Hamlet

• Written first part of 17 century about 1600 or 1601
• first performed in 1602
• first published in 1603
• dark winter night, a ghost walks the ramparts of Elsinore Castle in Denmark
• ghost resembles recently deceased King Hamlet
• brother Claudius has inherited the thrown & married the kings widow, Queen Gertrude
• The ghost tells his son to seek his revenge
• Plans/devotes himself to revenge/avenge his father's death
• takes his time because of his contemplative/thoughtful nature
• cause people to think he's gone made
• Rosencrantz & Guildenstern sent to watch him
• wants Ophelia to enter a nunnery & ban marriages
• traveling actors; Hamlet seizes an idea to test his uncle's guilt
• act out a scene close to how Hamlet thinks of his father's death to get a reaction out of his uncle
• Claudius leaps up and leaves the room during the death scene
• Hamlet & Horatio agree this proves his guilt
• Hamlet goes to kill Claudius; he's praying
• Hamlet believes killing during prayer will send his soul to heaven; he waits
• Claudius now fearing Hamlet's madness orders to send him to England at once
• Hamlet goes to his mother's bed chamber; Polonius hiding behind curtain
• Hamlet thinks kings so stabs curtain
• Claudius now banishes him to England with Rosencrantz & Guildenstern
• Rosencrantz and Guildenstern given direct orders for Hamlet to be put to death
• Ophelia drowns herself after her father's death
• Laertes returns from France enraged because of father/sisters death
• Claudius gets him to believe it is Hamlet's fault
• Claudius concocts plan to secure Hamlet's death
• Laertes will fence with Hamlet for sport; claudius poison's Laertes sword
• As a back up plan he poisons Hamlet's goblet
• Hamlet returns to the vicinity during Ophelia's funeral
• with grief attacks Laertes saying he always loved Ophilia
• Sword fight
• Hamlet 1st hit but refuses goblet
• Gertrude takes drink & immediately killed
• Laertes wounds Hamlet; Hamlet doesn't immediately die
• Laertes reveals Claudius is responsible for Queens Death; killed by poison on own sword
• Hamlet stabs Claudius with poisoned sword then forced to drink the rest of the wine; he dies
• Hamlet dies after revenge
• Fortinbras, Norwegian price takes over rule
• Hamlet lead away as fallen soldier would be.

• The impossibility of certainty:
• are ghosts real? If so, is the ghost reliable?
• Can we know facts about a crime with no witnesses?
• Can we know the state of Claudius' soul?
• Can we know the state of Hamlet's mind by watching his actions & listening to his speech?
• The complexity of action:
• The question of how to act is affected not only by rational considerations, but also emotional, ethical, & psych. considerations
• Hamlet considers actions, but acts recklessly & violently
• others don't consider as much, but their actions backfire
• The mystery of death
• Christian belief of suicide sending souls to bell begs the question from Hamlet if suicide is the better option than living a torturous life.
• Since death is both the course & consequence of revenge, its tied to the theme of revenge & justice - Claudius' murdering the king initiates Hamlet's quest for revenge & Claudius' death ends it.
• The nation as diseased body
• The welfare of the royal family & health of the state are interconnected
• Denmark is frequently described as a physical body made ill by the corrupt Claudius & Curtrude: "Something rotten in the state of Denmark"
• Dead king is seen as strong & forthright & state was in good health --> Claudius corrupted & compromised Denmark --> Fortinbras suggests Denmark will be strong again.

• Claudius marries his mother; his mother remarried to quickly
• Is hamlet same and it's a clever deflection or has to be lost his mind? great question of the years.
• Theme of Revenge, supernatural
• Ghost of father says he was murdered by brother, wants Hamlet Jr. to seek revenge
• Superstition of time, could you trust an apparition?
• Ghost says I'm going to Hell & I only have a few minutes, it's your duty to avenge my murder
• Must also avenge the fact that Hamlet's traitor uncle has also married his mother
• But people already think Hamlet is mentally unstable. Is it an act?

The ghost in Hamlet has caused a lot of discussion among readers and scholars. What did Shakespeare intend by including the ghost? Hamlet himself raises this question. Is the apparition a good spirit urging him on to a just revenge for the "murder most foul" of his father or an evil spirit tempting him to sin?

There are two views on this issue.

The argument that the ghost is "good" says that he (it) makes Hamlet aware of the crime that he would have otherwise not known about or discovered and therefore the murderer is finally brought to justice. What the Ghost tells Hamlet proves to be true–his younger brother, Claudius, murdered him in order to gain the throne of Denmark and to marry the woman, Queen Gertrude, Hamlet's mother, the woman he wanted above all others. The ghost does not urge any action against Gertrude, and he speaks twice to this so as to restrain Hamlet against any action toward her. The ghost says that he is in the Purgatory where all his earthly crimes are being burned away and this would indicate that he is not in Hell and is therefore not a "damned spirit."

However, those who argue for the evil purposes of the Ghost discuss the matter in another way. They indicate that Hamlet is basically a Christian play because there is a great deal about formal repentance, including Hamlet's own anxiety that his father might have gone to Hell because he was not allowed enough time to formally confess himself before his death. It is also an issue in the play whether Ophelia be given a Christian burial because the Church thinks that she may have committed suicide, an act which would have been regarded as "a sin against the Holy Ghost" in Shakespeare's time. If the play is then a Christian play–that is, a play in which the characters are taken to be believers in Christianity and to live within the kind of Christian cosmos that Shakespeare's contemporaries did–scholars argue that Christianity does not hold that people come back from the dead to wander restlessly until their murders are revenged.

At the same time, Purgatory, a Roman Catholic concept, was not an idea espoused by the Anglican Church or by the Puritan Protestant element of the Church of England after the Reformation who believed that certain Roman Catholic doctrines were inventions of Satan. Traditions acceptable to Catholics and Anglicans about the Devil himself held that he did not appear in his own hideous form to tempt a man to lose his soul. He would appears as "an angel of light," disguised in some plausible manner. In this context, it could be argued that the ghost of Hamlet's father is really the devil disguised in some plausible manner. In this context, it could be argued that the ghost of Hamlet's father is really the devil disguised as the person whom Hamlet would most likely believe and love. If, then, the Devil speaks accurately about the murder, he traditionally was understood as to always speak the truth, BUT FOR HIS OWN PURPOSES, just as the three witches do in Macbeth. The point of the appearance of the Devil to Hamlet would then be an attempt to tempt Hamlet to be a revengeful murderer. "Revenge is mine saith the Lord" according to the scriptures, but Hamlet is not the Lord.

The viewpoint which regards the ghost as the devil also suggests that Hamlet's quest for revenge causes the death of many people aside from Claudius–something difficult to reconcile to any Christian ethic but not difficult to see as something that the Devil would wish in effect. If Hamlet is a tragedy... tragedy must have some moral meaning, and adherents of the viewpoint which regards the ghost as the Devil ask whether tragedy can evolve from a play in which the hero achieves a "just" revenge by killing five other persons [and be responsible for the deaths of two others] in the process, all of whom are innocent of his father's murder.

–J. Leeds Barroll

• In Act 2, Scene 2 Hamlet tells Rosencrantz and Guildenstern that, to him, Denmark is a prison. He has lately lost all of joy, humor, mirth:
• "...it appeareth no other thing to me that a found and pestilent congregation of vapours. What a piece of work is a man! How nobel in reason! How infinite in faculties! In form and 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? Man delights not me..." (309)
• Renaissance Ideals
• The change is well described Ophelia after Hamlet has rejected her and denoused women in general:
• "O, what a nobel mind is here overthrown!... That unmatch'd form and feature of blown [blooming/blossoming] youth / Blasted with ecstacy [madness]. O, woe is me / I have seen what I have seen, see what I see! (Act 3, Scene 1, 158-)
• Here, the personification of a Renaissance Prince has undergone a horrible transformation. He usually exhuberant wit has been changed into a caustic comments–a weapon that spares only Horatio. Hamlet give a sarcastic reason for his mother's hasty marriage:
• Thrift, thrift, Horatio! The funeral bak'ed meats / Did coldy furnish forth the marriage tables (1,2,180–)
• Against Polonius who will "loose" Ophelia on Hamlet in an effort to learn the cause of Hamlet's seeming madness, Hamlet unleashes a torrent of abuse: "Do you know me, my lord?" Polonius asks. "Excellent well," Hamlet answers. "You are a fishmonger." (Act 2,2,173–)
• This is a horrible insult since fishmonger was a term of deep contempt and also lsang for a pimp.
• He batters Ophelia with his loathing of the human race. "Get thee to a nunnery!" unless she becomes "a breeder of sinners" (Act 3, 1, 122–). Nunnery often connoted a brothel, a house of prostitution, to Shakespeare's audience. He condemns all women as hypocrites with a pun on the word face. 
• "I have heard of your paintings too, well enough. God hath given you one face, and you make yourselves another... I say, we will have no mo[re] marriages. Those that are married already–all but one–shall live; the rest shall keep as they are." (Act 3, 2, 148–)
• As the play scene in Act 3, Scene 2 his speech abounds with sexual innuendo: Hamlet to Ophelia
• Lady, Shall I like in your lap?
  No, my lord
  I mean, my head upon your lap?
  Ay, my lord
  Do you think I means country matters?
  I think nothing, my lord
  That's a fair thought to lie between maids' legs
  What is, my lord?
  Nothing.
• The death of Polonius whom is mistakenly killed instead of Claudius, he dismisses with a grim joke:
• King–Now, Hamlet, where is Polonius?
  Hamlet–At supper
  King–At supper? Where?
  H–No where he eats, but where he is eaten. A certain convocation of politic worms are e'en at him.  Your worm is your only emperor for diet... Your fat kind and your lean beggar is but variable service–two dishes, but to one table. (Act IV, Scene 3, 17–)

• Tragedy - Death of whole royal family
• Tragic flaw - indecisive, behaves rashly and impulsively (stabbing Polonius)
• Tragic satisfaction - many injustices happened to him. Death of his father, etc
• Hamlet is more concerned with personal interest over his country's
• Mystery of death
• Youck's skull - fleetingness of life.
  "To be or not to be" is it ok to commit suicide?
  Ghost of Hamlet's father - come back to finish business
  Distination after death - if killed while praying
  Ophelia drowns herself to end her suffering
  Rosincrantz & Guildenstern
  Madness
  People think Hamlet is mad
• Renaissance
• Hamlet is a thinker and a reflecting on the world around him
• Hamlet is struggling with the purpose and meaning of man
• yearning for knowledge
• To R&G he expresses his admiration of man
• Nihilism/Humanism in conflict

1. Hamlet as victim of external difficulties - Claudius' divine right of kings power , hesitant to take revenge because of Claudius
2. Dreamer/sentementalist
1. Young, gifted intellectually, handsome, thinks too much
3. Excessive melancholy
4. Ghost - honest/dishonest "A spirit damned" private vengeance - not a Christian thought shouldn't be asking says he's going to hell
5. Christian play? How is this seen? 

• Mystery of death (contemplation) - Yorick's skull
•  Complexity of action - whether or not to act --->Hamlet's tragic flaw
• Madness
• Supernatural - ghost
• Revenge
• Hamlet's father, Polonius, Ophelia, Laertos, Hamlet, Claudius, & Gertrude all die (Rosencrantz and Guildenstern too)
• Many could have been saved if Hamlet had acted sooner - his indecision is his tragic flaw.