Hamlet Study Guide
Hamlet Study Guide
Hamlet Study Guide
● Fool/Knave
● Senses—Particularly hearing
○ The ears and the act of hearing is a motif that runs throughout Hamlet, which
enhances the theme of “appearance versus reality.” Words and conversations are
status and power. This is also symbolic of the poison in her ear.
● Structure of Text:
○ Like all of Shakespeare’s tragedies, Hamlet is written mostly in verse, but over
30% of the lines are in prose, which is the highest percentage of any of the
tragedies. One reason for the high amount of prose is that Hamlet has more comic
the gravedigger, and often Hamlet himself all make jokes, while Polonius has
jokes made at his expense in almost every one of his scenes. Shakespeare
preferred to use verse when he was tackling serious themes, and prose when he
scene.
○ Hamlet’s frequent switching between verse and prose is part of what makes the
style of the play feel evasive. Hamlet’s facility with both prose and verse, and
tendency to alternate between the two styles, also underscores the sense of him as
a character who is of two minds, or who is not quite sure who he is, so adopts
different speaking manners trying to figure out how to really sound like himself.
○ Another reason why Shakespeare switches between verse and prose is to mark the
difference between careful speech and disordered speech. In Act III, Scene 1,
Hamlet begins by speaking in verse. His famous soliloquy, “To be or not to be”
(III.i.), expresses a complex, ordered thought which Hamlet seems to have been
mulling for some time. When Ophelia enters and tries to return the presents
Hamlet has given her, he switches abruptly to prose. His switch to prose shows us
that Hamlet is no longer thinking clearly, and we understand that Ophelia has
○ One reason Hamlet has more prose than most of Shakespeare’s tragedies is that
Hamlet spends a large part of the play pretending to be crazy. In those scenes,
Likewise, when Ophelia actually goes mad, she too speaks in prose (when she’s
not singing). The effect of a character speaking prose when mad is also evident in
Macbeth, where Lady Macbeth speaks in nonsense prose as she loses her grip on
reality at the end of the play, and also in King Lear, where Lear speaks in
Members of the nobility, like Claudius, almost always speak in verse, but
commoners like the gravedigger use prose. When Hamlet speaks in prose to
with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, but he does not trust or respect them enough
● Foil characters:
Hamlet is not. (We can hear the Ghost now: "Why can't you be more like
also need to avenge their fathers, and they both take care of business in a big way:
Fortinbras tries to wage a war against Denmark, while Laertes runs home from
Paris to stage a revolution in his dead father's honor. Contrast this with Hamlet’s
continuous inaction.
Polonius), and two sets of children (Hamlet and Laertes/Ophelia). What we are
trying to say here is that family #1 is a foil for family #2. The relationships
between parents and their children are portrayed in two different ways: first,
his father (lots of advice involved, the question of revenge), and second, Polonius'
parallels are by no means perfect, but the mirroring structure can raise questions
about the universality of the kinds of relationships the play depicts. Doesn't
everyone have a parent who misunderstands them? Doesn't everyone receive
○ Ophelia to Gertrude—There are only two women in the play: Hamlet's mother,
dichotomy to establish the two women as foils to each other. Ophelia is a maiden
and an obedient daughter to Polonius; Gertrude (in the eyes of Hamlet, anyway)
has a sexual "appetite" and "hasty" remarriage that mark her as promiscuous and
Gertrude, and he's biased. What really makes these ladies foils is that they're both
women who die because of the power machinations of men who control them.
○ The main concept of the Great Chain of Being is that every existing thing in the
depends on the amount of spirit and importance in society it has. The chain
nobles, regular humans, animals, plants, and many other objects of nature.
According to this theory, all existing things have their specific function in the
universe, and causing any kind of disorder on the higher links of this chain courts
murder of Claudius.
○ Claudius moved up the chain of being through killing King Hamlet and taking his
place.
○ Fortinbras plans to take over Denmark, significantly increasing his position and
influence.
○ Hamlet says in his Act IV soliloquy, “What is a man if his chief good and market
○ Hamlet says in his Act I soliloquy, “O God, a beast that wants discourse of reason
would have mourned longer!” Comparing Gertrude to less than an animal (several
steps down from her position in the chain) because of her lack of remorse for
● 5 Stages of Grief:
○ DENIAL: Though Hamlet does not go through the stage of denial, it is evident
starting in act one, scene two, that the royal family is very much in denial of how
characterized by loss of judgment and simple rage at either the event in which
they are grieving, others, and/or themselves. Anger is often associated with
madness as it impedes the objective observation skills and, like insanity, can cloud
the mind with anything but the truth. (Santrock, 57) The angriest character in all
of Hamlet is the title character himself, Hamlet. Hamlet's anger is especially clear
in his rash dealings with his family, which he is supposed to be bonding with
over this shared grief, his visions of his father as a ghost, and his violent outbursts
against the denizens of his kingdom. When he enters his mother's chambers in act
three, scene four, he shows many signs of madness and anger, including visions of
violence inciting figures, lashing out against his mother, and the murder of
similar stages of grieving that as seen in Hamlet, can happen at the same time.
reason why Hamlet could not have been experiencing both of these stages at once.
In fact, Hamlet seems to have drifted in and out of these stages in between going
through anger and acceptance. (Santrock 58, 59) In act one, scene two, Hamlet
his life away completely, because he is too saddened and maddened by all of this
individuals come to terms with the fate they are handed, whether it be death, loss,
or a reminder of their mortality. (Santrock, 60) The final scene before Fortinbras
through their passing through the stage of acceptance. Every action, the voluntary
drinking of the cup that Claudius does, Laertes' last words to Hamlet, Gertrude's
voluntary drinking of the cup so Hamlet would live a bit longer, they all seemed