Hamlet

Laertes is a foil to Hamlet. Unlike Hamlet he does not reflect upon the task at hand, which is avenging his father's murder. He does not think about whether it is morally correct to conspire with the king, Claudius, to kill Hamlet for revenge. Fortenbras could also be considered a foil to Hamlet because he is just the opposite of Hamlet when it comes to decisions and following them through. B.Gene apex ;)

It says in my Hamlet book that "Claudius and Gertrude set Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, two boyhood friends of Hamlet, to spy on him to discover the cause of his apparent madness. After the returned ambassadors announce their success in stopping Fortinbras's planned invasion of Denmark, Polonius report his 'discovery' that Hamlet is mad for love. Claudius is unpersuaded but agrees to join Polonius in spying on Hamlet”.

In "Hamlet," Marcellus' first question is why the guard has suddenly starting keeping such a strict watch in Denmark. Next, he wants know why Denmark is suddenly making and importing a lot of weapons. He also wants to know why shipbuilders are working around the clock now.

The play about Hamlet was totally made up by William Shakespeare - there was no 'real' Hamlet.

1. Kill the king ("If thou didst ever thy dear father love, revenge his foul and most unnatural murder")

2. Lay off Mom. ("nor let thy soul contrive against thy mother aught")

3. "Remember me."

Polonius is one of those people who, once he gets an idea, there's no shifting it. He has formed the idea that Hamlet is mad for Ophelia's love, and suggests that this can be proven by spying on the two of them from a concealed place. Claudius is not persuaded at all by this: "Love? His affections do not that way tend." But Polonius has a new idea (which is basically the same as the old one) that his ideas may be proven by spying on Hamlet's conversation with Gertrude from a concealed place. Claudius just wants to get rid of him by sending him to England.

Polonius therefore views the conversation with Gertrude as his last chance to prove his theory. "If she find him not, to England send him, or confine him where your wisdom best may think."

After the performance of the Mousetrap (or The Murder of Gonzago), Claudius retires and attempts to pray for forgiveness for his crime. But how, he asks himself, can he be forgiven since he is "still possessed of those effects for which [he] did the murder: [his] Crown, [his] own ambition, and [his] Queen." These are the things which he got as a result of the murder of his brother.

It is called "The Murder of Gonzago" or "The Mousetrap" and depicts the murder of a king, whose widow then marries the murderer. Sound familiar?

He leaves part way through. The similarity of the crime depicted in the play and his own drives him crazy and he can't watch it any more. How do we know this? Because in the next scene Claudius is berating himself for the murder. "Oh, my offence is rank, it smells to heaven. It has the eldest primal curse on it--a brother's murder."

What he says he decides is, "O from this time forth my thoughts be bloody or be nothing worth." It's an open question whether that is a decision or a knee-jerk reaction, which he'll soon forget about.

He tells her not to get too involved with Hamlet or her reputation might suffer if he is unable to marry her. She responds that he shouldn't give hypocritical advice which he himself wouldn't take.

""A truant disposition, good my lord.""- William Shakespeare, Hamlet, 1.2""Thrift, thrift, Horatio! the funeral baked meatsDid coldly furnish forth the marriage tables.""- William Shakespeare, Hamlet, 1.2""In my mind's eye, Horatio.""- William Shakespeare, Hamlet, 1.2""He was a man, take him for all in all,I shall not look upon his like again.""- William Shakespeare, Hamlet, 1.2""Season your admiration for a while.""- William Shakespeare, Hamlet, 1.2""In the dead vast and middle of the night.""- William Shakespeare, Hamlet, 1.2""A countenance more in sorrow than in anger.""- William Shakespeare, Hamlet, 1.2""The friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel.""- William Shakespeare, Hamlet, 1.3

Hamlet is making comparisons between the emotions which the actors portray and real emotions as they are felt by people. Just prior, the lead actor had given a very moving speech and had managed to make tears run down his face, now Hamlet, who has every cause for an emotional tirade, must hold his own emotions in check until he can prove Claudius's guilt, and he plans on using the play to make Claudius betray himself.

Hamlet himself, while angry with Ophelia. This is probably actually refering to a brothel, as Hamlet no longer trusts Ophelia's honour

Because he feels like he cant escape

By Davis kitchens

Because he thinks Claudius will go to Heaven if he kills him right then. As in many of Shakespeare's plays, the characters are Catholic, and believe that a person's fate in the afterlife depends on whether they get to confess their sins right before they die. Hamlet's father is in something like Purgatory because Claudius murdered him in his sleep, without getting a chance to confess. Hamlet feels it isn't true revenge if he sends Claudius to Heaven...he's really doing him a favor. He decides to wait and kill him right as he's committing some sin, to be sure he goes to Purgatory or Hell.

Ironically, Claudius feels he isn't able to successfully confess his sins, since he's not willing to make proper contrition by giving up the crown and his wife. If Claudius is right, Hamlet could still have sent him to Purgatory by killing him. Hamlet doesn't know this, so he misses his chance.

Curiously, according to Catholic theology, simply praying does not absolve you from the effects of the sins--that can only be done by a priest. (That is why they have confessionals--otherwise people would just pray and not bother going to confession) Therefore even if Claudius were praying it would not wipe clean any sins he had recently committed (including murdering his brother for which he surely had not received absolution from a priest). The idea that it might do so, and that Claudius can struggle with whether his prayer will work to do so are entirely Protestant ideas. Indeed, there is a struggle between Catholic and Protestant concepts in Claudius's soliloquy and in the play as a whole.

It lightens the mood after the extremely tense and emotional Act 3 Scene 1, and before we get into the equally emotional scenes around the Mousetrap play.

Hamlet had no real reason to be angry with Lartes at Ophelia's funeral. His angry towards Lartes was a factor of the grief he had over just finding out that Ophelia was dead.

Hamlet and Horatio do not run into each other at the very beginning of the play; it Act I Scene 2 before they meet, and Hamlet already has one soliloquy under his belt. Nor does he talk at all about swearing until after he has seen and talked to the ghost, in Scene 5. Then he asks Horatio and Marcellus to swear "Never make known what you have seen tonight," and "Never to speak of this that you have seen," and "Never to speak of this that you have heard, " which are all pretty much the same thing. He also gets them to swear "never, so help you mercy, how strange or odd soe'er I bear myself . . . note that you know aught of me." This is a bit different. The first three oaths are "don't tell anyone about the ghost." but the fourth one is "If I start acting weird, don't let on that you know the reason why."

This idea is introduced in Act One. Queen Gertrude asks Hamlet why he is still so heavily mourning the death of his father, claiming that he seems to be grieving more than is necessary.

Hamlet, try to look happy and be nice to the new king.

Shakespeare specialists, directors and actors have been arguing hotly for years about just exactly why Hamlet does not, at the end of Act 1 Scene 5, make a dash for the room where "the king keeps his revels" and stab him then and there. AC Bradley, in 1906, listed 4 or 5 ideas of his contemporaries which he himself disagreed with, including the idea that Hamlet is a coward and abhors violence because it sickens him and the idea that Hamlet has his head in the clouds and does nothing as a result of "thinking too precisely on the event."

Therefore, the question, in suggesting that there are only two ways of looking at Hamlet's behaviour, makes a false assumption. It makes a false dichotomy between "cowardice" and "thoughtfulness", and suggests that there are no shades of grey between contemptible and "admirable and understandable".

Consider this possibility. Hamlet has a conflicted nature. Sometimes he thinks revenge is a good idea and sometimes he doesn't. Sometimes he thinks you have to take violent action and sometimes he thinks you have to stand back. Unfortunately the times when he thinks he should take violent action are the ones where he would be better served by standing back and vice versa.

Or how about this? Hamlet is a perfectionist. He wants to stage manage his revenge which is why he spends so much time getting ready for it. And then in the end he gives up and says, "If it be not now, yet it will come. The readiness is all." Only by becoming a fatalist can he actually start taking purposeful action, an ironic state of affairs.

When Hamlet accepts the invitation to a fencing match with Laertes, he says to Osric:

173 Sir, I will walk here in the hall: if it please his

174 majesty, 'tis the breathing time of day with me.

175 Let the foils be brought,

(Act 5, Scene 2, lines 173-175)

The "hall" mentioned by Hamlet would not be a hallway, but the great hall of the castle, where all of the court assembles for public events.

Hamlet's friends get him to watch out for his father's ghost, who he sees. The ghost tells him that he was murdered by Hamlet's uncle who has since married his former sister-in-law and become king. While Hamlet is deciding what to do, he runs into a travelling acting company, who he gets to put on a play which looks a lot like the murder the ghost describes. The King's reaction tells Hamlet that the ghost was telling the truth and he goes off to kill the King. He finds him, but does not want to kill him while he is praying. Instead he verbally abuses his mother and, hearing a noise in the curtains, kills who is behind it. Unfortunately it is not the king, but the king's advisor who also happens to be the father of Hamlet's girlfriend Ophelia. The king sends Hamlet away to England, and while he is gone, Ophelia goes crazy and dies, and her brother Laertes vows revenge on Hamlet. A fencing match is arranged at which Laertes is to murder Hamlet, but it does not turn out well: Hamlet is fatally poisoned all right, but he kills Laertes and the king while his mother dies after drinking a poisoned drink meant for Hamlet. At the end of the play the stage is covered in corpses.

We are informed of elder Hamlet's death by seeing his ghost appear.