1.5 oedipus and hamlet compare and contrast essay outline

Oedipus Rex & Hamlet: Compare & Contrast Essay

Introduction: similarities between oedipus and hamlet, oedipus rex as a tragic character, shakespeare’s hamlet: psychological portrait, conclusion: hamlet vs. oedipus, oedipus rex & hamlet faq.

In this compare and contrast essay, Oedipus Rex and Hamlet’s characters are analyzed and discussed. Being the creations of two different authors, they still resemble each other in some exciting ways. 

Oedipus is a character of Sophocles’ Oedipus the King. He searches for the truth but does not care much about the danger it may cause. Hamlet does not need much introduction since he is the hero of Shakespeare’s play Hamlet. This character is a philosopher who loses his mind and identity, chasing the truth.

So there is their first common trait: they both appear in well-known classic tragedies. Also, they are both truth-seekers. However, Hamlet vs. Oedipus’ comparison shall not end here.

Even from the introduction, it seems evident that King Oedipus is always dedicated to solving the issues no matter what. A good example is his reaction to the news about the epidemic in Thebes. It appears that the one who caused it is the killer of King Laius. Of course, Oedipus cannot understand why the murderer is still free and desires to resolve it as soon as possible.

When the curse of the Sphinx comes to an end, King Oedipus turns to the current and more relevant issues. He finally decides to take care of them and says he “will start afresh and once again.”

As he is talking to Creon, who is his brother-in-law, Oedipus declares that finding and catching the murderer is his greatest desire for now. He argues that it would bring peace to the state. Moreover, it would secure his safety as he is the main person there, the King.

It is almost incredible how persistent Oedipus Rex is. On the path of looking for the truth, nothing can stop him. He is almost like the ideal detective. He would never miss a chance to interview the witnesses of Laius’ death. King Oedipus takes every opportunity to investigate the leads that could help find the killer.

First, he decides to talk to the prophet Tiresias who is limited by blindness. After that, he listens carefully to the story told by his wife, Jocasta. After these complex steps, Oedipus dares to hear the shepherd’s real story of his origins.

In addition, King Oedipus shows off one of the best qualities all rulers should have. He is strong-minded, even though he can lose control sometimes. No political biases can undermine his determination to find the truth. Oedipus is not even afraid of losing his title and his life.

In his mind, revealing the truth is the only right thing to do in that situation. He also keeps insisting on it because he has no idea that the gods cursed him. Therefore, his actions remain the same according to the plan. 

Eventually, it becomes a tragic flaw of his. The chorus tries to warn King Oedipus about some details of Laius’ murder. However, Rex has only one answer: “Words scare not him who blenches not at deeds.”

No other line can demonstrate the persistence of the King. He is sure that his position is the only right one. Besides, there is another thought that shapes his behavior. Oedipus is confident that innocent people should not be afraid of the truth since it cannot harm them.

To sum up, King Oedipus aligns perfectly with the definition of the tragic hero. He is not an idol and can make mistakes just like others. He can even pose himself as a good person. However, in the end, the novelty of Oedipus does not protect him from the downfall. That is where the real tragedy steps in.

Hamlet is somewhat behind Oedipus when considering the passionate desire to seek the truth. Unlike the hyperactive King, he shows much less energy on his path. However, it is easily explainable.

Hamlet wants to find the truth just as badly as his Sophocles counterpart. That desire spikes even higher when his mother remarries quite soon after his father dies. Her remarkable resilience raises more and more suspicions in him.

At the same time, Hamlet poses himself as the philosopher in the battle for justice. Instead of taking sudden active actions, he prefers reflecting on the situation and contemplating further steps. It is noticeable from the number of monologues in the play.

Moreover, he primarily uses his inner wisdom and intuition during his investigation. It is incredible how he realizes that something is not right. After all, his suspicions appeared to be correct.

Hamlet’s character is just as decisive as Oedipus’, but in a slightly different way. Instead of taking straightforward steps toward finding the truth, he uses sneaky methods. For example, he could have just confronted his uncle. Instead, Hamlet sets up a scene to check the reliability of the information provided by the ghost. From the reaction of his uncle, everything is clear to him.

Therefore, Hamlet is represented as a more inventive character than Oedipus regarding the methods of reaching the goal. However, there are many more similarities between them.

Despite being emotionally unstable, Hamlet shows some decent physiological strategies. It is shown in the way he is planning to reveal the murderer. His approach seems quite sane and based on logical observations of human nature. 

On the other hand, his mind can only take that much. This tense and critical moment, along with the ghost’s provocations, alters the personality of Hamlet. He gives up his philosophy and decides to step on the path of revenge.

From this moment, his values and ideals are no longer responsible for his actions. Hamlet is led by the desire to fulfill the promise to restore justice to his family. His only aim becomes finding and punishing the murderer of the King.

However, such a bold decision requires more active actions. The prince also appears to have a shift in his attitude to life. He overcomes his fear of facing conflicts.

Hamlet’s monologues also reveal how much this young man struggles with a personality split and the burden of the oath he has given to his father.

Pointing out the parallels between the characters of Sophocles’ Oedipus the King and Shakespeare’s Hamlet could take forever. There are apparent similarities between Oedipus and Hamlet shown in this comparative essay. It is easy to see that they are truth-seekers and would do anything to discover the killer.

However, Oedipus feels such sincere repentance about the unfairness that he decides to investigate the murder of the previous King himself. He takes very active actions and relies on logic and evidence. On the other hand, Hamlet prefers to reflect on the events and think twice before acting. Moreover, he trusts his intuition more than anything else.

Who was Oedipus?

Oedipus was a king appearing in Greek mythology. He was ruling the land of Thebes. According to the story, he unwillingly kills his father and takes his mother as a wife. Oedipus is a tragic hero who brings disasters upon himself and his people. Sophocles highlights this part of the King’s life in his play Oedipus the King. 

How are Hamlet and Oedipus similar?

Hamlet and Oedipus are similar in that they both look for the truth about who killed the King. They are both tragic characters in the plays. Oedipus Rex, just like Hamlet, finds himself being fooled by his parents. Moreover, they are both so desperate to find the truth that they can do anything, but by different means.

How are Hamlet and Oedipus tragic heroes?

Hamlet and Oedipus are tragic heroes as they possess distinctive traits of this type of character. They both have good intentions despite having many flaws. Both Hamlet and Oedipus Rex are quite noble characters. The actions they take while seeking the truth appear to be life-changing. Their fate is tragic, even if they do not deserve it.

What is the difference between Oedipus the King and Hamlet?

The main difference between Oedipus the King and Hamlet is in the main characters’ attitudes. Both Hamlet and Oedipus Rex are chasing the murderers, but the means are different. As a complex character, Hamlet trusts his intuition and uses sleek methods to reveal the truth. King Oedipus goes with logic and investigates the murder, just like a detective would do.

Who is more resilient: Hamlet or Oedipus?

It might look like there is no difference, but it appears that Hamlet is more resilient than Oedipus. He mastered this quality, which immensely helped his path to revenge. Instead of making reckless and hasty choices, he steps aside and reflects on the events and his feelings. It makes him patient enough to succeed in everything.

The Randolph College Greek Play. n.d. The Plot Of OEDIPUS THE KING – The Randolph College Greek Play. [online]

Shakespeare Birthplace Trust. n.d. Hamlet. [online]

Delahoyde, M., n.d. Hamlet. [online] Public.wsu.edu.

Sandbox.spcollege.edu. 2015. Hubris: Oedipus’ And Hamlet’S Struggle Over The Golden Mean|. [online]

Dolloff, L., 2006. Oedipus Complex. [online] Uvm.edu.

Classics.mit.edu. n.d. The Internet Classics Archive | Oedipus The King By Sophocles. [online]

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Oedipus Vs Hamlet

How it works

In Oedipus Rex by Sophocles, when Thebes is struck with the aid of a plague, the human beings ask King Oedipus to supply them from its horrors. Creon, the brother of Jocasta, Oedipus’s queen, returns from the oracle of Apollo and discloses that the plague is punishment for the homicide of King Laius, Oedipus’s instant predecessor, to whom Jocasta was once married. Creon further discloses that the residents of Thebes need to find out and punish the murderer before the plague can be lifted.

The people mourn their dead, and Oedipus advises them, in their personal interest, to search out and apprehend the murderer of Laius.

Asked to assist discover the murderer, Teiresias, the ancient, blind seer of Thebes, tells Oedipus that it would be higher for all if he does not inform what he knows. He says that coming occasions will disclose themselves. Oedipus rages at the seer’s reluctance to inform the secret until he goads the historic man to reveal that Oedipus is the one accountable for Thebes’s afflictions due to the fact he is the murderer, and that he is dwelling in intimacy with his nearest kin. Oedipus accuses the historic man of being in league with Creon, whom he suspects of plotting towards his throne, however Teiresias answers that Oedipus will be ashamed and horrified when he learns the fact about his proper parentage. Oedipus defies the seer, announcing he will welcome the fact as lengthy as it frees his kingdom from the plague. Oedipus threatens Creon with death, however Jocasta and the human beings propose him against doing violence on the electricity of rumor or non permanent passion. Oedipus yields, but he banishes Creon.

Jocasta, grieved by way of the enmity between her brother and Oedipus, tells her husband that an oracle informed King Laius that he would be killed by way of his personal child, the offspring of Laius and Jocasta. Jocasta assures Oedipus that this could not take place because the child used to be deserted on a deserted mountainside quickly after birth. When Oedipus hears similarly that Laius was once killed through robbers at the assembly place of three roads and that the three roads met in Phocis, he is deeply disturbed and starts to suspect that he is, after all, the murderer. He hesitates to expose his suspicion, but he becomes extra and more convinced of his very own guilt.

Oedipus tells Jocasta that he believed himself to be the son of Polybus of Corinth and Merope till a drunken man on one occasion announced that the younger Oedipus used to be now not truely Polybus’s son. Disturbed, Oedipus consulted the oracle of Apollo, who instructed him he would sire young people via his personal mom and that he would kill his own father. After he left Corinth, at a assembly vicinity of three roads, Oedipus was once offended by a man in a chariot. He killed the man and all of his servants but one. From there he went on to Thebes, where he grew to become the new king by way of answering the riddle of the Sphinx. The riddle requested what went on all fours earlier than noon, on two legs at noon, and on three legs after noon. Oedipus answered, correctly, that human beings stroll on all fours as an infant, on two legs in their prime, and with the useful resource of a stick in their old age. With the kingship, he additionally won the hand of Jocasta, King Laius’s queen.

Oedipus summons the servant who mentioned King Laius’s death, however he awaits his arrival fearfully. Jocasta assures her husband that the entire depend is of no super consequence, that virtually the prophecies of the oracles will now not come true.

A messenger from Corinth pronounces that King Polybus is dead and that Oedipus is his successor. Polybus died of natural causes, so Oedipus and Jocasta are relieved for the time being. Oedipus tells the messenger he will no longer go to Corinth for worry of siring teens through his mother, Merope.

The messenger goes on to divulge that Oedipus is no longer the son of Polybus and Merope however a foundling whom the messenger, at that time a shepherd, took to Polybus. The messenger relates how he acquired the child from some other shepherd, who was once a servant of the house of King Laius. At that point Jocasta realizes the dreadful truth. She does no longer desire to see the historic servant who was once summoned, however Oedipus needs readability regardless of the cost. He again calls for the servant. When the servant appears, the messenger acknowledges him as the herdsman from whom he acquired the toddler years earlier. The ancient servant confesses that King Laius ordered him to destroy the boy however that out of pity he gave the infant to the Corinthian to raise as his foster son.

Oedipus, now all however mad from the cognizance of what he did, enters the palace and discovers that Jocasta hanged herself by means of her hair. He gets rid of her golden brooches and with them places out his eyes so that he will not be able to see the outcomes of the horrible prophecy. Then, blind and bloody and miserable, he shows himself to the Thebans and announces himself as the assassin of their king and the defiler of his personal mother’s bed. He curses the herdsman who saved him from death years before.

Creon, returning, orders the attendants to lead Oedipus returned into the palace. Oedipus asks Creon to have him performed out of Thebes where no man will ever see him again. He additionally asks Creon to provide Jocasta a suited burial and to see that the sons and daughters of the unnatural marriage ought to be cared for and now not be allowed to live terrible and unmarried due to the fact of the disgrace attached to their parentage. Creon leads the wretched Oedipus away to his exile of blindness and torment.In Hamlet by William Shakespear, three times, the ghost of Denmark’s dead king has stalked the battlements of Elsinore Castle. On the fourth night, Horatio, Hamlet’s friend, brings the thirty-year-old prince to the battlements to see the specter of his father. Since his father’s untimely death two months earlier, Hamlet has been grief-stricken and quite melancholy. The mysterious occasions surrounding the loss of life of his father perplex him, and his mother has married Claudius, the useless king’s brother, lots too hurriedly to go well with Hamlet’s sense of decency.

That night, Hamlet sees his father’s ghost and listens in horror as it tells him that his father was no longer killed with the aid of a serpent, as had been reported: He was murdered via his own brother, Claudius, the present king. The ghost provides that Claudius is guilty no longer only of murder but additionally of incest and adultery. The spirit cautions Hamlet to spare Queen Gertrude, his mother, and go away her punishment to heaven.

Hamlet ponders his subsequent move. The ghost’s disclosures need to have left no doubt in his mind that Claudius must be killed, but the introspective prince is not certain that the apparition he noticed used to be clearly his father’s spirit. He fears it may have been a satan despatched to torment him or to trick him into murdering his uncle. Debating with himself the hassle of whether or not to raise out the spirit’s commands, Hamlet swears his friends, such as Horatio, to secrecy concerning the look of the ghost. He additionally tells them not to reflect on consideration on him mad if he starts off evolved to act strangely.

Meanwhile, Claudius is going through no longer solely the possibility of warfare with Norway but also, an awful lot worse, his own conscience, which is stricken by using his act of fratricide and his hasty marriage to Gertrude. The prince’s depression issues him, for he knows that Hamlet resented the marriage. Claudius fears that Hamlet may also try to usurp the throne. The prince starts to put into motion the diagram he stated to his friends: He acts strangely at court. Hamlet’s odd behavior and wild speak make the king suppose that he may also be mad, but he stays unsure. To analyze whether Hamlet’s manner and movements are brought about by madness or ambition, Claudius commissions two of Hamlet’s friends, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, to spy on the prince. Hamlet sees thru their clumsy efforts, however, and responds to their inquiries with puzzling wordplay.

Polonius, the garrulous old chamberlain, believes that Hamlet’s odd behavior is the result of his lovesickness for Ophelia, Polonius’s daughter. Hamlet, meanwhile, will become more and more melancholy and guarded. Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, and Polonius all undercover agent on him constantly. Even Ophelia, he thinks, has became against him. However, the concept of deliberate homicide is revolting to him, and he is plagued with the aid of uncertainty as to whether the ghost he has seen represents correct or evil. When a troupe of actors visits Elsinore, Hamlet sees in them a danger to find out the truth. He instructs the players to enact before the king and the courtroom a scene resembling the murder described to him through the ghost. Hamlet believes that Claudius will react guiltily to the performance if he is certainly a murderer. Thus, by means of gazing the king carefully at some stage in the play, Hamlet hopes to discover the reality for himself.

Hamlet’s diagram works. Claudius becomes so unnerved for the duration of the overall performance that he walks out earlier than the end of the scene. Convinced by the king’s actions that the ghost was once right, Hamlet no longer has a cause to extend carrying out the desires of his dead father. Even so, he fails to take gain of his first threat to kill Claudius. Hamlet comes upon the king alone and unguarded in an attitude of prayer. He refrains from killing him, however, due to the fact he does not favor the king to die in a kingdom of grace: He wants to send him to hell, not to heaven.

The queen summons Hamlet to her chamber to reprimand him for his insolence to Claudius. Hamlet, remembering what the ghost informed him, speaks to her so violently that she screams for help. A noise at the back of a curtain follows her cries, and Hamlet, suspecting that Claudius has been eavesdropping on them, plunges his sword via the curtain, killing the spy?”who turns out to be Polonius. When he hears of Hamlet’s violent deed, the king fears a comparable attack on his personal life. He unexpectedly orders Hamlet to tour to England as an ambassador in employer with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, who carry a warrant for Hamlet’s death. The prince discovers the orders, however, and alters them so that the bearers, as an alternative than he, will be killed on their arrival in England. Hamlet then returns to Denmark.

Hamlet discovers that lots has happened at domestic throughout his absence. After being rejected via Hamlet, her former lover, Ophelia has gone mad and drowned herself. Laertes, Polonius’s hot-tempered son, has lower back from France and amassed a band of malcontents to avenge the demise of his father. He had notion that Claudius killed Polonius, but the king has instructed him that Hamlet used to be the assassin and has persuaded Laertes to take part in a plot to homicide the prince.

Claudius arranges for a duel between Hamlet and Laertes. To allay suspicion of foul play, the king bets on Hamlet, who is an expert swordsman. At the equal time, he poisons the tip of Laertes’ weapon and locations a cup of poison within Hamlet’s reach in the match that the prince turns into thirsty throughout the duel. However, it is Gertrude, who knows nothing of the king’s treachery, who drinks from the poisoned cup and dies. During the contest, Hamlet is mortally wounded with the aid of the poisoned rapier, however the two contestants trade foils in a scuffle, and Laertes receives a deadly wound as well. Before he dies, Laertes is stuffed with regret and tells Hamlet that Claudius used to be responsible for poisoning the sword. Hesitating no longer, Hamlet seizes his chance to act: He stabs the king with the poisoned blade and forces him to drink from the poisoned cup earlier than eventually death himself.

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Compare And Contrast Essay

Compare And Contrast Essay Outline

Learn How to Create a Compare and Contrast Essay Outline - With Examples & Tips

11 min read

What is a Compare and Contrast Essay Outline?

An outline for a compare and contrast essay aims to organize all the information in a readable manner. It's a roadmap that lays out how you organize and present your ideas.

Here are the main goals of an outline:

Clarity and Organization: An outline helps you organize your thoughts and ideas in a clear and structured manner. It ensures that all the ideas are presented in a systematic way.
Efficiency: Creating an outline streamlines the writing process. It saves you time by providing a clear direction. It keeps the writer focused on developing the main argument and supporting evidence.
Prevention of Overlooking Key Points: With a well-constructed outline, you're less likely to overlook essential points. It serves as a checklist for your essay, ensuring that it is comprehensive and balanced.

Two Types of Compare & Contrast Essay Structure

Before we dive into the outlining steps, you should know about the two main organizing strategies for this type of essay:

Point-by-Point Structure (or organization by criteria)
Block Method (or organization by item)

Each approach offers unique advantages and is suited to different writing situations. Let's explore these two structures in detail.

Point-by-Point Structure

The point-by-point structure involves comparing and contrasting specific aspects of your chosen subjects.

For instance, when comparing two car models point-by-point, you can first compare and discuss their fuel efficiency, then interior space, and finally compare and contrast their tech features.

This way, you proceed by covering each aspect at a time. Here is what this structure looks like:

Block Method

The block method, also known as organization by item, offers a different approach to structuring your compare and contrast essay.

In this structure, you present all the information about one subject before moving on to the other, and finally compare and evaluate the subjects in the last paragraph before the conclusion.

This straightforward approach is particularly useful when your subjects have few similarities and differences. Here’s an example of a block method compare and contrast:

Now that you know about the two types of compare and contrast outlines, let’s move on to how to craft them.

Step-by-Step Guide to Writing a Compare & Contrast Outline

Creating a compare and contrast essay outline may seem like a complex task, but fear not! Following these simple steps below will make outlining easier and smoother.

Step 1: Choose Your Subjects & Gather Information

Step 2: identify key points of comparison, step 3: develop a thesis statement.

Step 4: Organize Your Outline

Let’s get into each of these steps:

The first and most crucial step is to select the subjects or topics you'll be comparing and contrasting. Make sure that your subjects are related and offer meaningful comparisons.

Determine the purpose of your essay. Are you aiming to persuade, inform, or simply analyze? Understanding your purpose will help you gather relevant information about your subjects and shape your thesis statement.

Looking for topic ideas? Find 100+ compare and contrast essay topics to write about.

Consider the aspects or criteria you'll use to compare and contrast your subjects. These will become the basis for your body paragraphs. Common approaches include similarities and differences in structure, content, historical context, or impact of your chosen subjects.

Your thesis statement is the heart of your essay. It should concisely state the main point or argument of your essay and provide a roadmap for what your readers can expect. Make sure it reflects the essence of your comparison.

Step 4: Organize Your Outline

Now, it's time to create the actual outline structure. There are three components of an essay outline:

Introduction
The main body

Start with the basic framework:

Compare and Contrast Essay Introduction

An essay introduction aims to present your compare and contrast subjects and provide some context.

In the introduction part of your outline, you should add the following:

Hook Statement - A hook is the opening sentence of your essay that aims to catch the readers’ attention. Depending on the topic, choose a catchy statement for your introduction to make it interesting for the readers.
Points about Significance/Context - To make your essay introduction strong and engaging, add the points about the context or significance of the topic to your outline.
Thesis Statement - A thesis statement is the writer’s main argument about the topic.

Compare and Contrast Essay Body Paragraphs

Before outlining your body paragraphs, choose one of the two structures described above. That is, choose whether you want to write your essay in a point-by-point structure or by the block method.

Here’s what to add to your body paragraph outline if it follows a point by point organization:

If you’re using the block method, here’s what your body paragraph outline should include:

Conclusion

In your outline for the conclusion, you should include the following components:

Restate the Thesis: Reiterate your thesis statement, emphasizing the main argument of your essay. This reinforces the central message you want your readers to take away.
Summarized Points: Summarize the points you made in the body paragraphs.
Final Insight or Observation: Add a final insight, observation, or thought to end the conclusion. This could be a reflection on the significance of your comparisons, a call to action, or a broader perspective on the topic.

Starting with gathering information and ending with a complete outline, these 4 easy steps will let you have a great start.

Compare and Contrast Essay Outline Examples

Here are some outline examples that will make it easy for you to understand the process described above. Check them out to see what your final outlines should look like.

5 Paragraph Compare And Contrast Essay Outline Example

Compare And Contrast Essay Outline Middle School

Compare And Contrast Essay Outline 5th Grade

Compare And Contrast Essay Outline 6th Grade

Compare And Contrast Essay Outline High School

Compare And Contrast Essay Outline Point By Point

Compare And Contrast Essay Outline Block Method

Oedipus and Hamlet Compare And Contrast Essay Outline

Argumentative Compare and Contrast Essay Outline

Want to read complete essays instead? Check out our blog on compare and contrast essay examples to read expertly written samples!

Tips for Making Better Compare and Contrast Outlines

Creating a compare and contrast essay outline is a crucial step in the essay-writing process. With the right tips, you can make your outlines more effective and efficient.

Here are some valuable tips to help you craft better compare and contrast outlines:

Clarify Your Purpose: Before you start outlining, ensure you have a clear understanding of the purpose of your essay. Are you aiming to inform or analyze and evaluate? Your outline should align with your essay's objectives.
Choose the Right Structure: Select the structure (point-by-point or block method) that best suits your subjects and the nature of your comparison. Some topics may work better with one method over the other.
Be Consistent: Maintain consistency in your outline. Use the same format for each body paragraph, making it easier for you to stay organized and for your readers to follow your argument.
Prioritize Key Points: Not all comparisons and contrasts are of equal importance. Focus on the most significant aspects to avoid overwhelming your essay with minor details.
Balance Similarities and Differences: Ensure your outline includes a balanced mix of similarities and differences. This balance contributes to a well-rounded and persuasive essay.
Review and Revise: After creating your initial outline, take a step back and review it critically. Does it effectively convey your ideas? Are there any redundancies or gaps in your comparisons? Make revisions as needed.
Stay Focused: It's easy to get sidetracked when comparing and contrasting. Stick to your chosen criteria and avoid going off-topic in your outline.
Use Clear Language: Keep your outline concise and use clear, straightforward language. Avoid jargon or overly complex sentences that could confuse your readers.
Seek Feedback: If possible, share your outline with a peer or instructor for feedback. They can offer valuable insights and suggestions for improvement.

To Conclude,

Crafting a well-structured compare and contrast essay outline is a skill that can elevate your essays. We've explored the purpose, components, and step-by-step process for creating effective outlines. You’re now equipped to shape your ideas, organize your arguments, and guide your readers through compelling comparisons and contrasts.

Remember, outlining isn't just a preliminary step; it's your blueprint for essay excellence. So utilize the steps and tips you learned above to craft excellent comparison essays!

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A Modern Perspective: Hamlet

By Michael Neill

The great Russian director Vsevolod Meyerhold used to maintain that “if all the plays ever written suddenly disappeared and only Hamlet miraculously survived, all the theaters in the world would be saved. They could all put on Hamlet and be successful.” 1 Perhaps Meyerhold exaggerated because of his frustration—he was prevented from ever staging the tragedy by Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, who apparently thought it too dangerous to be performed—but Meyerhold’s sense of Hamlet ’s extraordinary breadth of appeal is amply confirmed by its stage history. Praised by Shakespeare’s contemporaries for its power to “please all” as well as “to please the wiser sort,” 2 it provided his company with an immediate and continuing success. It was equally admired by popular audiences at the Globe on the Bankside, by academic playgoers “in the two Universities of Cambridge and Oxford,” and at court—where it was still in request in 1637, nearly forty years after its first performance.

In the four centuries since it was first staged, Hamlet has never lost its theatrical appeal, remaining today the most frequently performed of Shakespeare’s tragedies. At the same time, it has developed a reputation as the most intellectually puzzling of his plays, and it has already attracted more commentary than any other work in English except the Bible. Even today, when criticism stresses the importance of the reader’s role in “constructing” the texts of the past, there is something astonishing about Hamlet ’s capacity to accommodate the most bafflingly different readings. 3

In the early nineteenth century, for instance, Romantic critics read it as the psychological study of a prince too delicate and sensitive for his public mission; to later nineteenth-century European intellectuals, the hero’s anguish and self-reproach spoke so eloquently of the disillusionment of revolutionary failure that in czarist Russia “Hamletism” became the acknowledged term for political vacillation and disengagement. The twentieth century, not surprisingly, discovered a more violent and disturbing play: to the French poet Paul Valéry, the tragedy seemed to embody the European death wish revealed in the carnage and devastation of the First World War; in the mid-1960s the English director Peter Hall staged it as a work expressing the political despair of the nuclear age; for the Polish critic Jan Kott, as for the Russian filmmaker Gregori Kozintsev, the play became “a drama of a political crime” in a state not unlike Stalin’s Soviet empire; 4 while the contemporary Irish poet Seamus Heaney found in it a metaphor for the murderous politics of revenge at that moment devouring his native Ulster:

I am Hamlet the Dane,

skull handler, parablist,

smeller of rot

in the state, infused

with its poisons,

pinioned by ghosts

and affections

murders and pieties 5

Even the major “facts” of the play—the status of the Ghost, or the real nature of Hamlet’s “madness”—are seen very differently at different times. Samuel Johnson, for example, writing in the 1760s, had no doubt that the hero’s “madness,” a source of “much mirth” to eighteenth-century audiences, was merely “pretended,” but twentieth-century Hamlets onstage, even if they were not the full-fledged neurotics invented by Freud and his disciple Ernest Jones, were likely to show some signs of actual madness. Modern readings, too, while still fascinated by the hero’s intellectual and emotional complexities, are likely to emphasize those characteristics that are least compatible with the idealized “sweet prince” of the Victorians—the diseased suspicion of women, revealed in his obsession with his mother’s sexuality and his needless cruelty to Ophelia, his capacity for murderous violence (he dies with the blood of five people on his hands), and his callous indifference to the killing of such relative innocents as Polonius, Rosencrantz, and Guildenstern.

Hamlet ’s ability to adapt itself to the preconceptions of almost any audience, allowing the viewers, in the play’s own sardonic phrase, to “botch the words up fit to their own thoughts” ( 4.5.12 ), results partly from the boldness of its design. Over the sensationalism and rough energy of a conventional revenge plot is placed a sophisticated psychological drama whose most intense action belongs to the interior world of soliloquy: Hamlet agrees to revenge his father’s death at the urging of the Ghost, and thus steps into an old-fashioned revenge tragedy; but it is Hamlet’s inner world, revealed to us in his soliloquies (speeches addressed not to other characters but to the audience, as if the character were thinking aloud), that equally excites our attention. It is as if two plays are occurring simultaneously.

Although Hamlet is often thought of as the most personal of Shakespeare’s tragedies, Shakespeare did not invent the story of revenge that the play tells. The story was an ancient one, belonging originally to Norse saga. The barbaric narrative of murder and revenge—of a king killed by his brother, who then marries the dead king’s widow, of the young prince who must pretend to be mad in order to save his own life, who eludes a series of traps laid for him by his wicked uncle, and who finally revenges his father’s death by killing the uncle—had been elaborated in the twelfth-century Historiae Danicae of Saxo Grammaticus, and then polished up for sixteenth-century French readers in François de Belleforest’s Histoires Tragiques. It was first adapted for the English theater in the late 1580s in the form of the so-called Ur- Hamlet , a play attributed to Thomas Kyd (unfortunately now lost) that continued to hold the stage until at least 1596; and it may well be that when Shakespeare began work on Hamlet about 1599, he had no more lofty intention than to polish up this slightly tarnished popular favorite. But Shakespeare’s wholesale rewriting produced a Hamlet so utterly unlike Kyd’s work that its originality was unmistakable even to playgoers familiar with Kyd’s play.

The new tragedy preserved the outline of the old story, and took over Kyd’s most celebrated contributions—a ghost crying for revenge, and a play-within-the-play that sinisterly mirrors the main plot; but by focusing upon the perplexed interior life of the hero, Shakespeare gave a striking twist to what had been a brutally straightforward narrative. On the levels of both revenge play and psychological drama, the play develops a preoccupation with the hidden, the secret, and the mysterious that does much to account for its air of mystery. In Maynard Mack’s words, it is “a play in the interrogative mood” whose action deepens and complicates, rather than answers, the apparently casual question with which it begins, “Who’s there?” 6

“The Cheer and Comfort of Our Eye”: Hamlet and Surveillance

The great subject of revenge drama, before Hamlet , was the moral problem raised by private, personal revenge: i.e., should the individual take revenge into his own hands or leave it to God? Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy (and, one assumes, his lost play about Hamlet as well) captured on the stage the violent contradictions of the Elizabethan attitudes toward this form of “wild justice.” The surprising thing about Shakespeare’s Hamlet is that it barely glances at the ethical argument raised by a hero’s taking justice into his own hands—an argument central to The Spanish Tragedy. Of course, the controversy about the morality of private revenge must have provided an important context for the original performances of the play, giving an ominous force to Hamlet’s fear that the spirit he has seen “may be a devil” luring him to damnation ( 2.2.628 ). But Shakespeare simply takes this context for granted, and goes on to discover a quite different kind of political interest in his plot—one that may help to explain the paranoiac anxieties it was apparently capable of arousing in a dictator like Stalin.

Turning away from the framework of ethical debate, Shakespeare used Saxo’s story of Hamlet’s pretended madness and delayed revenge to explore the brutal facts about survival in an authoritarian state. Here too the play could speak to Elizabethan experience, for we should not forget that the glorified monarchy of Queen Elizabeth I was sustained by a vigorous network of spies and informers. Indeed, one portrait of Elizabeth shows her dressed in a costume allegorically embroidered with eyes and ears, partly to advertise that her watchers and listeners were everywhere. Shakespeare’s Elsinore, too—the castle governed by Claudius and home to Hamlet—is full of eyes and ears; and behind the public charade of warmth, magnanimity, and open government that King Claudius so carefully constructs, the lives of the King’s subjects are exposed to merciless inquisition.

It is symbolically appropriate that the play should begin with a group of anxious watchers on the battlemented walls of the castle, for nothing and no one in Claudius’s Denmark is allowed to go “unwatched”: every appearance must be “sifted” or “sounded,” and every secret “opened.” The King himself does not hesitate to eavesdrop on the heir apparent; and his chief minister, Polonius, will meet his death lurking behind a curtain in the same squalid occupation. But they are not alone in this: the wholesale corruption of social relationships, even the most intimate, is an essential part of Shakespeare’s chilling exposure of authoritarian politics. Denmark, Hamlet informs Rosencrantz and Guildenstern accurately enough, is “a prison” ( 2.2.262 ); and the treachery of these former school friends of Hamlet illustrates how much, behind the mask of uncle Claudius’s concern, his court is ruled by the prison-house customs of the stool pigeon and the informer. How readily first Ophelia and then Gertrude allow themselves to become passive instruments of Polonius’s and Claudius’s spying upon the Prince; how easily Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are persuaded to put their friendship with Hamlet at the disposal of the state. Even Laertes’s affectionate relationship with his sister is tainted by a desire to install himself as a kind of censor, a “watchman” to the fortress of her heart ( 1.3.50 ). In this he is all too like his father, Polonius, who makes himself an interiorized Big Brother, engraving his cautious precepts on Laertes’s memory ( 1.3.65 ff.) and telling Ophelia precisely what she is permitted to think and feel:

I do not know, my lord, what I should think.

Marry, I will teach you. Think yourself a baby. . . .

( 1.3.113 –14)

Polonius is the perfect inhabitant of this court: busily policing his children’s sexuality, he has no scruple about prostituting his daughter in the interests of state security, for beneath his air of senile wordiness and fatherly anxiousness lies an ingrained cynicism that allows him both to spy on his son’s imagined “drabbing” in Paris and to “loose” his daughter as a sexual decoy to entrap the Prince.

Hamlet’s role as hero at once sets him apart from this prison-house world and yet leads him to become increasingly entangled in its web of surveillance. To the admiring Ophelia, Hamlet remains “Th’ observed of all observers” ( 3.1.168 ), but his obvious alienation has resulted in his being “observed” in a much more sinister sense. He is introduced in Act 1, scene 2, as a mysteriously taciturn watcher and listener whose glowering silence calls into question the pomp and bustle of the King’s wordy show, just as his mourning blacks cast suspicion on the showy costumes of the court. Yet he himself, we are quickly made to realize, is the object of a dangerously inquisitive stare—what the King smoothly calls “the cheer and comfort of our eye” ( 1.2.120 ).

The full meaning of that silky phrase will be disclosed on Claudius’s next appearance, when, after Hamlet has met the Ghost and has begun to appear mad, Claudius engages Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to probe his nephew’s threatening transformation ( 2.2.1 –18). “Madness in great ones,” the King insists, “must not unwatched go” ( 3.1.203 ):

There’s something in his soul

O’er which his melancholy sits on brood,

And I do doubt the hatch and the disclose

Will be some danger. ( 3.1.178 –81)

But of course Hamlet’s madness is as much disguise as it is revelation; and while the Prince is the most ruthlessly observed character in the play, he is also its most unremitting observer. Forced to master his opponent’s craft of smiling villainy, he becomes not merely an actor but also a dramatist, ingeniously using a troupe of traveling players, with their “murder in jest,” to unmask the King’s own hypocritical “show.”

The scene in which the Players present The Murder of Gonzago , the play that Hamlet calls “The Mousetrap,” brings the drama of surveillance to its climax. We in the audience become participants in the drama’s claustrophobic economy of watching and listening, as our attention moves to and fro among the various groups on the stage, gauging the significance of every word, action, and reaction, sharing the obsessional gaze that Hamlet describes to Horatio:

Observe my uncle. . . . Give him heedful note,

For I mine eyes will rivet to his face,

And, after, we will both our judgments join

In censure of his seeming. ( 3.2.85 –92)

“The Mousetrap” twice reenacts Claudius’s murder of his brother—first in the dumb show and then in the play proper—drawing out the effect so exquisitely that the King’s enraged interruption produces an extraordinary discharge of tension. An audience caught up in Hamlet’s wild excitement is easily blinded to the fact that this seeming climax is, in terms of the revenge plot, at least, a violent anticlimax. Kyd’s Spanish Tragedy had developed the play-within-the-play as a perfect vehicle for the ironies of revenge, allowing the hero to take his actual revenge in the very act of staging the villain’s original crime. Hamlet’s play, however, does not even make public Claudius’s forbidden story. Indeed, while it serves to confirm the truth of what the Ghost has said, the only practical effect of the Prince’s theatrical triumph is to hand the initiative decisively to Claudius. In the scenes that follow, Hamlet shows himself capable of both instinctive violence and of cold-blooded calculation, but his behavior is purely reactive. Otherwise he seems oddly paralyzed by his success—a condition displayed in the prayer scene ( 3.3.77 –101) where he stands behind the kneeling Claudius with drawn sword, “neutral to his will and matter,” uncannily resembling the frozen revenger described in the First Player’s speech about Pyrrhus standing over old Priam ( 2.2.493 ff.). All Hamlet can do is attempt to duplicate the triumph of “The Mousetrap” in his confrontation with Gertrude by holding up to her yet another verbal mirror, in which she is forced to gaze in horror on her “inmost part” ( 3.4.25 ).

Hamlet’s sudden loss of direction after the “Mousetrap” scene lasts through the fourth act of the play until he returns from his sea voyage in that mysteriously altered mood on which most commentators remark—a kind of fatalism that makes him the largely passive servant of a plot that he now does little to advance or impede. It is as if the springing of the “Mousetrap” leaves Hamlet with nowhere to go—primarily because it leaves him with nothing to say. But from the very beginning, his struggle with Claudius has been conceived as a struggle for the control of language—a battle to determine what can and cannot be uttered.

Speaking the Unspeakable: Hamlet and Memory

If surveillance is one prop of the authoritarian state, the other is its militant regulation of speech. As Claudius flatters the court into mute complicity with his theft of both the throne and his dead brother’s wife, he genially insists “You cannot speak of reason to the Dane / And lose your voice” ( 1.2.44 –45); but an iron wall of silence encloses the inhabitants of his courtly prison. While the flow of royal eloquence muffles inconvenient truths, ears here are “fortified” against dangerous stories ( 1.1.38 ) and lips sealed against careless confession: “Give thy thoughts no tongue,” Polonius advises Laertes, “. . . Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice . . . reserve thy judgment” ( 1.3.65 –75). Hamlet’s insistent warnings to his fellow watchers on the battlements “Never to speak of this that you have seen” ( 1.5.174 ) urge the same caution: “Let it be tenable in your silence still . . . Give it an understanding but no tongue” ( 1.2.269 –71). What for them is merely common prudence, however, is for the hero an absolute prohibition and an intolerable burden: “. . . break, my heart, for I must hold my tongue” ( 1.2.164 ).

Hamlet has only two ways of rupturing this enforced silence. The “pregnant” wordplay of his “mad” satire, as Polonius uneasily recognizes ( 2.2.226 –27), is one way, but it amounts to no more than inconclusive verbal fencing. Soliloquy is a more powerful resource because, since it is heard by no one (except the audience), its impenetrable privacy defines Hamlet’s independence from the corrupt public world. From his first big speech in the play, he has made such hiddenness the badge of his resistance to the King and Queen: “I have that within which passes show” ( 1.2.88 ), he announces. What is at issue here is not simply a contrast between hypocrisy and true grief over the loss of his king and father: rather, Hamlet grounds his very claim to integrity upon a notion that true feeling can never be expressed: it is only “that . . . which passes show ” that can escape the taint of hypocrisy, of “acting.” It is as if, in this world of remorseless observation, the self can survive only as a ferociously defended secret, something treasured for the very fact of its hiddenness and impenetrability. Unlike Gertrude, unlike Ophelia, unlike those absorbent “sponges” Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, Hamlet must insist he is not made of “penetrable stuff.”

If Hamlet’s “antic disposition” is the guardian of his rebellious inwardness, soliloquy is where this inwardness lives, a domain which (if we except Claudius’s occasional flickers of conscience) no other character is allowed to inhabit. Hamlet’s soliloquies bulk so large in our response to the play because they not only guarantee the existence of the hero’s secret inner life; they also, by their relentless self-questioning, imply the presence of still more profoundly secret truths “hid . . . within the center” ( 2.2.170 –71): “I do not know / Why yet I live to say ‘This thing’s to do,’ / Sith I have cause, and will, and strength, and means / To do ’t” ( 4.4.46 –49). The soliloquies are the focus of the play’s preoccupation with speaking and silence. Hamlet is set apart from those around him by his access to this region of private utterance: in it he can, as it were, “be bounded in a nutshell and count [himself] a king of infinite space” ( 2.2.273 –74).

Yet there is a paradox here: the isolation of soliloquy is at once his special strength and the source of peculiar anguish. It saves him from the fate of Ophelia, who becomes “Divided from herself and her fair judgment” ( 4.5.92 ) by her grief at Polonius’s death and hasty burial; accustomed to speak only in the voice that others allow her, dutifully resolved to “think nothing, my lord” ( 3.2.124 ), she is left with no language other than the disconnected fragments of her madness to express outrage at a murder which authority seems determined to conceal. Hamlet, by contrast, finds in soliloquy an arena where the unspeakable can be uttered. But the very fact that these are words that others do not hear also makes soliloquy a realm of noncommunication, of frustrating silence—a prison as well as a fortress in which the speaker beats his head unavailingly against the walls of his own cell. Thus the soliloquy that ends Act 2 reproaches itself for a kind of speechlessness—the mute ineffectuality of a “John-a-dreams,” who, unlike the Player, “can say nothing”—and at the same time mocks itself as a torrent of empty language, a mere unpacking of the heart with words ( 2.2.593 –616). For all their eloquence, the soliloquies serve in the end only to increase the tension generated by the pressure of forbidden utterance.

It is from this pressure that the first three acts of the play derive most of their extraordinary energy; and the energy is given a concrete dramatic presence in the form of the Ghost. The appearance of a ghost demanding vengeance was a stock device borrowed from the Roman playwright Seneca; and the Ur- Hamlet had been notorious for its ghost, shrieking like an oysterwife, “Hamlet, revenge!” But the strikingly unconventional thing about Shakespeare’s Ghost is its melancholy preoccupation with the silenced past and its plangent cry of “Remember me” ( 1.5.98 ), which makes remembrance seem more important than revenge. “The struggle of humanity against power,” the Czech novelist Milan Kundera has written, “is the struggle of memory against forgetfulness”; and this Ghost, which stands for all that has been erased by the bland narratives of King Claudius, is consumed by the longing to speak that which power has rendered unspeakable. The effect of the Ghost’s narrative upon Hamlet is to infuse him with the same desire; indeed, once he has formally inscribed its watchword—“Remember me”—on the tables of his memory, he is as if possessed by the Ghost, seeming to mime its speechless torment when he appears to Ophelia, looking “As if he had been loosèd out of hell / To speak of horrors” ( 2.1.93 –94).

For all its pathos of silenced longing, the Ghost remains profoundly ambivalent, and not just because Elizabethans held such contradictory beliefs about ghosts. 7 The ambivalence is dramatized in a particularly disturbing detail: as the Ghost pours his story into Hamlet’s ear (the gesture highlighted by the Ghost’s incantatory repetition of “hear” and “ear”), we become aware of an uncanny parallel between the Ghost’s act of narration and the murder the Ghost tells about:

’Tis given out that, sleeping in my orchard,

A serpent stung me. So the whole ear of Denmark

Is by a forgèd process of my death

Rankly abused. . . .

Upon my secure hour thy uncle stole

With juice of cursèd hebona in a vial

And in the porches of my ears did pour

The leprous distilment. . . . ( 1.5.42 –71)

If Claudius’s propaganda has abused “the whole ear of Denmark” like a second poisoning, the Ghost’s own story enters Hamlet’s “ears of flesh and blood” (line 28) like yet another corrosive. The fact that it is a story that demands telling, and that its narrator is “an honest ghost,” cannot alter the fact that it will work away in Hamlet’s being like secret venom until he in turn can vent it in revenge.

The “Mousetrap” play is at once a fulfillment and an escape from that compulsion. It gives, in a sense, a public voice to the Ghost’s silenced story. But it is only a metaphoric revenge. Speaking daggers and poison but using none, Hamlet turns out only to have written his own inability to bring matters to an end. It is no coincidence, then, that he should foresee the conclusion of his own tragedy as being the product of someone else’s script: “There’s a divinity that shapes our ends, / Rough-hew them how we will” ( 5.2.11 –12).

“To Tell My Story”: Unfinished Hamlet

In the last scene of the play, the sense that Hamlet’s story has been shaped by Providence—or by a playwright other than Hamlet—is very strong: the swordplay with Laertes is a theatrical imitation of dueling that becomes the real thing, sweetly knitting up the paralyzing disjunction between action and acting; at the same time, revenge is symmetrically perfected in the spectacle of Claudius choking on “a poison tempered by himself,” Laertes “justly killed with his own treachery,” and the Queen destroyed in the vicious pun that has her poisoned by Claudius’s “union.” Yet Hamlet’s consoling fatalism does not survive the final slaughter. Instead, he faces his end tormented by a sense of incompleteness, of a story still remaining to be told:

You that look pale and tremble at this chance,

That are but mutes or audience to this act,

Had I but time (as this fell sergeant, Death,

Is strict in his arrest), O, I could tell you—

But let it be. ( 5.2.366 –70)

Within a few lines Hamlet’s distinctive voice, which has dominated his own tragedy like that of no other Shakespearean hero, will be cut off in midsentence by the arrest of death—and “the rest is silence” ( 5.2.395 ).

The play is full of such unfinished, untold, or perhaps even untellable tales, from Barnardo’s interrupted story of the Ghost’s first appearance to the Player’s unfinished rendition of “Aeneas’ tale to Dido” and the violently curtailed performance of The Murder of Gonzago. In the opening scene the Ghost itself is cut off, before it can speak, by the crowing of a cock; and when it returns and speaks to Hamlet, it speaks first about a story it cannot tell:

But that I am forbid

To tell the secrets of my prison house,

I could a tale unfold whose lightest word

Would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy

young blood . . . ( 1.5.18 –21)

Even the tale it is permitted to unfold is, ironically, one of murderous interruption and terrible incompleteness:

Cut off , even in the blossoms of my sin,

Unhouseled, disappointed, unaneled,

No reck’ning made, but sent to my account

With all my imperfections on my head.

( 1.5.83 –86)

Act 5 at last produces the formal reckoning of this imperfect account, yet it leaves Hamlet once again echoing the Ghost’s agony of frustrated utterance.

But what, we might ask, can there be left to tell, beyond what we have already seen and heard? It seems to be part of the point, a last reminder of Hamlet’s elusive “mystery,” that we shall never know. The Prince has, of course, insisted that Horatio remain behind “to tell my story”; but the inadequacy of Horatio’s response only intensifies the sense of incompleteness. All that his stolid imagination can offer is that bald plot summary of “accidental judgments [and] casual slaughters,” which, as Anne Barton protests, leaves out “everything that seems important” about the play and its protagonist. 8 Nor is Fortinbras’s attempt to make “The soldier’s music and the rite of war / Speak loudly for [Hamlet]” ( 5.2.445 –46) any more satisfactory, for the military strongman’s cannon are no better tuned to speak for Hamlet than the player’s pipe.

It would be a mistake, of course, to underestimate the dramatic significance of Horatio’s story or of the “music and the rite of war”—these last gestures of ritual consolation—especially in a play where, beginning with the obscene confusion of Claudius’s “mirth in funeral” and including Polonius’s “hugger-mugger” interment and Ophelia’s “maimed rites,” we have seen the dead repeatedly degraded by the slighting of their funeral pomps. In this context it matters profoundly that Hamlet alone is accorded the full dignity of obsequies suited to his rank, for it signals his triumph over the oblivion to which Claudius is fittingly consigned, and, in its gesture back toward Hamlet’s story as Shakespeare has told it (so much better than Horatio does), it brings Hamlet’s story to a heroic end.

“The Undiscovered Country”: Hamlet and the Secrets of Death

How we respond to the ending of Hamlet —both as revenge drama and as psychological study—depends in part on how we respond to yet a third level of the play—that is, to Hamlet as a prolonged meditation on death. The play is virtually framed by two encounters with the dead: at one end is the Ghost, at the other a pile of freshly excavated skulls. The skulls (all but one) are nameless and silent; the Ghost has an identity (though a “questionable” one) and a voice; yet they are more alike than might at first seem. For this ghost, though invulnerable “as the air,” is described as a “dead corse,” a “ghost . . . come from the grave,” its appearance suggesting a grotesque disinterment of the buried king ( 1.4.52 –57; 1.5.139 ). The skulls for their part may be silent, but Hamlet plays upon each to draw out its own “excellent voice” (“That skull had a tongue in it and could sing once”; 5.1.77 –78), just as he engineered that “miraculous organ” of the Ghost’s utterance, the “Mousetrap.”

There is a difference, however: Hamlet’s dressing up the skulls with shreds of narrative (“as if ’twere Cain’s jawbone . . . This might be the pate of a politician . . . or of a courtier . . . Why may not that be the skull of a lawyer”; 5.1.78 –101) only serves to emphasize their mocking anonymity, until the Gravedigger offers to endow one with a precise historical identity: “This same skull . . . was . . . Yorick’s skull, the King’s jester” ( 5.1.186 –87). Hamlet is delighted: now memory can begin its work of loving resurrection. But how does the Gravedigger know? The answer is that of course he cannot; and try as Hamlet may to cover this bare bone with the flesh of nostalgic recollection, he cannot escape the wickedly punning reminder of “this same skull” that all skulls indeed look frightfully the same. Ironically, even Yorick’s distinctive trademark, his grin, has become indistinguishable from the mocking leer of that grand jester of the Danse Macabre , Death the Antic: “Where be your gibes now? . . . Not one now to mock your own grinning?”; so that even as he holds it, the skull’s identity appears to drain away into the anonymous memento mori sent to adorn “my lady’s” dressing table. It might as well be Alexander the Great’s; or Caesar’s; or anyone’s. It might as well be what it will one day become—a handful of clay, fit to stop a beer barrel.

It is significant that (with the trivial exception of 4.4) the graveyard scene is the only one to take place outside the confines of Claudius’s castle-prison. As the “common” place to which all stories lead, the graveyard both invites narrative and silences it. Each blank skull at once poses and confounds the question with which the tragedy itself began, “Who’s there?,” subsuming all human differences in awful likeness: “As you are now,” goes the tombstone verse, “so once was I / As I am now, so shall you be.” In the graveyard all stories collapse into one reductive history (“Alexander died, Alexander was buried, Alexander returneth to dust”; 5.1.216 –17). In this sense the Gravedigger is the mocking counterpart of the Player: and the houses of oblivion that gravediggers make challenge the players’ memorial art by lasting “till doomsday” ( 5.1.61 ). Hamlet shares with the Gravedigger the same easy good-fellowship he extends to the play’s other great outsider, the First Player; but the Gravedigger asserts a more sinister kind of intimacy with his claim to have begun his work “that very day that young Hamlet was born” ( 5.1.152 –53). In this moment he identifies himself as the Prince’s mortal double, the Sexton Death from the Danse Macabre who has been preparing him a grave from the moment of birth.

If there is a final secret to be revealed, then, about that “undiscovered country” on which Hamlet’s imagination broods, it is perhaps only the Gravedigger’s spade that can uncover it. For his digging lays bare the one thing we can say for certain lies hidden “within” the mortal show of the flesh—the emblems of Death himself, that Doppelgänger who shadows each of us as the mysterious Lamord ( La Mort ) shadows Laertes. If there is a better story, one that would confer on the rough matter of life the consolations of form and significance, it is, the play tells us, one that cannot finally be told; for it exists on the other side of language, to be tantalizingly glimpsed only at the point when Hamlet is about to enter the domain of the inexpressible. The great and frustrating achievement of this play, its most ingenious and tormenting trick, the source of its endlessly belabored mystery, is to persuade us that such a story might exist, while demonstrating its irreducible hiddenness. The only story Hamlet is given is that of a hoary old revenge tragedy, which he persuades himself (and us) can never denote him truly; but it is a narrative frame that nothing (not even inaction) will allow him to escape. The story of our lives, the play wryly acknowledges, is always the wrong story; but the rest, after all, is silence.

Dmitri Shostakovich, Testimony: The Memoirs of Dmitri Shostakovich , as related to and edited by Solomon Volkow, trans. Antonina W. Bouis (London: Faber, 1981), p. 84.
See F. E. Halliday, A Shakespeare Companion, 1564–1964 (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1964), pp. 435, 209; see also pp. 262 and 403.
The most lucid guide to this critical labyrinth, though he deals with no work later than 1960, is probably still Morris Weitz, Hamlet and the Philosophy of Literary Criticism (London: Faber, 1964).
Jan Kott, Shakespeare Our Contemporary (London: Methuen, 1964).
Excerpt from “Viking Dublin: Trial Pieces” from Poems, 1965–1975 by Seamus Heaney. Copyright © 1975, 1980 by Seamus Heaney. Reprinted by permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Inc. Permission for use of these lines from North by Seamus Heaney, published by Faber and Faber Limited, is also acknowledged.
See Mack’s classic essay, “The World of Hamlet,” Yale Review 41 (1952): 502–23; Mack’s approach is significantly extended in Harry Levin’s The Question of Hamlet (New York: Oxford University Press, 1959).
The most balanced treatment of this and other contentious historical issues in the play is in Roland M. Frye, The Renaissance Hamlet (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984).
Introduction to T. J. B. Spencer, ed., Hamlet (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1980), p. 52. See also James L. Calderwood’s To Be and Not To Be: Negation and Meta-drama in “Hamlet” (New York: Columbia University Press, 1983).

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Literature / Poetry

Compare Hamlet and Oedipus Essay

Pages: 6 (1999 words) · Bibliography Sources: 4 · File: .docx · Topic: Literature

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Oedipus Rex, Hamlet, & Willy Loman Comparison Essay

3 Works Cited

“Still, the Truth Remains” An immense desire for personal satisfaction, and extraordinary reputation can often result in a sickly, perverse distortion of reality. In Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex, a man well known for his intellect and wisdom, finds himself blind to the truth of his life, and his parentage. William Shakespeare’s Hamlet also contains a character that is in search of the truth, which ultimately leads to his own demise , as well as the demise of many around him. Arthur Miller’s play, The Death of a Salesman, tells of a tragic character so wrapped up in his delusional world, that reality and illusion fuse, causing an internal explosion that leads to his downfall. Each play enacts the struggle of a man attempting to come to grips …show more content…

Oedipus’ foolish decisions ultimately lead to his downfall in the play. Oedipus chooses to kill Laios. He chooses to marry Iocaste. He chooses to forcefully, and publicly, assume the mission of discovering the identity of Laios’ murderer saying ironically, “I say I take the son’s part, just as though I were his son, to press the fight for him and see it won,” (633). He proceeds on this mission and chooses to ignore the warnings of Creon, Iocaste, Teiresias, the messenger, the shepherd, and anyone who attempts to stand between him and the truth; and, he chooses to blind himself. In the end, Oedipus’ most foolish choice prevails throughout the play; the choice of illusion over reality ultimately costs him his life. Similar to the quest for truth in Oedipus’ case, so does Hamlet lead to his own decease. In the first act of William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, after Hamlet is aware of the tormented ghost of his father walking on the ramparts, he goes to witness it for himself. This immediately exemplifies the theory that Hamlet, like Oedipus, is in search of the truth, until he realizes it is too much to bear. Subsequent to seeing the apparition, he is convinced to avenge his father’s murderer. The ghost tells him, “Revenge his foul and most unnatural murder,” (29). As Hamlet lays the trap for the new King Claudius, he is procrastinating in order to solve his self-doubt. Even after the ghost tells Hamlet how his father was murdered, Hamlet has the players act

Hamlet Human Nature Essay

This all sets the stage for Hamlet’s mental state prior to learning that he was killed by somebody in his family. These themes of death and betrayal lead into the end of the first act when Hamlet is tasked by the ghost of his father to seek revenge against Claudius for what he did. Hamlet believes that he was “born to set it right” (1.5.190). The extremes of this line reveal that Hamlet believes that the whole reason for his existence is to avenge his father. This need for revenge drives Hamlet for the rest of the play. He wants justice for his father, but he also wants to punish Claudius for his murder and marrying his mother. He gives in to human nature when he starts striving to avenge his father’s death.

Oedipus Vs Creon Analysis

Oedipus is a very ignorant character. The play reveals that he killed his father and slept with his mother. To make matters worse, he has no idea that he has done either of these things. As the play progresses, hints of Oedipus’s wrongdoings pop up sporadically, yet he does not catch on until the end. Other characters realize what is going on before Oedipus does. It is Oedipus’s ignorance that prolongs his search for King Laius’s killer and his realization of his

Similarities Between Hamlet And August Wilson

In the play by William Shakespeare, the ghost of King Hamlet approaches his mourning and depressed son, Hamlet, who is still affected by his death. The ghost explains to Hamlet how he died and demands that Hamlet avenge his death. Note how the ghost approaches Hamlet when he’s the weakest and still mourning to persuade and manipulate him into taking revenge for him. In Act one Scene 5 the ghost states, “If thou didst ever thy dear father love-/ Revenge his foul and most unnatural murder.” The way King Hamlet words his request is more as a challenge; in which Hamlet’s love for his dead father can only be proven by carrying out whatever his father wishes. The ghost influences most Hamlet’s behavior, which not only affects the plot, but also the relationships with other characters. The ghost influences the relationship between Hamlet and his mother, Gertrude. He becomes angry at Gertrude because of her fast marriage with his uncle Claudius. Through the use of innuendos, antic disposition, and metamorphic plays, Hamlet makes it his duty to get King Claudius back for killing his father. Hamlet agreed to avenge his father without second thought. As the play advances, Hamlet begins to doubt the apparition. In act 3 Hamlet begins to have second thoughts and states, “The spirit that I have seen/ May be a devil…” This shows Hamlet’s inner conflict between listening to his father and avenging his death or following his ethics. To be sure that Claudius

Oedipus' Fate from the Gods and His Choices Essay

In the beginning of the story, Oedipus is very taken back by the situation. He will not accept the truth of his fate and accuses Tiresias of lying to him so Oedipus’s bother- in- law, Creon, could take the throne. Oedipus is extremely dumbfounded by this news because he had no knowledge of killing his father or marrying his mother, but what he learns later is that who he thought were his parents were not his real parents. When he finally realizes that he did in fact marry his own mother and kill his father, he accepts it and punishes himself in order to uphold his promise to his people. By this point there is no way Oedipus can escape his fate. Tiresias says to Oedipus, “No man in the world can make the gods do more than the gods will” (811). Since he did kill his father, the previous king, Oedipus has to be shunned by all of Thebes. Because there is no way of changing his fate, he accepts his responsibilities by giving himself the punishment he assigned to the murderer of Laius.

Examples Of Sane In Hamlet

The beginning of the play sets the stage for everything to unfold. Hamlet is weak in the mind due to his father’s unnatural death. In Act 1, Hamlet speaks to the Ghost and learns how his father died. Without Hamlet interaction with the Ghost, he would not have created a desire for revenging his father’s death. Now knowing that Claudius killed his father in order to take his place as king, it only makes sense that Hamlet desires the truth to be revealed as to what happened to his father.

Example Of Justice In Hamlet

When Hamlet’s father, the late king of Denmark, comes to him as a ghost and reveals he died at the hands of his brother, Claudius, he demands Hamlet “revenge his foul and most unnatural murder” (1.4.23-25). Without hesitation, Hamlet agrees to avenge his father’s death, saying, “Haste me to know’t, that I with wings as swift / as meditation or the thoughts of love, / May sweep to my revenge” (1.5.29-31). He decides the proper form of justice is to kill Claudius, just as the king killed his own brother, though he has his own motives. Hamlet loathes Claudius for marrying his mother, and learning King Hamlet died at the hands of Claudius only provokes Hamlet more. As the play continues, Hamlet plots his revenge, and he deceives everyone with his apparent insanity. Hamlet eventually succeeds in his search for vengeance and justice, though it kills him as well. He

Essay on Hamlets Obsession with Death

In Hamlet, William Shakespeare presents the main character Hamlet as a man who is fixated on death. Shakespeare uses this obsession to explore both Hamlet's desire for revenge and his need for assurance. In the process, Shakespeare directs Hamlet to reflect on basic principles such as justice and truth by offering many examples of Hamlet's compulsive behavior; as thoughts of death are never far from his mind. It is apparent that Hamlet is haunted by his father's death. When Hamlet encounters the ghost of his father, their conversation raises all kinds of unthinkable questions, for example murder by a brother, unfaithful mother, that triggers Hamlet's obsession. He feels compelled to determine the reliability

The Examination of Hamlet and Laertes as Foils Essay

William Shakespeare’s The Tragedy of Hamlet relays Hamlet’s quest to avenge the murder of his father, the king of Denmark. The late King Hamlet was murdered by his brother, Claudius, who took the throne and Hamlet’s mother Gertrude for himself. Hamlet is beseeched by the ghost of his father to take vengeance upon Claudius; while he swears to do so, the prince inexplicably delays killing Claudius for months on end. Hamlet’s feeble attempt to first confirm his uncle’s guilt with a play that recounts the murder and his botched excuses for not killing Claudius when the opportunity arises serve as testimony to Hamlet’s true self. Hamlet is riddled with doubt towards the validity of the ghost and his own ability to carry out the act necessary to

Hamlet: A Quest for Revenge Essay

Although Hamlet initially swears he will never forget the ghost while seeking retribution (Hamlet. I. v. 112-113), his focus slowly shifts from his father to his own self-interest. In fact, in his final soliloquy, Hamlet laments over his tragic situation: "How stand I, then,/ That I have a father killed, a mother stained,/ Excitements of my reason and my blood,/ And let all sleep while, to my

Comparison of Oedipus and Hamlet Essay

Compare and contrast Oedipus and Hamlet. Is Oedipus more a man of action? Or is he more a man driven by whim and sudden, rash decisions? Which character is more selfless? Does Hamlet show any signs of selfish motives in his actions or inactions? Which protagonist seems more learned? wiser? more religious? more loving? more incestuous? Which seems to be a better murder investigator? Does Oedipus have any of Claudius' motives when he kills the king, Laius? Then which murderer is more blameworthy--Oedipus or Claudius?

Oedipus The King Of Oedipus

The king of Thebes will decide to see this matter through on his own terms, no matter the cost. For Oedipus finding the truth becomes something of an obsession, and it is far more important than what that truth might actually reveal. It seems as if the more facts that are uncovered about the murder of Laios, the more determined Oedipus becomes, perhaps still unconvinced about his own possible implication in the death of Laios (even though he remembers killing a man at a crossroads). He relentlessly marches on, ignoring the pleas from his wife, Jocasta, to abandon the

Hamlet's Flaws

He also debates living or committing suicide. Hamlet is portrayed as indecisive in the play after meeting the ghost. At first he believes that the ghost is his father, but as the play progresses, Hamlet starts to have doubts and even questions his beliefs. Hamlet says: “The spirit that I have seen May be the devil, and the devil hath power To assume a pleasing shape.” (2.2.610-612) When Hamlet first sees the ghost, he believes that the ghost is the spirit of his father even though there is has no proof that it is King Hamlet’s ghost and not the devil. As the play progresses, the ghost starts to harass Hamlet about avenging his father’s death. When the ghost appears to Hamlet in Act One, Scene 5, it continuously talks about getting revenge not for Hamlet, but for his late father. The ghost goes on to pressure Hamlet to follow through with the murder when he says “Doomed 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.” (1.5.14-17) He wants Hamlet to know that he does not have all the time in the world to wait around for Hamlet to get revenge on Claudius for him. Hamlet begins to have doubts as he starts to wonder why the ghost is so obsessed with the plan to kill Claudius. Hamlet is an indecisive character because of his issues making decisions throughout the play, which leads to the death of all the main

Essay about Oedipus: A Tragic Hero

1 Works Cited

Oedipus causes his own downfall through his arrogance. He thinks that Teiresias is falsely accusing him of murdering Laius when Teiresias says, “…you are the murderer whom you seek” (Sophocles 1264). Teiresias then tells Oedipus that the man who he seeks will be brother and father to his children and husband and son to his wife. Oedipus’s hubris is also a major cause of his downfall. Because he tries to escape what fate has in store for him, he ends up falling right into what was planned

Hamlet Surface Reading

Uncovering the truth of his father’s death was not easy for Hamlet because it cost him his sanity and innocence. For instance, When Hamlet first encountered the ghost; he was in disbelief and thought the ghost was sent from the devil “Maybe the devil, and the devil hath power T' assume a pleasing shape.” This causes Hamlet to isolate himself from the other men in efforts to find out the ghost’s purpose. When the ghost tells Hamlet who killed him, “Rankly abused. But know, thou noble youth, The serpent that did sting thy father’s life Now wears his crown,” it causes Hamlet to become overcome by anger to get revenge. In efforts to hide his knowledge of the murder, Hamlet pretends to be insane to fool the king. After the play, Hamlet’s

Similarities And Differences Between Hamlet And Oedipus

Curiosity and revenge are what make every form of entertainment in the action genre truly enjoyable. The characters draw the audience in and take them through a plot to find justice. Separated by around 2000 years, Sophocles's Oedipus Rex and Shakespeare's The Tragedy of Hamlet: Prince of Denmark both possess a plot akin to each other with a similar main idea of attempting to discover the main character’s father’s murderer. These famous tragedies depict two tragic heroes plagued with incestuous mothers and bad luck who fight to find truth and justice. Although both plays are similar in plot, the characterization of Hamlet and Oedipus have crucial differences which begin to appear: Oedipus is dependent on external forces and unorganized in his search for his father’s killer, whereas Hamlet is highly affected by internal forces and meticulous with his planning.

William Shakespeare

Ask litcharts ai: the answer to your questions.

Every society is defined by its codes of conduct—its rules about how to act and behave. In Hamlet , the codes of conduct are largely defined by religion and an aristocratic code that demands honor—and revenge if honor has been soiled. As the play unfolds and Hamlet (in keeping with his country’s spoken and unspoken) rules) seeks revenge for his father’s murder, he begins to realize just how complicated vengeance, justice, and honor all truly are. As Hamlet plunges deeper and deeper into existential musings, he also begins to wonder about the true meaning of honor—and Shakespeare ultimately suggests that the codes of conduct by which any given society operates are, more often than not, muddy, contradictory, and confused.

As Hamlet begins considering what it would mean to actually get revenge—to actually commit murder—he begins waffling and languishing in indecision and inaction. His inability to act, however, is not necessarily a mark of cowardice or fear—rather, as the play progresses, Hamlet is forced to reckon very seriously with what retribution and violence in the name of retroactively reclaiming “honor” or glory actually accomplishes. This conundrum is felt most profoundly in the middle of Act 3, when Hamlet comes upon Claudius totally alone for the first time in the play. It is the perfect opportunity to kill the man uninterrupted and unseen—but Claudius is on his knees, praying. Hamlet worries that killing Claudius while he prays will mean that Claudius’s soul will go to heaven. Hamlet is ignorant of the fact that Claudius, just moments before, was lamenting that his prayers for absolution are empty because he will not take action to actually repent for the violence he’s done and the pain he’s caused. Hamlet is paralyzed in this moment, unable to reconcile religion with the things he’s been taught about goodness, honor, duty, and vengeance. This moment represents a serious, profound turning point in the play—once Hamlet chooses not to kill Claudius for fear of unwittingly sending his father’s murderer to heaven, thus failing at the concept of revenge entirely, he begins to think differently about the codes, institutions, and social structures which demand unthinking vengeance and religious piety in the same breath. Because the idea of a revenge killing runs counter to the very tenets of Christian goodness and charity at the core of Hamlet’s upbringing—regardless of whether or not he believes them on a personal level—he begins to see the artifice upon which all social codes are built.

The second half of the play charts Hamlet’s descent into a new worldview—one which is very similar to nihilism in its surrender to the randomness of the universe and the difficulty of living within the confines of so many rules and standards at one time. As Hamlet gets even more deeply existential about life and death, appearances versus reality, and even the common courtesies and decencies which define society, he exposes the many hypocrisies which define life for common people and nobility alike. Hamlet resolves to pursue revenge, claiming that his thoughts will be worth nothing if they are anything but “bloody,” but at the same time is exacting and calculating in the vengeances he does secure. He dispatches with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern , charged with bringing him to England for execution, by craftily outwitting them and sending them on to their own deaths. He laments to Horatio that all men, whether they be Alexander the Great or a common court jester, end up in the same ground. Finally, he warns off Horatio’s warning about dueling Laertes by claiming that he wants to leave his fate to God. Hamlet’s devil-may-care attitude and his increasingly reckless choices are the result of realizing that the social and moral codes he’s clung to for so long are inapplicable to his current circumstances—and perhaps more broadly irrelevant.

Hamlet is a deeply subversive text—one that asks hard, uncomfortable questions about the value of human life, the indifference of the universe, and the construction of society, culture, and common decency. As Hamlet pursues his society’s ingrained ideals of honor, he discovers that perhaps honor means something very different than what he’s been raised to believe it does—and confronts the full weight of society’s arbitrary, outdated expectations and demands.

Religion, Honor, and Revenge ThemeTracker

Religion, Honor, and Revenge Quotes in Hamlet

Thrift, thrift, Horatio! The funeral baked meats Did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables.

This above all—to thine own self be true; And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man.

Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.

O, villain, villain, smiling, damnèd villain!

O God, I could be bounded in a nutshell, and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams.

What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form, in moving how express and admirable; in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god: the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals—and yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust?

The play’s the thing, Wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the king.

My words fly up, my thoughts remain below; Words without thoughts never to heaven go.

We defy augury. There is a special providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, ’tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come. The readiness is all.

Now cracks a noble heart. Good night, sweet prince, And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.

1.5 oedipus and hamlet compare and contrast essay outline

Folger Shakespeare Library - Digital Hamlet

The best edition of Hamlet provided by Folger Shakespeare Library . This is a TREMENDOUS resource. USE IT.

Enjoying the Play

Try having the play next to you while you listen or watch the play.

On the left you can see that I'm using the Folger edition of the play, so that I can copy and paste the lines I might want to remember. If you hover over the line, you will get the act, scene and line number. I usually will open the ENTIRE PLAY from Folger.

On the right hand side of my screen you'll see the Digital Theatre+ version of the play. I can jump to any a ct, key scene or speech that I want to.

Reading / Viewing Schedule

We are going to read the play together. I will go over the passages I find interesting, regardless if they were brought up in class by students.

There are 2 ways for you to prepare for class :

Preread the Reading Questions and as the play unfolds, stop and jot down your answer.

Don't preread the Reading Questions , watch the play while skimming the lines (see picture below). When 30 minutes are up, answer the questions in sequential order.

If you cannot answer the Reading Questions , then it might be a good idea to:

Start reading and watching the act again.

Changes the questions. Use the generic Drama: The Art of Analysis questions to help you understand the play.

If you can't answer these questions, you should go back and start again with the previous act. It may be that you have not understood the beginning of the play.

Timestamps for the Stratford Festival's Hamlet on Digital Theatre+

Act 1 0:00 - 38:00 (Digital Theatre+ 36 min)

Act 2 38:00 - 1:10 (Digital Theatre+ 32 min)

Act 3 1:10 - 1:54 (Digital Theatre+ 39 min)

Act 4 1:54 - 2:14 (Digital Theatre+ 24 min)

Act 5 2:14 - 2:46 (Digital Theatre+ 28 min)

Digital Theatre+

You must see drama, to understand it.

Watch Hamlet , Stratford Festival version at Digital Theatre+ . URL, username and password are all in our Google Classroom.

Search for "Hamlet Stratford". (Thanks Angela N.)

All the versions are equally good. We use the Stratford Festival version of Hamlet because of audio quality and timestamps.

Drama: The Art of Analysis

Use these questions when you finish reading or watching a scene in drama.

In assessing the dramatic importance or function of any scene or speech, ask yourself the following questions: (Note, no single dramatic sequence will fulfill all of these functions, of course. You must decide upon the most important functions served by a speech or scene - or part of a scene.) Watch carefully for how these functions are fulfilled.

About Character

Does it introduce a character? (directly or indirectly)

Does it reveal something about someone's character?

Does it show characters in conflict?

Does it reveal a particular relationship between characters?

Does it explain the motivation of a character?

Does it create sympathy for a character?

Does it move the plot forward?

Does it foreshadow a future event?

Does it create suspense or excitement?

Does it provide background information?

Does it provide comic relief?

Does it create humour?

Does it lay the foundation for the plot?

About Setting

Does it reveal the setting?

Does it offer a contrast to the previous (or following) setting?

Does it engage the audience's interest?

Does it create atmosphere or mood?

Does it have anything to do with the theme?

Does it serve to indicate the passage of time?

Some Dramatic Effects of a Scene in a Play

A scene in any play will aim at one or more of the effects in this list:

A scene may reveal character, or it may show development of a character.

It may give background information about events occurring before the actions of the play.

It may present a dramatic contrast in character or mood.

It may give information about events occurring offstage which cannot be shown onstage.

It may develop pathos.

It may foreshadow coming events.

It may advance the plot.

It may create suspense.

It may establish relationships between characters, or it may show these relationships changing.

It may afford a relief of tension.

It may direct the audience's sympathies toward a certain character.

Oedipus Rex

A Play by Sophocles , 400 BCE.

The cycle of religions:

Trying to understand the human condition: Life, Death, Light, Dark, Known, Unknown

Deities fulfilling roles / ritual / structure that extends to the society

The movement of those gods to art / drama / song / poetry

What happens when we move past the gods? Who takes the 'role'? Kings, Nobility, Generals, The Merchant class, you?

Oedipus Rex in a nutshell:

A king, at the height of his game, consults the Oracle. (Sounds familiar?)

A child, hidden away. Grows, but becomes aware of his difference. (Sounds familiar?)

Two men, mirrors of one another, meeting at a river.

A monster is vanquished. A riddle is solved.

Confusion insures, how does the kingdom move forward? How is the hero rewarded?

What do we understand about Fate and Free Will?

Existentialism

Do some homework.

What does this word mean?

What does this picture mean?

Let's look at Aristotle 's Poetics.

Ask yourself, how do the 4 phases of tragedy lead to the essence of tragedy ?

Who / What kind of character takes the lead role?

How does the cycle of religion connect to art?

Why is the Great Chain of Being (hierarchical order) important?

Aristotle's Poetics

Aristotle's 4 phases of tragedy.

How do we get to pathos, and catharsis?

Arrogance, or sin of pride. Part of nature. Not anyone's fault but theirs.

Action based on hubris. Error of thought or action. Linked to hubris.

Anagnorisis

Moment of realization. I can't go back, I must keep going.

Downfall. Must be death. Nemesis delivering the retribution.

The Essence of Tragedy

Sadness, pity, contempt.

Release of emotion.

The Tragic Hero

Must be well intentioned at the outset

Born of noble birth

Responsible for own fate

Has a tragic flaw

Makes a serious error in judgment

Falls from great heights or from high esteem

Realizes they made an irreversible mistake

Faces and accepts death with honour

Meets a tragic death

The Great Chain of Being

List will be provided. Where do you fit in?

Fate, Family, and Oedipus Rex

Fate, Family, and Oedipus Rex: Crash Course Literature 202

The battle of the Greek tragedies

The battle of the Greek tragedies - Melanie Sirof

Tragedy Lessons from Aristotle

Tragedy Lessons from Aristotle: Crash Course Theater #3

Reading Questions for Hamlet

Reading Questions for Hamlet are taken from the Norton Edition of Hamlet, hosted at Saint Xavier University.

(Keyed to The Norton Shakespeare )

The best beginning procedure is always to familiarize yourself with the cast of characters and then to read the play (or at least an act or a scene) all the way through so that you know what's happening. The notes can help if you're stuck, but try to get the big picture of a scene before getting bogged down in details. Read through, then go back and clear up details. Then you're ready to think about the questions.

1. What happens when Francisco and Bernardo meet at the beginning of 1.1? Where are we, and when? Why is there confusion over which one is supposed to challenge the other by asking "Who's there"? Why is Horatio with Bernardo and Marcellus? Who is he?

2. What is Horatio's initial response to the story of the apparition? What happens when the ghost appears for the first time (1.1.37.1)? Notice that Horatio addresses it as "thou." This is the form of address used with friends or inferiors. Shakespeare's audience would have been much more attuned to the difference than we are. What is the effect of Horatio's addressing the ghost as "thou"?

3. What does Horatio first assume the appearance of the ghost means (1.1.68)? Why are there such intense war preparations in Denmark? (Read 1.1.69-106 carefully to get the international background of the play.) What does Horatio suggest by his discussion of Julius Caesar's death (1.1.106.5-.18)? Why does he choose the example of Rome? Why is the passage set off and in italics? (See note 2, line 106.)

4. What happens when the ghost appears for the second time (at the SD before 1.1.108.1)? Why does it leave so abruptly? The questions Horatio asks it represent, according to the thought of the time, the reasons why a ghost could appear.

5. What is the purpose of the two discussions of the crowing of the cock, Horatio's pagan one (1.1.130-37) and Marcellus' Christian one (1.1.138-45)?

6. What do we know so far about the nature of the ghost? Do we know yet if it is a "good" ghost (i.e., "really" the spirit of the person it appears to be) or a "damned" ghost (a devil or evil spirit in the shape of the person it appears to be)?

1. What is Claudius telling the court in the first part of his speech (1.2.1-16)? What does he say about young Fortinbras and his uncle the king of Norway (ll. 17-41)? How is Claudius responding to the threat? (You may also want to keep in mind that the name "Claudius" appears only in the opening stage direction for 1.2. The name is never spoken in the play. He is simply "the King.")

2. What does Laertes want from the King? How does Claudius respond to him? Based on his first 64 lines in office (1.2.1-64), how would you rate Claudius as a ruler? In what ways does he already differ from Old Hamlet as king? (Consider how Old Hamlet would have responded to Young Fortinbras.)

3. What do Claudius and Gertrude want Hamlet to do that he doesn't want to do? What won't they let him do it? How does he respond to them? How do they respond to the way he responds to them? (You probably know three names associated with the University of Wittenberg in Germany: Martin Luther, Doctor Faustus, and Hamlet. Can you see any connections among the three?)

4. How seriously do you take Claudius' argument against Hamlet's "prolonged" mourning (1.2.87-108)? How long has Hamlet been mourning (1.2.138)? (The normal mourning period of a noble or gentle woman for a dead husband at this time [ca. 1600] was a year or more.)

5. Read Hamlet's first soliloquy (1.2.129-59) carefully. What is it that is really bothering him about what has happened since his father's death? How would you describe the tone of his feelingsdetached, impassioned, rational, ironic, or what?

6. What is Hamlet's response to the news from Horatio, Marcellus, and Bernardo? Notice the way Hamlet questions them. How much do we know about how his mind works at this point of the play? What does he suspect as the reason for the ghost's appearance (1.2.254-57)?

1. What does Laertes warn Ophelia about? What, apparently, has been the relationship between Hamlet and Ophelia since his return from Wittenberg?

2. How seriously do you take Polonius' precepts (1.3.58-80)? Consider especially the last one (1.3.78-80).

3. How willing is Ophelia to discuss with her father what she has discussed with Laertes? What is his response to Hamlet's interest in her and her response to him? How seriously should she take their warnings about Hamlet's lack of seriousness and his inability to choose his own wife?

4. What do we know about Laertes, Polonius, and Ophelia by the end of 1.3? What sort of people are they? What sort of family are they? Who is missing from this family? How strong-willed in Ophelia?

1. Why do the trumpets and cannons sound, according to Hamlet? What does Hamlet think of the custom?

2. Read 1.4.18.7-.22 carefully. What is Hamlet saying here?

3. How does Hamlet respond to the ghost? If it is a "damned ghost," is he as safe as he thinks he is in 1.4.45-48? Why don't the others want him to go? Why can't/don't they stop him? What does Marcellus still think the nature of the problem is (1.4.67)?

1. Is Hamlet surprised when the Ghost asks him to revenge his father's murder? Is he surprised when he learns who the murderer is?

2. Do father and son have the same opinion of Claudius? (Compare 1.2.139-40, 152-53 and 1.5.47-52.) Would others in the court, not knowing about Claudius' crime, see Claudius as this much below his dead brother?

3. How did Claudius murder Old Hamlet?

4. What does the Ghost tell Hamlet to do about his mother?

5. Read Hamlet's second soliloquy carefully (1.5.92-113). What does Hamlet say he has learned? In other words, what general piece of wisdom does he want to save from this encounter (1.5.109). Is this shockingly new information to us? Or is Hamlet just becoming "grown up"? (When did you first learn that you couldn't always trust people?) Notice how quickly Hamlet moves from the specific (Claudius) to the general ("one"). Compare the same movement he makes from the specific person Gertrude to "frailty, thy name is woman" (1.2.146). Given this soliloquy, how soon would you expect Hamlet to go for his revenge?

6. What happens when the others find Hamlet. What does he ask them to swear? What does his mention of an "antic disposition" (1.5.173) suggest about his future plans? How might you expect Hamlet to be acting when next we see him?

1. How much time has passed between Act 1 and Act 2? How do you know? (Keep watching for evidence.)

2. What is Polonius telling Reynaldo to do? What does this tell up about Polonius and his way of thinking and acting?

3. Why is Ophelia so upset when she enters at 2.1.74.1? What has happened to her? Does Hamlet's appearance (in her telling) as a madman (a distracted lover) come as a surprise after what we last heard him say? Why would he appear in this sort of madness to her? Is there any possibility he really is a distracted lover responding to Ophelia's apparent rejection of him? How well has she obeyed her father's orders in 1.3?

4. What is Polonius' response to what Ophelia tells him? Where are they going?

1. Why have Rosencrantz and Guildenstern come to court? What is their relation to Hamlet? What use does Claudius have for them? Does this remind you of Polonius' use for Reynaldo? Are there any significant differences?

2. We've now had several different explanations of Hamlet's madness: love (2.1.86, 103), his father's death (2.2.8), and that plus "our o'erhasty marriage" (2.2.57note Gertrude's awareness of impropriety). Are people content with these explanations? Are you?

3. What results have come from Cornelius' and Voltemand's trip to Norway? Has Claudius' use of diplomacy rather than war been justified? What will Fortinbras be doing next? Can we expect to see him in Denmark after all? Why?

4. How effective is Polonius as a bearer of news? How convinced are Claudius and Gertrude that Polonius has found the answer? How do they plan to test this answer? Does Polonius' plan sound like his normal way of operating (2.2.163-68)?

5. Immediately following the discussion of the plan, Hamlet appears. Wouldn't this be a good time to try out the plan? Do they?

6. How does Hamlet behave when he enters? Does Polonius think he is mad? Is this the way we would expect Hamlet to act after Ophelia's description in 2.1? Why does he call Polonius a fishmonger? (It may help to know that fishmongers' wives, and daughters, apparently because of the fish, were assumed to be extremely fertile and thus able to conceive easilyand thus the connection in 2.2.185-86.)

7. How does Hamlet behave initially with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern (through 2.2.216-66)? Is it different from the way he just acted with Polonius? How does Hamlet change when he realizes that the two were sent for by Claudius and Gertrude?

8. How seriously should we take Hamlet's view of the world and of "man" (2.2.287-98). How do Rosencrantz and Guildenstern react to Hamlet's use of "generic" man (2.2.298-300)?

9. Why are the players traveling? What has been going on in the city? (Much of 2.2.317-46 refers to contemporary events in London around 1599-1601.)

10. What is the significance of Hamlet's referring to Polonius as Jephthah (2.2.385). Jephthah's story is interesting in this contextsee Judges 11:30-40.

11. What is unusual about the speech Hamlet begins to recite (2.2.430-44) and the First Player continues (2.2.448-498). How is its style different from that of the surrounding lines of Hamlet ? Why is its subject matter appropriate? (See Note 2 to line 430.) Do lines 461-62 echo anything from or about the play Hamlet ? Why can't the First Player finish the speech?

12. What play does Hamlet want the players to play? What does he want to do to the play?

13. Read Hamlet's third soliloquy carefully (2.2.526-82). How does he use the player's response to show how different his own position is? Is the comparison justified by what we have seen happen in the play? He complains that he hasn't acted on his vengeance. Why hasn't he? Why does he need the play? What will he learn from it?

1. How much have Rosencrantz and Guildenstern learned from/about Hamlet?

2. Finally the planned meeting between Hamlet and Ophelia is arranged, spies and all. What does Polonius give Ophelia to read (3.1.46)? What response does his remark get (in an aside) from Claudius? Why is this speech of Claudius' important? What do we learn that we have not learned before?

3. Read Hamlet's fourth soliloquy carefully (3.1.58-90). How is this soliloquy different from the first two? Think about the way Hamlet's mind works within the first two--is the same thing happening here? What is the main idea of this third soliloquy? (For an interesting variant of this speech, you might want to look at the duke's version in chapter 21 of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn -a great parody/pastiche.)

4. What happens between Hamlet and Ophelia in the so-called "Nunnery scene" (3.1.90-160)? Does Hamlet know that he's being watched? Does he determine that during the scene? Can you spot a place where he might? (Remember how he changed his way of talking to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern at 2.2.267.) Who is the "one" referred to in "all but one" (3.1.147)? What does it add to note that in talking about marriage in 3.1.146-48 Hamlet seems to be echoing St. Paul in 1 Corinthians 7?

5. How does Claudius respond to what he has seen and heard? Is he convinced that love is the cause of Hamlet's madness? What does he plan to do about Hamlet? How does Polonius respond? Is he willing to give up his "love" answer? What does he propose as an additional way to find out what Hamlet is thinking? Are you surprised that it includes spying?

1. What advice does Hamlet have for the actors? Why?

2. Why does Hamlet say he especially likes Horatio (3.2.56-67, esp. 64-67)? Does Hamlet see Horatio as similar to him or different from him?

3. What function is served by the discussion of Polonius as an actor (3.1.89-96)? Hamlet was written within a year or two of Julius Caesar ; what is added to the scene for the audience if Richard Burbage, playing Hamlet, also played Brutus? Can you guess what part the actor playing Polonius might have played in Julius Caesar ?

4. Based on 3.2.116, how much time elapsed between Act 1 and Act 2 (since the action has been continuous since the beginning of Act 2)?

5. How does the play-within-the-play (3.1.122.1-242) reflect the issues bothering Hamlet? Can you identify the lines he has had inserted? (Don't worry, nobody else can either.) Interestingly, the story of Gonzago as known outside Hamlet turns into a revenge story, with Gonzago's son revenging his father's death. So what we've seen is only the first few minutes of a much longer play. What lines would hit the intended audience hardest? (Consider, certainly, 3.2.159-62.) Although Hamlet is interested in Claudius' response, notice that so far Gertrude has taken the strongest "hits" (except, perhaps, for the poisoning in the earone of the new "Italianate" evil inventions, a way to murder someone without it appearing to be murder). Consider also the Player King's more abstract speech in 3.2.1168-195. How does this speech reflect issues that appear elsewhere in the play?

6. What is Claudius' mood as he stops the play at 3.2.247? How does Hamlet respond? If Hamlet has learned that Claudius is indeed guilty (if that's why he stopped the play and not for some other reason), Claudius has also learned something from the presentation of the play. What has Claudius learned?

7. What message do Rosencrantz and Guildenstern have for Hamlet? Despite the chaos at the end of the play, is this message unexpected after hearing Polonius' suggestion at the end of the Nunnery scene (3.1)? What lesson does Hamlet teach with a recorder?

8. Read Hamlet's fifth soliloquy carefully (3.2.358-69). How is it different from the other soliloquies? What is the mood of the soliloquy? How do you react to it? What about line 360? What is happening to Hamlet?

1. What has Claudius decided to do with Hamlet? Who will go with him? What "theoretical" message about kingship does Rosencrantz tell to Claudius?

2. Where is Polonius going?

3. What does Claudius admit in his attempt to pray? Has the play actually had an effect on him? Why can't he ask for forgiveness?

4. What happens when Hamlet enters? Why doesn't Hamlet kill Claudius then? What is ironic about Hamlet's decision?

1. How successful is the first part of the interview between Gertrude and Hamlet? What goes wrong (even before Polonius' death)? Who controls the conversation? Why does Gertrude call for help?

2. Does Gertrude know that Claudius killed Hamlet's father? (Consider 3.4.27-29, 38-39, 50-51.)

3. What device does Hamlet use to force Gertrude to consider what she has done?

4. Hamlet seems to be getting through to Hamlet when the Ghost enters. Why does the Ghost appear at this point? How is his appearance different from his appearances in Act 1? Who saw him then? Who sees him now? What is his message to Hamlet?

5. After the Ghost leaves, does Hamlet succeed in what he came to do? What is Gertrude's state when he leaves? What should she do, and what should she not do?

6. What does Hamlet think of his upcoming trip to England? What does he expect to do?

1. Does Gertrude tell Claudius the truth about what happened between her and Hamlet (4.1.6-7)? Is she following Hamlet's advice at the end of 3.4?

2. How does Claudius respond to the death of Polonius? Does he understand the implications of what happened? What will he do now?

1. What do Rosencrantz and Guildenstern learn from Hamlet?

1. Why does Claudius believe he can't simply arrest Hamlet?

2. What is the result of Hamlet's joking about death and worms? What connection do the worms and their diet have with Wittenberg? (Note 4 to line 31gives most of the answer. The Diet, headed by the Emperor and meeting at Worms in 1521, pronounced its ban on Luther after he refused to recant.) Keep the whole "worm" discussion in mind when you get to 5.1, the graveyard scene. This discussion is a prelude to that one.

3. Is Hamlet going to England as a prisoner or in the guise of a royal representative?

4. What do Claudius' letters tell England (i.e., the king of England) to do with Hamlet? Why does Claudius expect to be obeyed? (The situation is more or less historical, since England was ruled by a Danish king from 1016-1042. The original Hamlet story seems to date from about this time.)

1. Why is Fortinbras' army passing through Denmark? (Remember 2.2.60-80.)

2. Notice that the Folio text contains only lines 1-9 of this scene. What is the effect of having only those lines? Why would even that much of the scene appear? In other words, what is the function within the play of 4.4.1-9?

3. What sort of judgment does the Captain make about the place they are fighting for? How does Hamlet describe it (4.4.9.15-.19)?

4. Where is Hamlet going when he meets the Captain?

5. Read Hamlet's sixth soliloquy carefully (4.4.9.22-.56). What is unusual about it given its position in the play? Has Hamlet been delaying, as he says? What example does he compare himself to? (And what other soliloquy does this one remind you of?)

6. Look at 4.4.9.43-.46 closely. What is Hamlet saying? (See note 8 to line 9.46 for a suggestion. Is this the only possibility?) This passage introduces the idea of "honor" that we will be meeting again, particularly as represented by the "code of dueling," something new in the late 16th century that is represented in the play by Laertes and his "French connection" (as opposed to Hamlet's Wittenberg, philosophical connection). And be sure to recall what Falstaff had to say about it ( 1H4 5.1.127-39.)

7. 4.4 ends a long "movement" in the play that began at 2.1 with Polonius taking Ophelia to the King and Queen, followed by the arrival of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern and then of the players. 3.1 begins the day after the players arrive (the day the play is to be performed); the action of that day runs through the rest of Act 3 and the first scenes of Act 4. In 4.4 we must assume that it is early morning of the next day and that Hamlet is on his way to England. In 4.5 Laertes returns, having had enough time to learn in Paris of his father's death, so some time must pass between 4.4 and 4.5.

1. What do we learn about the state of Gertrude's soul in her aside (4.5.17-20)? What does this say about how she has responded to Hamlet's accusations and recommendations in 3.4?

2. The court assumes Ophelia's madness is caused by her father's death. Judging from her songs, are they correct? Is that the only thing that has made her mad? What else is on her mind and coming to the surface in her madness?

3. What is Laertes' approach to revenging his father's death? How does it compare to Hamlet's? How much support does he have? Whom does he initially blame?

4. What is being threatened as Laertes enters (4.5.107.1)? How well does Claudius handle this emergency?

5. How does Laertes respond to mad Ophelia? What offer does Claudius make to get his discussion with Laertes back on track?

1. Who brings Hamlet's letter to Horatio? What has happened to Hamlet? (Happily, we have been spared seeing Hamlet as Errol Flynnsee Olivier's movie version for that. However, this letter does show us a Hamlet quite capable of acting when the occasion presents itself.)

1. Claudius has obviously convinced Laertes of his innocence. What things of a personal nature do we learn about Gertrude and Claudius (4.7.11-16)? Laertes wants his revenge, but Claudius tells him "You shortly shall hear more." What does Claudius expect to be able to tell Laertes soon?

2. What does Hamlet's letter tell Claudius? Why does Hamlet want to see him"alone"? What seems to be Hamlet's plan?

3. What plan do Claudius and Laertes develop? What happened when Lamord came to Denmark two months ago? How will Claudius and Laertes use Laertes' reputation to get revenge?

4. What would Laertes do to get revenge (4.7.98)? How does this compare to Hamlet? How does Claudius respond?

5. How many tricks and poisons does it take (according to Claudius and Laertes) to kill a Hamlet?

6. What happened to Ophelia? Did she kill herself, or is her death accidental (based on this description; her death gets a different spin in 5.1)?

7. What is Laertes' response to her death? What does Claudius fear will happen?

1. What are the two clowns doing while they talk? Who is the "she" of 5.1.1? Why, according to the second clown, is she really being given a Christian burial?

2. What happens in the discussion between Hamlet and the Gravedigger? What does Hamlet learn from his confrontation with Yorick's skull? What does he learn from his meditation on Alexander and Caesar? How does the mood here differ from that in 4.3.17-38?

3. How old is Hamlet?

4. What do we learn from Gertrude's farewell to Ophelia (5.1.227-30)? Would Polonius have been surprised if he had heard this?

5. What happens when Hamlet appears to the others? What is significant about him calling himself "Hamlet the Dane" (5.1.242see the footnote)? Why is he so angry?

1. What new sort of attitude to life do you see in the Hamlet of the first 81 lines of 5.2 ?

2. What would have happened to him in England? How did he find out? What did he do about it? What has happened to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern? Do they know what hit them? (See Stoppard's play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead .) How does Hamlet feel about them?

3. What sort of person is Osric? What message does he have for Hamlet? What seems to be the problem with his hat? What is the wager (5.2.122-25)? (No one has been able to explain this speech in a way convincing to everyone.)

4. What is Hamlet's reaction to the idea of the match (5.2.148-61)? (The Folio text has an additional sentence at the end: "Let be.")? How well does Hamlet expect to do? Why does he go ahead with it? How does this reflect the new attitude we saw in Hamlet in 5.1?

5. Hamlet clearly apologizes to Laertes (5.2.163-81). How does Laertes respond? Given what we know about the plans of Laertes and Claudius, how do you take Laertes' promise (5.2.187-89)? Can we say he has any honor at all? Has he followed his father's precept in 1.3.78-80?

6. What is Laertes doing at line 202?

7. What is the "union" Claudius promises to put in the cup at line 210 and perhaps does not put into the cup until after line 225? What problem is created by Hamlet's response in line 227? What happens at line 232? (And what is the score by now?)

8. Look carefully at lines 245-55, noting who wounds whom and with what sword, and what happens to Gertrude (including Claudius' lie at line 251).

9. Why is Hamlet so concerned that Horatio stay alive to tell his story? How much do the other people at court know at this point?

10. Do you believe Horatio in his assumption that Hamlet is saved and not damned? Why or why not?

11. Does the Hamlet Fortinbras describes (5.2.339-44) sound like the Hamlet we have known? What will happen to the kingdom under Fortinbras?

The Complete Works of William Shakespeare hosted at MIT contains full text copies of his plays.

Mr. William Shakespeare and the Internet hosted at Palomar College contains link lists of valuable resources.

In Search of Shakespeare hosted at PBS contains a very thorough time line of Shakespeare's life.

Online Literary Criticism about Hamlet is the Internet Public Library's search results for essays on Hamlet.

Shakespeare on PBS

PBS.org has great materials on Shakespeare and his works. I've done the search for you .

7 Soliloquies found in Hamlet

"O, that this too, too sullied flesh would melt ..." (1.2.133)

"O all you host of heaven!" (1.5.99)

"O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I!" (2.2.577)

"To be or not to be—that is the question:" (3.1.64)

"’Tis now the very witching time of night" (3.2.419)

"Now might I do it pat, now he is a-praying" (3.3.77)

"How all occasions do inform against me" (4.4.34)

In a soliloquy, a character is alone, and dealing with their thoughts. Soliloquies are heard by the audience but are considered the internal monologue of a character. Other characters do not hear them. Soliloquies tend to start off with a a question or a problem, and the character works towards a solution or an answer. Because the character is speaking to themselves, they are honest.

Getting Ready for Big Ideas in Hamlet

Why should you read "Hamlet"? - Iseult Gillespie

Why tragedies are alluring - David E. Rivas

Shakespeare's Tragedies

Who am I? A philosophical inquiry - Amy Adkins

What is existentialism? | A-Z of ISMs Episode 5 - BBC Ideas

The philosophy of absurdism | What is the point of life? | A-Z of ISMs Episode 1 - BBC Ideas

Nihilism vs. Existentialism vs. Absurdism — Explained and Compared

The Complete Works of William Shakespeare

The Complete Works of William Shakespeare is hosted at MIT. You can get a read a copy of Hamlet by act and scene or the entire play . An important resource for many reasons. I wish it had line numbers. In a pinch, this will help.

#ToBeBlack | The Public Theater

"Listen as Black actors across the nation explore the truth in the painful reality of being Black in America with Shakespearean text. Timeless words that were never intended for us, yet the notion ”To Be or Not To Be” carries infinite weight throughout Black American history.

We call on America to listen with empathy and to act in alliance with Black Lives Matter.

This Nation possesses power that will remain latent until we unlock its truths.” - Kimber Elayne Sprawl

Shakespeare is for all time, all people.

When you are deciding which version to watch, expand your horizon. Consider that DigitalTheater+ has several productions to choose from.

Paapa Essiedu (Hamlet) in Hamlet (RSC)

Raphael Sowole (Hamlet) | Hamlet | Tara Arts

Eben Figueiredo | In Defence of Character - Hamlet - Text in Performance

Theatre and Drama

What Is Theater? Crash Course Theater #1

Straight Outta Stratford-Upon-Avon - Shakespeare's Early Days: Crash Course Theater #14

The English Renaissance and NOT Shakespeare: Crash Course Theater #13

Hamlet In Class Demand Writing Assignment

Hamlet summative - demand writing.

Your topic will be given out in class. You will have 1 period to complete the assessment.

You will brainstorm and compose your demand writing assignment in class. You will write, double spaced, on paper in class.

You will be writing in a shortened mini-essay format. There are several variants of the mini-essay. They all do the same thing, they allow the writer to focus and produce succinct writing.

The mini-essay OMITS both the introduction and conclusion paragraphs. You can help the fluidity of your writing by maintaining transitions and introducing your quotes properly .

Shortened mini-essay style (thesis + 1 body)

Thesis statement. In an in class demand writing scenario you have to weigh the importance of a positional thesis versus a thesis which lists arguments.

Body Paragraph

Topic Sentence

1 Sentence

Quote from the text that supports your point

Explain / Analysis # 1

1- 2 Sentences

Explain / Analysis # 2

1-2 Sentences

Explain / Analysis # 3

Concluding Sentence

Transitions are important. Have a few memorized. Use standard, formal English. There are no MLA style marks on the the demand writing assignment.

In an in class demand write, you have to weigh the importance of a positional thesis against a formulaic list of arguments thesis. Prepare by becoming comfortable writing a 2 sentence thesis. Order does not matter, but content does. One sentence will be your formulaic thesis (text, author, arguments and a reworking of the questions). The other sentence will be your position. Don't make the mistake of incorporating a position in the thesis and then not dealing with it in your body paragraphs.

Don't waste time or space on plot summary or "translation". Focus on your question, analyse your quotes and remember your audience.

In Class Demand Writing Assignment Rubric

Hamlet Writing in Role Assignment

Hamlet summative – write in role.

Using your knowledge and understanding of the text, along with your own inferences and creativity, write a passage from the perspective of a character. You may choose any character except for Hamlet himself.

Two pages double spaced, size 12 font, 500 words max.

A monologue, diary entry, or letter.

Mandatory context to include: write 1-3 sentences describing when this passage takes place in the play and which character you are portraying.

Make sure you have quotes from the play. MLA in-text citations.

Example: a diary entry from Ophelia, “I overheard Hamlet muttering ‘to be or not to be,’ (3.2 64) as he passed by today. I sent a page to inquire about the meaning of these utterances.” As you go through the play with the class, you will find that this is impossible for Ophelia to know. Pay attention to who knows what in the play.

Write in standard English. Keep in mind that contractions and "I" are allowed. Avoid slang. Pay attention to how the characters naturally speak in the play for more direction on contractions and pronouns.

Submit your assignment as a Google Doc to our Google Classroom.

What does writing in character involve?

Vivid and descriptive writing from the perspective of a character

You may include stories and anecdotes

Consider the thoughts and feelings of the character

Things to Consider

What/who is this passage about?

What is your character feeling?

Where (setting) is your character?

Who (if anyone) is your character addressing?

What are the given circumstances?

What specific events have happened so far?

What events will follow?

Where does this passage take place in the play?

What specific circumstances are happening right now?

What events have affected your character mentally/emotionally/physically?

What does your character want?

What motivates them?

What is their immediate objective or aim?

What is the intention of your passage?

To reveal a secret?

To provide more information about a situation?

To further develop a character?

To tell a story?

This is entirely up to you – you have creative freedom.

How to Get Started

In addition to the above considerations, it might be useful to create a biography to help you get into the mindset of your character. Try brainstorming with some of the following prompts:

How old is your character?

Describe their most significant relationship.

Describe their most tumultuous relationship (this could be with themselves or with others)

What does their relationship with their family/friends like?

What is their current job or status in society?

Do they have any children?

Do they think positively or negatively about themselves?

What motivates them?

What are their character flaws? Are they aware of them?

What are their strengths?

What qualities do they dislike in others?

What are their greatest fears?

What are their hopes and dreams?

Is there something they’ve done that they're not proud of?

What five words would a friend describe them as?

What makes them the happiest?

Helpful Videos

Both videos cover the process of writing a character from scratch but are nevertheless helpful when building out your already established Hamlet character.

How to Write an Interesting Character in 5 Minutes

3 Tips for Writing Compelling Characters | Advice from Kurt Vonnegut

Writing in role rubric.

If you can't see the document, please read: You Do Not Need Permission To View Any Documents .

Hamlet Essay Mini-Essay Outline Assignment

Read Carefully, the original assignment has been edited because of remote learning.

Choose a topic, compose your original thesis, and write a formal essay mini-essay outline where you prove your thesis. Your essay mini-essay outline will be in MLA format. The rubric has been provided below. You will be given class time to complete the writing process . Your essay mini-essay outline will be submitted to our Google Classroom.

Parallelism / Character Foils

Self examination and the introspective nature of the major soliloquies

The role of women

Hamlet's indecisiveness

The theme of ambition

The theme of obligation (Political, Filial, Self)

The mini-essay outline has a specific format. I made a layout if you prefer images .

MLA format (noting new under the sun)

12 pt. font size

Arial or Times New Roman font

double spaced

formal style

MLA header (Your name, my name, course code, date)

MLA Work(s) Cited page PLEASE NOTE THAT OWL PURDUE HAS A BUILT IN CITATION TOOL. USE IT!

page numbering

italicize titles of texts

If you are unsure about MLA format, check out Purdue's OWL

Writing Process

You need a writing process. Try this one , earnestly.

Develop your thesis .

Please use the essay planner provided .

Link your arguments and paragraphs together using transitions .

You need textual support .

Want to describe something?

You are handing this in to our Google Classroom. Due date is in our calendar .

Please use the Formal Essay Mini-Essay Outline Rubric below

Mini-Essay Outline Rubric

Formal essay rubric.

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Hamlet’s and Ophelia’s Experience of Madness in Shakespeare’s Play

Categories: Hamlet Hamlet Madness William Shakespeare

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Published: Sep 1, 2020

Words: 758 | Pages: 2 | 4 min read

Analysis of the theme of madness in "hamlet".

Shakespeare, W. (2003). Hamlet. In S. Wells & G. Taylor (Eds.), The Oxford Shakespeare: Hamlet (2nd ed.). Oxford University Press.
Blackmore, L. H. (1963). The Real or Assumed Madness of Hamlet. The Modern Language Review, 58(3), 355-364.
Eliot, T. S. (1917). The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. Poetry, 10(3), 147-152.
Showalter, E. (1985). Representing Ophelia: Women, Madness, and the Responsibilities of Feminist Criticism. In S. Innes (Ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Shakespearean Tragedy (pp. 83-104). Cambridge University Press.
Foakes, R. A. (1962). Hamlet as a Play of Recollection. Shakespeare Quarterly, 13(2), 173-188.
Dollimore, J. (1985). Radical Tragedy: Religion, Ideology, and Power in the Drama of Shakespeare and His Contemporaries. University of Chicago Press.
Holland, N. N. (1989). Psychoanalysis and Shakespeare. In D. Bevington & R. Holzbach (Eds.), The Politics of the Stuart Court Masque (pp. 45-64). University of Chicago Press.

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