Like Hamlet, we all have difficulty translating thought to action, but I have learned that this problem gets easier the better you know who you are.
had been staged by some of England's best-known actors.
Hamlet wants to find out who the ghost is and why it is coasting around at night. Hamlet has heard from the guards that work nights that there is a mess in Denmark. So being brave, Hamlet goes along with the guards one night and mets up with his father's spirit.
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, who are old schoolfriends of Hamlet's are called upon by the king to spy on Hamlet in order to find out what is bothering him. Hamlet, however, figures out why they are there, gets them to confess it and tells them what he guesses to be their business. He then lets out some vague and quite misleading hints as to what is on his mind (the "what a piece of work is man" speech.)
William Shakespeare
In Act five, scene one of Hamlet, we hear this conversation between Hamlet and the gravedigger: Hamlet: How long hast thou been a grave-maker? Gravedigger: Of all the days i' the year, I came to't that day our last King Hamlet overcame Fortinbras. Hamlet: How long is that since? Gravedigger: Cannot you tell that? Every fool can tell that: it was the very day young Hamlet was born. Later, the gravedigger says, "I have been sexton here, man and boy, thirty years." The conclusion is that since the gravedigger started work on Hamlet's birthday and he has been working for thirty years, Hamlet must be thirty years old.
Hamlet was based on a Scandinavian legend that was later adapted into a play by William Shakespeare.
Niccolò Machiavelli did not write "The Duchess of Malfi." The play "The Duchess of Malfi" was written by John Webster in 1613 about a widowed duchess who secretly marries her steward. Machiavelli was an Italian political philosopher known for his work "The Prince" which explores political power and leadership.
His first plan is to send Hamlet off to England along with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. R & G will have orders to have the English execute Hamlet. That doesn't work out, however, so Claudius then proposes to make use of Laertes's desire to avenge his father's death, and have Laertes kill Hamlet. Or if that doesn't work out, Claudius proposes to poison Hamlet.
The play "Hamlet" is based on a Danish legend that was also adapted into a play called "Ur-Hamlet" before Shakespeare wrote his version.
Who says Hamlet is 17? The gravedigger says (V,i, 150) that he started work as a gravedigger "the very day young Hamlet was born", and later (V,i, 164) "I have been sexton here, man and boy, thirty years". Which means of course that Hamlet is 30.
The degree of relationship between Hamlet and Ophelia is quite unknown to the reader, although it is somewhat suggested in the text that they were, in fact, together. This subplot shows that when Hamlet pretends to be - or actually does become - insane that it effects Ophelia on a very deep level. The rejection Ophelia is given by Hamlet sends her into insanity - and in the end suicide. This is an aspect of irony, something Shakespeare liked to use in his work. By pretending to be insane, Hamlet causes Ophelia to actually become insane - a type of casualty caused by Hamlet's need to know the truth about his father's death.
Hamlet
As the King in Shakespeare's Hamlet, Fortinbras's first political action is to appoint people who will work under him.
The Hamlet story got into popular culture by means of Belleforest's telling of the tale. However, many scholars believe that there may have been an earlier Hamlet play (which they call the Ur-Hamlet) which was the direct source for Shakespeare's work. There is an intriguing German play on the Hamlet story called Der Brudermord (The Brother-killer) which appears to have been translated from an Elizabethan revenge play very much in the style of Kyd's Spanish Tragedy. Was this the Ur-Hamlet? Could be.
The ghost of Old Hamlet warns Hamlet to not scold Gertrude. Hamlet was warned earlier "leaver her to heaven" (V v) and was warned later in the third act. The ghost warned Hamlet probably for one of two reasons, he still loved her or trying to change Gertrude would not work and who tried would go mad.
As they were cheats right from the start, this relation will not last long.