Hamlet Summary and Analysis

Author: William Shakespeare. Wrote this play shortly after his son, Hamnet, and father died. Both deaths are believed to have great influence on the play.

Setting: Denmark, mostly in Elsinore. Takes place in the 13^th century, though many film adaptations have placed Hamlet in a more modern setting.

Characters:

--Hamlet: He’s the Prince of Denmark. His father’s name was also Hamlet and his mom’s name is Gertrude, the current Queen. He’s next in line to be king and he often sees images of his father’s ghost, telling him to seek revenge. He’s torn and, because of this among other reasons, has gone mad and continually considers suicide.

--Ophelia: is in a relationship with Hamlet, but is torn between being with Hamlet and obeying her father, Polonius. When her father dies, however, she goes crazy and eventually kills herself.

--Gertrude: Hamlet’s mother and the Queen. Currently married to Claudius. It’s possible that she was having an affair with Claudius while Old Hamlet was still alive. Another suggestion is that she’s having an incestuous relationship with her son Hamlet.

--Claudius: The current King and Gertrude’s husband. His brother was Old Hamlet, who he killed to get the crown.

--Laertes: Ophelia’s brother, also Polonius’s son. He finds out that Hamlet killed his father Polonius and Laertes decides to seek vengeance. Laertes gets into a duel with Hamlet and plots with Claudius to poison Hamlet. Instead, Laertes is killed by his own poisoned sword.

--Polonius: father of Laertes and Ophelia. He is Claudius’s right-hand-man and enjoys making all the decisions without getting any of the criticism. He is killed by Hamlet, thought Hamlet had thought he was killing Claudius.

Plot Summary (from the collaborative review):

• Act 1
• Scene 1
• Horatio is told that the Ghost of the old king of Denmark, Hamlet, has been seen
• Horatio sees the Ghost and attempts to talk to it, but it does not answer Horatio.
• King Hamlet led a conquest against old Fortinbras
• Scene 2
• Claudius is introduced and makes a speech about his marriage and how young Fortinbras demands the lands taken by King Hamlet. Claudius sends ambassadors to stop an attack.
• Laertes is given leave to go to France, with permission of Polonius.
• Hamlet is introduced and is mourning his father, Claudius and Gertrude tell him to get over his father’s death.
• Hamlet is not given permission to leave and go back to Wittenberg.
• Hamlet is forced to stay in Denmark. He is upset about his mother’s marriage to his uncle. (Took place “within a month”)
• Horatio and friends tell Hamlet about the Ghost and he agrees to join them.
• Scene 3/4/5
• Laertes (leaving for France) warns Ophelia not to fall for Hamlet and not to trust him.
• Polonius says the same thing and orders her not to see Hamlet.
• Hamlet, Horatio, and Marcellus are visited by the Ghost.
• The Ghost wants to only speak to Hamlet.
• The Ghost tells Hamlet that he was murdered by Claudius. The Ghost tells Hamlet to avenge his murder.
• Hamlet makes his friends swear to secrecy.
• Act 2
• Scene 1
• Polonius does not trust Laertes in France and sends someone there.
• Ophelia was visited by Hamlet, who seemed crazy.
• Polonius thinks that Hamlet is crazy because Ophelia will not see him.
• Scene 2
• Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are sent to spy on Hamlet by Gertrude and Claudius.
• Polonius tells Claudius that Hamlet is crazy with love for Ophelia. They go to spy on Hamlet.
• Hamlet knows that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are spying for Claudius.
• Hamlet decides to prove his uncle’s guilt by staging a play, The Murder of Gonzago.
• Act 3
• Scene 1-To Be or Not To Be
• Rosencrantz and Guildenstern cannot find why Hamlet is mad.
• Polonius makes Ophelia to find out about Hamlet’s madness and goes to spy with Claudius.
• Hamlet sees Ophelia and is nice, but then he changes his attitude.
• Hamlet says he never loved her.
• After Hamlet leaves Claudius does not think that love is the cause of his madness. He decides to send Hamlet to England.

• Polonius says not to and wait until Gertrude talks to him.
• Scene 2
• The play occurs. Hamlet and Horatio watch for a reaction from Claudius.
• The Player King is killed by having poison poured in his ear.
• Claudius gets upset and leaves.
• Hamlet is asked to go see Gertrude.
• Scene 3
• Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are ordered to take Hamlet to England.
• Polonius plans to spy on Hamlet and Gertrude.
• Claudius starts to pray and Hamlet wants to kill him there, but cannot because then Claudius would go to Heaven.
• Scene 4
• Polonius hides behind a tapestry in Gertrude’s room.
• Hamlet enters and scares Gertrude, who calls for help. Polonius then calls for help.
• Hamlet, thinking that Polonius is Claudius, stabs the tapestry.
• Hamlet is then upset at Gertrude for marrying Claudius, when the Ghost appears and he is the only one to see. Gertrude thinks he is mad.
• The Ghost reminds Hamlet to avenge King Hamlet’s death.
• Act 4
• Gertrude tells Claudius that Polonius is dead. Claudius sends Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to find Hamlet, and the body.
• Hamlet does not say where he put the body.
• Claudius orders Hamlet to leave immediately for England. Claudius tells the audience he plans to have Hamlet killed in England.
• Hamlet sees Fortinbras and his army.

• Act 5
• Scene 1
• Two clowns (gravediggers) dig up poor Yorick’s bones to make room for Ophelia.
• Scene 2
• Hamlet has his “fall of the sparrow” speech.
• He then duels with Laertes, is mortally wounded, kills Claudius, then relinquishes his control to Fortinbras

Theme:

Shakespeare’s Hamlet cautions that self-doubt paired with moral corruption can lead to the subversion of providence.

Hamlet has a lot of conflict in his life, internal and external. First, he sees the ghost of his father, revealing to young Hamlet that Claudius had killed Old Hamlet: Claudius wasn’t the rightful heir and had usurped all the power that he had. The ghost wants Hamlet to kill Claudius. Hamlet is almost prepared to do it, but then he remembers that he can’t because of his religion. He doesn’t know how to be loyal to both God and his father. Eventually though, Hamlet gives in and finally kills Claudius, subverting providence.

Hamlet isn’t the only one though that is morally corrupt and that ends up subverting providence. It was Claudius, after all, who had originally killed the King, allowing Claudius to become the next king, and, therefore, subverting providence. And the moral corruption, of course does not stop at Claudius. All of Elsinore is corrupt (“there’s something rotten in Denmark”), and it is suspected that even Gertrude was having an affair while Old Hamlet was still alive.

Response to Course Material #5

So, this response to course material post is really supposed to be about everything we’ve done in the past month, but class really hasn’t been in session for the past month. We had three snow days for the first three days that we were supposed to be back from break, then Thursday and Friday of last week I was sick, so in the past month I’ve only been at school for five days. I guess this post will really only cover what we did last week.

That being said, I do think that our class has done quite a bit in the past five days. First, we hammered out our Hamlet theme statement. This took up most of Monday and Tuesday, but I was pleased with the result. Our theme statement was about how self doubt and moral corruption leads to the subversion of providence. Our class had a lot of trouble with the exact wording of the statement, but we were eventually able to come up with something that worked. After we finished the theme statement, Ms. Holmes showed us an interpretive dance of Hamlet that one of her previous classes had created, and I thought it was really cool. When Ms. Holmes first told us that she was going to show us the video I thought it was going to be something really weird or obscure, but the dance actually did make sense. The students did a really good job incorporating the major parts of the play and acting them out in dance form.

Aside from Hamlet, we also did some vocab review games and worked a lot on the collaborative exam review. I have never done a collaborative exam review any of my classes before, but I think it’s a great idea. This year, most of my teachers didn’t really give an exam review. In chem we have a FERP (final exam review packet), which is pretty helpful, and in government we received an outline of what we will need to know (without any actual info on it – just general topics), but that’s pretty much it for all my classes. If I want a study guide, I have to make it myself. Making a study guide as a class is great though because then you can thoroughly cover every topic. Not only that, but people even typed notes for certain things, like how travesty, burlesque and parodies are similar and different. Then, under the lit term there are tons of examples. No one student would have been able to make such a thorough study guide for this class, but together we were able to create a study guide and a practice test at the end. I guess the only real problem is that it is really long and takes a while to read through, but since every section is labeled it’s easy to just choose a section that’s harder and study that one more than the others.    

Basically, with such an extensive collaborative review, it’ll be pretty hard to give a good excuse to not study for the Lit exam, since all the information is right there for us. Hopefully it also means that we’ll all do pretty well on the exam too.

Open Prompt 2009 Response

2009 Prompt: A symbol is an object, action, or event that represents something or that creates a range of associations beyond itself. In literary works a symbol can express an idea, clarify meaning, or enlarge literal meaning. Select a novel or play and, focusing on one symbol, write an essay analyzing how that symbol functions in the work and what it reveals about the characters or themes of the work as a whole. Do not merely summarize the plot.

            Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman is a play about a family who tries to live the American Dream. The problem is that this family, the Lomans, only know how to talk about the Dream and fail to ever take any action in achieving it. This is what ultimately leads to their downfall and the symbol of diamonds perfectly demonstrates this.

            Willy has always looked up to his older brother, Ben. Ben served as a type of father-figure for Willy, as well as a symbol of success. It is often mentioned that Ben went off to Alaska and became rich quick after finding diamonds. Diamonds, therefore, also became a symbol of success. The problem, however, is that this success is only ever spoken or dreamed. There is never any solid proof or evidence that success through diamonds was ever actually achieved by Ben. Success becomes an elusive matter, something almost impossible to achieve, just like the diamonds.

            Similarly, diamonds represent financial security. Money is important to Willy and is practically the equivalent to success. Willy believes money boosts confidence and gives a person something to be proud about. Not only that, but living comfortably is also a large part of the American Dream and Willy does everything he can to make people believe he is living it. Willy actually goes through extreme measures to try to trick even his own family into believing that he is making more money than he actually is. This further demonstrates how Willy doesn’t take action to achieve the American Dream and instead is content enough with simply telling everyone that he has.

            Finally, diamonds represent what Willy can never have. Willy may have, at one time, been successful, but he was never really rich and always craved more. In his thirst for more, however, he only gets less and becomes unhappy and unsuccessful. Willy becomes so unhappy that he continuously attempts to commit suicide. Towards the end of the play, Willy begins seeing many apparitions of his brother Ben, telling him to enter the jungle to finally get those diamonds. In other words, Ben tells Willy to commit suicide so that his family can receive $20,000 from their insurance company. The only way for Willy to finally get those diamonds is to kill himself, and after he’s dead he never actually receives the diamonds anyway, only his family does. In valuing the words that Ben told him, Willy takes his own life: his ultimate downfall.

            Miller’s Death of a Salesman depicts the harms of cherishing words over actions. Willy is obsessed with obtaining diamonds: a wide-ranging symbol of money and success. One might say that Willy had already achieved the American Dream, but he always wanted more, always searched for those diamonds. Meanwhile, he would pretend that he had the Dream and even tried to convince his own family of it. It ended up being this searching and deception that eventually lead to his downfall, his suicide.