Hamlet
True or False
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1. If someone hurts one of your family
members, you should hurt them back.
Basic Plot
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Hamlet is the son of the late king of
Denmark (who dies two months
before the play starts).
After his father’s death, his Uncle
Claudius becomes king and marries
his mother, Gertrude
Hamlet thinks Claudius may have
murdered Hamlet Sr. to become
king.
Basic Plot
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Two officers of the king, Marcellus and Bernardo,
beckon Hamlet’s friend, Horatio, and later Hamlet
himself to see the late King Hamlet’s ghost appear
at midnight.
Privately, the ghost tells Hamlet that Claudius really
did kill him by pouring poison into his ear while he
was sleeping.
Hamlet gets angry and devises a plan for revenge.
HAMLET: Prince of Denmark
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The prince of Denmark, and a student at the
University of Wittenberg.
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Hamlet is melancholy, bitter, and cynical, full of
hatred for his uncle and disgust at his mother for
marrying him.
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Hamlet becomes obsessed with avenging his father’s
death but keeps thinking of reasons why he should
wait before killing Claudius—then chastises himself
for failing to act boldly.
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Hamlet is a character of contradictions.
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At times Hamlet is indecisive, but at other times he is
prone to impulsive acts of violence.
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Hamlet can be compared to Simba from The Lion King
CLAUDIUS: The Evil Uncle
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Claudius can be compared to Scar from The Lion
King
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The new king of Denmark, Hamlet’s uncle.
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The villain of the play, Claudius is a calculating,
ambitious politician, adept at manipulating others
for his own ends and willing to execute,
assassinate, or murder to stay in power.
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He doesn’t understand Hamlet or Hamlet’s
motives, but he is quick to perceive Hamlet as a
threat and take decisive action against him.
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Claudius does occasionally show signs of remorse
and human feeling—his affection for Gertrude,
for instance, seems sincere.
GERTRUDE: The Queen of
Denmark
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The queen of Denmark, Hamlet’s
mother, recently married to
Claudius.
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She seems clearly to love Hamlet,
but Hamlet sees her as a weak,
even depraved, woman motivated
wholly by lust.
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Hamlet has such strong feelings
about her sex life that he becomes
momentarily distracted from his
revenge quest, urging her toward a
life of chastity.
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Gertrude can be compared to
Sarabi in The Lion King
POLONIUS: Ophelia’s pompous
father
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The Lord Chamberlain of Claudius’s court, and
the father of Laertes and Ophelia.
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Polonius has good intentions, but he tends to be
somewhat underhanded.

He frequently leaps to the wrong conclusions,
and his speeches are comically pompous and
long-winded.

He is completely incapable of figuring out what
Hamlet is up to.

Polonius can be compared to Zazu in The Lion
King
HORATIO: Hamlet’s One True
Friend
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Studied with the prince at the
University of Wittenberg.
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Hamlet trusts Horatio above any
of the other characters, valuing
him for his even temper and
equanimity—qualities that Hamlet
seems to despise in himself.
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Horatio is loyal and helpful to
Hamlet throughout the play.
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Horatio can be compared to
Timon or Pumba from The Lion
King
OPHELIA: Hamlet’s girlfriend
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Polonius’s daughter, a beautiful
young woman with whom Hamlet
has been in love.
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A sweet and innocent young girl,
Ophelia dutifully strives to obey
her father and her brother,
Laertes, allowing Polonius to use
her in his scheme to spy on
Hamlet.
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Ophelia can be compared to Nala
from The Lion King.
LAERTES: Ophelia’s brother
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Polonius’s son and Ophelia’s
brother, a young man who
spends much of the play in
France.
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Passionate and quick to
action, Laertes is a foil for
the reflective and agonized
Hamlet.
FORTINBRAS: Prince of Norway
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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).
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Now Fortinbras wishes to attack
Denmark to avenge his father’s
honor, making him another foil
for Prince Hamlet.
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Hamlet admires Fortinbras for his
willingness to fight for no good
reason.
THE GHOST: Hamlet’s Father
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The specter of Hamlet’s recently deceased father.
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The ghost, who claims to have been murdered by
Claudius, calls upon Hamlet to avenge him.
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However, it is not entirely certain whether the ghost is
what it appears to be.
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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.
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The dead king can be compared to Mufasa from The Lion
King.
ROSENCRANTZ &
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.
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The silly yet dangerous hyenas
from The Lion King have been
compared to these characters,
who are also pawns of a villain
(Claudius/Scar).
OTHERS
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OSRIC: A foolish courtier
VOLTIMAND and CORNELIUS: Courtiers
sent to Norway to prevent Fortinbras from
attacking Denmark
MARCELLUS and BARNARDO: Officers who
see the ghost
FRANCISCO: A soldier
REYNALDO: Polonius servant and spy
Commentary
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Hamlet is perhaps the
closest of Shakespeare’s
tragedies to modern
sensibility. Its hero’s doubt
and indecisions are familiar
to modern man, equally
tormented by a lack of
certainties and the inability
to communicate.
Commentary cont.
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As the Romantic critic August W. von Schlegel
noted, Hamlet is the tragedy of will: in it,
thought kills action.
Hamlet’s indecision must be placed against the
background of the revenge tragedy, a very
popular genre at the time.
According to its conventions, Hamlet should
have sought revenge with all his force and as
soon as possible. But he does not do so. He is
full of hesitation.
Themes
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Impossibility of Certainty
Complexity of Action
Mystery of Death and After Life
Nation as a Diseased Body
Revenge
Class Issues
Love
Meaningful Excerpts
To be, or not to be- that is the
question:
Whether ‘tis nobler in the
mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of
outrageous fortune
Or to take arms against a sea
of troubles
And by opposing end them…
Yorick’s Skull
NO FEAR Translation
To be, or not to be- that
is the question:
Whether ‘tis nobler in the
mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of
outrageous fortune
Or to take arms against a
sea of troubles
And by opposing end
them…
The question is: is it better to
be alive or dead?
Is it nobler to put up with all
the nasty things that luck
throws your way, or to
fight against all those
troubles by simply putting
an end to them once and
for all?
Meaningful Excerpts II
NO FEAR Translation
To die, to sleepNo more- and by sleep to say we end
The heartache and the thousand
natural shocks
That flesh is heir to‘tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wished! To die, to sleep.
To sleep, perchance to dream- ay,
there’s the rub,
For in that sleep of death what dreams
may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal
coil,
Must give us pause. There’s the respect
That makes calamity of so long life
Dying, sleeping- that’s all dying
is- a sleep that ends all the
heartache and shocks that
life on earth gives us- that’s
an achievement to wish for.
To die, to sleep- to sleep,
maybe to dream.
Ah, but there’s the catch, in
Death’s sleep who knows
what kinds of dreams might
come, after we’ve put the
noise of life behind us.
That’s something to worry
about.
That’s what makes us stretch
out our sufferings so long.
LEGACY
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Hamlet is Shakespeare’s most famous
play.
The popularity of Hamlet has been
constant through the centuries, and its
story is one of the most frequently
filmed.