Hamlet

Summary

     Hamlet is a classic revenge tragedy.  The play opens with two guards on watch at the castle.  They are later joined by Horatio and Marcellus.  The ghost of Hamlet's father appears to the men but disappears before he can speak.  The next night Hamlet joins the watch and speaks to his father's ghost, who tells him that he was murdered by his brother Claudius. The ghost also asks Hamlet to swear to avenge his death.  Since the king's death, Claudius has married the queen, Gertrude.  Hamlet's mother and uncle are concerned about Hamlet's seeming madness and ask his school friends, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, to find the cause of the problem.

     A band of players comes to the palace and Hamlet asks them to play The Murder of Gonzago and act out the murder of the king.  The play infuriates Claudius, who storms out.  This seems to prove his guilt to Hamlet.

     Hamlet goes to his mother's room to speak with her.  While he is there, he hears Polonius cry out from behind the curtain and stabs blindly.  Polonius falls from the curtain, dead.  The king decides that Hamlet is too dangerous to stay in Denmark and sends him to England with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.  Claudius gives Rosencrantz and Guildenstern letters that contain instructions for Hamlet to be put to death in England.  On the boat, Hamlet discovers the letters and replaces them with notes of his own that send his two school friends to their deaths.

     Upon returning to Denmark, Hamlet finds that Ophelia has drowned.  Seeing Hamlet, Laertes blames him for the deaths of Polonius and Ophelia.  The king arranges a fight between Laertes and Hamlet, providing a way to "accidentally" kill Hamlet.  Claudius poisons a drink that he will offer Hamlet and Laertes poisons the tip of his sword.  During the duel Gertrude drinks the poison and Hamlet is injured by the poisoned sword.  The two men's swords are switched, so Laertes is also poisoned.  After learning that the king inadvertently killed Gertrude, Hamlet kills Claudius only to die shortly after. The play ends as Fortinbras and his army march into the castle.

*Hamlet is not only one of Shakespeare's most famous plays, but also his longest.

Themes

1. Revenge.  Hamlet questions if revenge is really worthwhile if you die in achieving it.  Hamlet achieved revenge at the cost of his own life as well as the lives of many of those he loved.
2. Four revenge plots are intertwined in this play.  Hamlet's quest for revenge is the main plot, but Laertes also seeks revenge for the murder of his father, Polonius, by Hamlet and Fortinbras brings his armies into Denmark to avenge the death of his father at the hands of the now dead king.  Another revenge story was told by the players--the tale of Pyrrhus and Priam.

Characters

Claudius - Claudius is the king of Denmark.  He murdered the previous king, his brother, and married the queen.

Gertrude - Gertrude is the queen of Denmark, King Hamlet's widow, Prince Hamlet's mother, and Claudius' wife.

Hamlet - Hamlet is the prince of Denmark.  He is determined to avenge his father's death.  His tragic flaw is usually thought to be indecision, but it could also be rashness.

Polonius - He is the King's adviser and the father of Laertes and Ophelia.  He is a silly, petty man.

Laertes - He returns to Denmark to revenge his father's death.

Ophelia - Ophelia is the daughter of Polonius and beloved of Hamlet.  After her father's death, she goes insane and drowns in a stream.

Horatio - He is Hamlet's close friend.

Fortinbras - Fortinbras is the Norwegian prince who returns to Denmark to revenge his father, who was killed by the now dead Hamlet.

Lines:

"O!  that this too solid flesh would melt,

Thaw and resolve itself into a dew!

Or that the Everlasting had not fix'd

His canon 'gainst self-slaughter!  O God!  God!

How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable

Seem to me all the uses of this world."

                                        Hamlet     Act I scene ii

"Neither a borrower, nor a lender be;

For loan oft loses both itself and friend,

And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.

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."

                                        Polonius     Act I scene iii

"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,

Than are dreamt of in your philosophy."

                                        Hamlet     Act I scene v

"The time is out of joint; O cursed spite

That ever I was born to set it right!"

                                        Hamlet     Act I scene v

"There's a divinity that shapes our ends,

Rough-hew them how we will."

                                        Hamlet     Act V scene ii

"'Tis in my memory locked,

And you yourself shall keep the key of it."

                                        Ophelia     Act I scene iii

"Something is rotten in the state of

Denmark."

                                        Marcellus     Act I scene v

"The rest is silence."

                                        Hamlet     Act V scene ii

"Good night, sweet prince,

And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest!"

                                        Horatio     Act V scene ii

"To be, or not to be:  that is the question:

Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer

The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,

Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,

And by opposing end them."

                                        Hamlet     Act III scene i

"Thus conscience does make cowards of us all."

                                        Hamlet     Act III scene i

"Frailty, thy name is woman!"

                                        Hamlet     Act I scene ii

"Alas, poor Yorick!  I knew him, Horatio."

                                        Hamlet     Act V scene i

"Though this be madness, yet there is

method in't."

                                        Polonius     Act II scene ii

"Get thee to a nunnery."

                                        Hamlet    Act III scene i

Tragedies

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