Hamlet

//Hamlet// Thesis statements (2) due Thursday, October 31st

//Hamlet// Rough Draft Essay Due November 4th by 2:36 via Google Drive.

//Hamlet// Final essay Due November 7th by 2:36 via Google Drive. No class this day because of Veteran' s Day Assembly

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Full Audio of Hamlet

Hamlet Study Aid

Hamlet Discussion

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 * Hamlet, Act 1, scenes 1 and 2 (1969) version || Act 1, Scenes 1 and 2 ||
 * Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 3 || Act 1, Scene 3 ||
 * Hamlet, Act 1 scenes 4 and 5 || Act 1, scenes 4 and 5 ||
 * Hamlet, Act 1, scenes 4 and 5 || Modern Act 1, scenes 4 and 5 ||

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To Be Or Not to Be...

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Ophelia Flower Scene

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Setting, Elsinore Castle
Dramatic and imposing, on its cliff-top perch, near Stonehaven in the Grampian region, Dunnottar Castle is a breath-taking spectacle; the ancient walls seem to breathe history from every corner. Between the 9th and 17th centuries the various fortifications were fought over many times.

Hamlet, Prince of Denmark
The Prince of Denmark, the title character, and the protagonist. About thirty years old at the start of the play, Hamlet is the son of Queen Gertrude and the late King Hamlet, and the nephew of the present king, Claudius. Hamlet is melancholy, bitter, and cynical, full of hatred for his uncle’s scheming and disgust for his mother’s sexuality. A reflective and thoughtful young man who has studied at the University of Wittenberg, Hamlet is often indecisive and hesitant, but at other times prone to rash and impulsive acts.

has fascinated audiences and readers for centuries, and the first thing to point out about him is that he is enigmatic. There is always more to him than the other characters in the play can figure out; even the most careful and clever readers come away with the sense that they don’t know everything there is to know about this character. Hamlet actually tells other characters that there is more to him than meets the eye—notably, his mother, and —but his fascination involves much more than this. When he speaks, he sounds as if there’s something important he’s not saying, maybe something even he is not aware of. The ability to write soliloquies and dialogues that create this effect is one of Shakespeare’s most impressive achievements.

A university student whose studies are interrupted by his father’s death, Hamlet is extremely philosophical and contemplative. He is particularly drawn to difficult questions or questions that cannot be answered with any certainty. Faced with evidence that his uncle murdered his father, evidence that any other character in a play would believe, Hamlet becomes obsessed with proving his uncle’s guilt before trying to act. The standard of “beyond a reasonable doubt” is simply unacceptable to him. He is equally plagued with questions about the afterlife, about the wisdom of suicide, about what happens to bodies after they die—the list is extensive. But even though he is thoughtful to the point of obsession, Hamlet also behaves rashly and impulsively. When he does act, it is with surprising swiftness and little or no premeditation, as when he stabs through a curtain without even checking to see who he is. He seems to step very easily into the role of a madman, behaving erratically and upsetting the other characters with his wild speech and pointed innuendos. It is also important to note that Hamlet is extremely melancholy and discontented with the state of affairs in Denmark and in his own family—indeed, in the world at large. He is extremely disappointed with his mother for marrying his uncle so quickly, and he repudiates, a woman he once claimed to love, in the harshest terms. His words often indicate his disgust with and distrust of women in general. At a number of points in the play, he contemplates his own death and even the option of suicide. But, despite all of the things with which Hamlet professes dissatisfaction, it is remarkable that the prince and heir apparent of Denmark should think about these problems only in personal and philosophical terms. He spends relatively little time thinking about the threats to Denmark’s national security from without or the threats to its stability from within (some of which he helps to create through his own carelessness).

King Claudius
(Right, with Queen Gertrude)

The King of Denmark, Hamlet’s uncle, and the play’s antagonist. The villain of the play, Claudius is a calculating, ambitious politician, driven by his sexual appetites and his lust for power, but he occasionally shows signs of guilt and human feeling—his love for Gertrude, for instance, seems sincere.

’s major antagonist is a shrewd, lustful, conniving king who contrasts sharply with the other male characters in the play. Whereas most of the other important men in Hamlet are preoccupied with ideas of justice, revenge, and moral balance, is bent upon maintaining his own power. The old King Hamlet was apparently a stern warrior, but Claudius is a corrupt politician whose main weapon is his ability to manipulate others through his skillful use of language. Claudius’s speech is compared to poison being poured in the ear—the method he used to murder Hamlet’s father. Claudius’s love for may be sincere, but it also seems likely that he married her as a strategic move, to help him win the throne away from Hamlet after the death of the king. As the play progresses, Claudius’s mounting fear of Hamlet’s insanity leads him to ever greater self-preoccupation; when Gertrude tells him that Hamlet has killed, Claudius does not remark that Gertrude might have been in danger, but only that he would have been in danger had he been in the room. He tells the same thing as he attempts to soothe the young man’s anger after his father’s death. Claudius is ultimately too crafty for his own good. In Act V, scene ii, rather than allowing Laertes only two methods of killing Hamlet, the sharpened sword and the poison on the blade, Claudius insists on a third, the poisoned goblet. When Gertrude inadvertently drinks the poison and dies, Hamlet is at last able to bring himself to kill Claudius, and the king is felled by his own cowardly machination.

Gertrude, the queen
The Queen of Denmark, Hamlet’s mother, recently married to Claudius. Gertrude loves Hamlet deeply, but she is a shallow, weak woman who seeks affection and status more urgently than moral rectitude or truth.

Few Shakespearean characters have caused as much uncertainty as, the beautiful Queen of Denmark. The play seems to raise more questions about Gertrude than it answers, including: Was she involved with before the death of her husband? Did she love her husband? Did she know about Claudius’s plan to commit the murder? Did she love Claudius, or did she marry him simply to keep her high station in Denmark? Does she believe when he insists that he is not mad, or does she pretend to believe him simply to protect herself? Does she intentionally betray Hamlet to Claudius, or does she believe that she is protecting her son’s secret? These questions can be answered in numerous ways, depending upon one’s reading of the play. The Gertrude who does emerge clearly in Hamlet is a woman defined by her desire for station and affection, as well as by her tendency to use men to fulfill her instinct for self-preservation—which, of course, makes her extremely dependent upon the men in her life. Hamlet’s most famous comment about Gertrude is his furious condemnation of women in general: “Frailty, thy name is woman!” (I.ii.146). This comment is as much indicative of Hamlet’s agonized state of mind as of anything else, but to a great extent Gertrude does seem morally frail. She never exhibits the ability to think critically about her situation, but seems merely to move instinctively toward seemingly safe choices, as when she immediately runs to Claudius after her confrontation with Hamlet. She is at her best in social situations (I.ii and V.ii), when her natural grace and charm seem to indicate a rich, rounded personality. At times it seems that her grace and charm are her only characteristics, and her reliance on men appears to be her sole way of capitalizing on her abilities.

Ghost of Hamlet's father
The spirit of the murdered King of Denmark, Hamlet's late father. The ghost is a common feature in a revenge play, such as it was apparent in Julius Caesar, Macbeth and Richard III.

The ghost, which has been silent in its appearances before the play opens and at the opening, speaks to Hamlet and reveals the secret of his death at the hands of his brother, Claudius, the present King--and insisting Hamlet exact revenge. This demand establishes the stress that disturbs Hamlet throughout the play. The ghost reappears in the climax of the play to remind Hamlet that he has not yet accomplished his revenge, thereby increasing the pressure on the prince.

The ghost is clearly an awesome presence, and we are plainly meant to be impressed by Hamlet's bravery in speaking to it. Only Claudius' reaction to the playlet re-enacting the murder makes clear that the ghost is to be trusted.

The ghost pushes Hamlet to face the trauma of his father's murder and his mother's acceptance of the murderer. It keeps his anguish sharp. However, the ghost is absent at the end of the drama. It has represented the emotional demands of Hamlet's grief and despair.

Polonius
A minister of the King of Denmark. The father of Ophelia and Laertes.

He loves intrigue and resorts to espionage whenever possible. He volunteers to spy for the King on the conversation between Hamlet and his mother, the Queen. Hamlet discovers an intruder behind a curtain and stabs through the curtain, killing the victim. This killing is the central event of the play, hastening Hamlet's exile to England, and triggering Laertes' vengeance on the prince.

Polonius' deviousness and dishonesty exemplify the state of moral decay in Denmark. After he offers Laertes his famous advice, 'to thine own self be true...Thou canst not then be false to any man' (1.3.78-80), his hypocrisy reveals itself, for he sets to spy on Laertes in 2.1, offering detailed instructions in espionage and duplicity to Reynaldo. He bars Ophelia from any contact with Hamlet, presuming the prince's professions of love cannot be truthful, perhaps arguing from self-knowledge, and when it appears that he was wrong and that the prince has gone mad from frustrated love, he spies on the lovers himself.

However, Polonius' murder is not to be taken as justifiable; much of its point depends on our recognition of it as an evil act, leading us to the further awareness that Hamlet is capable of evil. Polonius is not completely without good points, making his killing more reprehensible than it would appear if he were an absolute villain. For example, while his means are deplorable, Polonius clearly cares about his son, and his involvement in his welfare serves to cause Laertes to remain memorable through his long absence in the play; similarly, Polonius is a fool in his handling of Ophelia, but there is no doubt of his paternal concern, even if it can be overlaid with ulterior interests at the same time.

He is also a comic character at times, when speaking to the King and Queen about Hamlet's alleged madness. The passage is a contiunous stream of broken thoughts, with Polonius interrupting himself and losing his train of thought, thereby paroding a common, popular tendency of the day to overelaborate rhetoric.

Ophelia, daughter of Polonius
Polonius’s daughter, a beautiful young woman with whom Hamlet has been in love. Ophelia is a sweet and innocent young girl, who obeys her father and her brother, Laertes. Dependent on men to tell her how to behave, she gives in to Polonius’s schemes to spy on Hamlet. Even in her lapse into madness and death, she remains maidenly, singing songs about flowers and finally drowning in the river amid the flower garlands she had gathered.

Her nature is abundantly affectionate; her wounded but faithful love--both for her father and for Hamlet--makes her one of the most touching of Shakespeare's characters. However, the relationship between Hamlet and Ophelia is not a love story, for Hamlet has rejected love. She remains for Hamlet simply a stimulus for his disgust for women, and he no longer really sees her as an actual person. Ophelia's fate is an outgrowth of Hamlet's emotional collapse; not only is her life diminished--and ultimately destroyed--by his actions, but she is a measure of what he has lost through his mistaken vision of the world.

Ophelia's insanity is triggered by the crushing of her love for Hamlet and then intensified by the loss of her father to Hamlet's madness. Her pathetic ravings are concerned with lost loves and death, the grim realities that have broken her mind. She cannot absorb the conflict implicit in loving both her father and his murderer.

Laertes, son of Polonius
Polonius’s son and Ophelia’s brother, a young man who spends much of the play in France. Passionate and quick to action, Laertes is clearly a foil for the reflective Hamlet by the fact that each seeks and finally achieves revenge for his father's murder, although they do so in very different ways. Laertes is distinctly unheroic. He stoops to fraud and poison with no thought of the consequences or morality. Yet, at the close of the play he regrets his underhandedness, offers forgiveness in place of vengeance, and is himself forgiven.

Laertes is shallow and immature, as shown by the trite moralizing that inspires his insistence that Ophelia distrust Hamlet's love and by his rhetorical and exaggerated responses to his sister's insanity and death. As an avenger, he is easily manipulated by the King, who dissuades him from his rebellion with smooth talk about the divine right of kings. He gives no thought to honor as he accepts with grim glee the King's suggestion of a rigged fencing match, adding the idea of poisoning his sword. Moreover, he is thoughtlessly bold, prepared to sacrifice the peace of the country and his own salvation to satisfy his rage.

He shifts the moral balance of the play at the end, making the King the sole focus of evil. This conjunction of good and evil shown between Hamlet and Laertes, displays that acceptance of humanity is a great focus in the play.

Osric
A foppish nobleman in the court of King Claudius. (Played by John McEnery, Mercutio fromRomeo and Juliet)

The foolish courtier who summons Hamlet to his duel with Laertes in a fencing match, adding that the King has made a wager on Hamlet. His highly mannered language and behavior inspire Hamlet's amused derision, and the prince mocks the messenger, demonstrating the ease with which the courtier can be made to agree to contradictory assertions and making fun of his high-flown language. Osric later umpires the fencing match, though no further attention is paid to him.

Osric functions as comic relief in the face of the King's rapidly unfolding plot against Hamlet, which hinges on the fencing match. Further, the distraction offered by Osric subtly suggests Hamlet's own detatchm

Gravedigger
The digger of Ophelia's grave.

At the opening of 5.1, speaks to Hamlet, giving flip and enigmatic answers to his questions. In the course of describing the decomposition of corpses, he presents the prince with the skull of the late court jester, Yorick.

This involvement slows the plot, delaying development and providing some much needed comic relief in the face of a rapidly approaching climax. The grave digger serves as a subtle commentator on the main action, rather like a chorus. He frankly suggests the possibility of Ophelia's suicide, and his equally honest and humorous attitude to the world of the aristocrats reminds us of the extent to which intrigue infects Hamlet's world.

Most important, the grave digger's remarks and behavior reflect the play's attitude toward death: it is the normal human fate to die. The grave digger's job makes this an everyday fact rather than a philosophical observation. At a crucial point in the play, his demeanor, both prosaic and comical, helps to make clear to the audience that Hamlet's meditations on death no longer reflect the depression and grief that characterized him in Acts 1-4 but are rather the healthy recognition that death and decay are parts of life that must be accepted.

Marcellus and Bernardo
The officers who first see the ghost walking the ramparts of Elsinore and who summon Horatio to witness it. Marcellus is present when Hamlet first encounters the ghost. Known for the famous line: "Something is rotten in the state of Denmark" (1.4.90).

Reynaldo
Polonius’s servant, who is sent to France by Polonius to check up on and spy on Laertes.

His brief episode humorously illustrates the corrupt moral tone of Hamlet's Denmark, paralleling the later, more sinister use of spies by the King. It also displays the intrusiveness and love of spying that eventually brings Polonius to his death. Reynaldo is clearly more sensible than his master, hesitating at times over his orders, but he has little real personality.

Horatio
Hamlet’s close friend, who studied with the prince at the university in Wittenberg. Horatio is loyal and helpful to Hamlet throughout the play. He is the one person in the prince's world whom he values and trusts. With Horatio he can speak freely, and in doing so he demonstrates the evolution of his emotions.

Hortensio is a calm and stoical figure. He thus represents a Renaissance ideal--a person with the mental discipline to resist highly emotional responses, which were seen as humnaity's fall from grace. Horatio is an admirable figure, but he does not spark our imagination or sympathies.

He seems to be an intimate of the Danish court, but at several points he is unfamiliar with the local ways, so his past is unclear.

After Hamlet’s death, Horatio remains alive to tell Hamlet’s story.

Rozencrantz and Guildenstern
Two slightly bumbling courtiers, former friends of Hamlet from Wittenberg, who are summoned by Claudius and Gertrude to discover the cause of Hamlet’s strange behavior.

They are first encountered when the King recruits them to spy on Hamlet, where he refers to them as the Prince's childhood friends. As foils to Horatio, the courtiers point up the alienation of Hamlet's friends. As agents of the rottenness the infects the Danish court, they help establish a polarity between the prince and the King.

Hamlet quickly ends friendly relations with the two, to their eventual doom. His distrust of them leads to his discovery of the documents ordering his execution in England and his plot to send the courtiers to this fate in his stead. Their fates are bluntly reported in 5.2.376.

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern almost certainly did not know of the King's deadly plot and may thus have been seen as innocent victims of Hamlet's counterstroke. However, the two have unquestionably been the willing allies of the King; Hamlet has long recognized them as such. The playwright plainly expects us to see the poetic justice in the end; the fate of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern reflects their involvement in the evil environment of the Danish court.

Themes, Motifs, and Symbols
The Impossibility of Certainty What separates Hamlet from other revenge plays (and maybe from every play written before it) is that the action we expect to see, particularly from Hamlet himself, is continually postponed while Hamlet tries to obtain more certain knowledge about what he is doing. This play poses many questions that other plays would simply take for granted. Can we have certain knowledge about ghosts? Is the ghost what it appears to be, or is it really a misleading fiend? Does the ghost have reliable knowledge about its own death, or is the ghost itself deluded? Moving to more earthly matters: How can we know for certain the facts about a crime that has no witnesses? Can Hamlet know the state of Claudius’s soul by watching his behavior? If so, can he know the facts of what Claudius did by observing the state of his soul? Can Claudius (or the audience) know the state of Hamlet’s mind by observing his behavior and listening to his speech? Can we know whether our actions will have the consequences we want them to have? Can we know anything about the afterlife?

Many people have seen Hamlet as a play about indecisiveness, and thus about Hamlet’s failure to act appropriately. It might be more interesting to consider that the play shows us how many uncertainties our lives are built upon, how many unknown quantities are taken for granted when people act or when they evaluate one another’s actions.

The Complexity of Action Directly related to the theme of certainty is the theme of action. How is it possible to take reasonable, effective, purposeful action? In Hamlet, the question of how to act is affected not only by rational considerations, such as the need for certainty, but also by emotional, ethical, and psychological factors. Hamlet himself appears to distrust the idea that it’s even possible to act in a controlled, purposeful way. When he does act, he prefers to do it blindly, recklessly, and violently. The other characters obviously think much less about “action” in the abstract than Hamlet does, and are therefore less troubled about the possibility of acting effectively. They simply act as they feel is appropriate. But in some sense they prove that Hamlet is right, because all of their actions miscarry. Claudius possesses himself of queen and crown through bold action, but his conscience torments him, and he is beset by threats to his authority (and, of course, he dies). Laertes resolves that nothing will distract him from acting out his revenge, but he is easily influenced and manipulated into serving Claudius’s ends, and his poisoned rapier is turned back upon himself.

The Mystery of Death In the aftermath of his father’s murder, Hamlet is obsessed with the idea of death, and over the course of the play he considers death from a great many perspectives. He ponders both the spiritual aftermath of death, embodied in the ghost, and the physical remainders of the dead, such as by Yorick’s skull and the decaying corpses in the cemetery. Throughout, the idea of death is closely tied to the themes of spirituality, truth, and uncertainty in that death may bring the answers to Hamlet’s deepest questions, ending once and for all the problem of trying to determine truth in an ambiguous world. And, since death is both the cause and the consequence of revenge, it is intimately tied to the theme of revenge and justice—Claudius’s murder of King Hamlet initiates Hamlet’s quest for revenge, and Claudius’s death is the end of that quest. The question of his own death plagues Hamlet as well, as he repeatedly contemplates whether or not suicide is a morally legitimate action in an unbearably painful world. Hamlet’s grief and misery is such that he frequently longs for death to end his suffering, but he fears that if he commits suicide, he will be consigned to eternal suffering in hell because of the Christian religion’s prohibition of suicide. In his famous “To be or not to be” soliloquy (III.i), Hamlet philosophically concludes that no one would choose to endure the pain of life if he or she were not afraid of what will come after death, and that it is this fear which causes complex moral considerations to interfere with the capacity for action.

The Nation as a Diseased Body Everything is connected in Hamlet, including the welfare of the royal family and the health of the state as a whole. The play’s early scenes explore the sense of anxiety and dread that surrounds the transfer of power from one ruler to the next. Throughout the play, characters draw explicit connections between the moral legitimacy of a ruler and the health of the nation. Denmark is frequently described as a physical body made ill by the moral corruption of Claudius and Gertrude, and many observers interpret the presence of the ghost as a supernatural omen indicating that “[s]omething is rotten in the state of Denmark” (I.iv.67). The dead King Hamlet is portrayed as a strong, forthright ruler under whose guard the state was in good health, while Claudius, a wicked politician, has corrupted and compromised Denmark to satisfy his own appetites. At the end of the play, the rise to power of the upright Fortinbras suggests that Denmark will be strengthened once again.

Motifs Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts, or literary devices that can help to develop and inform the text’s major themes.

Incest and Incestuous Desire The motif of incest runs throughout the play and is frequently alluded to by Hamlet and the ghost, most obviously in conversations about Gertrude and Claudius, the former brother-in-law and sister-in-law who are now married. A subtle motif of incestuous desire can be found in the relationship of Laertes and Ophelia, as Laertes sometimes speaks to his sister in suggestively sexual terms and, at her funeral, leaps into her grave to hold her in his arms. However, the strongest overtones of incestuous desire arise in the relationship of Hamlet and Gertrude, in Hamlet’s fixation on Gertrude’s sex life with Claudius and his preoccupation with her in general.

Misogyny Shattered by his mother’s decision to marry Claudius so soon after her husband’s death, Hamlet becomes cynical about women in general, showing a particular obsession with what he perceives to be a connection between female sexuality and moral corruption. This motif of misogyny, or hatred of women, occurs sporadically throughout the play, but it is an important inhibiting factor in Hamlet’s relationships with Ophelia and Gertrude. He urges Ophelia to go to a nunnery rather than experience the corruptions of sexuality and exclaims of Gertrude, “Frailty, thy name is woman” (I.ii.146).

Ears and Hearing One facet of Hamlet’s exploration of the difficulty of attaining true knowledge is slipperiness of language. Words are used to communicate ideas, but they can also be used to distort the truth, manipulate other people, and serve as tools in corrupt quests for power. Claudius, the shrewd politician, is the most obvious example of a man who manipulates words to enhance his own power. The sinister uses of words are represented by images of ears and hearing, from Claudius’s murder of the king by pouring poison into his ear to Hamlet’s claim to Horatio that “I have words to speak in thine ear will make thee dumb” (IV.vi.21). The poison poured in the king’s ear by Claudius is used by the ghost to symbolize the corrosive effect of Claudius’s dishonesty on the health of Denmark. Declaring that the story that he was killed by a snake is a lie, he says that “the whole ear of Denmark” is “Rankly abused. . . .” (I.v.36–38).

Symbols Symbols are objects, characters, figures, or colors used to represent abstract ideas or concepts.

Yorick’s Skull In Hamlet, physical objects are rarely used to represent thematic ideas. One important exception is Yorick’s skull, which Hamlet discovers in the graveyard in the first scene of Act V. As Hamlet speaks to the skull and about the skull of the king’s former jester, he fixates on death’s inevitability and the disintegration of the body. He urges the skull to “get you to my lady’s chamber, and tell her, let her paint an inch thick, to this favor she must come”—no one can avoid death (V.i.178–179). He traces the skull’s mouth and says, “Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know not how oft,” indicating his fascination with the physical consequences of death (V.i.174–175). This latter idea is an important motif throughout the play, as Hamlet frequently makes comments referring to every human body’s eventual decay, noting that Polonius will be eaten by worms, that even kings are eaten by worms, and that dust from the decayed body of Alexander the Great might be used to stop a hole in a beer barrel.

Thoughts to enhance study of play
1. Questions are a central rhetorical form in Hamlet. The opening line is a question. The most famous line in the play ("To be or not to be...") is a question. (An excellent little book is by Harry Levin, The Question of Hamlet [1959].) Here are a few particular questions to ponder. You may want to generate some of your own.


 * What is the status of the ghost?
 * Is Gertrude culpable in the murder of her husband?
 * Is Hamlet mad?
 * Are (were) Hamlet and Ophelia lovers?
 * Does Ophelia commit suicide?
 * How old is Hamlet? **Click here**for a lively essay on this question.]
 * Why does Hamlet delay his revenge?
 * Does Hamlet actually take his revenge?

These questions have answers, and it is worthwhile to discover them. Beyond answers, however, there is an experience of questions-without-answers, or contradictory states of mind. It is also worthwhile to spend time inside that experience.

2. Examine carefully all the references to the Ghost in the opening scene. Is it definitively identified? How or how not? At what point does it become definitively identified? Why at this point?

3. Hamlet as a dramatic character is uniquely defined by his soliloquies. By rough count there are eight of these rhetorical performances. Try reading through all of them, independent of the play they inhabit. What can you learn about a character who talks this way, and who reveals these characteristics? I.e., listen to the purely private Hamlet. Who is he? What is he telling us? for a Lecture Supplement on early-modern styles of subjectivity.

4. Hamlet is often described as a play about the conflict between thought (or words about thoughts) and action. Consider this idea in terms of the character and the plot. Then, consider it more deeply, in terms of the discrepancy between emotion and expression: i.e., the problem ofrepresentation, through words or acts, of internal states.

5. Freud famously theorized that Hamlet enacted an Oedipus Complex, whereby he wanted his father dead so he could possess his mother. Does this theory make sense to you? Can you find evidence in the play to support it?

6. During much of Act 4, Hamlet is absent from the play. When he returns, he seems changed. How would you describe the change? How do you explain it?

7. In the "graveyard scene" (5.1), Hamlet literally and figuratively weighs Yorick's skull: "Alas, poor Yorick ...." Examine this skull with Hamlet. What is he looking at? How can you relate his speech about the skull to major issues in the play? for a QuickTime video.

8. After worrying the problem of action for 4.5 acts, Hamlet finally takes vigorous action. What are the motives for these acts? How do they relate to his initial charge of revenge? For example, why does he kill Claudius?

9. Although the source for Hamlet is an ancient tale from Danish legend, the story as Shakespeare tells it is one of the most popular ever told. It seems universal. **Click here** to read a student's explanation of this universality. Can you relate personally to some of these themes? (This is a private study question, to be considered in your internal theater of the mind. You too can be Hamlet.)

Website links for more help
@http://www.enotes.com/hamlet @http://www.sparknotes.com/shakespeare/hamlet/ @http://www.cliffsnotes.com/WileyCDA/LitNote/Hamlet.id-121.html http://shakespeare.mit.edu/Tragedy/hamlet/hamlet.html (Full Script) @http://www.tk421.net/hamlet/hamlet.html @http://www.online-literature.com/shakespeare/hamlet/ @http://www.pathguy.com/hamlet.htm @http://www.shakespeare-literature.com/Hamlet/index.html @http://www.gradesaver.com/hamlet/

Video Clips--if you missed those classes
Act 1 (First part) Act 1(second part) Act 1 (third part) Act 1 (end)-Act 2 (first part) Act 2-Act 3 (first part) Act 3 First part) Act 3 (second part) Act 3 (third portion) Act 3 (to end) Act 4 (first part) Act 4-Act 5 (First part) Act 5 (part 2) Act 5 (part 3) Act 5 (final part)