Hamlet

The clowns are just grave diggers (everyday civilian) who are digging Ophelia's grave at the time.

Hamlet wants to revenge his father's death, and feels that it his duty as a son to kill Claudius. The dilemma in this soliloquy is, if he follows through then he has committed the sin of murder and would go to purgatory.

Claudius is not a full-blooded villain like Aaron in Titus Andronicus or Richard III in Richard III. He has committed murder, fratricide no less, because of his love and desire for his brother's wife. This is a very bad thing, but it appears that this is really the only bad thing he has done.

However, Hamlet's provocative and dangerous behaviour (which results in the death of Claudius's close advisor) makes him someone who cannot be safely left alive. "Do it, England", says Claudius, "for like the hectic in my blood he rages and thou must cure me. 'Til I know 'tis done, howe'er my haps, my joys were ne'er begun."

Laertes, on the other hand, is someone who is motivated, not by love or questions of safety for himself or the state, but out of revenge. He is the person who acts like we imagine the ghost wants Hamlet to act. So long as he can kill his man, he will "cut his throat i' the church".

If we step back from this, we may ask, what do we consider to be the best way to deal with killers like Hamlet? For Hamlet has certainly killed Polonius, and he had no right to do so. Should it be the job of the son of the deceased to get the killer back? Is revenge laudable in a civilized society? Or rather do we not say that the disposition of murderers should be left to the government, which in a monarchy is the king? From this perspective, Laertes's plot on Hamlet's life is much more villainous than Claudius's.

The gravedigger, not Hamlet, discovers the skull of the jester Yorick, who Hamlet knew as a child, and has been dead for many years.

It's called Elsinore in the play. The real-life city is Helsingør, a coastal city and regional capital in eastern Denmark. It was never actually the capital of the country, as it is in the play.

"Rosencrantz: To think, my lord, that if you delight not in man, what lenten entertainment the players shall receive from you. We coted them on the way, and hither are they coming to offer you service."

Hamlet didn't write any letters to Laertes--ah, you mean "Did Claudius read the letter Hamlet wrote to Claudius out loud to Laertes?" I confess that it is difficult to phrase this question so it is unambiguous. Yes, Claudius reads the letter he got from Hamlet out loud to Laertes and asks whether Laertes can explain it.

If R & G were on their toes they might pick up a lot from Hamlet's conversations with them in Act 2, although it may not be important. They must know, for example, that he holds Polonius in contempt. However, it is tricky to know when Hamlet is being serious or when he's just fooling around. "Denmark's a prison"--what does that convey? Only that Hamlet resents not being able to go back to Wittenberg?

The remark that really sticks out here is "I am mad only north-by-northwest; when the wind is southerly I know a hawk from a handsaw." He's telling them that he's faking his madness, but it's a crazy-sounding sentence, and it comes out of the blue.

Generations of Shakespeare scholars, with more evidence to go on than R & G had, have been unable to say definitively whether Hamlet was really mad or whether he was faking it. You can hardly blame R & G for not being sure whether this remark is an admission.

The mood in the room before the inspector enters is tension from Eric and Birling's jokes on him. The mood was also warm when the engagementparty was on.

nothing

I felt really crestfallen after knowing that i have failed my examinations.

Claudius is not indisicive like Hamlet is. Claudous decieds that he wants a kigndom and a girl. BAM He kills Hamlet's father and gets both. However Hamlet can't decide on anything. He can't even decide whether to live or not. "To be or not to be..."

Hamlet thinks all kinds of bad things about his mother. He thinks she is disrespectful of her husband ("A beast that wants discourse of reason would have mourned longer"), an adultress (the ghost says so), guilty of incest (the ghost says that too), and complicit in his father's murder. ("almost as bad, dear mother, as to kill a king and marry with his brother.")

Polonius is a character, not a theme. And what tells us about the characters in the play is 1. What they do, 2. What they say about themselves and 3. What others say about them, in that order.

Macbeth's desire for power.

some people may think they are living in a hamlet because their village doesn't have any shops. a hamlet is a settlement which consists of only 2-4 houses. some small groups of houses that are close to a village are often thought to be hamlets when they are actually considered to be part of a village. there are very few hamlets around these days. it could also be a breakfast item

Hamlet always questions that life is evil / bad and can turn on a dime ("the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune") and of course his whole rant about women being evil "god hath given you one face and you make yourselves another . . . you jig and you amble and you nickname gods creatures . ." Then, he goes so far as to say he IS evil and wishes that his mother had never had him. He wants Ophelia to "get thee to a nunnery" because he cannot handle the thought of anymore evil people being born. ("breed a race of sinners.)He also says finally to Laertes, "I pray thee take thy hands from my neck . . .I have something within in me that you . . .should fear."

Hamlet stabs Claudius with a poisoned sword, but only the tip is poisonous and it is dubious whether Laertes' poisoned tip cuts the king as King Claudius cries out for help claiming he is only hurt. Hamlet then holds him down and forces him to drink the last of the poisoned wine that had been intended for Hamlet, but his mother, the queen, drank it and died. Laertes says the king "is justly served; It is a poison temper'd by himself. [the king]" Implying Laertes' poison didn't kill Claudius, Claudius's poison killed himself, just as Laertes was slain by his own posion from the sword.

So, Hamlet kills Claudius by making him drink a cup of poisoned wine that Claudius had intended for Hamlet.

Hamlet is a play written by William Shakespeare in about 1601. It is the most famous play ever in any language in the world. The play is about a prince in Denmark who finds that his uncle has married his mother and murdered his father (but not in that order) and who has been told by the ghost of his father that he must avenge the murder by killing his uncle. Sounds straightforward, right? Except that it is much more complicated than that, and anything one person says about it someone else is sure to disagree with.

Ophelia is a good character in the sense that she is well-written and interesting.

The character of Ophelia is also basically a good person. When she gets involved in things like helping her father spy on Hamlet, she does it because she is weak and easily browbeaten. She hurts Hamlet just as much through her weakness as she would through malice, but she is not malicious.

He loves and trusts him more than anyone else. He appreciates Horatio's learning and his outsider status in Elsinore. With his dying words, he urges him to live on for him. He's willing to treat him as an equal, but Horatio can't get over their class differences.

Fencing is the most important one to the plot. He's clearly into reading and philosophy, and is an amateur actor and general enthusiast of the theater. He may know to play the recorder.

I think Horatio is the pretty much the only character not to betray Hamlet. He is extremely loyal, and even wants to die when Hamlet does, but Hamlet tells him not to. Instead Hamlet tells him to "report me and my cause aright / To the unsatisfied".

The death of his father and the marriage of his mother Gertrude to his uncle Claudius.