Hamlet

HamletTwo years passed betweenHamlet’s being entered

in the Stationers’ Register, a journal kept by

the Stationers’ Company of London in which

the printing rights to works were recorded,

and the play’s being printed. In 1602, James

Roberts entered ‘‘A booke called the Revenge

of Hamlett Prince Denmarke as yt was latelie

Acted by the Lord Chamberleyne his servantes’’

in the Stationers’ Register; when the quarto text

of the play was published in 1604, the title page

read as follows:

The Tragicall Historie of HAMLET, Prince of

Denmarke. By William Shakespeare. Newly

imprinted and enlarged to almost as much

againe as it was, according to the true and

perfect Coppie. At London, Printed by I.R.

[James Roberts] for N.L. [Nicholas Ling] and

are to be sold at his shoppe vnder Saint

Dunstons Church in Fleetstreet. 1604.

In fact, sometime after Roberts initially reg-isteredHamlet but before he printed it, Nicholas

Ling published a pirated edition of the play, with

the text assembled from memory by actors who

had played in touring companies that took

Hamlet to Oxford and Cambridge. This pirated

edition is called the first quarto and is a corrupt

text. The 1604 quarto, called the second quarto,

seems to be based on Shakespeare’s own papers,

but it is marred by printer’s errors and by

corrupt interpolations from the pirated text. A

third and a fourth quarto were subsequently

printed, both based on the second. In 1623,

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1599

seven years after Shakespeare’s death, his friendsand fellow actors John Heminges and HenryCondell assembled his plays in a single folio-sized volume, called the 1623 Folio. The text ofHamlet in the Folio is substantially differentfrom that of the play’s second quarto; the Foliotext is thought to have come from the promptbook of Shakespeare’s acting company, theKing’s Men, and to be a revision of the secondquarto by Shakespeare himself. The later text isshorter than the second quarto by two hundredlines and contains passages not in that quarto.

Scholars are uncertain as to when before1602 Hamlet was written. The best evidence fora date before which Hamlet could not have beenwritten is found within the play itself, as Hamletdiscusses how the rise of children’s acting com-panies has driven the established adult actingcompanies out of business. Through Hamlet,Shakespeare is understood to be referring to the‘‘War of the Theaters,’’ which took place duringthe years 1599 and 1601, setting the date ofHamlet’s composition between 1599 and 1602.

Since its first appearance, Hamlet has beenimmensely popular, as evidenced by the numberof times it was reprinted in the seventeenth cen-tury and by its performance history. Even duringthe Puritan Interregnum, between 1649 and1660, when the theaters were closed and per-formances outlawed, the gravediggers scenefrom Hamlet was performed by actors standingalone, illegally, as a ‘‘droll,’’ or a short comicsketch with music and dance. When the theaterswere reopened upon the restoration of the mon-archy,Hamlet was performed frequently. A gen-tleman named Samuel Pepys noted in his diarythat he saw the play performed in 1661, 1663,and 1668. John Downes, the bookkeeper for theacting company of which the popular seven-teenth-century actor Thomas Betterton was theprincipal, noted that between 1662 and 1706, notragedy ‘‘got more Reputation, or Money to theCompany than’’ Hamlet. In 1695, two rival act-ing companies each presented performances ofHamlet on the same nights.

For those living in the second half of the sev-enteenth century, the plot ofHamlet could be readto parallel events in England’s immediate past—such as the beheading of Charles I, the years of theCommonwealth, and the restoration of the mon-archy—as the play tells the story of a usurperwhokills the rightful king and is finally overthrownhimself. Beyond historical considerations, in 1698,

JeremyCollier, in hisShort View of the Immorality,and Profaneness of the English Stage, citedHamletas ‘‘lewd’’ for its depiction of Ophelia in hermad scene. That judgment, however, did notdiminish Hamlet’s popularity or the esteem it wasgaining, particularly because the title role was onethat the great actors of the eighteenth century rel-ished, and, in turn, audiences relished their per-formances. The eighteenth century was also anera of great textual work on Shakespeare. Thefamous English writers Samuel Johnson andAlexander Pope were both among those whobrought out editions of Shakespeare’s works, andin 1725 Lewis Theobald notably collated all exist-ing texts of Shakespeare’s works in order to pro-duce the most authentic text possible. WhileHamlet was altered, cut, and adapted over theyears, it was never subject to the kinds of radicaltransformations that plays such as King Lear andThe Tempest were.

In part because of eighteenth-century tex-tual scholarship, in the nineteenth century,Hamlet, like the rest of Shakespeare’s plays,became something to read as well as to see per-formed—and in fact, critical opinion largely heldthat it was better read than seen. The Englishpoet and scholar Samuel Taylor Coleridgeaffected how audiences and readers would per-ceive the play ever after with his interpretationof Hamlet as a man averse to action, full ofresolve but hesitant and irresolute in action. Bythe twentieth century, Hamlet had achieved thestatus of being the most famous and mostesteemed play in the English language, if not inany language. The character of Hamlet, mean-while, achievedmythic status, especially after the1949 publication of the work Hamlet andOedipus, by Ernest Jones, an English Freudianpsychoanalyst, who argued that Hamlet’s ten-dency toward inactivity resulted from identifica-tion with his uncle, who had accomplished whatHamlet could have only wished for: to kill hisfather and marry his mother. Hamlet was alsogiven life outside of his play, becoming a subjector an allusion in other works, like James Joyce’sUlysses and T. S. Eliot’s ‘‘The Love Song ofJ. Alfred Prufrock.’’

In the Elizabethan era, Shakespeare’s focuson Hamlet’s intellectual conflicts was a signifi-cant departure from contemporary revenge trag-edies, like Thomas Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy(c. 1584), which tended to dramatize violentacts graphically on stage. Shakespeare largely

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established dramatic tension inHamlet by focus-ing on Hamlet’s dilemma rather than on thedepiction of bloody deeds. To achieve this shiftin emphasis, Shakespeare created a characterwith intellectual depth and emotional complex-ity that had not yet been present in Elizabethandrama. Shakespeare’s genius and his accom-plishment are evident in his transformation ofHamlet’s literary sources—especially the nearlycontemporaneous Ur-Hamlet. The Ur-Hamlet,or ‘‘original Hamlet,’’ is a lost play that scholarsbelieve was written about a decade beforeShakespeare’s Hamlet, providing the basis forthe later tragedy. Numerous sixteenth-centuryrecords attest to the existence of the Ur-Hamlet, with some references linking its compo-sition to Kyd, the author of The SpanishTragedy. The scholar Harold Bloom, on theother hand, drawing on internal and thematicelements in Hamlet and also on events inShakespeare’s life, asserts that the Ur-Hamletwas actually a first draft of Hamlet writtenby Shakespeare himself in his youth. Otherprincipal sources available to Shakespeare wereSaxo Grammaticus’s Gesta Danorum (c. 1200),which features a popular legend with a plot sim-ilar to Hamlet, and Francois de Belleforest’sHistoires tragiques, extraits des oeuvres italiennesde Bandel (7 vols.; 1559–80), which providesan expanded account of the story recorded inthe Gesta Danorum. From these sources, Shake-speare created Hamlet, a supremely rich andcomplex literary work that continues to delightand challenge both readers and audiences withthe complexity of its themes, the breadth anddepth of its portrayal of human nature and con-sciousness, and the nearly infinite scope of itsinterpretability.

PLOT SUMMARY

Act 1, Scene 1Hamlet opens on the battlements of the castle atElsinore, in Denmark, where the guard is beingchanged. Bernardo andMarcellus, accompaniedby Horatio, come to relieve Francisco. The firstwords spoken, ‘‘Who’s there?’’ a nervous inquiryby Bernardo indicating suspicion and the need tofind something out, set the tone for the rest of theplay. Francisco reports that his watch has beenuneventful. Alone, Bernardo and Marcellusrecount to Horatio how a Ghost appeared thenight before but would not stay. Now they are

waiting to see if it will appear again. If it does,they hope that it will speak to Horatio, who as ascholar may havemore success in speaking to theGhost than they did.

As they wait, the Ghost appears. Horatio’sattempt to speak to it fails, however, and theGhost vanishes. After the men note the Ghost’sresemblance to the deceased King Hamlet, theguards ask Horatio why they are keeping thewatch and why war preparations are beingmade in Denmark. Horatio tells them of a fearedinvasion by Norwegian troops under the com-mand of young Fortinbras. Fortinbras’s father,in a war with the old King Hamlet, PrinceHamlet’s father, was killed by King Hamlet.Fortinbras is set on avenging his father’s deathand recapturing the territory lost to KingHamlet. As they speak, the Ghost appearsagain, then vanishes again. The three decide toinform Hamlet of what they have seen.

Act 1, Scene 2Inside the castle, the new king, Claudius, is deliv-ering a state address, touching on his ascensionto the throne, the old king’s death, and his mar-riage to Gertrude, old King Hamlet’s widow andHamlet’s mother. Next on his agenda is theimpending war with Norway. He dispatchesCornelius and Voltimand to Norway to negoti-ate with Fortinbras’s uncle, the king of Norway,and prevent a war.

Claudius then turns his attention to Hamlet,who stands among the courtiers, dressed inmourning black. Claudius calls Hamlet ‘‘ourchiefest courtier, cousin, and our son.’’ Hamlet’sfirst words, an aside, showing his alienationfrom and disgust with Claudius, are ‘‘A littlemore than kin, and less than kind,’’ acknowledgingtheir kinship but indicating that he thinks ofhimself as entirely unlike Claudius. WhenClaudius asks, ‘‘How is it that the clouds stillhang on you?’’ Hamlet answers with a pun:‘‘Not so, my Lord. I am too much in the sun.’’Hamlet is cryptically suggesting that he is tooloyal a son for Claudius’s treacherous world.

Claudius’s apparent solicitude is fraughtwith purpose. In marrying Gertrude, he haseffectively usurped Hamlet’s place as successorto the Danish throne. He speaks to Hamletdirectly about the prince’s grief for his deadfather, arguing that to persist in grief for thedead is actually an offense against heaven, sinceit seems to reflect rebellion against the will of

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heaven. In this address, Claudius also informs

Hamlet that he is rejecting the prince’s request to

return to school in Germany, inWittenberg, and

wishes him to remain at court, especially since

Queen Gertrude, his mother, wishes him to

remain near her. Claudius’s refusal to let

Hamlet leave Denmark is particularly pointed

because he has just previously granted a similar

request by Laertes, the son of his Lord

Chamberlain, Polonius, to return to Paris.

Hamlet agrees to stay; when his mother asks

him why his grief for his dead father seems so

strong, he tells her that his grief does not just

seem strong but actually is strong. Moreover, he

tells her that the black mourning clothes he

wears and his dejected behavior are outward

manifestations of his internal woe.

After the court disperses, Hamlet remainsbehind and in a soliloquy reveals his internal

state. He expresses his disgust with the world,

which ‘‘is an unweeded garden / That grows to

seed. Things rank and gross in nature / possess itmerely.’’ He himself would prefer to be dead,even by his own hand, if such an act were notagainst the laws of God. Beyond his father’sdeath, a cause of his despair is his mother’squick and unseemly marriage to Claudius.Hamlet says nothing about his own royal ambi-tions, presumably not having any. He is power-fully troubled, however, by the differencesbetween his father and his uncle. To him, hisfather was a god; his uncle is a lecher. Hamletis most incensed not only at Gertrude’s disloy-alty to her dead husband but at her apparenthypocrisy, in that she could cling to his fatherand grieve for him as deeply as she had andnevertheless be so quickly seduced by his uncle.‘‘Frailty,’’ Hamlet generalizes from his mother tothe sex as a whole, ‘‘thy name is woman.’’

As Hamlet is finishing his painful medita-tion, Horatio,Marcellus, and Bernardo enter thechamber and report the night’s encounter withthe Ghost of his dead father. Hamlet arranges tomeet them on the battlements and watch withthem that night and vows to talk to the Ghostshould it appear.

Act 1, Scene 3In the third scene, Shakespeare shifts the focusof the play to Polonius and his two children,Ophelia and Laertes. As the scene begins,Laertes, about to embark on his return journeyto France, in parting from his sister, advises herto guard herself against Hamlet’s advances. Shepromises that she will and reminds him not tocounsel chaste and prudent behavior to her whileleading a reckless life himself. Polonius enters tobid Laertes farewell and to give him some pre-cepts that he hopes will guide his behavior inFrance. Once Laertes has departed, Poloniusasks Ophelia what they had been speakingabout, and Ophelia reports that her brotherhad warned her to be wary of Hamlet’s court-ship. Polonius affirms this warning, telling herthat Hamlet is in all likelihood only toying withher and that he wishes her to no longer speak toHamlet.

Act 1, Scene 4In the middle of the night, Hamlet, Horatio,Marcellus, and Bernardo wait on the battle-ments of Elsinore to see if the Ghost will appear.In the meantime they comment on the nightlycarousing and revelry at the court of Denmark,which Hamlet acknowledges give Denmark a

Kenneth Branagh as Hamlet and Kate Winsletas Ophelia from the 1996 movie Hamlet(Everett Collection)

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reputation of being a place of drunkenness.Hamlet then philosophizes about human faults,observing that one fault can overwhelm a personwho is in all other respects decent. His discourseis interrupted by the appearance of the Ghost,who signals him to follow. Hamlet’s companionstry to hold him back, fearing that the Ghost maydrive him mad or move him to take his own life,but Hamlet resists, drawing his sword, and fol-lows the Ghost. The others follow after.

Act 1, Scene 5Alone with the Ghost, Hamlet says that he willgo no further. The Ghost identifies himself asHamlet’s father’s spirit, ‘‘doomed for a certainterm to walk the night’’ because he died withouthaving had the opportunity to repent. More sig-nificantly, he tells Hamlet that although he is saidto have died sleeping in his orchard, the truth isthat his brother killed him by pouring a ‘‘leperousdistillment’’ in his ear; through this lie, Claudiushas abused the ear of Denmark. Hamlet tells theGhost that he had suspected some foul play byhis uncle, and the Ghost tells Hamlet that he isobliged to avenge the murder. Further, the Ghostinstructs Hamlet not to hurt his mother but to‘‘leave her to heaven / And to those thorns thatin her bosom lodge / To prick and sting her.’’With the approach of morning, the Ghost van-ishes, leaving in Hamlet’s ears the words‘‘Remember me.’’ Hamlet believes the Ghostand tells Horatio, Marcellus, and Bernardo thatthe Ghost is honest, but he refuses to reveal whatthe Ghost imparted. Hamlet instructs the men tomention nothing of what has just occurred and, ifthey see Hamlet acting oddly, not to indicate evenby the smallest gesture that they know the reasonwhy. He commands them to swear that they willbe silent. When they resist, saying that such anoath is not necessary, the Ghost’s voice calls out,‘‘Swear,’’ and they do. Hamlet calls the Ghost aperturbed spirit and tells it to rest. He thenremarks that ‘‘the time is out of joint’’ and thatit is his misfortune that it is his task ‘‘to set itright.’’

Act 2, Scene 1Polonius is alone with Reynaldo, a courtier whomhe is sending to Paris to find out how Laertes isbehaving. Polonius instructs Reynaldo in methodsof gathering information, emphasizing how heought to offer demeaning observations aboutLaertes’s character to see if others confirmthem or even reciprocate with further accounts

of his faults.OnceReynaldo is dispatched,Opheliaenters and tells her father of a recent, disturbing

encounter with Hamlet, who entered her chamberwith his clothing in disarray, took hold of her bythe wrist, sighed, gazed at her, and left. Polonius

interprets the behavior as indicating lovesicknessand asks her if she has ‘‘given him any hard wordsof late’’; Ophelia tells him that she has not, that she

has, as Polonius instructed, returned Hamlet’s let-ters and ‘‘denied / His access to me.’’ Polonius

determines to tell the king of the episode.

Act 2, Scene 2Claudius and Gertrude greet Rosencrantz and

Guildenstern, old school friends of Hamlet’s,thank them for answering their summons, andexplain that neither Hamlet’s ‘‘exterior nor the

inward man / Resembles that it was.’’ The kingand queen hope that the two might be able to

spend time with Hamlet and find out what hascaused his ‘‘transformation.’’ The two friendsthen leave to let Hamlet know of their arrival.

Polonius enters and informs Claudius thatthe ambassadors to Norway, Cornelius andVoltimand, have returned and that he thinks he

knows the cause of Hamlet’s madness; he advisesthe king to first hear from the ambassadors.

After Polonius leaves to fetch the ambassadors,Claudius tells Gertrude that Polonius thinks heknows the cause of Hamlet’s madness. She

remarks that she does not doubt that the causeis the combination of his father’s death and their‘‘o’erhasty marriage.’’

Voltimand and Cornelius report that the kingof Norway was grieved to learn that Fortinbraswas raising an army against Denmark, as he had

thought the army was being assembled for anattack against Poland. When he learned the

truth, he suppressed Fortinbras’s war effortagainst Denmark but asked for passage throughDenmark for the Polish campaign.

With the ambassadors’ business concluded,Polonius informs the king and queen with char-acteristic long-windedness that he believes the

cause of Hamlet’s apparent madness to be lovefor Ophelia; he reads a letter from Hamlet to her

that expresses love and desperation. The queenfinds the hypothesis credible, and the kingwishes to know how they might test it. Polonius

suggests that he will arrange for Hamlet andOphelia to meet and converse while the king,

queen, and Polonius hide behind an arras, or

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long heavy curtain, and eavesdrop. Claudiusaccepts, and Polonius, noticing Hamlet walking

toward them, instructs the king and queen toleave while he engages Hamlet in conversation.

Polonius greets Hamlet and, as if talking toa madman, asks Hamlet if he knows him.Hamlet answers that he knows him very well,that he is a fishmonger. Hamlet often speaks indouble entendres, expressions that have twomeanings, with one of them usually sexuallysuggestive; a fishmonger is not only a personwho sells fish but also a procurer, or pimp.Indeed, Polonius is in a sense using Ophelia(‘‘I’ll loose my daughter,’’ he has told Claudiusand Gertrude) to snare Hamlet. Hamlet contin-ues to lead Polonius on, teasing him with refer-ences to love, sexuality, Ophelia, and death.Polonius takes leave of Hamlet convinced thathe is mad and that love for Ophelia is the cause.

As Polonius leaves, Rosencrantz andGuildenstern enter and greet Hamlet, who askswhat ill fortune brings them to Denmark, whichhe calls a prison. They respond that they do notfind it to be such, and he tells them that it is oneonly to him, then, ‘‘for there is nothing eithergood or bad but thinking makes it so.’’ Theyobserve that he must have too much ambition,but Hamlet dissents and, as he had toyed withPolonius, toys with them, telling them he couldlive happily in a small space but has bad dreams.After they discuss the nature of dreams, Hamletagain asks why they have come to Elsinore, andthey answer that it was to visit him. But Hamletprotests that their visit is not voluntary, remark-ing, ‘‘Were you not sent for? . . .Come, come,deal justly withme.’’ They equivocate, not know-ing what to say, and Hamlet tells them that theyneed not answer; he knows that they weresummoned. Still, they do not respond honestly,asking, ‘‘To what end?’’ Hamlet replies, ‘‘Thatyou must teach me.’’ Finally, the two admit thatthey were summoned, and Hamlet says that hewill tell them why so that they will not be guiltyof revealing their mission.

Hamlet proceeds to inform them that he haslost his ability to take pleasure in being alive andthat ‘‘man,’’ though a wonderful creature withgreat capabilities, ‘‘delights not me’’; when theysmile, he suspects they have a bawdy under-standing of his words and adds ‘‘nor womanneither.’’ Rosencrantz asserts that he was think-ing no such thing; rather, he recalled that theyencountered traveling players on their way to the

court, and if Hamlet takes no pleasure in theways of men, he will not enjoy the players.Hamlet responds that they will be welcome,especially the one who plays the king. After dis-cussion on the current state of the theater, withreference to the stage in Shakespeare’s ownLondon and the rise of children’s theater com-panies, which has forced adult troupes to travel,Polonius enters to inform Hamlet that the play-ers have arrived. Hamlet and Polonius banterabout theater and once again about fathers andtheir daughters. Hamlet refers to the biblicalfigure of Jephthah, who vowed to God that ifhe was victorious in battle, he would offer as asacrifice to God the first thing he saw on hisreturn home. On his return, the first thingJephtha encountered was his daughter comingout to greet him. ‘‘Still on my daughter,’’Polonius notes, without realizing that Hamlet issuggesting that Polonius is sacrificing his daugh-ter to his own interests. The players enter, andHamlet greets them and asks one of the playersto recite a speech about the fall of Troy to theGreeks in the Trojan War and the suffering ofthe king and queen of Troy, Priam and Hecuba.Polonius notes that as the player recites thespeech, he is filled with emotion. Hamlet thenasks the players if they know a play called TheMurder of Gonzago; they do. Hamlet arrangesfor them to play it before the court the followingnight with the addition of some lines Hamlet willwrite.

Alone, Hamlet compares himself to theplayer, who was moved to a passion by his ownspeech, and berates himself in a soliloquy for hislack of determination in real life in his quest forrevenge. His meditation leads him to the ideathat ‘‘guilty creatures’’ watching a play that mir-rors their misdeeds might become so moved as toconfess their crimes, if not verbally then by somefacial expression or bodily gesture. Thus, Hamletplans to watch the king’s response to TheMurderof Gonzago, which features a murder similar toKing Hamlet’s murder. Hamlet remarks in clos-ing, ‘‘The play’s the thing / Wherein I’ll catch theconscience of the King.’’

Act 3, Scene 1Rosencrantz and Guildenstern report to the kingand queen that they were unable to learn muchfrom Hamlet, who, they say, greeted them like agentlemanbut avoided their inquirieswith a craftymadness. The two inform the king of the players’arrival and of the performance scheduled for that

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evening. The king is glad that Hamlet seems to bepursuing pleasure and instructs them to continuetrying to lead him to reveal the root of his madbehavior. The king then asks Gertrude to leavethem. Gertrude tells Ophelia that she hopes it isfor love of her that Hamlet is mad; she would notoppose their marriage. Polonius positionsOpheliawith a book to wait for Hamlet; he and the kingwill watch in hiding when Hamlet arrives.

Hamlet enters and recites perhaps the mostfamous speech from any play, the soliloquy ‘‘Tobe or not to be,’’ in which he ponders the pain ofbeing alive and the fear of death and of what theafterlife may hold. He concludes that fear of theunknown makes people bear the burdens, injus-tices, and woes of being alive. He breaks off hismeditations when he sees Ophelia, who is read-ing from a book that Hamlet takes to be a prayerbook. In greeting her, he asks her to include himin her prayers. She tells him that she has ‘‘remem-brances’’ of his, gifts and letters he has given herthat she wishes to return to him. He says that henever gave her anything, but she asserts that heknows he did; when he did, he gave them withsweet words, but now that he is cold to her, thegifts no longer have the richness they once had.He interrupts her to ask if she is honest, suspect-ing that she is the bait in a trap to catch him. Shedoes not understand his question, and hedeclares that if she is honest and fair, her honestywould not permit her to be used (as she is beingused to lure Hamlet into revealing himself).

In a speech full of words with double mean-ings, Hamlet tells Ophelia ‘‘Get thee to a nun-nery,’’ meaning both ‘‘sequester yourself in aconvent to be away from this sinful, dangerousworld’’ and ‘‘go into a brothel, for you are beinga prostitute, in being used by Claudius andPolonius.’’ At length, he berates himself and allof mankind. He concludes by asking, ‘‘Where’syour father?’’ and she answers with a lie, ‘‘Athome, my lord.’’ Hamlet then calls her father afool, tells Ophelia that if she marries she ought tobe chaste, and concludes with a condemnation ofwomen who apply makeup and act affectedly,making a mockery of God’s creation. He railsagainst marriage andmakes a veiled threat to killthe king. He concludes by once more telling her,‘‘To a nunnery, go.’’

Alone, Ophelia grieves at Hamlet’s apparentmadness. The king and Polonius come out ofhiding, and the king remarks that Hamlet didnot seem to be talking like a disappointed lover,

that his words were not really like those of a

madman. Furthermore, the king feels that

Hamlet is a threat and so resolves to send him

to England in an ambassadorial function, to

collect some tribute money that England has

neglected to pay Denmark. Polonius tells Ophe-

lia that she need not tax herself to relate the

conversation as they have overheard everything,

thus offering no comfort to the broken-hearted

girl. Polonius suggests that after the play, Ger-

trude ought to talk toHamlet to see what she can

learn; he will hide behind an arras and listen to

their conversation. The king agrees and adds

that ‘‘madness in great ones’’ must not go

unwatched.

Act 3, Scene 2Before the performance of The Mousetrap,

Hamlet’s adaptation of The Murder of Gonzago,

Hamlet instructs the players how to act, telling

them not to play the scene that evening too

broadly and with great gesticulation—not to go

for big effects but to perform realistically and to

‘‘hold . . . the mirror up to nature.’’ When the

players leave, Horatio enters. Hamlet first tells

him how much he loves and admires him for his

balanced, stoical disposition, as he is not a flat-

terer or a slave to the whims of fortune. Hamlet

asks Horatio to observe the king’s reactions dur-

ing the play, which will mirror the circumstances

of King Hamlet’s death as the Ghost has related

them.

With ceremonial flourish the king and thecourt enter. The king greets Hamlet, asking

how he ‘‘fares,’’ and Hamlet responds with a

cryptic pun, since ‘‘how do you fare’’ means

‘‘how do you eat?’’ as well as ‘‘how do you do?’’

Hamlet says that he ‘‘eats the air, promise

crammed,’’ punning also on ‘‘heir,’’ suggesting

that Claudius, by marrying Gertrude and

becoming king, has usurped Hamlet’s rightful

place in the royal succession. Claudius says that

he does not understand Hamlet’s meaning—

‘‘these words are not mine’’—and Hamlet retorts

that now that they have been spoken, the words

are not his either. Hamlet then turns to banter

with Polonius about his past as an actor. The

queen invites Hamlet to sit beside her, but

Hamlet indicates that he would prefer to sit by

Ophelia and proceeds to make a series of

obscene sexual puns and cutting references to

his father’s death and his mother’s remarriage.

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The play begins with a ‘‘dumb show’’ orpantomime of the action to come. After a spokenprologue, the Player King and Player Queenenter. They are loving, but the king is not ingood health and speaks of the possibility ofdying. The queen says that she will never marryagain; to do so would be like a second death ofher husband. But the king objects; as circum-stances change, he asserts, so will she. She pro-tests that she will be constant and then leaves thestage, and the king lies down for a nap. As thescene changes, Hamlet asks his mother what shethinks of the play, and she says that it seems toher that ‘‘the lady doth protest too much.’’

A new character then enters and pours poi-son into the sleeping king’s ear, as Hamlet, like achorus, narrates what is happening, noting,‘‘You shall see anon how the murderer gets thelove of Gonzago’s wife.’’ At this point, Claudiusrises, Gertrude asks how he fares, Poloniusorders the play stopped, and Claudius calls for‘‘some light’’ and leaves; all the court exceptHamlet and Horatio follow. Hamlet is euphoric,and he and Horatio agree that the king’s reactionconfirms the Ghost’s honesty and the king’s guilt.As they talk, Rosencrantz andGuildenstern enterand tell Hamlet how disturbed the king andqueen are at his behavior and also that thequeen wishes to speak with him in her chamber.They apologize for their boldness in speakingsomewhat reproachfully to Hamlet, citing thegreat love they bear him as an excuse. Hamlettakes a flute from one of the players and asksGuildenstern to play it; Guildenstern proteststhat he lacks the skill to do so. Hamlet remarkson how cheaply, then, Guildenstern must holdHamlet, in that Guildenstern was trying to ‘‘playupon’’ him. Polonius enters to also announcethat the queen wishes to see Hamlet in her cham-ber. Hamlet then taunts Polonius, too, and thescene ends with Hamlet leaving for Gertrude’schamber, vowing to be severe with her and rep-rimand her for her remarriage but not to beabusive or violent.

Act 3, Scene 3Feeling himself to be in danger, Claudius com-missions Rosencrantz and Guildenstern toescort Hamlet to England and tells them to armthemselves for the task. They flatter him, tellinghim how important a king is and how he mustprotect himself in order to protect all the peopleof the kingdom who depend on him. As theyleave, Polonius enters; he tells the king that

Hamlet is going to Gertrude’s chamber andthat he will hide behind the arras there to listento their conversation. Polonius adds that amother is too partial to her son to be trusted insuch circumstances.

Alone, Claudius contemplates his crime,admitting to himself how terrible the murder ofa brother is. He tries to pray but realizes that hisprayer is meaningless as long as he still enjoys thefruits of his crime. Meanwhile, Hamlet passes onhis way to Gertrude’s chamber and realizes thathe might kill the king—but he refrains fromdoing so because killing Claudius while he is inprayer would send his soul to heaven. That,Hamlet says, would be unfair: ‘‘A villain killsmy father, and for that / I, his sole son, do thissame villain send / To heaven.’’ He leavesClaudius alive. Claudius, alone, ends the scenesaying, ‘‘My words fly up, my thoughts remainbelow. / Words without thoughts never toheaven go.’’ Ironically, prayer did, this time,despite his ambivalence, protect him.

Act 3, Scene 4In Gertrude’s chamber, Polonius tells her thatHamlet is coming and that she should scold herson for his ‘‘pranks’’; meanwhile, Polonius willhide behind the arras. As Hamlet approaches,she tells Polonius not to worry and to hide.Hamlet asks his mother, ‘‘What’s the matter?’’and she answers that he has much offended hisfather, meaning Claudius, his stepfather. Heretorts that she has much offended his father,meaning her first husband, King Hamlet. Shetells him that his answer is idle, he tells her thather question is wicked, and they begin to quarrel.She asks if he has forgotten who she is; he saysthat indeed he has not, that she is her husband’sbrother’s wife and, though he wishes it were notso, his mother. She says that if he will not listento her, she will have others speak to him, and hetakes hold of her and sits her down, saying thathe will hold up a mirror for her to see her inner-most self. Frightened, she cries out, ‘‘What wiltthou do? Thou wilt not murder me? / Help, ho!’’Polonius, hearing her cry, calls out ‘‘Help!’’ too,and Hamlet stabs the man behind the curtainwithout seeing who it is. When his mother asks,‘‘What hast thou done?’’ he says that he does notknow. He asks if the man was the king, but sheonly says that it was a ‘‘bloody deed.’’ Hamletresponds that the act is ‘‘almost as bad, goodMother, / as kill a king, and marry with hisbrother.’’ She responds with the question, ‘‘As

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kill a king?’’ apparently not knowing what he is

referring to. He then lifts the curtain and sees the

dead Polonius, to call him a ‘‘wretched, rash,

intruding fool.’’

The murder seems to spur them to speakmore openly, for Gertrude then asks what she

has done to leave him so incensed. Hamlet pro-

ceeds to answer, and what he does not say is as

interesting as what he does, for he fails to men-

tion his meeting with the Ghost, nor does he

explain the expression ‘‘as kill a king.’’ Rather,

he focuses on the differences he perceives

between the two brothers, elevating the old

King Hamlet to a divine level and depicting

Claudius as a depraved man. He chides his

mother for being able to go from a man so fine

to a man so base. She breaks down and tells him

that he has torn her heart in two. He tells her to

throw away the rotten part, the part attached

to Claudius. As he speaks, the Ghost enters to

remind Hamlet that he has nearly forgotten his

mission, to avenge his father’s death. Gertrude

sees Hamlet talking to the air and grows afraid

that he truly is crazy. Hamlet warns her not to

think that he is mad rather than realize that she

is at fault; he tells her not to go again to

Claudius’s bed or to be seduced into revealing

Hamlet’s true condition. She agrees. Hamlet

then tells his mother that he is being sent to

England, that he suspects a plot against him,

that he does not trust Rosencrantz and

Guildenstern, and that he will beat them at

their own game. He leaves, dragging Polonius’s

body behind him to deposit it in another room.

Act 4, Scene 1The king asks Gertrude how the interview with

Hamlet went. She asks Rosencrantz and Guilden-

stern to withdraw and tells Claudius that Hamlet

is as mad as the raging sea during a tempest and

that he killed Polonius. The king reflects on how

he himself might have been killed and on how the

people will hold him partly responsible for the

killing, as he failed to keep Hamlet in check. He

reiterates that he will send Hamlet to England.

When Claudius asks Gertrude where Hamlet is

now, she reports that he has gone to stow Polo-

nius’s body somewhere. The king summons Rose-

ncrantz and Guildenstern back into his presence,

tells them of the murder of Polonius, and orders

them to find Hamlet and the body.

Act 4, Scene 2No longer as friends but as agents of the king,Rosencrantz and Guildenstern demand Polonius’sbody of Hamlet. He does not give them a straightanswer, insults them, and runs away as if playinghide-and-seek; they pursue him.

Act 4, Scene 3The king tells two or three courtiers that he hassent to find Hamlet and the body and thatHamlet is dangerous, though the ‘‘multitude,’’ thepeople, love him. Rosencrantz and Guildensternenter and tell the king that Hamlet is outside thechamber under guard but will not say where thebody is. The king orders Hamlet brought in andasks him where the body is. Hamlet answerscryptically first that Polonius is ‘‘at supper,’’‘‘not where he eats, but where he is eaten,’’ thenthat perhaps Polonius is in heaven and the kingought to send amessenger there to find him; if heis not there, the king might look in the ‘‘otherplace’’ himself. Finally, Hamlet says that if theking cannot find him in either place he will soonsmell him by a certain staircase. Claudius tellsHamlet that for his own safety he is sending himto England aboard a ship, and Hamlet isremoved under guard. In a short soliloquy, theking reveals that he has sent letters to Englandordering Hamlet’s murder and that he will notknow peace until Hamlet is dead.

Act 4, Scene 4Fortinbras, of Norway, crosses the stage with histroops, passing through Denmark on his way tofight for a barren piece of land in Poland, as acaptain tells Hamlet when he inquires. Hamlet isastonished that men should fight and so manyshould die for the possession of a worthless pieceof ground. He concludes that to be great is to‘‘find quarrel in a straw,’’ and reproaches himselffor not having accomplished the Ghost’s com-mission yet. He vows that his thoughts will bebloody from then on, thinking that if they arenot, they will be worth nothing.

Act 4, Scene 5In the castle, Gertrude refuses to speak withOphelia until a courtier tells her that Ophelia isdistracted and talks madly in incoherent snatchesabout her father; Horatio then advises Gertrude tospeakwithOphelia lest she bring people to think illof the king, and Gertrude agrees. Ophelia enters,deranged by grief and singing songs about sexualpromiscuity, abandonment, and death. Claudius

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enters and speaks gently to Ophelia, but she leavesthem talking of her father’s burial in the coldground and how her ‘‘brother shall know of it.’’Claudius instructs Horatio to keep an eye onOphelia, as he is worried that seeing her grief willturn the people against him; Claudius then tellsGertrude that Laertes has secretly returned fromFrance to avenge his father’s death, for which heblames the king. As Claudius speaks, there is acommotion, as Laertes has incited a mob lookingto overthrow Claudius and make Laertes king.They break down the doors of the castle andenter, and Laertes commands the mob to standoutside and demands to know where his father is.Gertrude unsuccessfully tries to calm Laertes, andClaudius bids her let him go, saying that he is notafraid, for a king is protected by God. The kingpersuades Laertes to be patient and tries to con-vince Laertes that they are partners in grief, that heis not responsible for Polonius’s death, and that hedoes not begrudge Laertes his revenge but alsodoes not want Laertes to punish the innocentwith the guilty. As Laertes’s passion subsides,Ophelia enters again, mad and strewing flowers,rousing that passion again. Once Ophelia hasgone, Claudius tells Laertes that he will answerany questions regarding Polonius’s death and willsatisfy Laertes regarding his own innocence.

Act 4, Scene 6Sailors bring Horatio a letter from Hamlet, whowrites that he is back in Denmark, as piratesboarded their ship at sea, and during the battleHamlet boarded the pirates’ ship. They havedealt fairly with him and for a reward are return-ing him to Denmark. He requests that Horatiotake the sailors to the king and give the kingletters from him. Hamlet has much to tellHoratio of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, whoare still traveling to England. Horatio promisesthe sailors to do as Hamlet requests and asksthem to bring him to Hamlet.

Act 4, Scene 7Explaining what has happened to Polonius,Claudius convinces Laertes of his own innocenceregarding Polonius’s death and of Hamlet’s guilt.When Laertes asks why Hamlet was not pun-ished, Claudius explains that he could not punishhim outright because of the love his mother andthe people both bear him. Laertes vows to takerevenge himself, but the king tells him that morenews will soon come to satisfy him. As theyspeak, a messenger enters with Hamlet’s letters,

and the king reads that Hamlet has returned toDenmark alone and wishes to see him. Laertesasserts that he must now take revenge, and theking concocts a scheme to make Hamlet’s deathlook accidental. He tells Laertes how muchHamlet admires his skill in fencing and proposesa match between the two. Laertes’ sword, how-ever, shall not have a blunt on its tip. Laertes,roused by the king’s goading to a passion thatwould allow him to cut Hamlet’s throat inchurch, agrees. Besides the sword’s being naked,the king proposes that its tip be wetted with adeadly poison and that, should Hamlet becomethirsty during the duel, the king will offer him acup of poisoned wine. Gertrude interrupts theirconversation to announce that Ophelia hasdrowned in a brook near the castle, and Laertesis shattered. The king and Gertrude follow himoffstage, with the king noting how terribleOphelia’s death is, since he has had so muchtrouble calming Laertes’ rage, and her death hasnow inflamed it once again.

Act 5, Scene 1In the graveyard, two clowns are joking andsinging as they dig a grave. By their conversa-tion, the audience or reader understands that thegrave is Ophelia’s and that owing to a disputeover whether her drowning was accidental orsuicidal, she will not be given full burial rites.Hamlet and Horatio then enter, and Hamlet isastonished that the First Clown can go about hisgravedigging business in such a carefree fashionand engages him in conversation. The FirstClown says that he has been employed at histrade for thirty years, since the young Hamletwas born. They speak of mortality, and theclown shows Hamlet a skull, saying that it wasthe skull of Yorick, the king’s jester; Hamlet thenmeditates on the passing of time.

As they speak, Claudius, Gertrude, Laertes,a Priest, and members of the court enter forOphelia’s burial. When she is laid in the earth,Laertes jumps into the grave after her. Hamlet,seeing everything, his passion aroused, jumps in,too, and there grapples with Laertes, proclaim-ing his greater love. The king has them parted,andHamlet protests that Laertes has no cause tobe angry with him, that he has always esteemedhim. Claudius bids Horatio look after Hamlet,and when he is alone with Laertes, the king askshim to be patient in his desire for revenge,reminding him of the plan they have to murderHamlet in the dueling contest.

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Act 5, Scene 2Hamlet tells Horatio how he found the letter that

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern were carrying

from Claudius to the king of England commis-

sioning Hamlet’s immediate execution. He then

notes that he substituted another letter that he

wrote and sealed with his own royal signet ring,

ordering instead the execution of Rosencrantz

and Guildenstern, for whose deaths he feels no

guilt, so willing were they to go about the king’s

business. In the course of this discussion, Hamlet

reveals a new calmness of temperament founded

on his acceptance that things, with time, will be

as they are ordained to be.

As they are speaking, Osric, a foppish cour-tier, enters and tells Hamlet of the fencing wager

the king has placed on him against Laertes.

Hamlet agrees to the contest and says that he is

available immediately. The king, queen, Laertes,

and the court then enter, and the contest begins.

Hamlet asks Laertes for forgiveness, claiming

that his madness, not himself, wronged Laertes,

and Laertes, yet planning to kill Hamlet, lies and

says that he forgives him, provisionally. Theychoose their foils, with Laertes taking the bare,poisoned one and Hamlet accepting the bluntedone without checking the other, as the king hadsaid he would. Between rounds, the king offersHamlet a drink of poisoned wine, but Hamletdeclines until later. The queen then begins totake a sip, and the king tries to stop her, butshe protests that she will drink; after drinking,she swoons and realizes that she has been pois-oned. Hamlet and Laertes then both wound eachother with the poisoned sword, for in a scuffletheir foils are exchanged. Laertes then has achange of heart and tells Hamlet of the king’splot; Laertes asks Hamlet’s forgiveness and diesreceiving it. Hamlet then strikes the king with thepoisoned sword and forces him to drink some ofthe wine, and the courtiers call out treason. AsHamlet is dying, Horatio says that he will takethe cup and drink as well, thus, like a Roman,following his friend in death. However, Hamletprevents him, imploring him rather to put off thejoys of death for a while and, in the cruel world,to draw his breath in pain and tell Hamlet’s

Christopher Eccleston as Hamlet in Act V, scene i, at the West Yorkshire Playhouse, Leeds, 2002(� Donald Cooper/Photostage. Reproduced by permission)

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story, for as it stands he dies with a sulliedreputation. Hamlet notes that he imaginesFortinbras will be selected king of Denmark,and he approves of that. Fortinbras, indeed,then enters, returning across Denmark from vic-tory in Poland, and has Hamlet placed on afuneral platform and given military rites.

CHARACTERS

BernardoBernardo is a guard at Elsinore. During hiswatch on the ramparts, along with his partnerMarcellus, Bernardo sees the Ghost of Hamlet’sfather, the old King Hamlet, and reports the

event to Hamlet’s friend Horatio, who joins the

two guards on the night watch.

ClaudiusClaudius is the old King Hamlet’s brother and

Prince Hamlet’s uncle. At the play’s opening, he

has secretly murdered his brother, married his

brother’s widow, and ascended the throne of

Denmark. Claudius soon becomes wary that

Hamlet has discovered his crime and is planning

to avenge King Hamlet’s murder by killing him.

Consequently, he arranges for the murder of

Hamlet. Although Claudius is unrepentant and

unwilling to forfeit the advantages he has gained

through his crime, he is plagued by a guilty

conscience.

MEDIAADAPTATIONS

� Laurence Olivier’s black-and-white film ver-

sion of Hamlet (1948), for which he won

Academy Awards for both acting and

directing, cuts Rosencrantz, Guildenstern,

and Fortinbras out of the play and empha-

sizes Hamlet’s inability to make up his mind

and his oedipal fixation on his mother. The

film was released by J. Arthur Rank.

� Elmer Rice’s 1958 stage adaptation ofHamlet,

Cue for Passion, transposes Shakespeare’s play

from Denmark to contemporary California.

This play offers the story of a widow who

remarries to the only witness to her first hus-

band’s apparently accidental death, with her

son finding the situation disturbing. The play

was first produced by the Playwrights’ Com-

pany at Henry Miller’s Theater in New York.

� For his 1990 film version ofHamlet, director

Franco Zeffirelli rearranged and cut the text

but fully retained the spirit of the original,

with Mel Gibson performing admirably as

Hamlet. The film was released by Warner

Bros. Pictures.

� Kenneth Branagh’s four-and-a-half-hour filmversion of Hamlet (1996) is a monumentalrendition of the complete play set in the nine-teenth century. Branagh adapted the play,directed the movie, and starred as the titlecharacter. The film was released by ColumbiaPictures.

� Ashewas filmingHamlet, Branaghalso filmedA Midwinter’s Tale (1995), a modest black-and-white film of a group of amateur provin-cial actors putting together a production ofHamlet. A Midwinter’s Tale includes certainscenes from Hamlet, some done as burlesqueand some done with an insightful naıvete. Thefilm was released by Sony Pictures.

� Let the Devil Wear Black (1999) turnsHam-let into a crime thriller set in the boardroomsof Los Angeles. The film was released byUnapix.

� The director Michael Almereyda set his2000 film version of Hamlet in modernManhattan, with Ethan Hawke starring asthe title character. The film was released byMiramax Pictures.

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First ClownAs he digs Ophelia’s grave, the First Clown singsand makes grim jokes about death. Hamletencounters him thus and is surprised at his mer-riness; Hamlet inquires as to whose grave isbeing dug and contemplates mortality as heholds what the First Clown declares to be theskull of Yorick, Hamlet’s father’s jester.

Second ClownThe Second Clown essentially plays the role ofstraight man to the comedic First Clown as theydig a grave for Ophelia.

FortinbrasFortinbras is the prince of Norway. His fatherwas killed by King Hamlet in combat yearsbefore, and he is determined to go to war againstDenmark in order to recapture the territories hisfather lost in that battle. After Claudius per-suades Fortinbras’s uncle, the king of Norway,to restrain Fortinbras with respect to Denmark,Claudius, in return, allows Fortinbras to lead histroops throughDenmark to conduct war againstPoland. At the end of the play, whenHamlet andClaudius are dead, Fortinbras becomes king ofDenmark.

FranciscoFrancisco appears in the first scene as one of theguards who nightly stand watch on the battle-ments at Elsinore.

GertrudeThe queen of Denmark, Gertrude is the old KingHamlet’s widow and Hamlet’s mother. Claudiusmarries Gertrude two months after her first hus-band’s death. She dies during the fencing matchbetween Hamlet and Laertes when she insists ondrinking from a cup intended for Hamlet, notknowing the wine is poisoned.

GhostThe Ghost is King Hamlet’s spirit. King Hamletis ‘‘doomed . . . to walk the night’’ for a certainperiod of time because he died without havingthe opportunity to repent of his sins, having beenmurdered in his sleep. He tells his son Hamletthat Claudius, his brother, killed him and com-mands Hamlet to avenge his murder by killingClaudius. He instructs Hamlet to spareGertrude, to ‘‘leave her to heaven / and to thosethorns that in her bosom lodge / To prick andsting her.’’

GuildensternGuildenstern is an old school friend of Hamlet’s.Along with his friend Rosencrantz, he is sum-moned by Claudius to Denmark to spy onHamlet in order to discover what is troublinghim and report back to the king. Hamlet sus-pects their duplicity. When they are sent byClaudius to escort Hamlet to England, bearinginstructions to the English monarch to haveHamlet killed, Hamlet gets hold of the orderand substitutes their names for his, and theyare later executed.

HamletHamlet, the prince of Denmark, is KingHamlet’s son and Claudius’s nephew. AfterKing Hamlet’s Ghost tells his son that he waskilled by Claudius and that he wishes Hamlet toavenge his murder, Hamlet becomes determinedto discover whether he saw an honest ghost or adiabolical spirit summoning him to a sinful act.To accomplish this, he decides to feign madnessand also to present a play mirroring his father’smurder, called The Murder of Gonzago, beforeClaudius and watch his reaction. In response tohis dead father’s charge, Hamlet is set on acourse of meditation on life, death, responsibil-ity, and fate. Far from being an action hero,Hamlet is a protagonist of reflection and philo-sophical contemplation. He is mortally woundedduring a rigged fencing match with Laertes thatClaudius has arranged, but not before he killsLaertes with the poisoned sword surreptitiouslyprepared for him. He stabs Claudius, as well,with that sword and also forces him to drinkfrom the poisoned cup Claudius had preparedfor him. As Hamlet and Laertes are dying,Hamlet forgives Laertes for plotting againsthim, and Laertes forgives Hamlet for the acci-dental murder of his father, Polonius. Hamletthen forbids his friendHoratio to commit suicideas a gesture of loyalty and friendship; rather,Hamlet charges Horatio to live and tell the prin-ce’s story so that his name will survive in honorafter his death.

HoratioHoratio is a stoic scholar and Hamlet’s true andloyal friend. Hamlet notes that Horatio meetsgood and bad fortune alike with equanimity.When Marcellus and Bernardo invite him tokeep the watch with them and the Ghost appears,Horatio tries to speak to it, but without success.He tells Hamlet of the Ghost’s appearance and

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joins him the following night on the battlements;when the Ghost beckons Hamlet to follow,Horatio tries to prevent Hamlet from going offalone with the spirit. He also advises Hamlet notto accept the king’s challenge to compete againstLaertes in a duel. At his death, Hamlet forbidsHoratio to commit suicide, asking his friend totell his story, explain his erratic behavior, andclear his name.

LaertesLaertes, Polonius’s son, returns from his studiesin Paris after Hamlet kills Polonius. Laertes’mission to avenge his father’s murder thus mir-rors Hamlet’s mission to avenge the murder ofhis own father. Claudius mollifies Laertes, whois angry over both his father’s death and hissister Ophelia’s madness, and conspires withLaertes, arranging for him to kill Hamlet in afencing match.

OpheliaOphelia is Polonius’s daughter and Laertes’ sis-ter. When Polonius learns that Hamlet has beencourting Ophelia, he warns his daughter thatHamlet may only be toying with her—that,being royalty, his choices in matters like matri-mony may not be his own to make. AfterOphelia breaks with Hamlet, following herfather’s instructions, Polonius suggests that thethwarting of Hamlet’s love for her is what hasmaddened him; in effect, Polonius uses Opheliain order to discover the root of Hamlet’s malady.After Hamlet kills Polonius, Ophelia goes madand eventually drowns. Whether her death isaccidental or a suicide is unclear.

OsricOsric is a courtier who conveys Laertes’ challengeto a duel to Hamlet, who mocks Osric withoutmercy for his affected courtly mannerisms.

PlayersThe Players are a troupe of traveling actors whovisit Elsinore. At Hamlet’s request, the principalplayer recites a speech depicting the fall of Troyand the fate of the king and queen of Troy,Priam and Hecuba. Later, the Players performThe Mousetrap, Hamlet’s revision of a playcalled The Murder of Gonzago, before Claudiusand the entire court. The play presents a situa-tion similar to the murder of King Hamlet andthe seduction of his widow. Hamlet hopes to seeif Claudius reacts to the play in a way confirming

his guilt and the Ghost’s assertions—and indeed,Claudius does so.

PoloniusPolonius is Claudius’s Lord Chamberlain—oneof his closest advisers—and is the father ofLaertes and Ophelia. He is verbose and senten-tious and seems to love to hear himself talk andto make what he considers wise formulations.Hamlet mocks him with contempt. WhenPolonius is hidden behind a curtain (an arras)in Gertrude’s closet, seeking to overhear theinterview between Gertrude and Hamlet that hehas arranged, Hamlet stabs him, thinkingClaudius is hidden there.

PriestThe Priest presides over Ophelia’s funeral anddefines the limits of the religious rites allowed toher, since her death is considered a suicide.

ReynaldoPolonius sends Reynaldo to Paris to make inqui-ries regarding Laertes’ behavior.

RosencrantzRosencrantz, along with Guildenstern, is aschool friend of Hamlet’s whom the king sum-mons to Elsinore to help discover the cause ofHamlet’s strange behavior.

First SailorWhen Hamlet is being conveyed to England, theboat he is on is overtaken by pirates who returnHamlet to Denmark. Among others, the FirstSailor delivers letters to Horatio and Claudiusfrom him.

VoltimandVoltimand, along with Cornelius, is an ambas-sador Claudius sends to Norway to negotiatewith the king to prevent Fortinbras’s invasionof Denmark.

THEMES

The Active versus the Contemplative LifeAs the hero of a revenge tragedy, conventionally,Hamlet ought to be a man of action, not ofthought; what thoughts he does have ought toconcern carrying out the deed he is dedicated toaccomplishing. Shakespeare’s hero, however, is

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a contemplative man. He thinks about theactions he will take and whether taking themwill be morally right. He worries about theauthenticity and authority of the Ghost. He con-templates the absurdity of war and the meaningof honor when he sees Fortinbras’s army march-ing to fight in Poland for a tract of land. Hemeditates on the difficulties and pains of beingalive and the fearsomeness of death in his ‘‘To beor not to be’’ soliloquy. When he has the oppor-tunity to slay Claudius when he finds him atprayer, he forbears for fear of sending him toheaven. Still, Hamlet ultimately proves quiteactive. He kills Polonius; he performs feats ofderring-do aboard his ship when it is attacked bypirates; he leaps into Ophelia’s grave and grap-ples with her brother; and he is an excellentfencer, as his final duel with Laertes shows.

SpyingNearly every character in Hamlet spies onanother character or at some point concealssomething. Polonius sends Reynaldo to spy onLaertes in France and is killed himself when hehides behind the arras to spy on Hamlet as hespeaks to Gertrude. He also counsels Claudius towatch with him as Hamlet and Ophelia converse.The king orders Rosencrantz and Guildenstern

to spy onHamlet. Ophelia is used by the king andher father as a bait for their spying. Hamlethimself, in his attempt ‘‘to catch the conscienceof the king’’ and authenticate the Ghost’s report,devises a complex series of surveillance strategies,including feigning madness and presenting a playduring the performance of which he watches theking. Aboard the ship to England, Hamletengages in espionage that allows him to discoverthe plot against his life. Horatio, too, at Hamlet’srequest, becomes a spy during the performance ofThe Mousetrap.

VengeanceA common type of play performed on theElizabethan stage was the revenge tragedy. In arevenge tragedy, one act of brutality gives rise to acounteract, which gives rise to another, until allthe characters aremurdered.Usually, themurdersare grim and treacherous. Hamlet is a complexexample of a revenge tragedy. Hamlet is a manwith greater consciousness than the typical heroesof revenge tragedies usually possess, and he strug-gles with the role of avenger that is cast upon him.After Hamlet’s father dies, his father’s ghost visitsand reveals that he was murdered by his brother,and he calls upon Hamlet to avenge his murder.Parallel revenge plots are also present, as the old

The group of traveling players performing ‘‘The Murder of Gonzago,’’ Act III, scene ii

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KingHamlet had defeated Fortinbras, the king of

Norway, in a war, and at the beginning ofHamlet,

the young Fortinbras plans to avenge his father’s

death by warring on Denmark. After Hamlet killsPolonius, that man’s son, Laertes, returns toDenmark in order to avenge his father’s death.The king suggests the climactic duel betweenLaertes and Hamlet as a way of accomplishingthat revenge. In the end, Hamlet not only takesvengeance on the king but also avenges himselfagainst Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, who hadbecome the king’s agents in his attempts tomurderHamlet.

STYLE

AsideAn aside is the term for a remark uttered outloud but understood by the audience as reflect-ing a character’s thought while not being heardby the other characters on the stage. Hamlet’sfirst words in the play, ‘‘A little more than kin,and less than kind,’’ constitute an aside. Thewords are not directed to the king, who has justaddressed him, but reveal Hamlet’s own unut-tered thoughts. Similarly, when Polonius is try-ing to sound Hamlet out, in act 2, scene 2, afterHamlet has referred to his daughter, Poloniussays to himself, ‘‘How say you by that? Stillharping on my daughter. Yet he knew me notat first.’’ And then he addresses Hamlet, asking,‘‘What do you read, my lord?’’

Blank VerseMost of Hamlet, except for occasional prosepassages, is written in unrhymed iambic pentam-eter, which is called blank verse. Pentametermeans that there are five poetic feet in eachline, where a foot is composed of a certain num-ber of syllables or beats. Iambic signifies therhythm of the feet; in an iambic foot the firstsyllable is unaccented, the second accented.Thus, the iambic pentameter line ‘‘When wehave shuffled off this mortal coil,’’ for example,is scanned as follows: ‘‘When WE haveSHUFFled OFF this MORtal COIL.’’ SpokenEnglish often falls into an iambic pattern.

PunningShakespeare is noted for his playing withwords—punning—in order to simultaneouslysuggest multiple meanings in one word orphrase. In Hamlet, Shakespeare can be said tohave given punning a rhetorical and dramaticrelevance that he had not given it since the very

TOPICS FORFURTHER

STUDY

� WhenHoratio announces, asHamlet is dying,that he will commit suicide like an ancientRoman, to join his friend in death, Hamletasks him to instead remain alive and relate hisstory. Imagine you are Horatio talking to agroup of Danish citizens and, either in blankverse or in prose, tell Hamlet’s story.

� In an essay, compare and contrast ThomasKyd’s playThe Spanish Tragedy andHamlet.

� Sources forHamlet includehistorical chronicles.Choose a period in history that interests youand find one or two narrative accounts ofthat period and of some particular eventsand people of that time. Then use what youhave studied as the basis for a short imagi-native play set in that time period and incor-porating some of the events and charactersyou read about.

� Many filmed versions and adaptations ofHamlet have been produced. Choose two,and in a well-organized essay of aroundone thousand words describe each and com-pare and contrast them with each other andwith the original play by Shakespeare.

� Write an adaptation of a scene fromHamletset in contemporary times, with contempo-rary characters and dialogue reflecting sim-ilar themes and concerns to those found inthe original play.

� Write a rap song or a folk song in which thestory of Hamlet is related.

� Along with Desdemona in Othello andCordelia in King Lear, Ophelia is one ofShakespeare’s heroines who is in some waysacrificed to the wishes and passions of thelead characters in those plays. Compare andcontrast the three women, focusing on theirrelations to their fathers and to their beloveds.

H a m l e t


early Comedy of Errors, when confusion regard-ing two sets of twins makes many commentshave at least two contexts. Hamlet plays withlanguage continuously and puns deliberately inorder to tease and confuse those with whom hespeaks, and he thereby also reveals the complex-ity of his personality.

Revenge TragedyIn the 1590s, when Elizabeth I continued toreign, revenge tragedies were extremely popular.Structurally, these tragedies typically involve aninitial crime that engenders waves of retributionfor the crime and of counter-retribution for theretribution. These plays are often violent, brutal,and graphic. Hamlet follows in the tradition ofthe revenge tragedy but features a hero who, byvirtue of his intellect and philosophical disposi-tion, questions the conventions of his role whileundertaking it.

SoliloquyA soliloquy is a speech a character delivers whenalone on stage. It is an address to the audiencerevealing the character’s inner thoughts andfeelings. Hamlet is famous for its soliloquies,particularly the one that Hamlet relates inact 3, scene 1, beginning ‘‘To be, or not to be.’’Shakespeare gave Hamlet several soliloquies, a

feature that emphasizes the character’s inward-looking nature and the activity of his mind.

HISTORICAL CONTEXT

Children’s Acting CompaniesHamlet speaks about children’s acting compa-nies with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern in act 2,scene 2, when they explain to him that the play-ers who are visiting Elsinore have been forced totravel because of the popularity of the newlyemerging children’s acting companies. In fact,beginning in 1598, after a decade of inactivity,children’s acting companies, especially theChildren of the Chapel Royal, became so popu-lar on London stages that some established adultcompanies were forced, from 1599 to 1601, to goon the road in search of audiences. This conflictbetween boy’s and men’s acting companies wasdubbed the ‘‘War of the Theaters.’’

The Trojan WarOne of the players recites for Hamlet the storyof the fall of Troy and the grief of QueenHecuba. The Trojan War was fought betweenGreece and Troy, ostensibly over the wife of theGreek king Menelaus, Helen, who was seduced

COMPARE&

CONTRAST

� 1600s: The players report to Hamlet that

adult actors have been driven off the

London stage and been replaced by children’s

companies, which have become very popular.

Today: The Broadway theater, which was

once the home to plays written by play-

wrights like Eugene O’Neill, Arthur Miller,

Tennessee Wiliams, William Inge, and

Clifford Odetts, all writing about complex

psychological and political subjects, has

become inundated with children’s spectacles

and juke-box musicals.

� 1600s: Shakespeare adapted older plays,

tales, and historical narratives in the com-

position of Hamlet.

Today: Hamlet continues to serve as the

basis for new dramatic, cinematic, and nar-

rative adaptations and reworkings.

� 1600s: In general, people do not consider it

impossible to see a ghost.

Today: Seeing a ghost would be, by manypeople, considered a sign of mental or emo-tional disturbance.

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and kidnapped by Paris, a Trojan prince. Thatwar was known to Elizabethans through a trans-lation of The Aeneid (c. 29–19 B.C.E.), originallywritten by Virgil, made by the Scotsman GavinDouglas. That translation appeared in Londonfor the first time in 1553.

CRITICAL OVERVIEW

Hamlet is regarded as being among the greatestplays ever written, if not the greatest, and is aspopular as it is critically esteemed. From its firstperformances, Hamlet enjoyed such great successthat its first printing was an unauthorized piratededition, reconstructed from memory by severalactors who had been in road company produc-tions at Oxford and Cambridge. It became themost popular work on the Restoration stagewhen the theaters were reopened in 1661, and itretained its popularity throughout the eighteenthcentury, in large part because great actors likeThomas Betterton, Colley Cibber, and EdmundKean were drawn to the role of Hamlet. At thebeginning of the nineteenth century, the poet andcritic Samuel Taylor Coleridge could write,‘‘Hamlet has been the darling of every country inwhich the literature of England has been fos-tered.’’ Undoubtedly, this has been true becauseof the play’s poetry and because of the scope anddepth of human character and complexity whichit reveals through and in that poetry. A. C. Brad-ley, in his 1904 classic study Shakespearean Trag-edy, praises ‘‘the dramatic splendour of the wholetragedy’’ and also states that ‘‘the whole storyturns upon the peculiar character of the hero.’’The particular problem that Bradley associateswith Hamlet’s character is that Hamlet seems tobe slow to act after his encounter with the Ghost.This concern extends backward from Bradley tothe beginning of the nineteenth century and wasalso a chief concern in twentieth-century interpre-tations of Hamlet.

In 1818, reviewing his own critical approachto Hamlet, Coleridge argued,

We see a great, an almost enormous, intellec-

tual activity, and a proportionate aversion to

real action consequent upon it . . . . This char-acter Shakspere places in circumstances, under

which it is obliged to act on the spur of the

moment:—Hamlet is brave and careless of

death; but he vacillates from sensibility, and

procrastinates from thought, and loses the

power of action in the energy of resolve.

In ‘‘Hamlet and His Problems,’’ from 1922,T. S. Eliot argues that rather than being a bril-liant creation, Hamlet is an artistic failure. Heasserts, ‘‘Hamlet the play is the primary problem,and Hamlet the character only secondary.’’ Eliotcontends that Shakespeare failed to find anadequate ‘‘objective correlative,’’ or ‘‘a set ofobjects, a situation, a chain of events whichshall be the formula of that particular emotion;such that when the external facts, which mustterminate in sensory experience, are given, theemotion is immediately evoked.’’ Eliot arguesthat in Hamlet, the emotional response evokedis greater than the plot can account for.Shakespeare, Eliot asserts, had ‘‘intractable’’material in Hamlet’s character, which defeatedShakespeare because he was dealing with thingshe did ‘‘not understand himself.’’

James Joyce, in the novel Ulysses, offers abiographical interpretation of Hamlet, presentingit as a reflection of the character StephenDedalus, who is as much concerned about hisrelationship to a father as he postulatesHamlet is.

One of the most influential twentieth-centuryreaders of Hamlet, and one who was likewiseconcerned with Hamlet’s attitude toward hisfather and its bearing on his actions, was theBritish Freudian psychoanalyst Ernest Jones.Jones argued that Hamlet is held back fromacting because of his Oedipus complex, whichleads him to identify with Claudius becauseof his unconscious desire to murder his ownfather and possess his own mother. Jones’sthoughts were published in 1946 as Hamlet andOedipus but had been introduced in 1910 in apaper called, ‘‘The Oedipus-Complex as anExplanation of Hamlet’s Mystery: A Study inMotive.’’ Jones’s analysis greatly influencedLaurence Olivier’s classic 1948 film version ofHamlet.

The majority of critics and interpreters havepursued approaches to the problem of whatbecame known as Hamlet’s delay with greaterattention to the text itself or to period scholarship,rather than to external theories or systems.Eleanor Prosser, inHamlet and Revenge, attemptsto determine the credibility of the Ghost and themorality of its injunction to revenge by determin-ing whether it was a Protestant or a Catholicghost. If conceived of from aCatholic perspective,the Ghost is a tormented spirit from purgatory,which is a Catholic concept. From a Protestantperspective, theGhost must be a demon from hell.

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(Martin Luther, who sparked the ProtestantReformation, by 1530 had rejected the idea ofpurgatory, and Protestant teaching does notinclude belief in purgatory.) Prosser concludesthat the spirit is misleading and evil.

What seems to unite all critics throughoutthe centuries is agreement that Hamlet is a pro-found study of the human condition with greatdramatic excitement, exceptional lengths of thegreatest poetry, and penetrating studies ofhuman characters and relationships.

CRITICISM

Ernest JonesJones applies Sigmund Freud’s techniques of psy-choanalysis to Hamlet’s character, asserting thatthe prince is afflicted with an Oedipus Complex.This psychological disorder involves the uncon-scious desire of a son to kill his father and take hisplace as the object of the mother’s love. Accordingto the critic, Hamlet delays taking revenge onClaudius because he identifies with his uncle andshares his guilt. Thus Hamlet’s inaction stemsfrom a ‘‘tortured conscience,’’ and his affliction iscaused by ‘‘repressed’’ feelings. Furthermore, thistheory accounts for Hamlet’s speaking to Gertrudelike a jealous lover, dwelling on his mother’s sexualrelations with Claudius, and treating his uncle like arival. Significantly, the critic also claims that whilehis father’s murder evokes ‘‘indignation’’ in Hamlet,Gertrude’s perceived ‘‘incest’’ awakes his ‘‘intensesthorror.’’ In addition, Jonesmaintains that the princesuffers from ‘‘psychoneurosis,’’ or ‘‘a state of mindwhere the person is unduly, often painfully, driven orthwarted by the ‘unconscious’ part of his mind.’’This internal mental conflict reflects Hamlet’s con-dition throughout much of the play.

[The] whole picture presented by Hamlet,his deep depression, the hopeless note in hisattitude towards the world and towards thevalue of life, his dread of death, his repeatedreference to bad dreams, his self-accusations,his desperate efforts to get away from thethoughts of his duty, and his vain attempts tofind an excuse for his procrastination; all thisunequivocally points to a tortured conscience,to some hidden ground for shirking his task, aground which he dare not or cannot avow tohimself. We have, therefore, . . . to seek forsome evidence that may serve to bring to lightthe hidden counter-motive.

The extensive experience of the psycho-analytic researches carried out by Freud and hisschool during the past half-century has amplydemonstrated that certain kinds of mental proc-ess show a greater tendency to be inaccessible toconsciousness (put technically, to be ‘‘repressed’’)than others. In other words, it is harder for aperson to realize the existence in his mind ofsome mental trends than it is of others.

Bearing these considerations in mind, let usreturn to Hamlet . . . We . . . realize—as his wordsso often indicate—that the positive striving forvengeance, the pious task laid on him by his father,was to him the moral and social one, the oneapproved of by his consciousness, and that the‘‘repressed’’ inhibiting striving against the act ofvengeance arose in some hidden source connectedwith his more personal, natural instincts. The for-mer striving . . . indeed ismanifest in every speech inwhich Hamlet debates the matter: the second is,from its nature, more obscure and has next to beinvestigated.

This is perhaps most easily done by inquir-ing more intently into Hamlet’s precise attitudetowards the object of his vengeance, Claudius,and towards the crimes that have to be avenged.These are two: Claudius’ incest with the Queen,and his murder of his brother. Now it is of greatimportance to note the profound difference inHamlet’s attitude towards these two crimes.Intellectually of course he abhors both, butthere can be no question as to which arouses inhim the deeper loathing. Whereas the murder ofhis father evokes in him indignation and a plain

I WOULD SUGGEST THAT IN THIS

SHAKESPEARE’S EXTRAORDINARY POWERS OF

OBSERVATION AND PENETRATION GRANTED HIM A

DEGREE OF INSIGHT THAT IT HAS TAKEN THEWORLD

THREE SUBSEQUENT CENTURIES TO REACH. . . . IT IS

NOW BECOMING MORE AND MORE WIDELY

RECOGNIZED THATMUCHOF MANKIND LIVES IN AN

INTERMEDIATE AND UNHAPPY STATE . . . OFWHICH

HAMLET IS THE SUPREME EXAMPLE IN LITERATURE.’’

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recognition of his obvious duty to avenge it, hismother’s guilty conduct awakes in him theintensest horror.

Now, in trying to define Hamlet’s attitudetowards his uncle we have to guard againstassuming off-hand that this is a simple one ofmere execration, for there is a possibility of com-plexity arising in the following way: The unclehas not merely committed each crime, he hascommitted both crimes, a distinction of consid-erable importance, since the combination ofcrimes allows the admittance of a new factor,produced by the possible inter-relation of thetwo, which may prevent the result from beingsimply one of summation. In addition, it has tobe borne in mind that the perpetrator of thecrimes is a relative, and an exceedingly nearrelative. The possible inter-relationship of thecrimes, and the fact that the author of them isan actual member of the family, give scope for aconfusion in their influence on Hamlet’s mindwhich may be the cause of the very obscurity weare seeking to clarify.

Let us first pursue further the effect onHamlet of his mother’s misconduct. Before heeven knows with any certitude, however much hemay suspect it, that his father has been murderedhe is in the deepest depression, and evidently onaccount of this misconduct.

According to [A. C.] Bradley, [in hisShakespearean Tragedy], Hamlet’s melancholicdisgust at life was the cause of his aversionfrom ‘‘any kind of decided action.’’ His explan-ation of the whole problem of Hamlet is ‘‘themoral shock of the sudden ghastly disclosure ofhis mother’s true nature,’’ and he regards theeffect of this shock, as depicted in the play, asfully comprehensible. He says:

Is it possible to conceive an experience more

desolating to a man such as we have seen

Hamlet to be; and is its result anything but

perfectly natural? It brings bewildered horror,

then loathing, then despair of human nature.

His whole mind is poisoned . . .A nature

morally blunter would have felt even so dread-

ful a revelation less keenly. A slower and more

limited and positive mind might not have

extended so widely through the world the dis-

gust and disbelief that have entered it.

But we can rest satisfied with this seeminglyadequate explanation of Hamlet’s weariness oflife only if we accept unquestioningly the con-ventional standards of the causes of deep emo-tion. Many years ago [John] Connolly, a well-

known psychiatrist, pointed out [in his A Studyof Hamlet] the disproportion here existingbetween cause and effect, and gave as his opinionthat Hamlet’s reaction to his mother’s marriageindicated in itself a mental instability, ‘‘a predis-position to actual unsoundness’’; he writes: ‘‘Thecircumstances are not such as would at once turna healthy mind to the contemplation of suicide,the last resource of those whose reason has beenoverwhelmed by calamity and despair.’’ In T. S.Eliot’s opinion, also, Hamlet’s emotion is inexcess of the facts as they appear, and he spe-cially contrasts it with Gertrude’s negative andinsignificant personality [in his The SacredWood] . . .We have unveiled only the excitingcause, not the predisposing cause. The very factthat Hamlet is apparently content with theexplanation arouses our misgiving, for, as willpresently be expounded, from the very nature ofthe emotion he cannot be aware of the true causeof it. If we ask, not what ought to produce suchsoul-paralysing grief and distaste for life, butwhat in actual fact does produce it, we are com-pelled to go beyond this explanation and seek forsome deeper cause. In real life speedy secondmarriages occur commonly enough withoutleading to any such result as is here depicted,and when we see them followed by this resultwe invariably find, if the opportunity for ananalysis of the subject’s mind presents itself,that there is some other and more hidden reasonwhy the event is followed by this inordinatelygreat effect. The reason always is that the eventhas awakened to increased activity mental proc-esses that have been ‘‘repressed’’ from the sub-ject’s consciousness. His mind has been speciallyprepared for the catastrophe by previous mentalprocesses with which those directly resultingfrom the event have entered into association . . .In short, the special nature of the reaction pre-supposes some special feature in the mental pre-disposition. Bradley himself has to qualify hishypothesis by inserting the words ‘‘to a mansuch as we have seen Hamlet to be.’’

We come at this point to the vexed questionof Hamlet’s sanity, about which so many con-troversies have raged. Dover Wilson authorita-tively writes [in hisWhat Happens in Hamlet]: ‘‘Iagree with Loening, Bradley and others thatShakespeare meant us to imagine Hamlet as suf-fering from some kind of mental disorderthroughout the play.’’ The question is whatkind of mental disorder and what is its signifi-cance dramatically and psychologically. The

H a m l e t


matter is complicated by Hamlet’s frequentlydisplaying simulation (the Antic Disposition),and it has been asked whether this is to concealhis real mental disturbance or cunningly to con-ceal his purposes in coping with the practicalproblems of this task?

What we are essentially concerned with isthe psychological understanding of the dramaticeffect produced by Hamlet’s personality andbehaviour. That effect would be quite otherwere the central figure in the play to representmerely a ‘‘case of insanity.’’ When that happens,as with Ophelia, such a person passes beyondour ken, is in a sense no more human, whereasHamlet successfully claims our interest and sym-pathy to the very end. Shakespeare certainlynever intended us to regard Hamlet as insane,so that the ‘‘mind o’erthrown’’ must have someother meaning than its literal one. RobertBridges has described the matter with exquisitedelicacy [in his The Testament of Beauty, I]:

Hamlet himself would never have beenaught to us, or we

To Hamlet, wer’t not for the artful balancewhereby

Shakespeare so gingerly put his sanity indoubt

Without the while confounding his Reason.

I would suggest that in this Shakespeare’sextraordinary powers of observation and pene-tration granted him a degree of insight that it hastaken the world three subsequent centuries toreach. Until our generation (and even now inthe juristic sphere) a dividing line separated thesane and responsible from the irresponsibleinsane. It is now becoming more andmore widelyrecognized that much of mankind lives in anintermediate and unhappy state charged withwhat Dover Wilson well calls ‘‘that sense of frus-tration, futility and human inadequacy which isthe burden of the whole symphony’’ and of whichHamlet is the supreme example in literature. Thisintermediate plight, in the toils of which perhapsthe greater part of mankind struggles and suffers,is given the name of psychoneurosis, and longago the genius of Shakespeare depicted it for uswith faultless insight.

Extensive studies of the past half century,inspired by Freud, have taught us that a psycho-neurosis means a state of mind where the personis unduly, and often painfully, driven or thwa-rted by the ‘‘unconscious’’ part of his mind, thatburied part that was once the infant’s mind and

still lives on side by side with the adult mentality

that has developed out of it and should havetaken its place. It signifies internal mental

conflict. We have here the reason why it is

impossible to discuss intelligently the state of

mind of anyone suffering from a psychoneuro-

sis, whether the description is of a living personor an imagined one, without correlating the

manifestations with what must have operated

in his infancy and is still operating. That is what

I propose to attempt here.

For some deep-seated reason, which is tohim unacceptable, Hamlet is plunged into

anguish at the thought of his father being

replaced in his mother’s affections by someoneelse. It is as if his devotion to his mother had

made him so jealous for her affection that he had

found it hard enough to share this even with his

father and could not endure to share it with still

another man. Against this thought, however,

suggestive as it is, may be urged three objections.First, if it were in itself a full statement of the

matter, Hamlet would have been aware of

the jealousy, whereas we have concluded that the

mental process we are seeking is hidden from

him. Secondly, we see in it no evidence of thearousing of an old and forgotten memory. And,

thirdly, Hamlet is being deprived by Claudius of

no greater share in the Queen’s affection than he

had been by his own father, for the two brothers

made exactly similar claims in this respect—namely, those of a loved husband. The last-

named objection, however, leads us to the heart

of the situation. How if, in fact, Hamlet had in

years gone by, as a child, bitterly resented having

had to share his mother’s affection even with hisown father, had regarded him as a rival, and had

secretly wished him out of the way so that he

might enjoy undisputed and undisturbed the

monopoly of that affection? If such thoughts

had been present in his mind in childhood days

they evidently would have been ‘‘repressed,’’ andall traces of them obliterated, by filial piety

and other educative influences. The actual real-

ization of his early wish in the death of his father

at the hands of a jealous rival would then have

stimulated into activity these ‘‘repressed’’ mem-ories, which would have produced, in the form

of depression and other suffering, an obscure

aftermath of his childhood’s conflict. This is

at all events the mechanism that is actually

found in the real Hamlets who are investigatedpsychologically.

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The explanation, therefore, of the delay andself-frustration exhibited in the endeavour tofulfil his father’s demand for vengeance is thatto Hamlet the thought of incest and parricidecombined is too intolerable to be borne. Onepart of him tries to carry out the task, the otherflinches inexorably from the thought of it. Howfain would he blot it out in that ‘‘bestial obliv-ion’’ which unfortunately for him his consciencecontemns. He is torn and tortured in an insolu-ble inner conflict.

Source: Ernest Jones, ‘‘The Psycho-Analytical Solution,’’

in Hamlet and Oedipus Doubleday & Company, 1954,

pp. 51–79.

Kenneth MuirMuir discusses imagery and symbolism inHamlet,beginning with an examination of what he consid-ers the most apparent image pattern in the play—disease. The critic suggests that images of diseaseare not associated with Hamlet himself, but asense of infection surrounds both Claudius’scrime and guilt and Gertrude’s sin.Muir attributesHamlet’s disorder to his melancholic grief over hisfather’s death and his mother’s frailty. In addition,the critic includes images of decay, flowers, andprostitution with those of disease in the largerpatterns of corruption and appearance versus real-ity. Finally, Muir explores war imagery inHamlet, noting that it frequently recurs in thetext and that its dramatic function is to underscorethe fact that Hamlet and Claudius are engaged ina duel to the death.

A good many of the sickness images aremerely designed to lend atmosphere [in Hamlet],as when Francisco on the battlements remarksthat he is ‘‘sick at heart’’ [I. i. 9] or when Hamletspeaks of the way the courtier’s chilblain isgalled by the peasant’s. Other images . . . are con-nected with the murder of Hamlet’s father orwith the corresponding murder of Gonzago.Several of the images refer to the sickness of thestate, which some think to be due to the threat ofwar, but which the audience soon comes to real-ize is caused by Claudius’ unpunished crime.Horatio believes that the appearance of theGhost ‘‘bodes some strange eruption to ourstate’’ [I. i. 69] and Marcellus concludes that

Something is rotten in the state ofDenmark.

[I. iv. 90]

Hamlet himself uses disease imagery againand again in reference to the King’s guilt. He

thinks of himself as a surgeon probing awound: ‘‘I’ll tent him to the quick’’ [II. ii. 597].He tells Guildenstern that Claudius should havesent for a physician rather than himself, andwhen he refrains from assassinating him heremarks:

This physic but prolongs thy sicklydays.

[III. iii. 96]

He compares Claudius to ‘‘a mildewed earBlasting his wholesome brother’’ [III. iv. 64–5]and in the last scene of the play he compares himto a cancer:

Is’t not to be damn’dTo let this canker of our nature comeIn further evil.[V. ii. 68–70]

It is true that Claudius reciprocates by usingdisease images in reference to Hamlet. He com-pares his leniency to his nephew to the behaviourof one suffering from a foul disease who concealsit and lets it feed ‘‘Even on the pith of life’’ [IV. i.23]. He supports his stratagem of sendingHamlet to England with the proverbial maxim:

Diseases desperate grownBy desperate appliance are reliev’d,Or not at all.[IV. iii. 9–11]

In hatching his plot with Laertes, he callsHamlet’s return ‘‘the quick of th’ulcer’’ [IV. vii.123]. It is surely obvious that these images can-not be used to reflect onHamlet’s character: theyexhibit rather the King’s guilty fear of hisnephew.

Some of the disease images are used byHamlet in reference to the Queen’s adultery atwhich, he tells her, ‘‘Heaven’s face . . . Is thought-sick’’ [III. iv. 48–51]. He urges her not to lay toher soul the ‘‘flattering unction’’ that he is mad:

It will but skin and film the ulcerousplace,

Whiles rank corruption, mining all within,Infects unseen.[III. iv. 147–49]

Gertrude herself, suffering from pangs ofremorse, speaks of her ‘‘sick soul.’’

Laertes uses three disease images, two in hiswarnings to Ophelia not to allow herself to beseduced by Hamlet since in youth

Contagious blastments are most imminent.[I. iii. 42]

H a m l e t


In the third he tells Claudius that the pros-pect of avenging himself ‘‘warms the very sick-

ness’’ [IV. vii. 55] in his heart.

Hamlet uses one image to describe the causeof the war between Norway and Poland—

the imposthume of much wealth and

peaceThat inward breaks, and shows no cause

withoutWhy the man dies.[IV. iv. 27–9]

We have now examined nearly all the diseaseimagery without finding any evidence to support

the view that Hamlet himself is diseased—the

thing that is rotten in the state of Denmark. It

is rather Claudius’ crime and his guilty fears of

Hamlet, andGertrude’s sin to which the imagery

mainly refers; and in so far as it relates to the

state of Denmark it emphasizes that what is

wrong with the country is the unpunished fratri-

cide committed by its ruler. But four disease

images remain to be considered.

While Hamlet is waiting for his interviewwith his father’s ghost he meditates on the drunk-enness of the Court and of the way a single smalldefect in a man’s character destroys his reputa-tion and nullifies his virtues in the eyes of theworld—‘‘the general censure’’ [I. iv. 35]. Thedram of evil,—some bad habit, an inherited char-acteristic, or ‘‘some vicious mole of nature’’—

Doth all the noble substance of a doubt.[I. iv. 24–5]

The line is textually corrupt, but the generalmeaning of the passage is plain. Some critics,and Sir Laurence Olivier in his film of the play,have assumed that Hamlet, consciously orunconsciously, was thinking of the tragic flawin his own character. But there is no reason tothink that at this point in the play Hamlet suffersfrom some vicious mole of nature—he has notyet been tested. In any case he is not arguing thata single defect outweighs infinite virtues, butmerely that it spoils a man’s reputation. Thelines cannot properly be applied to Hamlethimself.

Richard Easton as the Ghost and Roger Rees as Hamlet in Act I, scene iv, Royal Shakespeare Theatre,Stratford-upon-Avon, 1984 (� Donald Cooper/Photostage. Reproduced by permission)

H a m l e t


Two more disease images occur in thespeech in which Claudius is trying to persuadeLaertes to murder Hamlet. He tells him that loveis apt to fade,

For goodness, growing to a plurisyDies in his own too much : that we would doWe should do when we would[IV. vii. 117–19]

If we put it off,

this ‘should’ is like a spendthrift’s sighThat hurts by easing.[IV. vii. 122–23]

The speech is designed to persuade Laertesto avenge his father’s death without delay. But asHamlet and Laertes are characters placed in asimilar position, and as by this time Hamlet’svengeance has suffered abatements and delays,many critics have suggested that Shakespeare iscommenting through the mouth of Claudius onHamlet’s failure to carry out his duty. It is notinherently impossible; but we should surelyapply these lines to Hamlet’s case only if wefind by the use of more direct evidence thatShakespeare so conceived Hamlet’s failure tocarry out his duty.

Only one sickness image remains to be dis-cussed, but this is the most famous one. In hissoliloquy in Act III scene 1 (which begins ‘‘To beor not to be’’ [III. i. 55ff.]) Hamlet shows thatthinking about the possible results of action is aptto inhibit it. People refrain from committing suicide(in spite of themiseries of this life) because they fearthat death will be worse than life. They may, forexample, be punished in hell for violating the canonagainst self-slaughter. Hamlet continues:

Thus conscience does make cowards ofus all,

And thus the native hue of resolutionIs sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought,And enterprises of great pitch and momentWith this regard their currents turn awryAnd lose the name of action.[III. i. 82–7]

Obviously these lines are an important clueto the interpretation of the play. I used to thinkthat conscience meant both ‘‘thinking too pre-cisely on the event’’ and also the ‘‘craven scruple’’of which Hamlet speaks in his last soliloquy—conscience as well as conscience, in fact. I nowthink the word is used (as in the words ‘‘theconscience of the King’’ [II. ii. 605]) only in itsmodern sense. Since Hamlet foresees that in tak-ing vengeance on Claudius he may himself bekilled, he hesitates—not because he is afraid ofdying, but because he is afraid of being punishedfor his sins in hell or purgatory. But, as G. R.Elliott has pointed out [in his Scourge andMinister], Hamlet is speaking not merely of him-self but of every man:

Thus conscience does make cowards ofus all.

[III. i. 82]

It is apparent from this analysis of the sick-ness imagery in the play that it throws light onElsinore rather than on Hamlet himself. He isnot the diseased figure depicted by a long line ofcritics—or, at least, the imagery cannot justifi-ably be used in support of such an interpretation.On the other hand, the parallels which have beenpointed out with Timothy Bright’s Treatise ofMelancholy do suggest that Shakespeare con-ceived his hero as suffering from melancholy.As depicted in the course of the play, he is notthe paragon described by Ophelia, the observerof all observers, the glass of fashion,

The expectancy and rose of the fair state. [III. i. 152]

But it is necessary to emphasize that hismelancholy has objective causes in the frailty ofhis mother and the death of his father.

Closely connected with the sickness imageryis what may loosely be called symbolism con-cerned with the odour of corruption . . .Hamlet, like Webster in Eliot’s poem, is muchpossessed by death. He speaks of the way the sunbreeds maggots in a dead dog, he refers to thecorpse of Polonius as ‘‘the guts’’; he tellsClaudius that the dead man is at supper at thediet of worms and he proceeds to show how aking may go a progress through the guts of abeggar. The Graveyard scene is designed notmerely to provide a last expression of Hamlet’slove for Ophelia, and an opportunity for screw-ing up Laertes’ hatred of Hamlet to the sticking-point. This could have been done without theconversation between the gravediggers, andthat between the gravedigger and Hamlet. The

HAMLET SHOWS THAT THINKING ABOUT THE

POSSIBLE RESULTS OF ACTION IS APT TO INHIBIT IT.’’

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scene is clearly used to underline the death-theme. Hamlet’s meditation on the variousskulls serves as a memento mori [a reminder ofmortality]. We are reminded of Cain, who didthe first murder, of Lady Worms, ‘‘chapless andknocked about the mazard with a sexton’sspade’’ [V. i. 89–90], of Yorick’s stinking skull,and of the noble dust of Alexander which may bestopping a bung-hole. Hamlet is thinking of thebase uses to which we may return; but his med-itations in the graveyard, though somewhatmorbid, are calmer and less bitter than histhoughts earlier in the play.

All through the play there are words andimages which reinforce the idea of corruption.Hamlet, feeling himself to be contaminated bythe frailty of his mother wishes that his sulliedflesh would melt. He suspects ‘‘foul play’’ whenhe hears of the appearance of the ghost. Theintemperance of the Danes makes foreignerssoil their addition with swinish phrase.Denmark’s ear is ‘‘rankly abused’’ by the falseaccount of the death of Hamlet’s father; andlater Claudius, at his prayers confesses that his‘‘offence is rank’’ [III. iii. 36]. The Ghost tellsHamlet that Lust

Will sate itself in a celestial bedAnd prey on garbage.[I. v. 56–7]

Polonius speaks of his son’s youthful vicesas ‘‘the taints of liberty’’ [II. i. 32]. The air seemsto Hamlet ‘‘a foul and pestilent congregation ofvapours’’ [II. ii. 302–03] and he declares that ifhis uncle’s guilt is not revealed, his

imaginations are as foulAs Vulcan’s stithy.[III. ii. 83–4]

In the scene with his mother, Hamlet speaksof ‘‘the rank sweat of an enseamed bed’’; he urgesher not to ‘‘spread the compost on the weeds Tomake them ranker’’; and he speaks of ‘‘rankcorruption mining all within’’. The smell of sinblends with the odour of corruption. [III. iv. 92,151–52, 148]

The only alleviation to this atmosphere isprovided by the flowers associated with the‘‘rose of May’’ [IV. v. 158], Ophelia. Laertescompares Hamlet’s love for her to a violet;Ophelia warns her brother not to tread ‘‘theprimrose path of dalliance’’ [I. ii. 50], and latershe laments that the perfume of Hamlet’s love islost. In her madness she distributes flowers and

the last picture we have of her alive is wearing‘‘fantastic garlands’’. Laertes prays that violetsmay spring from her unpolluted flesh and theQueen scatters flowers in the grave with thewords ‘‘Sweets to the sweet’’ [V. i. 243]. Hamlet,probably referring to his love for Ophelia, tellsGertrude that her adultery

takes off the roseFrom the fair forehead of an innocent loveAnd sets a blister there.[III. iv. 42–4]

The rose colour again reminds us of theflower. But the flowers and perfumes associatedwith Ophelia do not seriously counterbalancethe odour of corruption.

I have left to the end what by my reckoningis the largest group of images. This is derived notfrom sickness, but from war. Many of these warimages may have been suggested by the elderHamlet’s campaigns and by the activities ofFortinbras; but we should remember thatPrince Hamlet himself is not without martialqualities, and this fact is underlined by the ritesof war ordered for his obsequies and byFortinbras’ final tribute. But the dramatic func-tion of the imagery is no doubt to emphasise thatClaudius andHamlet are engaged in a duel to thedeath, a duel which does ultimately lead to boththeir deaths.

Hamlet speaks of himself and his uncle asmighty opposites, between whose ‘‘pass and fellincensed points’’ [V. ii. 61] Rosencrantz andGuildenstern had come. All through the playthe war imagery reminds us of the struggle.Bernardo proposes to ‘‘assail’’ Horatio’s earswhich are ‘‘fortified against’’ his story. Claudiusin his first speech tells of discretion fighting withnature and of the defeated joy of his wedding.Later in the scene he complains that Hamlet hasa heart unfortified. Laertes urges his sister to‘‘keep in the rear’’ of her affection,

Out of the shot and danger of desire [I. iii. 34–5]

and he speaks of the ‘‘calumnious strokes’’ sus-tained by virtue and of the danger of youth’srebellion. Ophelia promises to take Laertes’advice as a ‘‘watchman’’ to her heart. Poloniusin the same scene carries on the same imagery: heurges her to set her ‘‘entreatments at a higher rateThan a command to parley’’ [I. iii. 122–23]. Inthe next scene Hamlet speaks of the way ‘‘theo’ergrowth of some complexion’’ breaks down‘‘the pales and forts of reason’’ [I. iv. 27–8].

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Polonius compares the temptations of the flesh

to a ‘‘general assault,’’ The noise of Ilium’s fall

‘‘takes prisoner Pyrrhus ear’’ [II. ii. 477], and

Pyrrhus’ sword is ‘‘rebellious to his arm’’ [II. ii.

470]. Hamlet thinks the actor would ‘‘cleave the

general ear with horrid speech,’’ and says that

‘‘the clown shall make those laugh whose lungs

are tickle o’th’sere’’ (i.e. easily set off) [II. ii. 563,

323–24]. He speaks of ‘‘the slings and arrows of

outrageous fortune’’ and derides the King for

being ‘‘frighted with false fire’’ [III. i. 57; III. ii.

266]. Rosencrantz talks of the ‘‘armour of the

mind’’ [III. iii. 12] and Claudius admits that his

‘‘guilt defeats’’ his ‘‘strong intent’’ [III. iii. 40].

Hamlet fears that Gertrude’s heart is sobrazed by custom that it is ‘‘proof and bulwarkagainst sense’’, and he speaks of the way ‘‘com-pulsive ardour’’ (sexual appetite) ‘‘gives thecharge’’ [III. iv. 86]. He tells his mother that hewill outwit Rosencrantz and Guildenstern:

For ’tis the sport to have the engineerHoist with his own petar; and it shall go

hardBut I will delve one yard below their minesAnd blow them at the moon.[III. iv. 206–09]

The Ghost speaks of Gertrude’s ‘fightingsoul’. Claudius says that slander’s whisper

As level as the cannon to his blankTransports his pois’ned shot.[IV. i. 42–3]

He tells Gertrude that when sorrows come,

They come not single spiesBut in battalions![IV. v. 78–9]

and that Laertes’ rebellion,

Like to a murd’ring piece, in manyplaces

Gives me superfluous death.[IV. v. 95–6]

In explaining to Laertes why he could notopenly proceed against Hamlet because of hispopularity with the people, he says that hisarrows,

Too slightly timber’d for so loud awind,Would have reverted to my bow again,But not where I have aim’d them.[IV. vii. 22–4]

Hamlet, in apologising to Laertes, says thathis killing of Polonius was accidental:

I have shot my arrow o’er the houseAnd hurt my brother.[V. ii. 243–44]

(These last two images are presumably takenfrom archery rather than from battle.) Gertrudecompares Hamlet’s hairs to ‘‘sleeping soldiers inthe alarm.’’

Six of the images are taken from naval war-fare. Polonius tells Ophelia he thought Hamletmeant to wreck her [II. i. 110] and he advisesLaertes to grappe his friends to his ‘heart withhoops of steel’ [I. iii. 63] and, in a later scene, heproposes to board the Prince [II. ii. 170]. Hamlet,quibbling on ‘‘crafts,’’ tells his mother:

O, ’tis most sweetWhen in one line two crafts directly meet.[III. iv. 209–10]

In the same scene he speaks of hell thatmutines in a matron’s bones; and, in describinghis voyage to England, he tells Horatio:

Methought I layWorse than the mutines in the bilboes.[V. ii. 5–6]

In addition to the war images there are alarge number of others that suggest violence.There are four images about knives, as whenthe Ghost tells Hamlet that his visitation is ‘‘towhet’’ his ‘‘almost blunted purpose’’ [III. iv. 111].

The images of war and violence should havethe effect of counteracting some interpretationsof the play, in which the psychology of the herois regarded as the centre of interest. Equallyimportant is the struggle between Hamlet andhis uncle. Hamlet has to prove that the Ghost isnot a devil in disguise, luring him to damnation,by obtaining objective evidence ofClaudius’ guilt.Claudius, for his part, is trying to pierce the secretof Hamlet’s madness, using Rosencrantz andGuildenstern, Ophelia, and finally Gertrude ashis instruments. Hamlet succeeds in his purpose,but in the very moment of success he enablesClaudius to pierce the secret of his madness.Realising that his own secret murder has cometo light, Claudius is bound to arrange forHamlet’s murder; and Hamlet, knowing thatthe truth of his antic disposition is now revealedto his enemy, realises that if he does not killClaudius, Claudius will certainly kill him.

We have considered most of the patterns ofimagery in the play—there are a few otherswhich do not seem to throw much light on themeaning of the play—and I think it will be agreed

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that . . . the various image-patterns we havetraced in Hamlet show that to concentrate onthe sickness imagery, especially if it is divorcedfrom its context, unduly simplifies the play. I donot pretend that a study of all the imagery willnecessarily provide us with one—and only one—interpretation; but it will at least prevent us fromassuming that the play is wholly concerned withthe psychology of the hero. And that, I hope youwill agree, is a step in the right direction. It mayalso prevent us from adopting the view of severalmodern critics—Wilson Knight, Rebecca West,Madariaga, L. C. Knights—who all seem to meto debase Hamlet’s character to the extent ofdepriving him of the status of a tragic hero. Itmay also prevent us from assuming that thecomplexities of the play are due toShakespeare’s failure to transform the melo-drama he inherited, and to the survival of prim-itive traits in his otherwise sophisticated hero.

Source: Kenneth Muir, ‘‘Imagery and Symbolism in

Hamlet,’’ in Etudes Anglaises, Vol. XVII, No. 4,

October–December 1964, pp. 352–63.

George DetmoldDetmold addresses the question of why Hamletdelays taking revenge on Claudius by assessinghis status as a tragic hero. According to the critic,a tragic hero has three prominent characteristics:(1) a will-power that surpasses that of averagepeople, (2) an exceptionally intense power of feel-ing, and (3) and unusually high level of intelli-gence. From this definition of a tragic hero,Detmold especially focuses on Hamlet’s unortho-dox demonstration of will-power in the play, argu-ing that the protagonist’s preoccupation withmoral integrity is what ultimately delays himfrom killing Claudius. Further, the critic assertsthatHamlet is distinct from other tragedies in thatits action commences in the soliloquy of Act I,scene ii where most other tragedies end: ‘‘withthe discovery by the tragic hero that his supremegood is forever lost to him.’’ Perhaps the mostsignificant reason why Hamlet hesitates, the criticconcludes, is that although he is tempted by love,kingship, and even revenge, he is long past thepoint where he desires to do anything aboutthem. None of these objectives gives him a newincentive for living.

Hamlet is surely the most perplexing char-acter in English drama. Who has not sympa-thized with the Court of Denmark in theirbewilderment at his mercurial conduct? Theatre-

goers, to be sure, are seldom baffled by him;perhaps the spectacle and melodrama of hisundoing are powerful enough to stifle any mere

doubts about his motives. But the more dispas-sionate audience of scholars and critics—if onemay judge from the quantity of their published

remarks—are often baffled. Seeking an intellec-tual satisfaction which will correspond to thepleasant purging of pity and terror in the specta-tor, they are only perplexed by Hamlet’s behav-

ior. They fail to understand his motives. Howcan a man so dilatory, who misses every oppor-tunity to achieve what apparently he desires,who requires nearly three months to accomplish

a simple and well-justified killing—how can sucha man be classed a tragic hero? Is he not merelyweak and contemptible? How can he be ranked

with such forceful men as Lear, Macbeth,Othello, or even Romeo? And yet he is a greattragic hero, as the playgoers will testify. Thespectacle of his doings and undoing is pro-

foundly stirring; it rouses the most intense emo-tions of awe and admiration; it never moves us toscorn or contempt.

In order to understand Hamlet, we must beable to answer the old question about him: ‘‘Why

does he delay?’’ Granting—as he does—that hehas sufficient ‘‘cause, and will, and strength, andmeans’’ [IV. iv. 45] to avenge his father, why

should he require approximately three monthsto do so, and then succeed almost purely byaccident or afterthought? There is only one pos-sible reason why a strong, vigorous, intelligent

man does not kill another when he feels norevulsion against the deed, when his dutyrequires that he do it, when he is not afraid,when the man to be killed is not invulnerable,

and when the consequences of the act are eitherinconsiderable or are not considered at all.Hamlet delays to kill his uncle only because he

has little interest in doing so. His thoughts are

HAMLET, THEN, HAS THE HEROIC TRAITS OF

LEAR, OTHELLO, TAMBURLAINE, MACBETH, AND

OEDIPUS: HIGH INTELLIGENCE, DEEP SENSITIVITY, AND

STRONG WILL.’’

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elsewhere. Most of the time he forgets about it,as we forget about a letter that should beanswered—and only occasionally does heremember it and ponder his reluctance to per-form this simple duty. Rightly or wrongly, he ispreoccupied with other things.

Yet revenge, especially when it entails mur-der, is a tremendously important affair; how canany man overlook it? What kind of man canconsider what kind of thing more important? IsHamlet in any way unique, beyond or above orapart from our experience of human nature? Letus examine him as a man and—more impor-tant—as a tragic hero.

Wemust realize that there is nothing curiousor abnormal about him. He is recognizablyhuman; he is not diseased or insane. If this werenot so he would rouse no admiration in an audi-ence, for it will never accord to a sick or crazyman the allegiance it usually gives to the tragichero. The normal attitude toward abnormality

is one of aversion. We worship strength andhealth and power, and will identify ourselveswith the hero who displays these qualities. Wemay even identify ourselves with a Lear duringhis temporary insanity, but only because we haveknown him sane and can appreciate the magni-tude of his disaster. For the Fool who is hiscompanion we can feel only a detached and ten-der compassion. Hamlet rouses stronger emo-tions than these, and only because we canrecognize ourselves in him, because he is in thefinest sense a universal man: Homo sapiens, manthinking—and man feeling, man acting. Theproper habitat of the freak is the side-show ormuseum, not the stage.

But within this humanity and universality wemay distinguish three characteristics which areusually found in the tragic hero. The firstof these is a willpower surpassing in its intensityanything displayed by average men; the heroadmits of no obstacle and accepts no compro-mise; he drives forward with all his strength tohis desired goal. The second is a power of feelinglikewise more intense than that possessed byaverage men; he rises to heights of happinessforever unattainable to the majority of us, andcorrespondingly sinks to depths of misery. Thethird is an unusually high intelligence, displayedin his actions and in his power of language.Aristotle sums up these characteristics in theterm hamartia: the tragic flaw, the failure of judg-ment, the refusal to compromise. Passionatelypursuing the thing he desires, the hero is incapa-ble of compromise, of the calm exercise ofjudgment.

It will be seen that Hamlet possesses thesethree characteristics. His power of feeling sur-passes that of all other characters in the play,expresses itself in the impassioned poetic dictionpeculiar to great tragedy. His intelligence issubtle and all-embracing, displaying itself notonly in his behavior but also in word-playsbeyond the comprehension of the others in thedrama, and in metaphors beyond their attain-ment. But what can be said of his will-power, theone pre-eminently heroic characteristic? He isapparently a model of hesitation, indecision,procrastination; we seem to be witnessing anexamination of the failure of his will. And yetdemonstrably it has not failed, and does at oddmoments stir itself violently. In no other way canwe account for the timidity of his enemies, therespect of his friends, and his own frank

Marianne Faithfull as Ophelia in Act IV, sceneV, at the Round House, London, 1969 (� Donald

Cooper/Photostage. Reproduced by permission)

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acknowledgement that he has ‘‘cause, and will,and strength, and means’’ to avenge his father.And though he is a long time in killing Claudius,he does kill him at last, and he is capable of otheractions which argue the rash and impulsivenature of a man with strong will. He will ‘‘makea ghost’’ [I. iv. 85] of any man who tries toprevent him from following his father’s spirit.He murders Polonius. He engineers the murderof Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. He boards thepirate ship single-handed. He takes so long tokill Claudius only because he has little interest inrevenge—not because he lacks will, but becauseit is inactive. Will-power does not spread itself ina circle around the possessor, but lies in astraight line toward the thing he desires.

Hamlet, then, has the heroic traits of Lear,Othello, Tamburlaine, Macbeth, and Oedipus:high intelligence, deep sensitivity, and strongwill. There is another characteristic of the tragichero without which the former ones would neverbe perceived: his delusion that there is some onething in the world supremely good or desirable,the possession of which will make him supremelyhappy. And to the acquisition of the thing hedesires he devotes all his will, all his intelligence,all his power of feeling. Thus Romeo dedicateshimself to the pursuit of love,Macbeth to power,Lear to filial gratitude—and Hamlet to moralbeauty.

It is clear that, at some point before theopening of the play, Hamlet has been completelydisillusioned. He has failed to discover moralbeauty in the world; indeed, by the intensity ofhis search he has roused instead his supreme evil:moral ugliness. Themajority of us, the non-heroes,might disapprove of the sudden remarriage of amother after the death of her husband—but wewould probably not be nauseated. Hamlet,supremely sensitive to the godliness and beast-liness in men, was overwhelmed by what hecould interpret as nothing but lust. To be sure,the marriage of his mother and uncle was tech-nically incestuous. But his objection to it liesmuch deeper than surface technicalities. He hasworshipped his father, adored his mother (hislove for her is everywhere apparent beneath hisbitterness). Gertrude has mourned at the funeral‘‘like Niobe, all tears’’ [I. ii. 149]. And then withina month she has married his uncle—a vulgar,contemptible, scheming drunkard—exposingwithout shame her essentially shallow, thought-less, amoral, animal nature.

The blow has been too much for Hamlet,sensitive as he is to moral beauty.

O, most wicked speed, to postWith such dexterity to incestuous sheets!It is not, nor it cannot come to good.[I. ii. 156–58]

That is, it cannot come to his conception ofthe good, whatever may be said for Gertrude’s.He is unable to offer her understanding or sym-pathy, since to do so would mean compromisingwith his ideal of her. He fails to realize that noamount of scolding will ever improve her.Instead of accepting her conduct as inevitableor even endurable, he fights it, exaggerates itinto a disgusting and an intolerable sin againsteverything he holds dear. And because the sinmay not be undone, and since it has destroyedhis pleasure and purpose in living, he wishes todie. The only thing that restrains him from sui-cide is the moral injunction against it:

O that this too too sullied flesh wouldmelt,

Thaw and resolve itself into a dew,Or that the Everlasting had not fix’dHis canon ’gainst self-slaughter.[I. ii. 129–32]

The longing for death, once the supremegood has been destroyed, is entirely normal andusual in the tragic hero. Romeo, hearing thatJuliet is dead, goes immediately to her tomb inorder to kill himself:

O, hereWill I set up my everlasting restAnd shake the yoke of inauspicious starsFrom this world-wearied flesh . . .Thou desperate pilot, now at once run onThe dashing rocks thy sea-sick weary bark.[Romeo and Juliet, V. iii. 110–14]

Othello, when he realizes that in seeking topreserve his honor he has ruined it, prepares todie in much the same state of mind:

Here is my journey’s end, here is mybutt

And very sea-mark of my utmost sail.[Othello, V. ii. 267–68]

Macbeth, discovering at last that his franticefforts to maintain and increase his power haveonly destroyed it, finds life a tale told by anidiot—and he too longs for death:

I ’gin to be a-weary of the sun,And wish the estate of the world were now

undone.

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Ring the alarum bell. Blow wind, comewrack,

At least we’ll die with harness on our back.[Macbeth, V. v. 48–51]

Lear, instead of dying, is driven mad. Hiscounterpart, Gloucester, who also has lived forthe love of his children, tries to throw himselffrom the cliff at Dover. Oedipus [in Sophocles’sOedipus Rex], too, when he discovers that he hasruined the city he tried to save, finds life worth-less—blinds himself, and begs to be cast out ofThebes. As a general rule, whenever the tragichero discovers that in his efforts to attain hissupreme good he has only aroused his supremeevil, he kills himself, or goes mad, or otherwisesinks into a state that is death compared to hisformer state. Once he has lost all hope of gainingwhat he desires, he quite naturally finds no rea-son for continuing to live. Life in itself is alwaysmeaningless to him; he lives only for the goodthat he can find in it.

The curious thing about Hamlet is that itbegins at the point where most other tragediesend: with the discovery by the tragic hero that hissupreme good is forever lost to him. The play issurely unique among great tragedies. Elizabethandrama usually presents a double reversal of for-tune—the rise and fall in the hero’s prosperityand happiness—or sometimes, as in King Lear,the fall and rise. Greek tragedy, limited to asingle curtainless stage and thus to a late pointof attack in the plot, could show only a singlereversal—usually the fall in fortune from pros-perity to misery, as is observed by Aristotle. Butcertainly nowhere else is there a tragedy likeHamlet, with no reversal at all, which beginsafter the rise and fall of the hero have takenplace, in which the action does not coincidewith his pursuit of the good, and which presentshim throughout in despair and in bad fortune.We never see Hamlet striving for or possessinghis good. Rather, he knows only the evil which isits counterpart; and in this unhappy condition hefind nothing further desirable except death.

We are now in a position to understand whyHamlet takes so long to effect his revenge.Everyone in the play, including himself, recog-nizes that he is potentially dangerous, that he hasthe necessary courage and will to accomplishanything he desires. But the demand upon thesequalities has come at a time when he has foreverlost interest in exercising them. Upholding thedivinity of man, he is betrayed by the one he

thought most divine, exposed to her rank shame-less adultery, bitterly disillusioned in all man-kind, and desperate of any further good inexistence. The revelation by the Ghost that mur-der has cleared a way for the new husbandshocks Hamlet to the base of his nature, but itgives him no new incentive for living; it merelyadds to his misfortune and confirms him in hisdespair. The further information that his motherhas committed adultery provides a final shock.All evidence establishes him immovably in hisdisillusion. The Ghost’s appeal to him forrevenge is, remotely, an appeal to his good: ifhe may not reestablish the moral beauty of theworld he may at least punish those who haveviolated it. But it is a distant appeal. The damagealready done is irreparable. After giving passion-ate promises to ‘‘remember’’ his father, he regretsthem:

The time is out of joint; O cursed spite,That ever I was born to set it right.[I. v. 188–89]

Within ten minutes after his first meetingwith the Ghost he has succumbed again to hisanguish, which is now so intense after the dis-covery of his mother’s adultery and the murderof his father that his mind threatens to crackunder the strain. His conversation with hisfriends is so strange that Horatio commentsupon it:

These are butwild andwhirlingwords,mylord.

[I. v. 133]

A few minutes later Hamlet announces hisintention to feign madness, to assume an ‘‘anticdisposition’’—presumably as a means of reliev-ing his surcharged feelings and possibly forestal-ling truemadness, but certainly not as ameans ofdeceiving Claudius and thus accomplishing hisrevenge. At the moment there is no point indeceiving Claudius, who knows of no witnessesto the murder and who is more vulnerable toattack now than he will be at any point later inthe play.

Two months later the antic disposition hassucceeded only in arousing the King’s suspi-cions. Hamlet has not effected his revenge;there is no sign that he has even thought aboutit. All we know is that he is badly upset—asOphelia reports to her father:

My lord, as I was sewing in my closet,Lord Hamlet, with his doublet all unbrac’d,

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No hat upon his head, his stockings foul’d,Ungartered and down-gyved to his ancle,Pale as his shirt, his knees knocking each

other,And with a look so piteous in purportAs if he had been loosed out of hellTo speak of horrors, he comes before me,[II. i. 74–81]

It is doubtful that he wishes to deceive thecourt into thinking that he is mad with unre-quited love—only the fool Polonius is sodeceived. Most probably he goes to Opheliabecause he loves her as he loves his mother, andfears to discover in her the same corruption thathas poisoned his mind towards Gertrude. Hesuspects that her love for him is insincere; hissuspicions are later reinforced when he catchesher acting as the decoy of Claudius andPolonius. But the one significant thing here isthat his mind is still upon his old sorrow and notupon his father.

He does not recall his father until the FirstPlayer, in reciting the woes of Troy, speaks of the‘‘mobled queen’’ who

. . . saw Pyrrhus make malicious sportIn mincing with his sword her husband’s

limbs.[II. ii. 513–14]

Shortly afterwards Hamlet asks him to‘‘play the Murder of Gonzago’’ and to ‘‘study aspeech of some dozen lines, which I would setdown and insert in ’t’’ [II. ii. 541–42]. This, as welearn in the following soliloquy, is to be a trapfor the conscience of Claudius. And why is a trapnecessary? Because perhaps the Ghost was not atrue ghost, but a devil trying to lure him todamnation. Most likely Hamlet is here ration-alizing, trying to find an excuse for his dilatori-ness, for forgetting the injunction of his father—yet the excuse is a poor one, for never before hashe questioned the authenticity of the Ghost.Furthermore, he does not wait for the trap tobe sprung; throughout the performance of ‘‘TheMousetrap’’ he seems convinced of the guilt ofClaudius, he taunts him with it. But for a whilehe has stilled his own conscience and found arefuge from the flood of self-incrimination.

Before ‘‘TheMurder of Gonzago’’ is enactedwe see Hamlet alone once more. What is on hismind? His uncle? His father? Revenge? Not atall. ‘‘To be, or not to be, that is the question’’ [III.i. 55ff.]. He is back where he started, and wherehe has been all along, with

The heart-ache, and the thousand naturalshocks

That flesh is heir to.[III. i. 61–2]

He is still preoccupied with death.

‘‘The Mousetrap’’ convicts Claudius beyondany doubt; he bolts from the room, unable toendure for a second time the poisoning of asleeping king. And yet Hamlet, fifteen minuteslater, with an admirable opportunity to kill hisuncle, fails to do so—for reasons that are evi-dently obscure even to himself. He wishes, hesays, not only to kill the man, but to damn hissoul as well, and thus will wait to kill him uncon-fessed. At this, apparently, the Ghost itself losespatience, for it returns once more to Hamlet inthe next scene and exhorts him:

Do not forget: this visitationIs but to whet thy almost blunted purpose.[III. iv. 110–11]

The exhortation is wasted. On the samenight, Hamlet allows the King to send him toEngland. Possibly he has no recourse but obedi-ence; probably he knows what is in store for him;quite likely he does not care, may even welcomea legitimate form of dying; certainly he cannot,in England, arrange to kill his uncle. The nextday, on his way to exile and death, he meets thearmy of Fortinbras, whose courage and pur-posefulness stimulate him to reflect upon hisown conduct:

How all occasions do inform againstme,

And spur my dull revenge![IV. iv. 32–3]

He considers how low he has sunk in hisdespair:

What is a man,If his chief good and market of his timeBe but to sleep and feed? A beast, no more.[IV. iv. 33–4]

When he returns he is unchanged, still pre-occupied with death. He haunts the graveyardwith Horatio, reflects upon the democratizinginfluence of corruption. Overcome with disgustat the ‘‘rant’’ at Ophelia’s funeral (he has seen toomuch insincerity at funerals), he wrestles withLaertes. He acquaints Horatio with the crimesof Claudius and resolves to revenge himself—and then accepts the invitation to the fencingmatch, aware that it is probably a trap, butresigned to whatever fate is in store for him.

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And with the discovery of his uncle’s final per-fidy, he stabs him with the envenomed foil andforces the poisoned wine down his throat. Butthere is still no thought of his father or of theaccomplishment of an old purpose. He is stirredto action principally by anger at his mother’sdeath:

Here, thou incestuous,murderous, damnedDane,

Drink off this potion: is thy union here?Follow my mother.[V. ii. 325–27]

The murder of Claudius is simply accom-plished. We see how easily it could have beenmanaged at any time in the past by a man likeHamlet, with whatever tools might have come tohis hand. Even though the King is fully awake tohis peril he is powerless to avert it. The only thingnecessary is that Hamlet should at some timechoose to kill him.

That Hamlet finally does so choose is theresult of accident and afterthought. The enve-nomed foil, the poisoned wine, Laertes andGertrude and himself betrayed to their deaths—these things finally arouse him and he strikes outat the King. But he has no sense of achievementat the end, no final triumph over unimaginableobstacles. His uncle, alive or dead, is a side-issue.His dying thoughts are of the blessedness ofdeath and of the sanctity of his reputation—hewould clear it of any suggestion of moral evil butrealizes that he has no time left to do so himself.Accordingly he charges Horatio to stay alive alittle while longer:

Absent thee from felicity a while,And in this harsh world draw thy breath in

pain,To tell my story.[V. ii. 347–49]

Then, after willing the kingdom toFortinbras, he sinks into the oblivion which hehas courted so long, and which now comes tohim honorably and gives him rest.

Source: George Detmold, ‘‘Hamlet’s ‘All but Blunted

Purpose,’’’ in The Shakespeare Association Bulletin, Vol.

XXIV, No. 1, January 1949, pp. 23–36.

SOURCES

Bevington, David, ‘‘Canon, Dates, and Early Texts:

Appendix 1,’’ in The Complete Works of Shakespeare,

edited by David Bevington, Scott, Foresman and Co.,

1980, pp. 1622–23.

Bloom, Harold, ‘‘Hamlet,’’ in Shakespeare: The Invention

of the Human, Riverhead Books, 1998, pp. 383–431.

Bradley, A. C., ‘‘Shakespeare’s Tragic Period—Hamlet,’’

in Shakespearean Tragedy, 1904, reprinted by Fawcett

Publications, 1992, p. 79.

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, ‘‘Hamlet,’’ in Lectures and

Notes on Shakspere and Other English Poets, George

Bell and Sons, 1904, pp. 342–68, available online at

http://shakespearean.org.uk/ham1-col.htm, edited by

Thomas Larque, 2001.

Eliot, T. S., ‘‘Hamlet and His Problems,’’ in The Sacred

Wood: Essays on Poetry and Criticism, Methuen & Co.,

1920, available online at http://www.bartleby.com/200/

sw9.html.

———, ‘‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,’’ in The

Complete Poems and Plays: 1909–1950, Harcourt, Brace

and Co., 1952.

Jones, Ernest, Hamlet and Oedipus, Norton, 1976.

———, ‘‘The Oedipus-Complex as an Explanation of

Hamlet’s Mystery: A Study in Motive,’’ in American

Journal of Psychology, Vol. 21, No. 1, January 1910,

pp. 72–113.

Joyce, James,Ulysses, Modern Library, 1961, pp.187–89.

Kyd, Thomas, The Spanish Tragedy (c. 1590), edited by

Philip Edwards, Methuen & Co., 1969.

Prosser, Eleanor,Hamlet and Revenge, 2nd ed., Stanford

University Press, 1971.

Shakespeare, William, The Comedy of Errors, edited by

Harry Levin, New American Library, 1965.

———, Hamlet, edited by Edward Hubler, New

American Library, 1963.

Taylor, Gary, Reinventing Shakespeare: A Cultural

History, from the Restoration to the Present, Weidenfeld

& Nicolson, 1989, pp. 46, 50.

FURTHER READING

Bowers, Fredson, ‘‘The Moment of Final Suspense in

Hamlet: ‘We Defy Augury,’’’ in Shakespeare, 1564–

1964: A Collection of Modern Essays by Various Hands,

edited by Edward A. Bloom, Brown University Press,

1964, pp. 50–5.

Bowers argues that Hamlet accepts the author-

ity of Christian providence and ignores his

sense of the ominous in the duel with Laertes,

and consequently he achieves salvation rather

than damnation because he resigns his attempt

to seek revenge and leaves the disposition of the

matter to heaven.

Gana, Nouri, ‘‘Remembering Forbidding Mourning: Repe-

tition, Indifference, Melanxiety, Hamlet,’’ in Mosaic: A

H a m l e t


Journal for the Interdisciplinary Study of Literature, Vol. 37,

No. 2, June 2004, pp. 59–78.

Gana invokes Hamlet in a discussion of the

dangers involved in the process of remember-

ing during psychoanalytic treatment and cites

Hamlet as an example of a character beset by

the twin afflictions of brooding melancholy

and anxious dread of not being.

Hinten, Marvin D., ‘‘Shakespeare’s Hamlet,’’ in Explica-

tor, Vol. 62, No. 2, Winter 2004, pp. 68–70.

Hintern contradicts the argument that Hamlet

knew that Polonius, not the king, was hiding

behind the arras in Gertrude’s closet when he

killed him.

Knowles, Ronald, ‘‘Hamlet and Counter-Humanism,’’ in

Renaissance Quarterly, Vol. 52, No. 4, Winter 1999,

pp. 1046–69.

Knowles sees Hamlet as a framework in which

occurs a debate between the medieval view that

life is full of misery and the Renaissance idea

that existence is something to celebrate.

Levy, Eric, ‘‘The Problematic Relation between Reason

and Emotion in Hamlet,’’ in Renascence: Essays on

Values in Literature, Vol. 53, No. 2, Winter 2001, pp.

83–95.

Levy considers Hamlet’s struggle to resolve the

conflict between thinking and feeling, espe-

cially in relation to Thomas Aquinas’s writing

regarding that conflict.

McCormick, Frank J., ‘‘Eliot’s ‘The Love Song of J.

Alfred Prufrock’ and Shakespeare’s Hamlet,’’ in

Explicator, Vol. 63, No. 1, Fall 2004, pp. 43–7.

McCormick traces the similarities between

Eliot’s Prufrock and not only Hamlet but also

Polonius and Ophelia, with whom he argues

Prufrock most identifies.

McFarland, Thomas, ‘‘Hamlet and the Dimension of

Possible Existence,’’ in Tragic Meanings in Shakespeare,

Random House, 1966, pp. 1–59.

McFarland puzzles over the problem of deter-

mining exactly what constitutes the ‘‘thine own

self’’ to which Polonius advises one be true.

Sloboda, Noel, ‘‘Visions and Revisions of Laurence

Olivier in the Hamlet Films of Franco Zeffirelli and

Kenneth Branagh,’’ in Studies in the Humanities, Vol. 27,

No. 2, December 2000, pp. 140–57.

Sloboda discusses the ways in which Zeffirelli

and Branagh both attempted to overcome the

influence of Laurence Olivier’s interpretation

of Hamlet in their respective film versions of

the play.

Smith, Kay H., ‘‘‘Hamlet, Part Eight, the Revenge’; or,

Sampling Shakespeare in a Postmodern World,’’ in

College Literature, Vol. 31, No. 4, Fall 2004, pp. 135–49.

Smith examines the use of Hamlet as the basis

for and as a significant reference in a number of

recent popular movies.

Tiffany, Grace, ‘‘Hamlet, Reconciliation, and the Just

State,’’ in Renascence: Essays on Values in Literature,

Vol. 58, No. 2, Winter 2005, pp. 111–33.

Tiffany argues that by fulfilling the Ghost’s

commission, Hamlet purges a wound given to

the state of Denmark through the murder of

the rightful king and shortens the days of the

Ghost’s penitential wanderings.

Wormald, Mark, ‘‘Hopkins, Hamlet, and the Victorians:

Carrion Comfort?’’ in Victorian Poetry, Vol. 40, No. 4,

Winter 2002, pp. 409–31.

Wormald examines the influence of Hamlet on

a sonnet by the late nineteenth-century poet

Gerard Manley Hopkins.

H a m l e t


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Hamlet