Hamlet Lesson Plan

Suicide in Hamlet

Kind of Activity:

Individual Writing

Objective:

Students will demonstrate an ability to support an assertion by citing specific textual evidence.

Common Core Standards:

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.11-12.1

Structure:

The true nature of Ophelia's death in Act IV is one of the unsolved "mysteries" in Hamlet - was it an accident, or was it suicide?

The specter of suicide hangs over most of the action of Hamlet. Hamlet expresses suicidal thoughts a mere four lines into his first soliloquy in Act I, and suicide is the focus of his "To be or not to be" speech in Act III. As with the case of Ophelia's death,...