Group 1

HAMLET by William Shakespeare

I. Summary

In telling the story of a fatally indecisive character’s inability to choose the proper course to avenge his
father’s death, Hamlet explores questions of fate versus free will, whether it is better to act decisively or
let nature take its course, and ultimately if anything we do in our time on earth makes any difference.
Once he learns his uncle has killed his father, Hamlet feels duty-bound to take decisive action, but he
has so many doubts about his situation and even about his own feelings that he cannot decide what
action to take. The conflict that drives the plot of Hamlet is almost entirely internal: Hamlet wrestles
with his own doubt and uncertainty in search of something he believes strongly enough to act on. The
play’s events are side-effects of this internal struggle. Hamlet’s attempts to gather more evidence of
Claudius’s guilt alert Claudius to Hamlet’s suspicions, and as Hamlet’s internal struggle deepens, he
begins to act impulsively out of frustration, eventually murdering Polonius by mistake. The conflict of
Hamlet is never resolved: Hamlet cannot finally decide what to believe or what action to take. This lack
of resolution makes the ending of Hamlet especially horrifying: nearly all the characters are dead, but
nothing has been solved.

The play’s exposition shows us that Hamlet is in the midst of three crises: his nation is under attack, his
family is falling apart, and he feels deeply unhappy. The Ghost of the old king of Denmark appears on
the castle battlements, and the soldiers who see it believe it must be a bad omen for the kingdom. They
discuss the preparations being made against the threat from the Norwegian prince, Fortinbras. The next
scene deepens our sense that Denmark is in political crisis, as Claudius prepares a diplomatic strategy to
divert the threat from Fortinbras. We also learn that as far as Hamlet is concerned, his family is in crisis:
his father is dead and his mother has married someone Hamlet disapproves of. Hamlet is also
experiencing an internal crisis. Gertrude and Claudius are worried about his mood, and in his first
soliloquy we discover that he feels suicidal: “O that this too, too sullied flesh would melt” (I.ii.).

The three crises of the play’s opening—in the kingdom, in Hamlet’s family, and in Hamlet’s mind—lay
the groundwork for the play’s inciting incident: the Ghost’s demand that Hamlet avenge his father’s
death. Hamlet accepts at once that it is his duty to take revenge, and the audience can also see that
Hamlet’s revenge would go some way to resolving the play’s three crises. By killing Claudius, Hamlet
could in one stroke remove a weak and immoral king, extract his mother from what he sees as a bad
marriage, and make himself king of Denmark. Throughout the inciting incident, however, there are hints
that Hamlet’s revenge will be derailed by an internal struggle. The Ghost warns him: “Taint not thy mind
nor let thy soul contrive/Against thy mother aught” (I.v.). When Horatio and Marcellus catch up to
Hamlet after the Ghost’s departure, Hamlet is already talking in such a deranged way that Horatio
describes it as “wild and whirling” (I.v.), and Hamlet tells them that he may fake an “antic disposition”
(I.v.). The audience understands that the coming conflict will not be between Hamlet and Claudius but
between Hamlet and his own mind.

For the whole of the second act—the play’s rising action—Hamlet delays his revenge by pretending to
be mad. We learn from Ophelia that Hamlet is behaving as if he is mad with love for her. We see him
make fun of Polonius by talking nonsense which contains half-hidden jokes at Polonius’s expense.
Hamlet tells Rosencrantz and Guildenstern that he has “lost all [his] mirth” (II.ii.). Only at the end of Act
2 do we learn the reason for Hamlet’s delaying tactics: he cannot work out his true feelings about his
duty to take revenge. First, he tells us, he doesn’t feel as angry and vengeful as he thinks he should:
“I[…]Peak like John-a-dreams, unpregnant of my cause” (II.ii.). Second, he’s worried that the Ghost
wasn’t really a ghost but a devil trying to trick him. He decides he needs more evidence of Claudius’s
crime: “I’ll have grounds/More relative than this” (II.ii.).

As the rising action builds toward a climax, Hamlet’s internal struggle deepens until he starts to show
signs of really going mad. At the same time Claudius becomes suspicious of Hamlet, which creates an
external pressure on Hamlet to act. Hamlet begins Act Three debating whether or not to kill himself: “To
be or not to be—that is the question” (III.i.), and moments later he hurls misogynistic abuse at Ophelia.
He is particularly upset about women’s role in marriage and childbirth—“Why wouldst thou be a
breeder of sinners?” (III.i.)—which reminds the audience of Hamlet’s earlier disgust with his own mother
and her second marriage. The troubling development of Hamlet’s misogynistic feelings makes us wonder
how much Hamlet’s desire to kill Claudius is fuelled by the need to avenge his father’s death, and how
much his desire fuelled by Hamlet’s resentment of Claudius for taking his mother away from him.
Claudius, who is eavesdropping on Hamlet’s tirade, becomes suspicious that Hamlet’s madness presents
“some danger” (III.i.) and decides to have Hamlet sent away: Hamlet is running out of time to take his
revenge.

The play’s climax arrives when Hamlet stages a play to “catch the conscience of the king” (II.ii.) and get
conclusive evidence of Claudius’s guilt. By now, however, Hamlet seems to have truly gone mad. His
own behavior at the play is so provocative that when Claudius does respond badly to the play it’s
unclear whether he feels guilty about his crime or angry with Hamlet. As Claudius tries to pray, Hamlet
has yet another chance to take his revenge, and we learn that Hamlet’s apparent madness has not
ended his internal struggle over what to do: he decides not to kill Claudius for now, this time because of
the risk that Claudius will go to heaven if he dies while praying. Hamlet accuses Gertrude of being
involved in his father’s death, but he’s acting so erratically that Gertrude thinks her son is simply “mad
[…] as the sea and wind/When they each contend which is the mightier” (III.iv). Again, the audience
cannot know whether Gertrude says these lines as a cover for her own guilt, or because she genuinely
has no idea what Hamlet is talking about, and thinks her son is losing his mind. Acting impulsively or
madly, Hamlet mistakes Polonius for Claudius and kills him.

The play’s falling action deals with the consequences of Polonius’s death. Hamlet is sent away, Ophelia
goes mad and Laertes returns from France to avenge his father’s death. When Hamlet comes back to
Elsinore, he no longer seems to be concerned with revenge, which he hardly mentions after this point in
the play. His internal struggle is not over, however. Now Hamlet contemplates death, but he is unable to
come to any conclusion about the meaning or purpose of death, or to resign himself to his own death.
He is, however, less squeamish about killing innocent people, and reports to Horatio how he signed the
death warrants of Rosencranz and Guildenstern to save his own life. Claudius and Laertes plot to kill
Hamlet, but the plot goes awry. Gertrude is poisoned by mistake, Laertes and Hamlet are both poisoned,
and as he dies Hamlet finally murders Claudius. Taking his revenge does not end Hamlet’s internal
struggle. He still has lots to say: “If I had time […] O I could tell you— / But let it be” (V.ii.) and he asks
Horatio to tell his story when he is dead. In the final moments of the play the new king, Fortinbras,
agrees with this request: “Let us haste to hear it” (V.ii.). Hamlet’s life is over, but the struggle to decide
the truth about Hamlet and his life is not.
II. Analysis
- Full title: The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark
- Type of Work: Play
- Genre: Tragedy, revenge tragedy
- Time and place written: London, England, early seventeenth century (probably 1600–1602)
- Date of first publication: 1603, in a pirated quarto edition titled The Tragicall Historie of Hamlet;
1604 in a superior quarto edition
1. Themes
The theme of revenge in Hamlet
There are two young men bent on avenging their father’s death in this play. Hamlet and Laertes
are both on the same mission, and while Hamlet is pondering his approach to the problem
Laertes is hot on his heels, determined to kill him as Hamlet has killed his father, Polonius. This
is, therefore, a double revenge story. Shakespeare examines the practice of revenge by having
two entirely different approaches to it – the hot-headed abandon of Laertes and the
philosophical, cautious approach by Hamlet. The two strands run parallel – invoking
comparisons, each one throwing light on the other – until the young men’s duel and both their
deaths. The revenge theme feeds into the religious element of the play as Hamlet is conflicted
by his Christian aversion to killing someone and his duty to avenge his father’s death, whereas it
is not a consideration for Laertes, whose duty is clear to him, and he acts on it immediately.
The theme of corruption
Corruption is a major concern in this play. The text is saturated with images of corruption, in
several forms – decay, death, poison. From the very first moments of the play the images start
and set the atmosphere of corruption which is going to grow as Shakespeare explores this
theme. The tone is set when Marcellus says, ‘Something is rotten in the state of Denmark,’ after
seeing the ghost of Hamlet’s father. What Shakespeare is doing here, and in using the image
structure of corruption, is addressing the broadly held view that a nation’s health is connected
to the legitimacy of its king. Here we have the ghost of a murdered king, and his murderer – a
decidedly illegitimate king – is sitting on his throne. All through the play, Hamlet is preoccupied
with rot and corruption – both of the body and the soul, reflecting the way in which society is
destroyed by the corruption of its inner institutions – in this case, the court, which is the
government.
Decay, rot and mould are always in Hamlet’s mind, and his language is full of those images – ‘an
unweeded garden that grows to seed – things rank and gross possess it,’ and countless images
of death and disease. He hides Polonius’ body in a place where it will decay rapidly and stink out
the castle. It’s an image of the corruption in secret places that is going to contaminate the whole
country.
The theme of religion
Religion has an impact on the actions of the characters in this play. Hamlet’s ‘to be or not to be’
soliloquy outlines his religious thinking on the subject of suicide. He declines to kill Claudius
while he is praying for fear of sending him to heaven when he should be going to hell. Hamlet
believes, too, that ‘there is a destiny that shapes our ends.’

One of the most important things of all in this play is the Christian idea of making a sacrifice to
achieve healing. Hamlet is Christ-like in his handling of the crisis. The court is rotten with
 corruption and the people in it are almost all involved in plotting and scheming against others.
Hamlet’s way of dealing with it is to wait and watch as all the perpetrators fall into their own
traps –‘hauled by their own petards,’ as he puts it. All he has to do is be ready – like Christ. ‘The
readiness is all,’ he says. And then, all around him, the corruption collapses in on itself and the
court is purified. Like Christ, though, he has to be sacrificed to achieve that, and he is, leaving a
scene of renewal and hope.
The Hamlet theme of politics
Hamlet is a political drama. Hamlet’s uncle has murdered his father, the king. He has
subsequently done Hamlet out of his right of succession and become king. Hamlet’s mother has
married the king while the rest of the palace is engaged in palatial intrigues, leading to wider
conspiracies and murders. The king, Claudius, determined to safeguard his position in the face of
the threat Hamlet presents, plots in several ways to kill Hamlet. Polonius plots against Hamlet to
ingratiate himself with Claudius. Characters, including Hamlet’s mother, Gertrude, spy on each
other. This is all to do with power and the quest to achieve and hold it.
The theme of appearance and reality
This is a major theme in every one of Shakespeare’s plays. The text of Hamlet is saturated with
references to the gap that exists between how things seem to be and how they really are. Very
little in this play is really as it seems. That is bound to be so in a play in which there are so many
murderous plots and schemes by those who, on the surface, strive to appear innocent, like
Claudius, who, behind his charismatic smile, is a damned villain. He is, as Hamlet puts it, a
‘smiling villain.’ Although Ophelia loves Hamlet she pretends to spurn his affections. Hamlet
pretends to be mad so that he can explore the ghost’s assertion that Claudius killed him. All the
characters, in one way or another, are hiding their true intentions.
What makes this theme particularly interesting and different in this play is that as the play
develops the gap between appearance and reality narrows by the characters becoming more
like the masks they are using than any reality that may lie behind that so the identities they have
assumed eventually become their realities.
The theme of women
For much of the play, Hamlet is in a state of agitation. It is when he is talking to either of the two
female characters that he is most agitated – so much so that he is driven to violence against
them. He cares about both but does not trust either. He feels his mother, Gertrude, has let him
down by her ‘o’er hasty marriage’ to Claudius. To him, it means that she didn’t really love his
father. In the case of Ophelia, he is suspicious that she is part of the palace plot against him.
Both women die in this play. Ophelia is driven mad by the treatment she receives from the three
men – Claudius, Polonius and Hamlet – and takes her own life. Gertrude’s death is more
complex because it raises the question: how far is she responsible for the corruption that
Hamlet has to deal with?
2. Setting
The story of Hamlet is set in the late middle ages (14th and 15th centuries, or 1300 to 1499) in
and around (mostly) the royal palace in Elsinore, a city in Denmark.
3. Plot
Major Conflict
 Hamlet feels a responsibility to avenge his father’s murder by his uncle Claudius, but Claudius is
now the king and thus well protected. Moreover, Hamlet struggles with his doubts about
whether he can trust the ghost and whether killing Claudius is the appropriate thing to do.

Rising Action
The ghost appears to Hamlet and tells Hamlet to revenge his murder; Hamlet feigns madness to
his intentions; Hamlet stages the mousetrap play; Hamlet passes up the opportunity to kill
Claudius while he is praying.
Climax
When Hamlet stabs Polonius through the arras in Act III, scene iv, he commits himself to overtly
violent action and brings himself into unavoidable conflict with the king. Another possible climax
comes at the end of Act IV, scene iv, when Hamlet resolves to commit himself fully to violent
revenge.
Falling Action
Hamlet is sent to England to be killed; Hamlet returns to Denmark and confronts Laertes at
Ophelia’s funeral; the fencing match; the deaths of the royal family
4. Characterization
Most of the characters in Hamlet are citizens of Denmark and members of the royal court,
reeling after the death of their king. The characters are deeply suspicious of one another, as it
becomes clear that the king may have been murdered—and by his brother Claudius no less. As
Hamlet is a tragedy, each character carries within themselves a tragic characteristic that
contributes to their own downfall. But it is in particular the unstable atmosphere of the new
court of Claudius that brings about much of the action of the play.

Hamlet
The protagonist of the tragedy, Hamlet is a beloved prince and a thoughtful, melancholy young
man. Distraught by his father’s death, Hamlet is only made more depressed by his uncle
Claudius’ succession to the throne and his subsequent marriage to his mother. When the ghost
of the king, Hamlet’s father, tells him that he was murdered by his brother Claudius and that
Hamlet must avenge him, Hamlet becomes almost suicidal and obsessed with revenge. He is
slowly driven mad by his inability to act on this instruction.

Very intelligent, Hamlet decides to fake madness in order to fool his uncle and those loyal to him
while he uncovers whether Claudius is guilty for his father’s death—although often his mental
health is genuinely in question. Worried about his own guilt, Hamlet also becomes hateful,
despising his uncle, voicing anger at his mother, frustrated with his traitorous friends, and
alienating Ophelia (whom he once courted). His anger borders on ruthlessness, and he is
responsible for numerous deaths throughout the play, but he never loses his reflective and
melancholy traits.

Claudius
Claudius, the play's antagonist, is the king of Denmark and Hamlet’s uncle. According to the
ghost of Hamlet’s father, Claudius is his killer. When we are first introduced to Claudius, he
scolds Hamlet for still being so glum about his father’s death and forbids him to return to his
university studies in Wittenberg.

Claudius is a conniving strategist who poisoned his own brother in cold blood. He remains
calculating and unloving throughout the play, driven by his ambition and lust. When he realizes
that Hamlet is not mad as he originally believed, and in fact poses a threat to his crown, Claudius
quickly begins to plot Hamlet's death. This plan ultimately leads to Claudius’s death at Hamlet’s
hands at the end of the play.

However, Claudius also has an honorable side. When Hamlet has a traveling troupe put on a
play for the court that emulates the murder of a king, Claudius reveals his sense of guilt. He also
decides to have Ophelia buried with ceremony, rather than as a suicide. His love for Gertrude
also seems sincere.

Polonius
Polonius is the main advisor to the king, also known as the Lord Chamberlain. Pompous and
arrogant, Polonius is also the overbearing father of Ophelia and Laertes. As Laertes sets off for
France to continue his studies, Polonius gives him paradoxical advice, including the famous
quotation, "to thine own self be true”—an ironic line from a man who cannot keep his advice
consistent. When Hamlet goes to his mother’s bedchamber, attempting to confront her about
his father’s murder, he kills Polonius, who is hiding behind a tapestry and whom Hamlet
mistakes for the king.

Ophelia
Ophelia is Polonius’s daughter and Hamlet’s lover. She is obedient, agreeing not to see Hamlet
anymore at her father's suggestion and spying on Hamlet when asked by Claudius. She believes
that Hamlet loves her, despite his inconsistent courtship, and is devastated during a
conversation in which he seems not to love her at all. When Hamlet kills her father, Ophelia
goes mad and drowns in the river. Whether this is a suicide is left ambiguous. Ophelia is
feminine and almost maidenly throughout the play, though she is able to counter Hamlet’s wit.

Gertrude
Gertrude is the queen of Denmark and Hamlet’s mother. She was originally married to Hamlet’s
father, the dead king, but has now married the new king Claudius, her former brother-in-law.
Gertrude's son Hamlet regards her with suspicion, wondering whether she had a hand in his
father’s murder. Gertrude is rather weak and unable to match wits in an argument, but her love
for her son remains strong. She also enjoys the physical aspects of her marriage to Claudius—a
point that disturbs Hamlet. After the sword fight between Hamlet and Laertes, Gertrude drinks
the poisoned goblet meant for Hamlet and dies.

Horatio
Horatio is Hamlet’s best friend and confidant. He is cautious, scholarly, and a good man, known
for giving sound advice. As Hamlet lies dying at the end of the play, Horatio considers suicide,
but Hamlet convinces him to live on to tell the story.
 Laertes
Laertes is Polonius’s son and Ophelia’s brother, as well as a clear foil to Hamlet. Where Hamlet is
contemplative and frozen by emotions, Laertes is reactive and quick to action. When he hears of
his father’s death, Laertes is ready to raise a rebellion against Claudius, but his sister’s madness
allows Claudius to convince him Hamlet is at fault. Unlike Hamlet, Laertes will stop at nothing for
revenge. At the end of the play, Hamlet kills Laertes; as he lays dying, Laertes admits to
Claudius’s plot to kill Hamlet.

Fortinbras
Fortinbras is the prince of neighboring Norway. His father was killed by Hamlet’s father, and
Fortinbras is looking for revenge. Fortinbras arrives in Denmark just as the climax is reached. At
Hamlet’s recommendation and due to a distant connection, Fortinbras becomes the next king of
Denmark.

The Ghost
The ghost claims to be Hamlet’s dead father, the former king of Denmark (also named Hamlet).
He appears as a ghost in the first scenes of the play, informing Hamlet and others that he was
murdered by his brother Claudius, who poured poison into his ear while he slept. The Ghost is
responsible for the action of the play, but its origins are unclear. Hamlet worries that this
specter might be sent by the devil to incite him to murder, but the mystery is never solved.

Rosencrantz & Guildenstern

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are two acquaintances of Hamlet who are asked to spy on the
young prince in order to figure out the cause of his madness. Both are rather spineless and
obedient—Rosencrantz more so than Guildenstern—and neither is intelligent enough to really
fool Hamlet. After Hamlet kills Polonius, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern accompany him to
England. They have secret orders from the king of England to behead Hamlet on arrival, but the
ship is attacked by pirates, and when Rosencrantz and Guildenstern arrive in England, their
heads are chopped off instead.
5. Point of View
William Shakespeare wrote his famous tragedy Hamlet about a Danish prince who struggles with
his father's death and uncle's likely betrayal, as a play to be performed. As such, this story is
written in objective third person (otherwise known as dramatic) point of view.

Objective third person point of view presents the action of the play through dialogue and
without direct author commentary. This differs from third person omniscient or limited
omniscient where the reader can glimpse inside the mind or minds of the characters and the
author can comment directly on either the characters or the action. Using objective point of
view limits the author as readers can only enter the mind of the characters through the dramatic
conventions of soliloquy or asides. In his play Shakespeare uses both conventions expertly to
convey Hamlet's inner turmoil.
6. Figures of Speech
Metaphor
Metaphor is a direct comparison to show a certain similarity. Hamlet’s speeches are full of such
metaphors. He sees this world as “an unweeded garden.” He says, “the dread of something after
death, the undiscover’d country whose bourn no traveller returns.”

Here the fact that Hamlet fears the unknowable nature of death is shown by his comparison of
death to an undiscovered country. Again, in the third Act, Hamlet wonders “whether ‘tis nobler
in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea
of troubles.”
To emphasise on the piercing nature of fortune, he employs the image of arrows and slings and
compares the immensity of his troubles with the sea. Laertes sees his sister as a “rose of May.”

Simile
The simile is a comparison which is made by using words “like” or “as.” Hamlet in a mournful
state complains of his mother who “Like Niobe, all tears” followed his father’s body after his
death but married so soon after that.
Here she is compared to Niobe, a mythical Greek character who cried profusely due to the death
of her children. Ophelia uses simile in her songs too when she has already lost her senses after
her father gets killed.

She thinks of her father and sings that “his beard was as white as snow.” When Hamlet pierces
his mother’s conscience with his words, she shouts back that his words are “like daggers”
entering her ears.

Alliteration
It is a very common literary device where the same sound or words are repeated and it
enhances the rhythm of the sentences and adds a phonetic quality to it. The whole play is full of
it. “Bare bodkin”, “single spies”, “bad begins” and “O, ‘tis too true” are a few examples of many.

Anaphora and Repetition

It is the repetition of the same word at the beginning of each phrase. It helps the speaker to
emphasise on a certain aspect. When Polonius reads Hamlet’s letter to the king and the queen,
it is anaphoric in nature.
“Doubt thou the stars are fire; Doubt that the sun doth move; Doubt truth to be a liar; But never
doubt I love.” There are many recurring repetitions in the play like Hamlet saying, “I humbly
thank you; well, well, well.” Or on asked by Polonius, he says, “words, words, words.”

Anadiplosis
It is a literary device rarely used. It is when a phrase ends with a word and the next phrase
begins with it too. Hamlet employs it in his dialogues many times, for example, “to die, to sleep;
to sleep; perchance to dream.”

Irony
Dramatic Irony is one major device used across the play to engage the readers with its
development. Like the Ghost has revealed the reality to Hamlet but it isn’t known to Claudius or
Gertrude or any other major characters. In the end of the play, when Claudius has arranged the
fencing match and poisoned the sword and wine but Hamlet doesn’t know.

Allusion
It is when some distant idea, event or place or something is referred to in the text. Shakespeare
alludes from a rich variety in this play. Mostly from Greek and Roman myths such as “the
mightiest Julius”, “Like Niobe, all tears”, “Hyperion to a satyr”, “Than I to Hercules.”