Hamlet

// Hamlet // is a five-act play written by William Shakespeare. The first printed version of //Hamlet// was registered in 1602. Performances of Hamlet began in the year 1600 and elements of the play can be traced back to the play, //Historia Danica,// a play “first printed in Paris in 1514” (Wright xvi).
 * Hamlet: **

[[image:Ham.png width="249" height="295" align="left" caption="Eugene Delacroix 1839. Oil canvas. "]]
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=** Characters **= **Courtiers** ** : ** =** Act I **= Scene I   Scene II    Scene III Scene IV   Scene V  =** Act II **= Scene I   Scene II  =** Act III **= Scene I   Scene II    Scene III Scene IV =** Act IV **= Scene I   Scene II    Scene III Scene IV   Scene V    Scene VI    Scene VII
 * Hamlet ** : Hamlet is the protagonist of the play. His mother is the Queen of Denmark. His father was the King of Denmark, but was recently killed. His love interest is Ophelia.
 * Gertrude, Queen of Denmark ** : Hamlet’s mother. After Hamlet’s father dies she agrees to marry Hamlet’s uncle, Claudius, to maintain power.
 * Claudius, King of Denmark ** : Hamlet’s uncle, who convinces Hamlet’s mother, Gertrude, to marry him so he can become King.
 * Polonius, Lord Chamberlain: ** Ophelia's father and the King’s counselor.
 * Ophelia: ** Daughter of Polonius, sister of Laertes. She is romantically involved with Hamlet.
 * Laertes: ** Son of Polonius, and brother of Ophelia.
 * Horatio: ** Hamlet’s long time best friend.
 * Fortinbras **, **Prince of Norway**: His father was killed by King Hamlet during Denmark’s war with Norway.
 * Rosencrantz: ** Hamlet’s childhood friend.
 * Guildenstern: ** Hamlet’s childhood friend.
 * Ghost of Hamlet’s Father: ** King Hamlet's ghost.
 * Reynaldo: ** Servant to Polonius.
 * Franscisco: ** A soldier
 * Voltimand
 * Cornelius
 * Osric
 * A Gentleman
 * Officers: **
 * Marcellus
 * Bernardo
 * Other Characters: **
 * Gravediggers (2)
 * English Ambassadors
 * The Players
 * A Priest
 * A Captain
 * Lords, Ladies, Officers, Soldiers, Sailors, Messengers, and other Attendants
 * Bernardo, Francisco, Horatio, and Marcellus see a ghost, who resembles the late King Hamlet. They discuss the war with Norway.
 * Hamlet returns home from Wittenberg, after his father King Hamlet’s death. Hamlet is infuriated to find that his mother is marrying his father’s brother, Claudius.
 * Hamlet is rightfully suspicious of the hurried engagement; he questions the intentions for the marriage:
 * Married with my uncle;/ My father’s brother, but no more like my father/ Than I to Hercules. Within a month (1.2.157-159).
 * Ophelia is interested in Hamlet. Ophelia’s father and brother, insist she stay away from Hamlet, Laertes (her brother) tells her she will be no more than “the perfume and suppliance of a minute” to Hamlet (1.3.10-11).
 * Hamlet, Horatio, and Marcellus see the ghost. The ghost and Hamlet speak alone.
 * Hamlet speaks to the ghost of his father who explains that King Claudius poisoned him “with juice of cursed hebenon in a vial," pouring poison into his ear. (1.5.69).
 * Hamlet becomes set on revenge for his father's death. He is set on proving King Claudius is guilty of his father's murder, even if only to justify the killing the King to himself: " The theme of secrecy and poison . . . develops from Claudius’ secret poisoning of Hamlet’s father before the play opens. This is the hidden evil that must be brought to light" (Charney 31).
 * Act I ends with Hamlet telling Horatio that he is going to act mad to trick the King into a confession.
 * Polonius is suspicious of Hamlet’s recently changed behavior.
 * Ophelia confesses to her father, Polonius, that Hamlet is acting crazy, “As if he had been loosed out of hell/ To speak of horrors—he comes before me” (1.2.92-93). Polonius places blame on his daughter for Hamlet’s madness.
 * The players arrive.
 * The king is suspicious of Hamlet, so he has Hamlet’s old friends Rosencrantz and Guildenstern spy on Hamlet.
 * Questioning Hamlet’s state of mind, Polonius and King Claudius force Ophelia to talk to Hamlet while they spy on the two.
 * Hamlet gives his “To be or not to be” speech, “Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,/ And by opposing end them. To die—to sleep-/ No more; and by a sleep to say we end” (3.1.67-68).
 * Hamlet tells Ophelia she should go to a nunnery because she is too pure to be in the world they live in, but then he asks her where her father is and she lies: “At home, my lord” (13.1.141).
 * After Ophelia’s lie, Hamlet turns on her.
 * Hamlet continues to be cruel to Ophelia, mocking her and saying she is no longer pure.
 * Hamlet stages a reenactment of his father’s death hoping to trap his uncle looking guilty of murder. Hamlet believes he can judge the King’s guilt by his reaction to the play.
 * King Claudius is forced to sit through the play that reenacts his killing of King Hamlet. He leaves in fury.
 * Claudius briefly prays for forgiveness, but is unwilling to give up the benefits he receives from his sins, “Words without thoughts never to heaven go” (3.4.102).
 * Hamlet watches the King and thinks the King is praying to cleanse his soul of his sins (Bloom 53).
 * At this point, Hamlet’s intentions have turned. Hamlet refuses to settle for just killing the King, he must murder the King while he has no chance to repent, “To take him in the purging of his soul,/ When he is fit and seasoned for his passage?/ No” (3.3.85-87).
 * Even though Hamlet has the opportunity, he decides not to kill the King: “Hamlet spares the King in his moment of prayer out of his need not merely for good reason for action but for the best reason; for total consonance between deed and retribution” (Bloom 53). Hamlet
 * In the Queen’s bedroom, Hamlet tries to convince his mother of his uncle’s guilt.
 * While talking to his mother Hamlet is startled, thinking Claudius has been spying on them he stabs the man behind a curtain; however, it is Polonius.
 * Hamlet believes he will have to pay for Polonius’s unjust death, “According to both Elizabethan and modern law, his intent, his ‘malice forethought,’ makes him as guilty of first-degree murder as if his victim had actually been Claudius” (Prosser 192). Hamlet’s sense of morality changes because he no longer sees himself as a just man.
 * Gertrude tells Claudius that Hamlet killed Polonius; Claudius becomes even more threatened by Hamlet (Prosser 192).
 * Hamlet is sent to England with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.
 * Rosencrantz and Guildenstern ask Hamlet where Polonius’s body is.
 * Hamlet initially refuses to tell them, or the King, that the body is under the stairs, telling them: “A certain convocation of politic worms are e’en at him,” (4.3.22-23)
 * As Fortinbras's army passes through Denmark on route to Poland, Fortinbras has one of his army Captains to talk to Hamlet.
 * Laertes returns infuriated about his father’s death.
 * Horatio receives a letter from Hamlet telling that he has escaped and is returning.
 * Claudius receives a note from Hamlet telling that he escaped and is returning.
 * Claudius and Laertes plot to kill Hamlet.
 * Laertes plans to kill Hamlet with a poisoned sword during a fencing match.
 * The King decides to also have poison for Hamlet to drink, “And that he calls for drink, I’ll have prepared him/ A chalice for the nonce; whereon but sipping,/ If he by chance escape your venomed stuck” (4.7.176-177).
 * The Queen tells Laertes and Claudius that Ophelia has killed herself by drowning, “Fell in the weeping brook. Her clothes spread wide/ And, mermaid-like, awhile they bore her up” (4.7.193-194).

=** Act V **= Scene I   Scene II
 * At a graveyard, Hamlet contemplates the meaning of man’s life; he finds the skull of Yorick, a man he knew as a child. At his point, Hamlet is reflective and has shown a marketable change: “It is not a barbaric young revenger, consumed by rage and confirmed in murderous thoughts, who appears in the graveyard, but a mature man of poise and serenity” (Prosser 217).
 * Hamlet finds out that Ophelia is dead, and he is at her funeral.
 * Laertes is overcome with grief and jumps in Ophelia’s grave and Hamlet follows.
 * Hamlet confides in Horatio that Rosen-crantz and Guildenstern are dead.
 * Hamlet agrees to a duel with Laertes.
 * At the duel, Hamlet receives the first point, then King Claudius makes a toast to Hamlet and hands him the glass full of poison.
 * The Queen drinks the poison instead of Hamlet.
 * Laertes wounds Hamlet with the poison sword.
 * The swords get mixed up and Hamlet wounds Laertes with his own poisoned sword.
 * The Queen dies, then Claudius confesses to the poison.
 * Hamlet stabs the King, finally attaining the revenge, possibly justice, he has been looking for: “It is not until the final scene of the play that Hamlet is fully convinced of the justice of this revenge” (Charney 11).
 * Claudius drinks the poison to hasten his death, and Laertes dies.
 * Hamlet delivers another monologue then hears the sound of Fortinbras’s army, “These martial sounds are almost the last thing that Hamlet hears, and they give him assurance of a new order of truth and justice in Denmark: (Charney 19).
 * King Forinbras storms the castle ready for battle only to finds the King, the Queen, Laertes, and Hamlet, are all dead, “Now, returning from Poland, flushed with victory, he reenters Denmark like a conquering hero” (Prosser 236).

=** Themes **= **Revenge**: Hamlet seeks revenge for his father's murder by murdering King Claudius; he spends much of the play trying to justify this choice. Laertes quickly seeks revenge for his father's murder as well.
 * The meaning of life: ** Hamlet struggles throughout the play attempting to figure out his place in the world. He raises several questions such as what is the value of life and subsequently what is the value of death (King 71).
 * Spirits: ** Hamlet never questions the ghost being real, but he is highly skeptical of it’s intentions, “Hamlet believes that an objective, veritable ghost has appeared to him . . . but the suspicion comes to him that the spirit he has seen may be the devil, who abuses him to damn him” (Corson 206).
 * Friendship: ** While the majority of relationships, either through death or destruction, are broken or devolve, Hamlet and Horatio remain bonded through the play (Corson 212).
 * Madness: ** Although Hamlet’s sanity can be disputed, Ophelia’s cannot be. Ophelia is crushed by her father's death and Hamlet's regection leading to her suicide (Prosser 212).

=** Actors and Performances: **= 1600's- Richard Burbage originally played Shakespeare’s // Hamlet //, and he was one of the most well know Shakespearean actors of the time (Seton 8). 1700's- In 1756 David Garrick performed // Hamlet // at the Theatre Royal, "Garrick was a hugely influential actor, playwright and theatre manager" (Royal Shakespeare Company). 1800's- Henry Irving played and produced //Hamlet// in the 1870's (Clapp). In 1899 Sarah Bernhardt, a notably famous 19th century female actress played Hamlet in an adaptation of // Hamlet // (Royal Shakespeare Company). 1900's- In the 1956 production directed by Michael Langham, Alan Badel portrayed the role of Hamlet. In 1984, //Hamlet// was played by Roger Rees in the Royal Shakespeare Company's production directed by Ron Daniels and Maria Bjornson; and in 1989, Ron Daniels directed Mark Rylance in the lead role (Royal Shakespeare Company). = Works Cited:  =

Bloom, Harold. Ed. //William Shakespeare’s Hamlet.// Chelsea House Publishers. New York. 1986. 53. (author of section Ruth Nevo) Charney, Maurice. //Style in Hamlet.// Princeton University Press. Princeton, New Jersey. 1969. Corson, Hiram. //An Introduction to the Study of Shakespeare.// D.C. Heath & Co. Publishers. Boston. 1903. King, Walter N. //Hamlet’s Search for Meaning.// The University of Georgia Press. Athens. 1982. Meyer, Michael. //The Compact Bedford Introduction to Literature//. 9th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2012. 907. Print. Prosser, Eleanor. //Hamlet and Revenge.// Stanford University Press. Stanford, California. 1967. Royal Shakespeare Company. "Production History in Pictures". RSC Royal Shakespeare Company. Web. Seton, Harold, “All Sorts of Hamlets.” //Theatre Magazine//, Vol. 29, No. 7. Ed. Arthur Hornblow. New York: Theatre Magazine Company, 1919. p.8. Shakespeare, William. //The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark.// Ed. Louis B. Wright and Virginia A. LaMar. New York. Washington Square Press Inc. 1957. Print. Wright, Louis B, Virginia A. LaMar. //The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark.// Washington Square Press Inc. New York. 1957. Print.