Rachelle Schmidt
Jordre Fagerland
Dessie Westall
Bekah Hartman
Similarities
Concept 1: In both stories the King is killed by the brother who wants the throne.
In Hamlet, King Hamlets’ brother Claudius wanted to power of the throne. He poisoned King
Hamlet while he was sleeping. Claudius now is the King. In the Lion King, Mufasa is the King of Pride
Rock. Scar, his evil brother, wants to take over his kingdom. Scar sets Mufasa up by having his son Simba
be in the middle of a stampede. Then scar comes along and throws him off of a rock.
Concept 2: In both stories the brother’s successfully take over their kingdoms.
After Claudius kills King Hamlet, he marries the Queen. He now becomes the King and no one
really knows the real reason why he died. In the Lion King, Scar takes over the kingdom and doesn’t
really marry Sarabi, but he does force her to do things for him or else she won’t be queen.
Concept 3: Both sons’s had plans on how they were going to get revenge.
In Hamlet, he pretends to go crazy so it would be acceptable if he murdered Claudius. Hamlet
plans the play to see if the ghost was telling the truth about Claudius murdering King Hamlet. In the Lion
King, they sneak in to Pride Rock. Timon and Pumbaa distract the hyenas while Simba goes to find Scar
to take back the kingdom.
Concept 4: In both stories their father’s come to visit them in ghost form.
In Hamlet, the guards see a ghost and they think that it is King Hamlet. The tell Hamlet about it
and they plan to go out there the next night and try to see if it will talk to him. The ghost comes again
and tells Hamlet that Claudius is the one who murdered him. In the Lion King, instead of the guards
bringing the prince to the ghost Rafiki brings Simba to the lake where he sees his father. His father tells
him that he needs to take his place in the circle of life. Which means that he needs to go get the
kingdom back.
Concept 5: In both stories the sons’s are both enraged because of the way that the villains now treat
their mothers’.
In Hamlet, Claudius won the queens affection over. He never told her that he was the one who
killed her husband. He kept a lot of secrets from her. In the Lion King, Scar is not nice to Sarabi. He
doesn’t share the food with her and he doesn’t treat her like the queen.
Concept 6: In both stories the sons have significant others.
In Hamlet, Hamlet is in love with Ophelia. Her father Polunious is good friends with the king.
Ophelia goes crazy after he father’s death and she drowns herself in the water. In the Lion King, Simba is
in love with Nala. Nala’s mother is good friends with Sarabi. Nala however does not die but convinces
Simba to come back, and she helps him defeat Scar.
Concept 7: In both stories they let their evil uncles rule their kingdom.
In Hamlet, he has a plan to get revenge on his father but he never really acts on it to try to get
the throne back. He wants revenge for his father’s death rather than the throne. In the Lion King, Scar
convinces him that Mufasa’s death was his fault. So he tells him to run away and never return. So he
runs away and it takes someone else for him to realize that it wasn’t his fault.
Differences
Concept 8: Timon and Pumbaa remain loyal friends to Simba but in Hamlet, Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern turn against Hamlet and begin to do things for Claudius.
Simba meets Timon and Pumbaa when he runs away. They help him get over the fact that he
thinks he killed his father, Hakuna Matata. When Simba decides to come back to Pride Rock they are
there for him to help get rid of Scar. In Hamlet, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern show up. But the reason
they are in Denmark is to spy on Hamlet. Hamlet pretty much knows why they are here and they are not
loyal friends to him.
Concept 9: The queen in Hamlet didn’t do anything about the death of her husband or anything to help
Hamlet, but in the Lion King, Sarabi is upset about the down fall of her kingdom and is on Simba’s side.
The queen in Hamlet hurriedly married her husband’s brother, Claudius. She didn’t really have
time to mourn her husband’s death but they way they made it sound is she started to like him before his
death. She really didn’t help at all, and we think that she knew that Hamlet was being set up for his
death. In the Lion King, Sarabi doesn’t ever like Scar and knows that Simba wasn’t responsible for his
father’s death. When Simba comes to fight Scar she is right along to help.
Concept 10: In Hamlet, Hamlet has a “friendly” dual with Laertes because Hamlet killed his father. But in
the Lion King, Simba comes for Scar to take back his kingdom.
In Hamlet, He is set up to have a dual with Laertes. He knows that something bad is about to
happen. They dual and they both end up dead. In the Lion King, Simba comes for Scar, and no one
knows about it. Other lions help Simba fight the hyenas off so he can fight Scar. Simba is about ready to
drop him off of the rock like he did to his father, but instead just tells him to run away and never return.
Concept 11: The setting and the characters are all a different.
In Hamlet, we have humans. Also the setting is in Denmark. In the Lion King, they are a bunch of
personified animals. This setting is in Africa, mostly on the Pridelands.
Concept 12: In Hamlet, mostly everyone dies. But in the Lion King, it is a happy ending and no one dies
but Mufasa. We think that Scar might have gotten eaten by hyenas.
In Hamlet during the dual, the queen drinks to the success of Hamlet’s defeat and it had poison
in her drink. Then Laertes then cuts Hamlet with the poisoned sword, then Hamlet gets that sword from
him and cuts him. Then Hamlet pushes him off the ledge and he dies. Then Hamlet kills Claudius. Finally,
Hamlet dies from the poison. In the Lion King, Mufasa was killed by Scar, but that was the only animal,
that we really know of, who died in that story.
Concept 13: In Hamlet, Claudius isn’t necessarily a bad king. But in the Lion King, Scar is a terrible king.
In Hamlet, Claudius does take over the kingdom in the wrong way. When he is king though the
kingdom doesn’t really change. It didn’t go downhill, until people found out that he was the one who
killed King Hamlet. In the Lion King, when Scar becomes the king everything goes downhill. The land
becomes dead and they have no food or water to drink. The animals begin to starve.
Concept 14: In Hamlet, Hamlet doesn’t really feel responsible for his father’s death, but in the Lion King,
Simba feels like he is responsible for Mufasa’s death.
In Hamlet, he just wanted revenge for his father’s death. He thought that he had died of natural
death, but when visited by the ghost he finds out that he actually was poisoned. In the Lion King, Simba
was in the middle of the stampede when Mufasa was trying to save him. Simba got out of the stampede
and Mufasa was trying to climb out on the rocks and Scar grabbed him and threw him off the rocks.
Simba didn’t see that and Scar convinced him that it was his fault that he did not survive.