Most of the attention in William Shakespeare's Hamlet is directed toward the play's namesake the Prince of Denmark or at the least King Claudius, the villainous uncle who murdered his brother and seduced his wife. Critics and readers alike...

Hamlet and Macbeth are two of William Shakespeare's most famous plays. Each share not only fame, however, but format: Both feature main characters with tragic flaws that become their demise. In the cases of Hamlet and Macbeth, this flaw is...

By the end of Hamlet, six people--not including Hamlet himself--are dead. It has been asserted that the sole reason for the bloodshed was Hamlet's inability to take speedy revenge on the king. However, a close examination into the circumstances...

Hamlet is a play about a young man’s journey to self-discovery through an intense examination of his spirituality, morality, and purpose on earth. Prince Hamlet’s encounter with the ghost of his murdered father prompts this path to...

Hamlet’s soliloquy in Act 1 Scene II is his first of the play and, as a consequence, allows the audience to see his inner thoughts for the first time. The subjects of this soliloquy are numerous: his father’s death, his mother’s response to this...

Several of Shakespeare’s plays, including historical and tragedy, involve the political intrigue which results in the killing of a king. While the action revolving around this event may involve many more obvious themes, it is interesting to note...

A statistician would balk at the idea of analyzing women in Hamlet: as there are only two members of the fairer sex in the entire cast, surely any observations drawn are unreliable. However, when approaching Hamlet, it is best to remember that...

Shakespeare’s plays employ many allusions to religious stories and beliefs. Hamlet and Measure for Measure, for example, both address religious themes and incorporate religious imagery. However, Shakespeare’s personal religious beliefs have never...

In the introduction for Hamlet in William Shakespeare: A Textual Companion, Gary Taylor writes that “of all the two-text plays, Hamlet comes closest to Lear in the scale and complexity of the textual variation apparently resulting from authorial...

Deception is a critical component of Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Its appears most significantly in Claudius concealing murder and Hamlet concealing knowledge of the same. Hamlet also feigns madness in order to misguide others and attempt to prove...

Ophelia’s situation in Shakespeare’s Hamlet not only invokes pity in the reader but also provides an example of the nature of men and women and accentuates Hamlet’s tragic flaws. Shakespeare so beautifully links the female with the liquid,...

When Hamlet’s father orders him to kill Claudius, Hamlet’s reaction is one of questioning and disbelief. While he feels strongly about the murder of his father and yearns to discover the killer, he harbors suspicions about the truth behind the...

Why has Hamlet captivated actors, critics and audiences for centuries? What makes Hamlet himself so mysterious? Unlike most characters, who are defined by what can be seen on stage, Hamlet appears to be “constructed around an unseen or secret...

In the aftermath of Old Hamlet’s demise, Hamlet cannot think of anything other than death, and over the course of the play he considers it from various points of view. The inquiry of his own death plagues Hamlet as he constantly considers whether...

Metatheatre, a form of self-reflexivity in drama, plays a pivotal role in Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Tom Stoppard’s parodic version, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. Self-reflexivity is conveyed through metatheatrical scenes, or scenes that...

In order to truly appreciate life, or recognize its value, one must be able to comprehend the powerful finality that accompanies death. Furthermore, there also must be comprehension of this topic when seeking to destroy and inflict death on...

In an excerpt from Sir Robert Filmer’s The Natural Power of Kings, the defined paternal positions of father and king are inextricably synonymous. In the periods in which William Shakespeare’s plays Hamlet, Prince of Denmark and King Lear both...

Insanity is defined as doing something over and over again and expecting a different outcome. In Shakespeare'sHamlet, the young and not fully matureHamlet might be thought of asinsane. However, althoughhe says and doesthings that are out of the...

I. Introduction

Past critics have deemed Ophelia an insignificant and marginal character in Shakespeare’s Hamlet, functioning only to further define Hamlet. One such critic, Jacques Lacan, interprets Ophelia as a mere object of Hamlet’s sexual...

Tom Stoppards Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead is a postmodernist adaptation of the lives of two seemingly appurtenant characters from Shakespeares Hamlet. In the story, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern search for meaning in their isolated...

Controversial issues such as incest and murder are tough to discuss and even more difficult to resolve. Literature often employs such realities to leave the reader in a state of thought, rarely offering answers or even stances on the issues. In...

In Western literature, sacrifice is often regarded as a noble act because it invokes the powerful image of Christ's death. Many writers throughout history have used this familiar association to reprimand the prevalence of selfishness in the human...

Implicit in the schema of Hamlet lies the idea that an immoral world order has established itself, imposing political and social significance onto the once purely corporeal sense and function of ears and hearing. Although one must necessarily rely...

A common interpretation of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, based on the widely read Folio edition of the text, is that the titular character is motivated by darkness, exhibiting depression and suicidal tendencies. The young prince often refers to suicide,...