Key Facts
full title ·The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark
author ·William Shakespeare
type of work ·Play
genre ·Tragedy, revenge tragedy
language ·English
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
protagonist ·Hamlet
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
setting (time) ·The late medieval period, though the play’s chronological setting is notoriously imprecise
settings (place) ·Denmark
foreshadowing ·The ghost, which is taken to foreshadow an ominous future for Denmark
tone ·Dark, ironic, melancholy, passionate, contemplative, desperate, violent
themes ·The impossibility of certainty; the complexity of action; the mystery of death; the nation as a diseased body
motifs ·Incest and incestuous desire; ears and hearing; death and suicide; darkness and the supernatural; misogyny
symbols ·The ghost (the spiritual consequences of death); Yorick’s skull (the physical consequences of death)
Revenge Play genre
Thomas Kyd, The Spanish Tragedy (1588)classic Greek tragedy of destiny / curse of family
- Senecan tragedy
- Thomas Kyd / "ur-Hamlet" / The Spanish Tragedy
- assault on family / justified retaliation / feigned madness
Titus Andronicus (c. 1590) as cartoon for later tragedies of character in extremis (Lear, Othello)
Principle of retaliation
- lex talionis
- Biblical "eye for an eye" = principle of balance as well as revenge (license)
- in "civilized" societies, state takes over role of retribution
-- system of laws replaces blood feud
- but what if the offender is the King?
--- conflict of personal vengeance with public obedience
Shakespearean concept of character
- early-modern cultural invention of identity-as-theatre
- public playhouses as space for projection & identification
- creation of dramatic hero (Marlowe & others)
- Shakespeare's focus on internality (esp. in Hamlet)
-- importance of soliloquy as monologue of self-disclosure & self-interrogation
-- Hamlet as most famous dramatic character in Western literature
-- early-modern bridge between medieval & modern notions of character: click here for diagram
Hamlet
1.1.1 ("Who's there?")
- conventional challenge (public speech) + personal interrogation (private speech)
- confusion of speakers
- "unfold yourself" (metaphor)
- motto for entire play: question, doubt, hidden essence
1.1.8-9 ("'Tis bitter cold, / And I am sick at heart.")
- external v. internal weather
- heart-sickness & melancholy
--- click here for another image of melancholy
Horatio's skepticism v. guards' credulity
- intellect v. emotion
1.2 Hamlet's entrance "dressed in black"
- costume of mourning + melancholy
--- melancholy as pathology + pose // affect + affectation
--- Hamlet as actor
1.2.65 ("A little more than kin ...")
Hamlet's first words = aggressive riddle
- spoken to himself
- language that both reveals and conceals
1.2.76-86 ("Seems, madam? ...)
- appearance & reality // acting & pretense
- limits of language & behavior to show true feeling
- metadrama ("actions that a man might play")
- concept of secret personal core ("that within")
--- partially demonstrable only through convention (posture, action, language)
1.2.129-159 ("O that this too too sullied flesh ...")
Try reading this speech aloud.
- textual crux of "sallied" / "sullied" / "solid" flesh
- What is the focus of Hamlet's grief & anger?
1.2.244-256 ("If it assume ...")
- Hamlet shifts from the conditional to the definite. What has happened in this brief moment?
1.4.38-45 ("Look, my lord, it comes....")
- theological problem
- "questionable shape"
- Hamlet identifies the ghost
1.5.1-112 (Hamlet meets with the ghost)
- "my prophetic soul!" (unconscious awareness)
- "incestuous, ... adulterate ..." Are these terms accurate?
- What is the ghost's vindictive focus? What is Hamlet's?
- models of memory as "table" (writing) & "distracted globe" (cerebral playhouse)
2.1.74-120 ("How now, Ophelia...")
- distracted Hamlet described but not seen
-- issue of Hamlet's "madness"
2.2.242-256 ("Denmark's a prison....")
- "For there is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so."
--- What assumptions lie behind this assertion?
- "O God, I could be bounded in a nutshell ..."
2.2.543ff. "(Now I am alone.") [another speech to read aloud]
- What sort of character announces his solitude? (To whom is he speaking?)
- What are the relations between Hamlet and the Player (who acted Hecuba)?
--- in terms of acting styles in terms of genuine emotion
- Reconsider the question of how real emotion gets enacted through behavior.
- How does Hamlet understand the question of the ghost ("the devil," "my melancholy")?
--- How does he understand the relation between proof of the ghost & proof of Claudius's guilt?
3.1.55-87 ("To be, or not to be ...")
What is the question?
3.2.379-390 ("'Tis now the very witching time of night ...")
- conventionally primed for revenge
- focus of his vengeance?
--- "soul of Nero"
3.4 (The Closet or Bedroom Scene)
- "... a glass / ... inmost part of you"
--- idea of secret interiority / hidden / shameful ("black ... spots")
--- "... murder me?" -- idea of guilt & vengeance
3.4.23 S.D. ("S.D. Thrusts his rapier through the arras.")
- Whom does Hamlet believe he is stabbing?
- Why now? (Recall 3.3 in this context.)
3.4.88-96 ("O Hamlet, speak no more ...")
- Gertrude's black spots
- daggers in the ears
4.5.4-15 ("She speaks much ...")
- question of distinguishing authentic speech from gesture
- issue of audience
- metadrama
4.7.165ff ("Your sister's drown'd ...")
- potent poetic description
- question of agency
-- Ophelia as agent or victim
-- suicide, accident, or something between
5.1 (Graveyard Scene)
/ Click herefor a mini-lecture on "Hamlet and Death"
5.1.15-20 ("Here lies the water...")
- relate to the tragedy of Hamlet
5.1.89-91 ("Here's fine revolution ...")
- What is "the trick to see't"? Look carefully.
5.1.178ff ("Alas, poor Yorick. ...")
- Consider image of young Hamlet
--- Click here for image
--- Click here for QuickTime video (6.6MB)
- Stare hard at this skull. (Study Question 6)
- Click here for vanitas tradition in art
- And here for another vanitas painting
- And here for a contemporary actualization
5.2.4-11 ("Sir, in my heart ...")
- "rashness" as praiseworthy motive
- balance of "indiscretion," "plots," and "divinity"
--- Question of nature + location of divinity
--- internal impulse ("conscience") equivalent to external rule
5.2.27-56 ("But wilt thou hear ..?")
- Hamlet enters & rewrites his own play (metadrama)
Still photo of Kenneth Branagh (20c film)
5.2.212-220 ("If your mind ...")
- relate Hamlet's melancholy suicidal wishes to reliance on Providence
- what is "readiness"?
5.2.222 ("Give me your pardon ...")
- Hamlet distinguishes himself from his "madness"
--- true admission or continued guise?
5.2.318 ("Treachery! Seek it out." / "It is here ...")
- internal v. external threat
- see Act One, Scene One
--- guarding against external invasion & surprised by internal ghost
5.2.329-333
Hamlet kills Claudius. Why? Is this his revenge?
5.2.337-345 ("I am dead ...")
- metadramatic gesture toward audience
- promise of narrative deferred
5.2.400-408 ("Let four captains ...")
- Fortinbras constructs his own projected image of Hamlet
--- Would Hamlet have approved?
William Hazlitt's Hamlet was also torn with inner conflict and indecision. The events on stage become an external manifestation of an inner battle.
He seems incapable of deliberate action, and is only hurried into extremities on the spur of the occasion, when he has no time to reflect, as in the scene where he kills Polonius, and again, where he alters the letters which Rosencrans and Guildenstern are taking with them to England, purporting his death. At other times, when he is most bound to act, he remains puzzled, undecided, and sceptical, dallies with his purposes, till the occasion is lost, and finds out some pretence to relapse into indolence and thoughtfulness again. For this reason he refuses to kill the King when he is at his prayers, and by a refinement in malice, which is in truth only an excuse for his own want of resolution, defers his revenge to a more total opportunity, when he shall be engaged in some act 'that has no relish of salvation in it.'He is the prince of philosophical speculators: and because he cannot have his revenge perfect, according to the most refined idea his wish can form, he declines it altogether. - William Hazlitt, Characters of Shakespear's Plays, (1817 Complete Works, Dent and Sons, London, 1930. v.4. p.234.
English 366: Studies in Shakespeare
Introductory Lecture on Shakespeare's Hamlet
[A lecture prepared for English 200 and revised for English 366: Studies in Shakespeare, by Ian Johnston of Malaspina-University College, Nanaimo, BC. It was last revised slightly on February 27, 2001. This entire text is in the public domain and may be used free of charge and without permission]
A. Introduction
Shakespeare's Hamlet, written around 1600, is one of the most problematic texts in all of literature. With the exception of certain Biblical texts, no other work has produced such a continuing, lively, and contentious debate about how we are supposed to understand it. In fact, one could very easily construct a thorough and intriguing history of modern literary criticism based upon nothing other than various interpretative takes on Hamlet (a task which has already been carried out by at least one historian of ideas).
Given this critical confusion, we might as well admit up front that we are not going to arrive at anything like a firm consensus on what the play is about and how we should understand it. However, wrestling with this play is a very important and stimulating exercise, because it puts a lot of pressure on us to reach some final interpretation (that is, it generates in us a desire to make sense of all the elements in it, to find some closure), and, even if that goal eludes us, we can learn a great deal about reading poetic drama and interpreting literature from a serious attempt to grasp this most elusive work. If one of the really important functions of great literature is to stimulate thought-provoking conversations which force us to come to grips with many things about the text and about ourselves, then Hamlet is a particularly valuable work.
I should also add that many of the difficulties we wrestle with (like the age of the characters, for example) can only be temporarily resolved by witnessing and responding to a production of the play. Because there is so much ambiguity and uncertainly about many key elements, Hamlet offers a director a great deal of creative scope, and hence the variety in productions of this play is unmatched in all of Shakespeare, perhaps in all tragic drama.
In this introductory lecture (and I stress the word introductory) I would like to discuss three things: (a) first, I would like to outline what the "problem" with this play is, the source key of the disagreement, (b) second, I would like to review some of the attempts to resolve this initial problem, and (c) third, I would like to outline three of the main issues raised by the play, matters which any coherent and reasonably complete interpretation has to deal with. If there is time, I might offer a few suggestions along the way about the approach which I personally find particularly persuasive.
B. Hamlet: What's the Problem?
So what is the source of the difficulties with this play? Well, we can begin by acknowledging that Hamlet is a revenge play. That is, the story is based upon the need to revenge a murder in the family. In a typical revenge plot, there are no authorities to appeal to, either because the original criminal is too powerful (e.g., has become king) or those in a position to act do not know about or believe in the criminality of the original villain. Thus, the central character has to act on his own, if any justice is to occur.
Hamlet clearly falls into this conventional genre. There is a victim (Hamlet Senior), a villain (Claudius), and an avenger (Hamlet). Early in the play the details of the murder become known to Hamlet, he vows to carry out his revenge, and eventually he does so, bringing the action to a close. The major question which arises, and the main focus for much of the critical interpretation of Hamlet is this: Why does Hamlet delay so long? Why doesn't he just carry out the act?
Now, revenge dramas, from the Oresteia to the latest Charles Bronson Death Wish film, are eternally popular, because, as playwrights from Aeschylus on have always known, revenge is something we all, deep down, understand and respond to imaginatively (even if we ourselves would never carry out such a personal vendetta). The issue engages some of our deepest and most powerful feelings, even if the basic outline of the story is already very familiar to us from seeing lots of revenge plots (for the basic story line doesn't change much from one story to another).
Typically, the avenger assumes the responsibility early on, spends much of the time overcoming various obstacles (like having to find the identity of the killer or dealing with the barriers between the avenger and the killer, a process which can involve a great deal of excitement and violence of all sorts), and concludes the drama by carrying out the mission, a culmination which requires a personal action (usually face to face). The revenge, that is, must be carried out in an appropriate manner (just getting rid of the villain any old way or reporting the villain to the authorities is not satisfying). This formula, which is very old, popular, and, if done well, a smash at the box office, was a staple of Greek theatre (not just in Aeschylus), common in Elizabethan drama before Shakespeare, and characterizes an enormous number of Western movies and detective fictions, among other genres. So there's nothing new about that in this play.