HAMLET

QUOTE

PLOT

SOURCES

CHARACTERS

HAMLETShakespeare

MEANING

THEMES

MAIN CHARACTER: HAMLET

He is the Prince of Denmark, about thirty years old at the start of the play, Hamlet is the son of Queen Gertrude and the late King Hamlet, and the nephew of the present king, Claudius. Hamlet is melancholy, bitter, and cynical, full of hatred for his uncle’s scheming and disgust for his mother’s sexuality. Hamlet is often indecisive and hesitant, but at other times prone to rash and impulsive acts.

SOURCES

-Hamlet is based on the story of Amleth in Historia Danica by Saxo Grammaticus. -Shakespeare kept the murderer of the king a secret and used the ghost to reveal it to Prince Hamlet.

PLOT

The ghost of the King of Denmark tells his son Hamlet to avenge his murder by killing the new king, Hamlet's uncle. Hamlet feigns madness, contemplates life and death, and seeks revenge. His uncle, fearing for his life, also devises plots to kill Hamlet. The play ends with a duel, during which the King, Queen, Hamlet's opponent and Hamlet himself are all killed.

THEMES

Madness: Hamlet pretends to be mad to conceal his indecision. But this ploy backfires, leading to, among other things, Ophelia’s genuine descent into madness over Hamlet’s unintentional murder of her father. Revenge: In a traditional revenge tragedy, the hero plans his revenge. In Hamlet, the tragedy stems from the hero’s doubt and uncertainty. Many lives would have been saved if Hamlet had just killed his uncle earlier. Destiny and fate: The appearance of the Ghost is responsible for everything. Does Hamlet have a choice in what he does, or is there some great plan which makes everything inevitable? Relationships within the family and frienss

MEANING

In telling the story of a fatally indecisive character's inability to choose the proper course to avenge his father's death, Hamlet explores questions of fate versus free will, and ultimately if anything we do in our time on earth makes any difference.

QUOTE

"To be or not to be"

The "To be or not to be" soliloquy appears in Act 3, Scene 1 of Shakespeare’s Hamlet. In this scene, often called the "nunnery scene," Prince Hamlet thinks about life, death, and suicide. Specifically, he wonders whether it might be preferable to commit suicide to end one's suffering and to leave behind the pain and agony associated with living.