Hamlet

Hamlet has fascinated audiences and readers for centuries, and the first thing to point out about him is that
he is enigmatic. There is always more to him than the other characters in the play can figure out; even the
most careful and clever readers come away with the sense that they don’t know everything there is to
know about this character. Hamlet actually tells other characters that there is more to him than meets the
eye—notably, his mother, and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern—but his fascination involves much more
than this. When he speaks, he sounds as if there’s something important he’s not saying, maybe something
even he is not aware of. The ability to write soliloquies and dialogues that create this effect is one of
Shakespeare’s most impressive achievements.
A university student whose studies are interrupted by his father’s death, Hamlet is extremely
philosophical and contemplative. He is particularly drawn to difficult questions or questions that cannot
be answered with any certainty. Faced with evidence that his uncle murdered his father, evidence that any
other character in a play would believe, Hamlet becomes obsessed with proving his uncle’s guilt before
trying to act. The standard of “beyond a reasonable doubt” is simply unacceptable to him. He is equally
plagued with questions about the afterlife, about the wisdom of suicide, about what happens to bodies
after they die—the list is extensive.
But even though he is thoughtful to the point of obsession, Hamlet also behaves rashly and impulsively.
When he does act, it is with surprising swiftness and little or no premeditation, as when he stabs Polonius
through a curtain without even checking to see who he is. He seems to step very easily into the role of a
madman, behaving erratically and upsetting the other characters with his wild speech and pointed
innuendos.
It is also important to note that Hamlet is extremely melancholy and discontented with the state of affairs
in Denmark and in his own family—indeed, in the world at large. He is extremely disappointed with his
mother for marrying his uncle so quickly, and he repudiates Ophelia, a woman he once claimed to love, in
the harshest terms. His words often indicate his disgust with and distrust of women in general. At a
number of points in the play, he contemplates his own death and even the option of suicide.
But, despite all of the things with which Hamlet professes dissatisfaction, it is remarkable that the prince
and heir apparent of Denmark should think about these problems only in personal and philosophical
terms. He spends relatively little time thinking about the threats to Denmark’s national security from
without or the threats to its stability from within (some of which he helps to create through his own
carelessness).

Revenge tragedy
Audiences watching Hamlet at the time it was first performed would recognize the play as belonging to a
particular genre: they didn’t have a name for it, but modern scholars call it “revenge tragedy.” In a
revenge tragedy the hero has suffered a great wrong, usually the murder of someone he loves, and the plot
is driven by his desire for revenge. At the end of the play, the hero murders the person who has wronged
him, and typically the hero also dies. The first really popular revenge tragedy was The Spanish Tragedy
by Thomas Kyd. It was written more than a decade before Hamlet, and it was still being performed when
Hamlet was first staged. Shakespeare’s audiences would have noticed that Hamlet borrows several
features from Kyd’s play, including a vengeful ghost, a play-within-a-play and a hero who goes mad. But

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rather than simply repeating the familiar conventions of the revenge tragedy, Hamlet subverts many of the
tropes to question both the genre of revenge tragedy, as well as the nature of revenge itself.
Hamlet turns revenge tragedy on its head by taking away the usual obstacles to the hero’s vengeance. In a
typical revenge tragedy like The Spanish Tragedy, the hero faces two obstacles: to find out who the
murderers are, and then to get himself into a position where he can kill them. In Hamlet, the hero learns
the identity of his father’s murderer at the end of Act I, and he’s in a position to kill Claudius from the
very beginning. No character thwarts him in his desire for revenge, and, living in the same palace as his
nemesis, he has many chances to enact his plot. Hamlet’s only real obstacle is in his head: he is uncertain
what he should believe and how he should act. By making the obstacles to Hamlet’s revenge internal,
Shakespeare introduces philosophical questions to the revenge tragedy which had not appeared in the
genre before. Can we believe the evidence of our eyes? Is revenge justified? Can we predict the
consequences of our actions? What happens when we die?
While Hamlet, being a tragedy, is generally seen as a very serious play, in some ways it seems to make
fun of the revenge tragedies that came before it. When Hamlet cries “Remorseless, treacherous,
lecherous, kindless Villain! / O, vengeance!” (II.ii.) he sounds like a sillier version of Hieronimo, the hero
of The Spanish Tragedy. The play-within-a-play staged in Act III, Scene 2 is a parody of a revenge
tragedy: its rhymes would have made it sound absurdly old-fashioned to an audience in Shakespeare’s
time. With the character of Laertes, Shakespeare pokes fun at the traditional heroes of revenge tragedy.
Unlike Hamlet, Laertes is ready to rush to his revenge, but Claudius is easily able to manipulate him and
Laertes ends up begging forgiveness from the man he wanted to murder. By making traditional revenge
tragedies look ridiculous, Shakespeare shows us that the troubling philosophical doubt of Hamlet is more
realistic than the passion and fury of plays like The Spanish Tragedy.
After Hamlet, the genre of revenge tragedy would never be taken entirely seriously again. Later revenge
tragedies follow Hamlet in using humor, especially humor at the expense of the revenge tragedy genre
itself. The best-known revenge tragedy written after Hamlet is The Revenger’s Tragedy, by Thomas
Middleton, which was first performed in 1606. Despite its title, The Revenger’s Tragedy is as much a
black comedy as a revenge tragedy. Its violence is deliberately over-the-top and its plot absurdly
complicated. Middleton was also influenced by Hamlet’s philosophical questions. Where Hamlet doubted
the morality of seeking revenge, Middleton’s hero Vindice is openly immoral in pursuing his: by the end
of the play Vindice is more a villain than a hero. Modern action movies also owe a great deal to Hamlet’s
comic take on the revenge plot. Movies like Kill Bill and John Wick share with Hamlet and The
Revenger’s Tragedy amoral heroes and complex revenge plots ending in comically gory action
sequences.

Claudius
Characters Claudius

Hamlet’s major antagonist is a shrewd, lustful, conniving king who contrasts sharply with the other male
characters in the play. Whereas most of the other important men in Hamlet are preoccupied with ideas of
justice, revenge, and moral balance, Claudius is bent upon maintaining his own power. The old King
Hamlet was apparently a stern warrior, but Claudius is a corrupt politician whose main weapon is his
ability to manipulate others through his skillful use of language. Claudius’s speech is compared to poison

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being poured in the ear—the method he used to murder Hamlet’s father. Claudius’s love for Gertrude
may be sincere, but it also seems likely that he married her as a strategic move, to help him win the throne
away from Hamlet after the death of the king. As the play progresses, Claudius’s mounting fear of
Hamlet’s insanity leads him to ever greater self-preoccupation; when Gertrude tells him that Hamlet has
killed Polonius, Claudius does not remark that Gertrude might have been in danger, but only that he
would have been in danger had he been in the room. He tells Laertes the same thing as he attempts to
soothe the young man’s anger after his father’s death. Claudius is ultimately too crafty for his own good.
In Act V, scene ii, rather than allowing Laertes only two methods of killing Hamlet, the sharpened sword
and the poison on the blade, Claudius insists on a third, the poisoned goblet. When Gertrude inadvertently
drinks the poison and dies, Hamlet is at last able to bring himself to kill Claudius, and the king is felled by
his own cowardly machination.

Gertrude
Characters Gertrude
Few Shakespearean characters have caused as much uncertainty as Gertrude, the beautiful Queen of
Denmark. The play seems to raise more questions about Gertrude than it answers, including: Was she
involved with Claudius before the death of her husband? Did she love her husband? Did she know about
Claudius’s plan to commit the murder? Did she love Claudius, or did she marry him simply to keep her
high station in Denmark? Does she believe Hamlet when he insists that he is not mad, or does she pretend
to believe him simply to protect herself? Does she intentionally betray Hamlet to Claudius, or does she
believe that she is protecting her son’s secret?
These questions can be answered in numerous ways, depending upon one’s reading of the play. The
Gertrude who does emerge clearly in Hamlet is a woman defined by her desire for station and affection,
as well as by her tendency to use men to fulfill her instinct for self-preservation—which, of course, makes
her extremely dependent upon the men in her life. Hamlet’s most famous comment about Gertrude is his
furious condemnation of women in general: “Frailty, thy name is woman!” (I.ii.146). This comment is as
much indicative of Hamlet’s agonized state of mind as of anything else, but to a great extent Gertrude
does seem morally frail. She never exhibits the ability to think critically about her situation, but seems
merely to move instinctively toward seemingly safe choices, as when she immediately runs to Claudius
after her confrontation with Hamlet. She is at her best in social situations (I.ii and V.ii), when her natural
grace and charm seem to indicate a rich, rounded personality. At times it seems that her grace and charm
are her only characteristics, and her reliance on men appears to be her sole way of capitalizing on her
abilities.

Ophelia
Characters Ophelia
Ophelia’s role in the play revolves around her relationships with three men. She is the daughter of
Polonius, the sister of Laertes, and up until the beginning of the play’s events, she has also been
romantically involved with Hamlet. Ophelia’s relationships with these men restrict her agency and
eventually lead to her death. From her very first scene, men tell Ophelia what to do. In Act One, scene
three, where we first meet her, Laertes and Polonius admonish Ophelia not to trust Hamlet’s expressions
of love. Despite the force of their warnings, Laertes and Polonius both trust Ophelia to make her own
decisions. However, as the question of Hamlet’s state of mind increasingly dire, Polonius tightens the
reins on his daughter. At the top of Act Three Polonius forces Ophelia to return Hamlet’s letters and

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renounce his affections. Ophelia obeys, but her action sends Hamlet into a fit of misogynistic rage. Soon
after, Hamlet mistakenly kills Polonius. The combination of her former lover’s cruelty and her father’s
death sends Ophelia into a fit of grief. In Act Four she spirals into madness and dies under ambiguous
circumstances. Ophelia’s tragedy lies in the way she loses her innocence through no fault of her own.

Polonius
Characters Polonius
Polonius is a proud and concerned father. In his first line he tells us he hesitates to let his son Laertes go
abroad, and he draws out his last meeting with Laertes because he’s reluctant to see him go. In the same
scene, Polonius advises his daughter Ophelia to avoid Hamlet because he’s worried about her. The secure
and happy family unit of Polonius, Laertes, and Ophelia provides a stark contrast with the dysfunctional
unit formed by Claudius, Gertrude, and Hamlet. The happiness of Polonius’s family is reflected in his
children’s reaction to his murder. Laertes passionately pursues revenge, and Ophelia feels so struck with
grief that she goes mad. At the same time, Polonius reveals himself to be a far from perfect father. He
sends Reynaldo to spy on his son, and he uses his daughter as bait to trick Hamlet. Polonius’s actions
suggest that in Hamlet, even relationships that seem loving are ambiguous, a fact which contributes to the
play’s atmosphere of doubt and uncertainty.
Polonius also provides Hamlet with its main source of comic relief. As a comic character, he consistently
shows himself less wise than he thinks. For instance, in Act Two he cleverly announces that “brevity is
the soul of wit” (II.ii.), but he does so in the middle of a tediously long speech. The fact that Polonius gets
himself so wrong contributes to one of Hamlet’s central themes: the challenge of self-certainty.
Polonius’s amusing lack of self-awareness serves as a comic foil to Hamlet’s existential struggle with
self-knowledge. In this sense Polonius offers an alternative and far less extreme perspective on the
impossibility of perfectly knowing oneself. This difference between Polonius and Hamlet results in a
powerful example of irony in Act Three, when Hamlet mistakenly kills Polonius, thinking it’s Claudius.
Whereas Polonius’s lack of self-awareness is ultimately harmless, Hamlet’s lack of self-certainty drives
him to his first act of violence, which completely and tragically misfires.

Is Hamlet really mad?

Hamlet may already be going mad when the play begins, and his later decision to fake madness is just a
cover for real insanity. The first line addressed to Hamlet is: “How is it that the clouds still hang on you?”
(I.ii.): Claudius thinks it’s strange and unhealthy that Hamlet is still grieving for his father. In the same
scene Hamlet tells us that he is wearing “solemn black” and a “dejected ‘havior” (I.ii.), which audiences
in Shakespeare’s time would have recognised as signs of “melancholy,” a condition which Renaissance
doctors believed could lead to madness. Although several characters see the Ghost during Act One, only
Hamlet hears it speak, which opens the possibility that the Ghost’s speech is a hallucination of Hamlet’s.
Later Hamlet wonders the same thing, asking whether the Ghost’s story was a trick played on him by the
Devil, “Out of my weakness and my melancholy, /As he is very potent with such spirits” (II.ii.). The
possibility that Hamlet is mad when the play begins forces us to question the truth of everything he says,
making his character even more mysterious.
Hamlet’s misogynistic behavior toward Gertrude and Ophelia can be seen as evidence that Hamlet really
is going mad, because these scenes have little to do with is quest for justice, and yet they seem to provoke
his strongest feelings. We see little evidence in the play that either Gertrude or Ophelia is guilty of any
wrongdoing, and they both appear to feel genuine affection and concern for Hamlet. Yet he treats them

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both with paranoia, suspicion, and cruelty, suggesting he has lost the ability to accurately interpret other
people’s motivations. Hamlet describes Gertrude’s marriage as “incestuous” (I.ii.), but no one else in the
play agrees with his opinion. Even though the Ghost instructs Hamlet not to “contrive against thy mother
aught” (I.v), Hamlet’s disgust with his mother’s sex life mounts as the play continues: when he finally
confronts Gertrude he paints a picture of her “honeying and making love over the nasty sty” (III.iii).
Hamlet demonstrates a similar attitude to Ophelia’s sexuality, telling her “Get thee to a nunnery” rather
than become “a breeder of sinners” (III.i). After giving Ophelia a long list of what he sees as women’s
faults, Hamlet confesses: “It hath made me mad” (III.i). The fact that Hamlet’s biggest emotional
outbursts are directed against the sexual feelings of the women in his life suggests that his mad behavior
is not just a ploy to disguise his revenge plans.
Despite the evidence that Hamlet is actually mad, we also see substantial evidence that he is just
pretending. The most obvious evidence is that Hamlet himself says he is going to pretend to be mad,
suggesting he is at least sane enough to be able to tell the difference between disordered and rational
behavior. Hamlet tells Horatio and Marcellus that he plans to “put an antic disposition on” (I.v). His
“mad” remarks to Polonius— “you are a fishmonger” (II.ii)—are too silly and sometimes too clever to be
genuinely mad: even Polonius notes “How pregnant sometimes his replies are” (II.ii.). Hamlet’s most
mad-seeming outburst, against Ophelia, may be explained by the fact that Claudius and Polonius are
spying on the conversation: if Hamlet suspects that he’s being spied on, he may be acting more deranged
than he really is for the benefit of his listeners. If Hamlet does know that Claudius and Polonius are
listening, the fact that he can instantly adjust his behavior points toward the idea that he has a firm grip on
reality and his own mind. Similarly, when Hamlet is sent to England, he acts skilfully and ruthlessly to
escape, which suggests that even at this late stage in the play he is capable of perfectly sane behavior. For
every piece of evidence that Hamlet is mad, we can also point to evidence that he’s sane, which
contributes to the mystery of Hamlet’s character.
By making the audience constantly question whether Hamlet is really mad or just pretending, Hamlet asks
us whether the line between reality and acting is as clear-cut as it seems. Hamlet tells us that he believes
the purpose of acting is “to hold, as ’twere, the mirror up to Nature” (III.ii), that is, to be as close to reality
as possible. The First Player cries as he delivers a sad speech, and Hamlet asks whether the Player’s
pretended feelings are stronger than his own real feelings, since Hamlet’s feelings are not strong enough
to make him cry. Hamlet seems to believe that acting can be as real, or realer, than real-life emotion,
which raises the possibility that by pretending to be mad, Hamlet has actually caused his own mental
breakdown. Another interpretation could be that Hamlet acts mad as a way to express the strong,
troubling emotions he can’t allow himself to feel when he’s sane, just as the actor can cry easily when
playing a role. Throughout the play, Hamlet struggles to determine which role he should play—
thoughtful, reticent scholar, or revenge-minded, decisive heir to the throne—and by acting both parts,
Hamlet explores what his true role should be. Hamlet forces us to question what the truth is: how can we
tell between reality and pretense?

Plot Analysis
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, whether it is better to act decisively or
let nature take its course, and ultimately if anything we do in our time on earth makes any difference.
Once he learns his uncle has killed his father, Hamlet feels duty-bound to take decisive action, but he has
so many doubts about his situation and even about his own feelings that he cannot decide what action to
take. The conflict that drives the plot of Hamlet is almost entirely internal: Hamlet wrestles with his own

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doubt and uncertainty in search of something he believes strongly enough to act on. The play’s events are
side-effects of this internal struggle. Hamlet’s attempts to gather more evidence of Claudius’s guilt alert
Claudius to Hamlet’s suspicions, and as Hamlet’s internal struggle deepens, he begins to act impulsively
out of frustration, eventually murdering Polonius by mistake. The conflict of Hamlet is never resolved:
Hamlet cannot finally decide what to believe or what action to take. This lack of resolution makes the
ending of Hamlet especially horrifying: nearly all the characters are dead, but nothing has been solved.
The play’s exposition shows us that Hamlet is in the midst of three crises: his nation is under attack, his
family is falling apart, and he feels deeply unhappy. The Ghost of the old king of Denmark appears on the
castle battlements, and the soldiers who see it believe it must be a bad omen for the kingdom. They
discuss the preparations being made against the threat from the Norwegian prince, Fortinbras. The next
scene deepens our sense that Denmark is in political crisis, as Claudius prepares a diplomatic strategy to
divert the threat from Fortinbras. We also learn that as far as Hamlet is concerned, his family is in crisis:
his father is dead and his mother has married someone Hamlet disapproves of. Hamlet is also
experiencing an internal crisis. Gertrude and Claudius are worried about his mood, and in his first
soliloquy we discover that he feels suicidal: “O that this too, too sullied flesh would melt” (I.ii.).
The three crises of the play’s opening—in the kingdom, in Hamlet’s family, and in Hamlet’s mind—lay
the groundwork for the play’s inciting incident: the Ghost’s demand that Hamlet avenge his father’s
death. Hamlet accepts at once that it is his duty to take revenge, and the audience can also see that
Hamlet’s revenge would go some way to resolving the play’s three crises. By killing Claudius, Hamlet
could in one stroke remove a weak and immoral king, extract his mother from what he sees as a bad
marriage, and make himself king of Denmark. Throughout the inciting incident, however, there are hints
that Hamlet’s revenge will be derailed by an internal struggle. The Ghost warns him: “Taint not thy mind
nor let thy soul contrive/Against thy mother aught” (I.v.). When Horatio and Marcellus catch up to
Hamlet after the Ghost’s departure, Hamlet is already talking in such a deranged way that Horatio
describes it as “wild and whirling” (I.v.), and Hamlet tells them that he may fake an “antic disposition”
(I.v.). The audience understands that the coming conflict will not be between Hamlet and Claudius but
between Hamlet and his own mind.
For the whole of the second act—the play’s rising action—Hamlet delays his revenge by pretending to be
mad. We learn from Ophelia that Hamlet is behaving as if he is mad with love for her. We see him make
fun of Polonius by talking nonsense which contains half-hidden jokes at Polonius’s expense. Hamlet tells
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern that he has “lost all [his] mirth” (II.ii.). Only at the end of Act 2 do we
learn the reason for Hamlet’s delaying tactics: he cannot work out his true feelings about his duty to take
revenge. First, he tells us, he doesn’t feel as angry and vengeful as he thinks he should: “I[…]Peak like
John-a-dreams, unpregnant of my cause” (II.ii.). Second, he’s worried that the Ghost wasn’t really a ghost
but a devil trying to trick him. He decides he needs more evidence of Claudius’s crime: “I’ll have
grounds/More relative than this” (II.ii.).
As the rising action builds toward a climax, Hamlet’s internal struggle deepens until he starts to show
signs of really going mad. At the same time Claudius becomes suspicious of Hamlet, which creates an
external pressure on Hamlet to act. Hamlet begins Act Three debating whether or not to kill himself: “To
be or not to be—that is the question” (III.i.), and moments later he hurls misogynistic abuse at Ophelia.
He is particularly upset about women’s role in marriage and childbirth—“Why wouldst thou be a breeder
of sinners?” (III.i.)—which reminds the audience of Hamlet’s earlier disgust with his own mother and her
second marriage. The troubling development of Hamlet’s misogynistic feelings makes us wonder how
much Hamlet’s desire to kill Claudius is fuelled by the need to avenge his father’s death, and how much
his desire fuelled by Hamlet’s resentment of Claudius for taking his mother away from him. Claudius,

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who is eavesdropping on Hamlet’s tirade, becomes suspicious that Hamlet’s madness presents “some
danger” (III.i.) and decides to have Hamlet sent away: Hamlet is running out of time to take his revenge.
The play’s climax arrives when Hamlet stages a play to “catch the conscience of the king” (II.ii.) and get
conclusive evidence of Claudius’s guilt. By now, however, Hamlet seems to have truly gone mad. His
own behavior at the play is so provocative that when Claudius does respond badly to the play it’s unclear
whether he feels guilty about his crime or angry with Hamlet. As Claudius tries to pray, Hamlet has yet
another chance to take his revenge, and we learn that Hamlet’s apparent madness has not ended his
internal struggle over what to do: he decides not to kill Claudius for now, this time because of the risk that
Claudius will go to heaven if he dies while praying. Hamlet accuses Gertrude of being involved in his
father’s death, but he’s acting so erratically that Gertrude thinks her son is simply “mad […] as the sea
and wind/When they each contend which is the mightier” (III.iv). Again, the audience cannot know
whether Gertrude says these lines as a cover for her own guilt, or because she genuinely has no idea what
Hamlet is talking about, and thinks her son is losing his mind. Acting impulsively or madly, Hamlet
mistakes Polonius for Claudius and kills him.
The play’s falling action deals with the consequences of Polonius’s death. Hamlet is sent away, Ophelia
goes mad and Laertes returns from France to avenge his father’s death. When Hamlet comes back to
Elsinore, he no longer seems to be concerned with revenge, which he hardly mentions after this point in
the play. His internal struggle is not over, however. Now Hamlet contemplates death, but he is unable to
come to any conclusion about the meaning or purpose of death, or to resign himself to his own death. He
is, however, less squeamish about killing innocent people, and reports to Horatio how he signed the death
warrants of Rosencranz and Guildenstern to save his own life. Claudius and Laertes plot to kill Hamlet,
but the plot goes awry. Gertrude is poisoned by mistake, Laertes and Hamlet are both poisoned, and as he
dies Hamlet finally murders Claudius. Taking his revenge does not end Hamlet’s internal struggle. He
still has lots to say: “If I had time […] O I could tell you— / But let it be” (V.ii.) and he asks Horatio to
tell his story when he is dead. In the final moments of the play the new king, Fortinbras, agrees with this
request: “Let us haste to hear it” (V.ii.). Hamlet’s life is over, but the struggle to decide the truth about
Hamlet and his life is not.

Themes:
Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas explored in a literary work.
The Impossibility of Certainty
What separates Hamlet from other revenge plays (and maybe from every play written before it) is that the
action we expect to see, particularly from Hamlet himself, is continually postponed while Hamlet tries to
obtain more certain knowledge about what he is doing. This play poses many questions that other plays
would simply take for granted. Can we have certain knowledge about ghosts? Is the ghost what it appears
to be, or is it really a misleading fiend? Does the ghost have reliable knowledge about its own death, or is
the ghost itself deluded? Moving to more earthly matters: How can we know for certain the facts about a
crime that has no witnesses? Can Hamlet know the state of Claudius’s soul by watching his behavior? If
so, can he know the facts of what Claudius did by observing the state of his soul? Can Claudius (or the
audience) know the state of Hamlet’s mind by observing his behavior and listening to his speech? Can we
know whether our actions will have the consequences we want them to have? Can we know anything
about the afterlife?
Many people have seen Hamlet as a play about indecisiveness, and thus about Hamlet’s failure to act
appropriately. It might be more interesting to consider that the play shows us how many uncertainties our

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lives are built upon, how many unknown quantities are taken for granted when people act or when they
evaluate one another’s actions.
The Complexity of Action
Directly related to the theme of certainty is the theme of action. How is it possible to take reasonable,
effective, purposeful action? In Hamlet, the question of how to act is affected not only by rational
considerations, such as the need for certainty, but also by emotional, ethical, and psychological factors.
Hamlet himself appears to distrust the idea that it’s even possible to act in a controlled, purposeful way.
When he does act, he prefers to do it blindly, recklessly, and violently. The other characters obviously
think much less about “action” in the abstract than Hamlet does, and are therefore less troubled about the
possibility of acting effectively. They simply act as they feel is appropriate. But in some sense they prove
that Hamlet is right, because all of their actions miscarry. Claudius possesses himself of queen and crown
through bold action, but his conscience torments him, and he is beset by threats to his authority (and, of
course, he dies). Laertes resolves that nothing will distract him from acting out his revenge, but he is
easily influenced and manipulated into serving Claudius’s ends, and his poisoned rapier is turned back
upon himself.

The Mystery of Death

In the aftermath of his father’s murder, Hamlet is obsessed with the idea of death, and over the course of
the play he considers death from a great many perspectives. He ponders both the spiritual aftermath of
death, embodied in the ghost, and the physical remainders of the dead, such as by Yorick’s skull and the
decaying corpses in the cemetery. Throughout, the idea of death is closely tied to the themes of
spirituality, truth, and uncertainty in that death may bring the answers to Hamlet’s deepest questions,
ending once and for all the problem of trying to determine truth in an ambiguous world. And, since death
is both the cause and the consequence of revenge, it is intimately tied to the theme of revenge and justice
—Claudius’s murder of King Hamlet initiates Hamlet’s quest for revenge, and Claudius’s death is the end
of that quest.
The question of his own death plagues Hamlet as well, as he repeatedly contemplates whether or not
suicide is a morally legitimate action in an unbearably painful world. Hamlet’s grief and misery is such
that he frequently longs for death to end his suffering, but he fears that if he commits suicide, he will be
consigned to eternal suffering in hell because of the Christian religion’s prohibition of suicide. In his
famous “To be or not to be” soliloquy (III.i), Hamlet philosophically concludes that no one would choose
to endure the pain of life if he or she were not afraid of what will come after death, and that it is this fear
which causes complex moral considerations to interfere with the capacity for action.

The Nation as a Diseased Body

Everything is connected in Hamlet, including the welfare of the royal family and the health of the state as
a whole. The play’s early scenes explore the sense of anxiety and dread that surrounds the transfer of
power from one ruler to the next. Throughout the play, characters draw explicit connections between the
moral legitimacy of a ruler and the health of the nation. Denmark is frequently described as a physical
body made ill by the moral corruption of Claudius and Gertrude, and many observers interpret the
presence of the ghost as a supernatural omen indicating that “[s]omething is rotten in the state of
Denmark” (I.iv.67). The dead King Hamlet is portrayed as a strong, forthright ruler under whose guard
the state was in good health, while Claudius, a wicked politician, has corrupted and compromised

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Denmark to satisfy his own appetites. At the end of the play, the rise to power of the upright Fortinbras
suggests that Denmark will be strengthened once again.

Performance
Hamlet includes many references to performance of all kinds – both theatrical performance and the way
people perform in daily life. In his first appearance, Hamlet draws a distinction between outward behavior
— “actions that a man might play”— and real feelings: “that within which passeth show” (I.ii.). However,
the more time we spend with Hamlet the harder it becomes to tell what he is really feeling and what he is
performing. He announces in Act One scene five that he is going to pretend to be mad (“put an antic
disposition on”.) In Act Two scene one, Ophelia describes Hamlet’s mad behavior as a comical
performance. However, when Hamlet tells Rosencrantz and Guildenstern that “I have lost all my mirth,”
he seems genuinely depressed. Generations of readers have argued about whether Hamlet is really mad or
just performing madness. It’s impossible to know for sure – by the end of the play, even Hamlet himself
doesn’t seem to know the difference between performance and reality.
Hamlet further explores the idea of performance by regularly reminding the audience that we are
watching a play. When Polonius says that at university he “did enact Julius Caesar” (III.ii), contemporary
audiences would have thought of Shakespeare’s own Julius Caesar, which was written around the same
time as Hamlet. The actor who played Polonius may have played Julius Caesar as well. The device of the
play within the play gives Hamlet further opportunities to comment on the nature of theater. By
constantly reminding the audience that what we’re watching is a performance, Hamlet invites us to think
about the fact that something fake can feel real, and vice versa. Hamlet himself points out that acting is
powerful because it’s indistinguishable from reality: “The purpose of playing […] is to hold as ’twere the
mirror up to Nature” (III.ii.). That’s why he believes that the Players can “catch the conscience of the
King” (II.ii.). By repeatedly showing us that performance can feel real, Hamlet makes us question what
“reality” actually is.
Madness
One of the central questions of Hamlet is whether the main character has lost his mind or is only
pretending to be mad. Hamlet’s erratic behavior and nonsensical speech can be interpreted as a ruse to get
the other characters to believe he’s gone mad. On the other hand, his behavior may be a logical response
to the “mad” situation he finds himself in – his father has been murdered by his uncle, who is now his
stepfather. Initially, Hamlet himself seems to believe he’s sane – he describes his plans to “put an antic
disposition on” and tells Rosencrantz and Guildenstern he is only mad when the wind blows “north-north-
west” – in other words, his madness is something he can turn on and off at will. By the end of the play,
however, Hamlet seems to doubt his own sanity. Referring to himself in the third person, he says “And
when he’s not himself does harm Laertes,” suggesting Hamlet has become estranged from his former,
sane self. Referring to his murder of Polonius he says “Who does it then? His madness.” At the same
time, Hamlet’s excuse of madness absolves him of murder, so can also be read as the workings of a sane
and cunning mind.
Doubt
In Hamlet, the main character’s doubt creates a world where very little is known for sure. Hamlet thinks,
but isn’t entirely sure, his uncle killed his father. He believes he sees his father’s Ghost, but isn’t certain
he should believe in the Ghost or listen to what the Ghost tells him: “I’ll have grounds / More relative
than this.” In his “to be or not to be” soliloquy Hamlet suspects he should probably just kill himself, but
doubt about what lies beyond the grave prevents him from acting. Hamlet is so wracked with doubt he

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even works to infect other characters with his lack of certainty, as when he tells Ophelia “you should not
have believed me” when he told her he loved her. As a result, the audience doubts Hamlet’s reliability as
a protagonist. We are left with many doubts about the action – whether Gertrude was having an affair
with Claudius before he killed Hamlet’s father; whether Hamlet is sane or mad; what Hamlet’s true
feelings are for Ophelia.

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