HAMLET

By William Shakespeare

Character List

Hamlet - The Prince of Denmark, the title character, and the protagonist. About thirty
years old at the start of the play, Hamlet is the son of Queen Gertrude and the late King
Hamlet, and the nephew of the present king, Claudius. Hamlet is melancholy, bitter, and
cynical, full of hatred for his uncle’s scheming and disgust for his mother’s sexuality.

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

Gertrude - The Queen of Denmark, Hamlet’s mother, recently married to Claudius.

Gertrude loves Hamlet deeply, but she is a shallow, weak woman who seeks affection
and status more urgently than moral rectitude or truth.

Polonius - The Lord Chamberlain of Claudius’s court, a pompous, conniving old man.
Polonius is the father of Laertes and Ophelia.

Horatio - Hamlet’s close friend, who studied with the prince at the university in
Wittenberg. Horatio is loyal and helpful to Hamlet throughout the play. After Hamlet’s
death, Horatio remains alive to tell Hamlet’s story.

Ophelia - Polonius’s daughter, a beautiful young woman with whom Hamlet has been in
love. Ophelia is a sweet and innocent young girl, who obeys her father and her brother,
Laertes. Dependent on men to tell her how to behave, she gives in to Polonius’s schemes
to spy on Hamlet.

Laertes - Polonius’s son and Ophelia’s brother, a young man who spends much of the
play in France. Passionate and quick to action, Laertes is clearly a foil for the
reflective Hamlet.

Fortinbras - The young Prince of Norway, whose father the king (also named
Fortinbras) was killed by Hamlet’s father (also named Hamlet). Now Fortinbras wishes to
attack Denmark to avenge his father’s honor, making him another foil for Prince Hamlet.

The Ghost - The specter of Hamlet’s recently deceased father. The ghost, who claims to
have been murdered by Claudius, calls upon Hamlet to avenge him. However, it is not
entirely certain whether the ghost is what it appears to be, or whether it is something else.

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

Osric - The foolish courtier who summons Hamlet to his duel with Laertes.

Voltimand and Cornelius - Courtiers whom Claudius sends to Norway to persuade the
king to prevent Fortinbras from attacking.

Marcellus and Bernardo - The officers who first see the ghost walking the ramparts of
Elsinore and who summon Horatio to witness it. Marcellus is present when Hamlet first
encounters the ghost.

Francisco - A soldier and guardsman at Elsinore.

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

Summary
This drama is one of the great tragedy themed plays by William Shakespeare. The themes
of the plot cover indecision, revenge and retribution, deception, ambition, loyalty and
fate. Prince Hamlet mourns both his father's death and his mother, Queen Gertrude's
remarriage to Claudius. The ghost of Hamlet's father appears to him and tells him that
Claudius has poisoned him. Hamlet swears revenge. He kills the eavesdropping Polonius,
the court chamberlain. Polonius's son Laertes returns to Denmark to avenge his father's
death. Polonius's daughter Ophelia loves the Prince but his behaviour drives her to
madness. Ophelia dies by drowning. A duel takes place and ends with the death of
Gertrude, Laertes, Claudius, and Hamlet.

Literary Approaches:

1. Historical/Biographical Approach

This tradition existed from Roman times (the Roman playwright Seneca was well known
for writing revenge tragedies). The story of Hamlet is based on a Danish revenge story
first recorded by Saxo Grammaticus in the 1100s. In these stories, a Danish prince fakes
madness in order to take revenge on his uncle, who had killed the prince’s father and
married his mother. But Shakespeare modified this rather straightforward story and filled
it with dread and uncertainty—Hamlet doesn’t just feign madness; he seems at times to
actually be crazy.

Hamlet is in many ways a product of the Reformation, in which Protestants broke away
from the until-then dominant Catholic Church, as well as the skeptical humanism of late
Renaissance Northern Europe, which held that there were limits on human knowledge.

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2. Psychological Approach

"There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so"

Hamlet’s constant anxiety about the difference between appearance and reality, as well as
his concerns about and difficulties with religion (the sinfulness of suicide, the unfairness
that killing a murderer while the murderer is praying would result in sending the murder
to heaven).

3. Feminism
They point to the common classification of women as maid, wife or widow, with
only whores outside this trilogy. Using this analysis, the problem of Hamlet becomes the
central character's identification of his mother as a whore due to her failure to remain
faithful to Old Hamlet, in consequence of which he loses his faith in all women, treating
Ophelia as if she were a whore also. She goes mad with guilt because, when Hamlet kills
her father, he has fulfilled her sexual desire to have Hamlet kill her father so they can be
together. Ophelia has become the symbol of the distraught and hysterical woman in
modern culture, a symbol which may not be entirely accurate nor healthy for women.

4. Reader Response
As a reader, each of us would have its own notion to help us examine issues and these are
the following that drew out from my criticism:

This play defies such expectations particularly because Hamlet seems to become
engrossed in almost everything but revenge, and he always has to self-consciously knock
himself back into his role. The ending is anti-climactic. In fact, the play, I would argue,
builds us up from Acts 1 to 3 to make us wish for Hamlet to circumvent his revenging
role. Well, Hamlet overcome those failures by simply “obeying”, preferably that term
would fit in.

Examining the complexity of the process of reading this dense passage; how he would
stumble on certain words; misunderstand certain places; and how we reader would
attempt to fill in the gaps to try to conceive of some meaning, even if the reader is nearly
clueless as to what the passage actually means. Honestly, there are certain passages that
are very difficult to grasp- contrary beginning with its ending lines.

5. Deconstructionism
Perhaps one of the most significant and very noticeable line in Hamlet would be the, “To
be or not to be” Soliloquy. Right off the bat, a deconstructionist reading of the soliloquy
would question the universal assumption that Hamlet’s words “To be or not to be”
means, “To live or not to live,” or suicide. The words that would stand out are “be” and
“not.” One could easily argue that the word “be” itself is extremely slippery. There are so
many different possibilities for what the word “be” or “being” itself means. A radical
deconstructionist would conclude that, in the end, “being” can mean so many different
things that the term becomes meaningless. During way back high-school, I find this

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subtle at first, (To be or not to be, specifically) I tried to look for more references to
understood it.

In many ways, Hamlet and his ruminations itself is a classic case of deconstruction. A
person who thinks things laboriously and thinks things through, a punster, a wit and a
lover of quips and riddles, Hamlet affirms things at the same moment as he undermines
things. And he constantly undermines his own arguments. These are all the very things
that a deconstructionist sees in literature. So as a character, Hamlet, in many ways, is
emblematic of everything that the deconstructionist preeches. His language is slippery; he
undermines the very things he affirms at the same moment; and he attempts to gain truth
and meaning in life that constantly eludes him.

7. Formalism

• Irony
The first good irony comes in the first two lines. When Claudius says that it is "sweet and
commendable" to give this duty, he's praising Hamlet for something that will eventually
kill him.

• Paradox
Hamlet’s gift of intelligence is his tragic flaw that leads to his downfall. His capability to
think beyond the nature of humanity disrupted the nature of life. Hamlet is the prince of
Denmark who was given a special trait.

His ability to think beyond the nature of humanity is what made him great. Yet, he
contradicted himself many times, like causing a delay for his main plan to kill Claudius.
This clever plan gave him enough proof that Claudius was guilty through his reaction of
the play.

It wouldn't be a perfect revenge if he died with his sins replenish. The moral order was
destroyed when Claudius murdered Hamlet Senior. Hamlet the prince of philosophy has a
great mind which ultimately caused his downfall.

• Metaphor

A famous example is the scene in Shakespeare’s play Hamlet (Act III, scene 2) that is
argued in terms of music, specifically, recorder playing technique, with Hamlet saying,

You would play upon me; you would seem to know my stops; you would pluck out
the heart of my mystery; you would sound me from my lowest note to the top of
my compass; and there is much music, excellent voice, in this little organ, yet cannot
you make it speak. ’Sblood, do you think I am easier to be played on than a
pipe? Call me what instrument you will, though you can fret me, you cannot play
upon me.”

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 • Imagery and symbols
There are many images of sickness, disease, wickedness, blemishes on the body, and
other loathsome things that are metaphorically descriptive or the unwholesome condition
of Denmark. Examples of this are on most pages.

The Ghost

We thought you might look here for a little somethin’ about the ghost. We talk about this
figure in its own "Character Analysis" and in the theme of "Religion."

Flowers- So which flowers belong to which characters?

When Ophelia loses her mind in Act IV, Scene v, she starts handing out flowers to
everyone around her. She talks directly about the symbolic meaning of those flowers, but
what's also important is to whom she hands each flower.

Does Ophelia give the rosemary (for remembrance) to an invisible Hamlet, praying he
hasn't forgotten about her? Does she give the rue (another word for regret) to Gertrude,
who may be regretting her hasty marriage to Claudius? Keep these questions in mind as
you read Ophelia's lines. "There's rosemary, that's for remembrance; pray, love,
remember," she says, "and there is pansies. That's for thoughts […]. There's fennel for
you, and columbines: there's rue for you; and here's some for me: we may call it the herb-
grace o' Sundays: O you must wear your rue with a difference. There's a daisy: I would
give you some violets, but they withered all when my father died." Fennel symbolized
strength and praiseworthiness, columbine symbolized folly, daisies symbolized
innocence, and violets symbolized faithfulness and modesty. So which flowers belong to
which characters?

The Royal Court

Whatever the physical setting, it's important to understand that the dynamic of the royal
court of Denmark is high-powered and manipulative. Public image matters. Hamlet's
emotional struggles and madness are not just playing out in his own home: his strange
behavior is a liability to his parents, and they have a political interest in bringing him
under control. "Madness in great ones must not unwatched go," says Claudius (3.1.188).

Yorick’s Skull
Hamlet is not a very symbolic play. In fact, the only object that one can easily pick out as
a symbol in the play is the skull of Yorick, a former court jester, which Hamlet finds with
Horatio in the graveyard near Elsinore in Act 5, scene

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As Hamlet picks up the skull and both talks to the deceased Yorick and to Horatio about
the skull, it becomes clear that the skull represents the inevitability of death.

8. Structuralism
One could even use Structuralism, exploring the “grammar of literature” in a single line.
Let’s take Hamlet’s first line of the entire play (and one of my favorites).

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In a sarcastic aside, Hamlet responds to Claudius addressing him, “But now, my cousin
Hamlet, and my son” with
A little more than kin, and less than kind.

Looking closely at the line isolated, one right away would notice the oppositional words
“little” and “more” followed by “less.” We have an opposition then between something
being “more or less,” essentially. Hamlet is making a comparison. If we looked closely,
we would see that the two words that stand out in both resemblance and as more complex
than the articles and prepositions, “kin” and “kind.” A lot depends upon the definition of
these words, particularly understanding how Shakespeare creates the semblance that
Hamlet, right off the bad, is a sharp intellect and a brilliant punster.
Kin evolves from both Anglo-Saxon and Latin meaning birth, race, and, as a verb, to be
born. Now we know it as a group of people sharing ancestry and / or one’s relatives. In
the Old and Middle English ages, the word kinship was used to describe a group of
people who surrounded a leader in a common cause, which evolved into kingdom.

9. Mimetic

He says that how many people in this world are capable of bearing the torture and pains
of life, which keep increasing as life goes. In present times, we can see that life brings a
new tragedy everyday, thus Hamlets famous line is applicable to present. In present
circumstances, human beings are not valued and are deprived of the real feelings and
power that they hold in themselves. To grunt and sweat under a weary life.

10. Mythological/Archetypal/Symbolic

Evidence in Celtic, Greek, and Germanic myths, including The Odyssey, demonstrates
consistent attachment of significance to the symbols of cup, water, and cloth—commonly
associated with female sovereigns.

The reappearance of these elements in Hamlet creates intriguing parallels and suggests
that Gertrude, not Claudius, possesses sole authority to choose the new king. Some myths
offer a defense of the charges against Gertrude (e.g., adultery). The mermaid allusion—a
powerful nexus of mythological and folk material—enables a new perspective on
Gertrude’s speech and the play” Gertrude’s description of Ophelia as “mermaidlike” in
the drowning report “evokes a whole tradition from Homer’s sirens to mermaid
references in Shakespeare’s own time” because sirens and mermaids were conflated by
the Elizabethan period.

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 To Coy His Mistress
By Andrell Marvell

1. Historical/Biographical
To His Coy Mistress is a metaphysical poem written by the British author and statesman
Andrew Marvell (1621–1678) either during or just before the Interregnum.

Marvell probably wrote the poem prior to serving in Oliver Cromwell's government as a
minister. The poem was not published in his lifetime.

The poem does not present a scene in a specific place in which people interact. However,
the young man and the young lady presumably live somewhere in England (the native

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land of the author), perhaps in northeastern England near the River Humber. The poet
mentions the Humber in line 7.

2. Formalistic
The poem is written in iambic tetrameter and rhymes in couplets. The first stanza ("Had
we...") is ten couplets long, the second ("But...") six, and the third ("Now therefore...")
seven.

Exploring the patterns created by the formal elements of a poem—alliteration, image,

tone, and metaphor, for example—helps us to understand more deeply the poem’s
meaning and the nuances that enrich that meaning. This kind of formal close reading of
the poem’s text is fundamental to any analysis of poetry.

lines 6 and 12 - "rubies” and “empires"

In the first section of the poem, the speaker creates exotic imagery, presumably to
tantalize his listener. He has her imagination wandering to rivers both near (the Humber)
and far (the Ganges), and his evocation of rubies and empires suggests exotic and
fantastic realms removed from and more appealing than any domestic scene in England.

- line 16 - "thirty thousand"

The speaker progresses from comprehensible amounts of time to incomprehensible
amounts, culminating by asking her to imagine thirty thousand years. The effect of this
imagery is to bring her (and us) outside of the immediate moment and into ancient history
and beyond.

- line 24 - "Deserts of vast eternity"

While our minds are presumably lost in the reverie of contemplating thirty thousand
years in the preceding section, the speaker abruptly changes imagery and brings his
mistress (and us) to the grave. The “deserts of vast eternity” could have been the age the
speaker would devote to worshiping his listener’s “every part” (17). Instead, neither the
speaker’s lust nor his listener's beauty will endure through eternity. The poem has
progressed from ten years before the flood into eternity, but the lifelessness of the second
section is in stark contrast with the rich luxury of the first.

- lines 27, 29, and 30 - "worms,” “dust,” and “ashes"

To make the lifelessness of the preceding lines even more distasteful, the speaker
introduces repugnant images associated with the decomposition of bodies in graves. The
effect is to make the listener fully appreciate the important differences between beautiful
life and disgusting death.

- lines 36, 38, and 39 - "instant fires,” “birds of prey,” and “devour"
Once he has set up the contrast between the eternity of his love and human mortality in
the first two sections, the speaker uses images of fiery passion in this final section. Gone

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are the ethereal, tantalizing images of the first section; here he is arguing with a kind of
passionate intensity meant to awaken his lover’s hot-blooded desire, not to garner her
mild agreement.

• Metaphor

My vegetable love should grow

The speaker compares his love to vegetative growth, which is slow and unconscious. Of
course, this metaphor is ironic because it is in the conditional tense; the speaker knows
that he does not have world enough or time, and his impassioned love grows quickly and
consciously.

lines 35-36 - "soul transpires / At every pore with instant fires"

The lover’s soul breathes through her body with “instant fires,” obviously not intended as
literal flames on her skin, but rather to demonstrate how the feeling of ardent desire is
like heat. The fact that there are many fires instead of just one, and that they are “instant”
rather than constant, underscores the transience of the moment, which is the subject of the
poem.

• Irony

line 1 - "Had" Had we but world enough, and time,

The first section of the poem is a calculated series of hyperbolic statements that are meant
to impress and flatter the listener, and the first word, “Had,” sets this section in the realm
of the subjunctive tense. Essentially, the speaker is saying, “If we were to live forever, I
could spend a great deal of time seducing you.” Of course, they won't live forever, and
the speaker knows that before he even begins his flattery.

- line 19 - "you deserve this state" For, Lady, you deserve this state,
Part of the speaker’s irony here is his knowledge that, although the lady might “deserve
this state” of leisurely seduction, because she is mortal she cannot have it. All of

• Simile

lines 33-34 - "the youthful hue / Sits on the skin like morning dew"
This simile is meant to make the situation crystal clear to the listener; it almost
encapsulates the speaker’s argument. The simile is a fairly standard comparison of the
listener to nature: The morning dew, like the speaker’s youth, is ephemeral.

- line 38 - "like amorous birds of prey"

This simile reveals the speaker’s desperation and his rising passion, or barely contained
lust. “Birds of prey” are generally not considered “amorous,” just the opposite. Here the
speaker is trying to introduce a bold, aggressive image into the mind of his mistress in
order to stir her passions.

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3. Moral/Philosophical

Morally speaking; doing this pre-marital sex is a sin, an activity doing out of marriage is
biblically & morally wrong. This man wants this woman, this central focus point of his
sexual passion. He cannot wait, he begs her not to put off sexual union. He eloquently
points out that the cares of the moment do not much matter as time is slowly absorbing
them both, as it does all things.

4. Mimetic

This man wants this woman, this central focus point of his sexual passion. He cannot
wait, he begs her not to put off sexual union. Socially speaking, men are more powerful.
Women submit themselves to men. In today’s world, sex outside marriage is rampant and
seems like not an issue anymore. They did it but we can’t clearly conclude that there is no
love at all.

5. Psychological
Marvell’s image of a ball as emblematic of sexual and psychological closeness:
“Let us roll all our strength, and all / Our sweetness, up into one ball”

It becomes difficult to decide if Marvell’s “To His Coy Mistress” is a poem about time,
love, lust and seduction or perhaps a combination of all four. On the surface, the poem
is undeniably about seduction and living for the moment. The speaker argues “[now] let
us sport us while we may, /…like amorous birds of prey”. However, beneath the surface
there is evidence to suggest that the speaker has feelings of love for the woman rather
than simply lust. Although it is clear he is attempting to seduce his would-be lover, and
at times objectifies her, he tells her he “would love her ten years before the flood.

As a final point, it could be argued that Marvell’s poem is about lust. But Marvell feels
as deeply about love as anyone: in his poem “The Definition of Love” he describes love
as “so divine a thing”. Despite the cheeky implications in “To His Coy Mistress” it is
unlikely that he would settle for lust.

6. Mythological/Archetypal/Symbolic

There is a procreative nature to the speaker’s ‘vegetable love’ as well as the allusion to
Greek mythology in the pun at the end of the poem. The speaker advocates procreation
in the name of God rather than simply copulation.

7. Feminism

And you should, if you please, refuse

Till the conversion of the Jews.

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 That long-preserved virginity,
And your quaint honor turn to dust,

These lines depict of a condemnation of the woman committing such act, when long time
ago virginity is being preserved, but then her dignity and honor was lost.

8. Structuralism

My echoing song; then worms shall try

Thorough the iron gates of life:

Here the line is a reference both to pregnancy as well as a familial mausoleum. The
echoing song of the speaker in the vault of his mistress may represent the child in the
womb. Furthermore, it may represent a familial mausoleum, where the descendants
would actually be found if the couple continued to propagate.

9. Reader Response

Critics and literature lovers continue analyze To His Coy Mistress because of its
unconventional, but still persuasive use of language. Or perhaps, readers are so interested
in it because they want to know the mistress's reply. This will never be known for sure,
but I imagine the speaker would be content with her answer. An awaited reactions to the
readers that keep it highly interesting.

10. Deconstructionism

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You are forgetting that Andrew Marvell was a smart man, and he knew that it was
forbidden to have sex before marriage. Writing an entire poem about it would have made
him the most hated person at that time. However, it is seen by many that he was being
satirical in the poem, making fun of men who feel that way. He was not writing of
himself, but perhaps even warning women to beware of men who would feel that way
about love - as nothing more than a sexual relationship. This is also backed up by the fact
that he was a strong catholic or protestant. His father was also a clergyman, and he was
not doubt raised with high principles on the sanctity of life and marriage.

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