the revengee.
One must punish and get away with it.
One must NEVER feel guilty about what they have
done to get revenge.
Only then has one TRULY gotten revenge.
Standard 17: Students will identify, analyze, and apply knowledge of the themes, structure, and
elements of drama and provide evidence from the text to support their understanding.
Core Value: Communication
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Hamlet – son of Gertrude and the dead King Hamlet
Gertrude – Queen and Hamlet’s mother
Claudius – Hamlet’s uncle and now step-father
Horatio – Hamlet’s friend
Polonius – Advisor to the new King
Ophelia – Polonius’ daughter and Hamlet’s girlfriend
Laertes – Ophelia’s brother
Rosencrantz and Gildenstern – childhood friends of
Hamlet
Hamlet’s Ghost – young Hamlet’s father in ghostly
form
Standard 17: Students will identify, analyze, and apply knowledge of the themes, structure, and
elements of drama and provide evidence from the text to support their understanding.
Core Value: Communication


The Oedipus complex in Freudian psychoanalysis
refers to stage of psychosexual development in
childhood where children of both sexes regard their
father as an adversary and competitor for the exclusive
love of their mother. The name derives from the Greek
myth of Oedipus, who unwittingly kills his father,
Laius, and marries his mother, Jocasta.
In Jungian thought, the Oedipus complex tends to refer
only to the experience of male children, with female
children experiencing an Electra complex in which they
regard their mothers as competitor for the exclusive
love of their fathers.
Standard 17: Students will identify, analyze, and apply knowledge of the themes, structure, and
elements of drama and provide evidence from the text to support their understanding.
Core Value: Communication

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Is Hamlet basically good or basically bad?
Is he cunning or crazy?
Is he a good son? Nephew? Friend? Boyfriend?
Is Hamlet brave or cowardly?
Is he in-the-right or in-the-wrong?
Is he all talk or is he a man of action?
These questions, and others, are left for you to decide.
As we read the play, draw your own conclusions
about Hamlet.
Standard 17: Students will identify, analyze, and apply knowledge of the themes, structure, and
elements of drama and provide evidence from the text to support their understanding.
Core Value: Communication
Standard 17: Students will identify, analyze, and apply knowledge of the themes, structure, and
elements of drama and provide evidence from the text to support their understanding.
Core Value: Communication
Standard 17: Students will identify, analyze, and apply knowledge of the themes, structure, and
elements of drama and provide evidence from the text to support their understanding.
Core Value: Communication
Old Kin
Young Prince
Hamlet
inbras
ROSENCRANTZ
AND
GUILDENSTERN
Horatio
Standard 17: Students will identify, analyze, and apply knowledge of the themes, structure, and
elements of drama and provide evidence from the text to support their understanding.
Core Value: Communication

1. Have you or anyone you have known ever
seen or claimed to have witnessed some kind
of supernatural being? Explain the
circumstances surrounding the event. Do you
believe in the supernatural? Explain.
Standard 17: Students will identify, analyze, and apply knowledge of the themes, structure, and
elements of drama and provide evidence from the text to support their understanding.
Core Value: Communication
Standard 17: Students will identify, analyze, and apply knowledge of the themes, structure, and
elements of drama and provide evidence from the text to support their understanding.
Core Value: Communication

How are relationships between stepparents
and stepchildren generally depicted in fiction
or film? Do you have any experience with or
knowledge of step-relationships? What
conflicts and barriers must be overcome? What
are the advantages, the positive aspects of these
relationships?
Standard 17: Students will identify, analyze, and apply knowledge of the themes, structure, and
elements of drama and provide evidence from the text to support their understanding.
Core Value: Communication
To what extent do parents have the right to "spy"
or check up on their children? What
circumstance might allow or prevent this?
Standard 17: Students will identify, analyze, and apply knowledge of the themes, structure, and
elements of drama and provide evidence from the text to support their understanding.
Core Value: Communication
Pass the Character

Focus: -introduction to stock characters similar to those in Hamlet;

-exploring the connection between props/costumes and character.

Bring in a box or bag in which you have assembled the following costume pieces and props: a

love letter; a shovel; a crown; a small bottle marked “Poison”; a garland of flowers; a skull; a

white sheet; a sword; and a set of prayer beads. Make sure your students have what they need to

get their responses down on paper before you let them see what you have brought in. As you

take an object out, tell them what it is and give them 30 seconds to write down everything they

can think of about the person to whom the object belongs.

When all of the objects have been introduced, divide the class into small groups (3-6 people) and

assign one or two objects to each. Working together, the members of each group must come up

with a detailed description of the character they associate with the object they have been given,

including his or her occupation, social class, historical era and leisure pursuits. As well, the
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group must be prepared to show the rest of the class how the character walks and talks.

When each group has had the chance to teach the class about the characters they have created,

including how to walk and talk like them, you are ready to improvise two-minute scenes with

any three of them (and their props) onstage. Take suggestions for locations in which to set the

scene and try different combinations of these characters each time. At any point the action may

be frozen and the command, “Pass the character!” given. The actors must then exchange

props/characters and continue with the scene in the new role.
Standard 17: Students will identify, analyze, and apply knowledge of the themes, structure, and
elements of drama and provide evidence from the text to support their understanding.
Core Value: Communication
"To the celestial and my soul's idol, the most
beautified Ophelia, "Doubt thou the stars are
fire; Doubt that the sun doth move; Doubt truth
to be a liar; But never doubt I love. O dear
Ophelia, I am ill at these numbers; I have not
art to reckon my groans: but that I love thee
best, O most best, believe it. Adieu. Thine
evermore most dear lady, whilst this machine is
to him, HAMLET."
Standard 17: Students will identify, analyze, and apply knowledge of the themes, structure, and
elements of drama and provide evidence from the text to support their understanding.
Core Value: Communication