Hamlet: An Introduction
Objectives
 Define by example the terms tragedy and tragic hero
 Show Hamlet to be an example of Renaissance tragic hero
 Identify and discuss the characteristics of this play that mark it as a
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Shakespearean tragedy
Trace Hamlet’s evolving psychological and emotional state and how his
condition is reflected in his soliloquies
Analyze the characters of Hamlet, Gertrude, Claudius, Polonius, and
Ophelia and their relationships to each other
Discuss the techniques Shakespeare uses to convey character and
character relationships to his audience
Identify and analyze the use of comic relief
Offer a close reading of Hamlet and support all assertions and
interpretations with direct evidence from the text, from authoritative
critical knowledge of the genre, or from authoritative criticism of the
play
Notable Aspects
 Genre
 Tragedy, specifically a revenge tragedy
 Structure
 A play in five acts, but the elapsed time span
divides the action into three parts
 Character
 Seven soliloquies articulate the Prince’s state of mind
 Even the villain has a conscience
 Parents and children, especially fathers and sons
 Ideas and Imagery
 A ghost evokes more issues about the soul and afterlife than about the
supernatural
 A garden, graves, make-up, theater/acting/role-playing, and other
imagery
English Tragedy Usually Involves…
 Someone in a high place (ruler, general, noble) whose own flaws
and choices feed the downfall or who gets set up by an
unscrupulous villain
 Ambition is a common tragic impetus in the Renaissance, as is
love or a conflict of values (as in Hamlet with revenge)
 Tragic protagonists eventually have to recognize their faults and
mistakes or the failure of their willful wrongdoing and accept
responsibility for it
 In most tragedies, there is a point of no return, at which the
protagonist is inescapably bound to disaster
Perspectives on the Action: Revenge
Murder is as old as Cain and Abel. Between brothers, through
time, it may be the legacy of primogeniture and the attendant jealousy
of younger sons, or it may be the continuation of an infant’s wanting the
toy a sibling has. Usually an urge to strike back follows. It points to a
deep and violent aspect of the human character—the willingness to take
the law into one’s own hands—prompted by an equally deep and
destabilizing sense of being wronged. Pain, suffering, and violence keep
audiences entranced by the stage or the screen. How many stories and
songs share the “I’ve been done wrong” or “You’ll be sorry” motif, one
of the primal human themes, as potent as young love, which is often a
contributing factor.
Hamlet is a tale of two brothers, a crown they both wear, and the
woman they both marry. Not surprisingly, those events occur by means
of murder, and, consequently, Hamlet also becomes a tale of three sons
of slain fathers, each seeking vengeance or restitution.
Common Revenge Elements
 The discovery of a murder or other wrong
 A need to find “who done it,” for that is unknown
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or secret for a time
A need for justice but the inability to get it because the
murderer is in power or closely linked to that power
Derangement or madness on the part of the avenger
A passage of time between discovery of the wrong and the
enactment of revenge
A play within a play as part of the elaborate plan for revenge
A pile of bodies at the end
The avenger not surviving his revenge
I. Shakespeare and His Times
Ideas that characterized the Renaissance of 1500-1650:
 Humans had the potential for development.
 The idea of medieval Christianity, that this world is a preparation
for eternal life, was questioned. Instead, people began to see
everyday life as meaningful and an opportunity for noble activity.
 This was a time for heroes. The ideal Elizabethan man was a
talented courtier, adventurer, fencer, poet, and conversationalist.
H was a witty and eloquent gentleman who examined his own
nature and the causes of his actions.
 Marriages were arranged, usually for wealth.
 Women had a lower social status than men.
 People were concerned over the order of things. They felt there
was “a great chain of being.” This concept originated with Plato
and expressed the idea that there is a proper order within all
things from the tiniest grains of sand to heaven and God. When
everything was in its proper position, there was harmony. When
the order was broken, everything was upset, and everyone
suffered.
 People felt that their rulers were God’s agents. To kill a king
was a heinous crime; the heavens would show ominous signs
when such evil was present.
II. Features of Shakespeare’s Character
and Theme Development
1. Formal versus informal forms of address
 Two forms of second-person address: you (formal) and thou
(informal)
 Formal used when an inferior was speaking to a superior, when
two business colleagues who were not close friends were
speaking, or when the speaker wanted to maintain a distance
 Informal was more intimate and used among friends, family
members, and persons to whom the speaker wanted to imply
closeness
Act I, Scene ii: Claudius addresses Laertes, inviting him to present his
petition to return to France
And now, Laertes, what’s the news with you?
You told us of some suit. What is’t, Laertes?
You cannot speak of reason to the Dane,
And lose your voice. What wouldst thou beg, Laertes,
That shall not be my offer, not thy asking?
As the King shifts from the formal to the familiar, a reader can almost
see him rise from the throne, step down from the dais, and place a
warm and friendly arm around Laertes’ shoulders.
King Claudius: But now, my cousin Hamlet, and my son—
…How is it that the clouds still hang on you?
Queen Gertrude: Good Hamlet, cast thy nighted color off,
And let thine eye look like a friend on Denmark.
Queen Gertrude: Hamlet, thou hast thy father much offended
Hamlet: Mother, you have my father much offended.
2. Motifs
 The Garden/Serpent
 Belief is that Hamlet’s father died after being stung by a snake while
napping in his garden, but the Ghost says, “The serpent that did
sting thy father’s life / Now wears his crown.”
 Allusion to the Garden of Eden—what is it that is the sin for Adam
and Eve? How does Hamlet also lose his innocence?
 Act I, scene ii: Hamlet says the world is “an unweeded garden /
That grows to seed” (ground is cursed, Gen. 3:18)
 Ophelia’s flowers
 Gravedigger’s reference to his graveyard as a garden and himself to
Adam
 Hamlet’s desire for (and concept of ) Death
 Images of disease and decay
 Meta-fiction/Meta-drama
 Meta-fiction: comments on the very devices of fiction it employs;
usually involves irony and is self-reflective
 Meta-drama: calls attention to itself as a play or has occasion to
comment on its own actions and devices
III. Dramatic Conventions and Author’s
Techniques
 Soliloquy: monologue with the character alone on stage; device used
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to give the audience insight into the character’s thoughts and emotions
Aside: device used to give the audience insight into the character,
who is speaking to himself or directly to the audience; other characters
do not hear it
Allusion: indirect reference to another event, person, or work with
which the writer assumes the reader is familiar; used to establish
character, build theme, and set mood (particularly Greek and Roman
mythology, Roman history, and the Bible in Hamlet)
Use of the supernatural
Madness, either real or pretended (popular in Elizabethan drama)
Tragic hero
Conflict (primarily internal in Hamlet’s case)
IV. Ghosts, Girlfriends, and Graveyards
1. The Ghost of Hamlet’s father
 For Shakespeare’s audience, a matter of great philosophical debate
because Protestants did not believe in ghosts, simply an afterlife of
heaven or hell from which the soul did not return; some did believe
demons could assume the likeness of the dead
 Catholics, however, believed in afterlife regions of Limbo and
Purgatory, and it might be possible for souls to return to earth while
existing in these regions
 “I am thy father’s spirit, / Doom’d for a certain term to walk the night, /
And for the day confined to fast in fires, / Till the foul crimes done in my
days of nature / Are burnt and purged away” (in Catholic Purgatory…
could honestly be Hamlet’s father)
 Hamlet and Horatio are being educated in the very-Protestant Wittenberg
(1517 – Martin Luther began the Protestant Reformation in Wittenberg),
which justifies their first thought that the ghost is a demon
2. Ophelia
 What role does she play in his madness? Does he really love her? What
is the effect of her betrayal?
 Why does she apparently go mad?
 She is a young girl who has no choice but to obey her father. She will
dutifully marry the man he chooses.
 She is in love with a man who falls out of favor with everyone, including
her father.
 She sees Hamlet’s pain but is manipulated by her father and the king to spy
on Hamlet.
 Consider the effect of what occurs between her father and Hamlet and the
effect on her, especially how guilty she may feel for her involvement.
 Eve vs. the Virgin Mary
 Seducing temptress vs. innocent and virtuous
 Hamlet’s anger at his mother directed toward Ophelia (consider how he
begins to view all women)
3. Graveyards
 Hamlet sees Death as the great equalizer, but the gravediggers
complain that class distinctions exist even in death
 Groups not eligible for full Christian burial in hallowed ground:
unbaptized persons (including babies); suicides; unmarried,
pregnant women; and any person who died in a state of mortal
sin
 Not uncommon to be buried in a preused grave, especially for
lower classes
 Allows comic relief and allows Hamlet to philosophize about
dead and the purpose of earthly strife and his personal feelings
for the dead
 Treatment of the dead mirrors the statement about the
rottenness of Denmark
Timeline: Prior to the Play’s Beginning
 30 years prior to the beginning of the play
 Prince Hamlet is born
 Hamlet, Sr. kills Fortinbras, Sr. of Norway; his brother takes
over as tributary regent (and will be bedridden as the play
opens)
 A new gravedigger and sexton is appointed in Elsinore
 23 years prior
 Yorick, the king’s jester, dies (Hamlet, as a boy, had spent a lot of
time with him)
Timeline: The Year of the Play
 Tuesday, March 20 the year of the play
 King Hamlet dies in his garden, mid afternoon
 Messengers are sent to Hamlet in Wittenberg (could make it in 2-3
days)
 Monday, March 26
 Hamlet arrives at Elsinore from school for the funeral
 Thursday, March 30
 Horatio and Laertes (separately) arrive at Elsinore for the funeral
 Friday, March 31
 Funeral of Hamlet, Sr. ten days after
his death
 A week of public mourning follows
Timeline: Six Weeks After the Funeral
 Sunday, May 6
 Claudius marries Gertrude
 Claudius is probably lobbying electors to let him be the next
king
 Wednesday, May 16
 Electors decide Claudius is the most fit to handle the current
political situation
 Claudius is crowned
 Saturday, May 19 (midnight)
 Hamlet, Sr.’s ghost appears for the first time
Timeline: Two Months After Hamlet, Sr.’s
Death
 Monday, May 21
 Midnight: Ghost appears on the battlements to Bernardo,
Marcellus, and Horatio
 11:00 a.m.: Claudius addresses the public assembled at the first
council since the marriage and election of Claudius as king
 Claudius sends Voltimand to Norway and names Prince Hamlet most
immediate to the throne (after himself)
 Claudius “requests” Hamlet stay at Elsinore
 Hamlet meets Horatio and learns of the Ghost
 Hamlet agrees to meet on the battlements that
night between 11:00 and midnight
Parodies and Informational Clips
 The Simpsons:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OyQLJyW4Rk0
 John Green: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=My14mZaeq8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDCohlKUufs
 Thug Notes:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A98tf9krihg
 SparkNotes Summary:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t0CqUTmwKiM
 Montage:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JVph4-BWnkI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iUbqfmBIQG4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VvsTcOvr-wk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wbRnOQmmZY0