Hamlet

The king as in the ghost? he tells him to get revenge on Hamlet Sr. (the ghost) brother, Claudius because he was the one who killed him. He also told him not to hurt his mother for marrying Claudius because Hamlet Sr. made her that way and she didn't know that Claudius killed him.

This is a very difficult question. It's not clear the play was meant to have a moral, or what the moral might have been. My personal best guess would be "know your own mind well enough to act both prudently and decisively." Other decent ones would be "Be decisive.", "Don't try to judge people as God does," or "Intelligence can be as much a burden as it is a virtue."

Claudius has sent written instructions to the English to put Hamlet to death when he arrives there.

Hamlet was at school at Wittenberg, a famous college in Germany. Wittenberg is where the Protestant Reformation started, and that's probably the association we're supposed to make. He returned to Elsinore for the funeral.

As a character Hamlet hadily develops throughout the course of the play. Hamlet is one of the greatest procrastinators ever written. He thinks, and thinks, and thinks, but never makes any attempt to actually persue his plans.

The only way in which Hamlet does ultimately become a better man, is that once he discovers he is poisoned by Laertes' blade, he finally decides to act instead of think, and finally kills Claudius.

No, Shakespeare lived during the English Renaissance which came some time after the Renaissance in Italy.

A lot of what happens in Hamlet has to do with death, especially Hamlet's two most famous speeches. The "To be or not to be" speech wonders why, since life is so crappy, people don't just kill themselves all the time like lemmings. The "Alas poor Yorick" speech and Hamlet's ensuing conversation with Horatio ponders the fact that, no matter how vital, funny, important or powerful you are, you still end up as a dirty, stinking bunch of bones. Hamlet also thinks about the "circle of life" when he thinks about worms eating kings, and then that same worm being eaten by a fish which is eaten by a beggar. The phenomenon of worms eating dead bodies also interests him: he says that Polonius is at supper, "not where he eats, but where he is eaten."

At the same time, the play talks about our spiritual life after death, especially in the revelation by the Ghost that, yes, there is a Purgatory, and it's pretty miserable, so it does make a difference if a priest gives you the sacrament of Extreme Unction or not.

Hamlet's obsession with mortality may be a result of his belief that we should be able to be masters of our fate, even to the extent of mastering death. (This is why he has such a hard time accepting his father's death and his mother's quick recovery from it.) But in the end, after facing the imminent possibility of his death at the hands of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern and then at the hands of the pirates, he learns to adopt a more fatalistic approach: "If it be not now, yet it will come . . . the readiness is all." Only when he does so is he able to carry out his revenge.

His father, Old Hamlet. The ghost who later speaks to him.

Laertes, in a parallel revenge, seeks revenge against Hamlet for killing his father, Polonius, and the early death of his sister Ophelia. Hamlet does die, but not before Laertes, so Laertes never does get his revenge against Hamlet

She is a loving mother. In the first act, she tries to coax Hamlet out of his depression. In the second, she shows her astuteness and concern for Hamlet's wild behaviour: "No doubt it is nothing but the main: his father's death and our own o'erhasty marriage."

But she has no idea of the depth of the horror which Hamlet sees until the closet scene. Although she cares about Hamlet she doesn't really understand him. It is only when he says "Almost as bad, dear mother, as kill a king and marry with his brother." does she realize what is going on.

The King of Norway has restrained Fortinbras and prevented him from attacking the Danes.

"His father's death, and our o'erhasty marriage." She thinks it's a combination of grief over his father, and anger and confusion over the fact that his uncle is now his father, and is king instead of him. She's not far wrong.

The reason for Ophelia's madness, which is introduced in Act 4 Scene 5, is never directly stated in Hamlet. Probably causes include being instructed by her father and brother to stop seeing Hamlet, with whom she had been romantically involved. After breaking up with him, she watches him apparently go mad, and bears the brunt of one of his angry outbursts.

Shortly after, her father Polonius is murdered by Hamlet himself, leaving her with no family in the area, as her brother Laertes is at school in France.

The combination of these stressful and painful situations most likely leads Ophelia into madness.

Ophelia's madness comes from not only being publicly humiliated by Hamlet but also hearing about how Hamlet murdered her father.

Claudius advises Hamlet to stop mourning his father's death and start celebrating the marriage between him and Hamlet's mother. He calls Hamlet's attitude"stubborn and unmanly."

A little insensitive considering Hamlet's father has only been dead for 2 months at the time.

He is trying to decide what to do about the murder of his father. Does he force the issue with his uncle? Does he go to his mom? "To be or not to be, that is question. To suffer the slings of outrages fortune. To sleep, to dream." Does he kill him self? Or does he get revenge? As you know, he goes for revenge, but he goes through this torment before he decides and by the end of the speech he has decided.

Hamlet's ship was attacked by pirates. The pirates agreed to return Hamlet to Denmark for a price. He sent word to Horatio and asked him to get ready to meet him. We also learn that his traitorous friends, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, have met with some dire circumstances.

Polonius didn't have any type of cover or guard while listening in on the conversation and wasn't expecting for Hamlet to notice him, "him"(What Hamlet had thought was the supposed Claudius) It was maybe because Hamlet had thought Polonius was Claudius, but even so.

Polonius hid behind the tapestry or the arras while he was eavesdropping on Gertude and Hamlet. Hamlet thought that it happened to be the king Claudius who was spying on him and had hid behind there, but to his unknowing, after slashing away at the cloth he found that he had killed Polonius. Hamlet, instead of being shocked by killing the man said that he was a fool and hid his body somewhere.

Ophelia returns Hamlets gifts because she no longer feels that have any value to her since the sentimental value that they once carried has been lost due to his rude and insane behaviour towards her.

There is nothing in the text that indicates Laertes is in school. He came from France, and wishes to return there after coming back to Denmark to attend King Claudius' wedding.

Hamlet, on the other hand, attended school in Wittenburg, and wishes to retrun there, but Claudius (and more so, Gertrude) convincce him to stay in Denmark. good thing, there wouldn't have been much of a play had he skipped out in the second scene of the play...

The tragic force in Hamlet, according to Gustav Freytag, is when Hamlet, during an interview with his mother, kills Polonius by mistake, thinking that he is killing the king. See Freytag's Technique of the Drama, translated by Elias J. MacEwan, page 191.

Gertrude, Hamlet's mother, accidentally drinks the poison. This happened because she was giving a toast to Hamlet after winning the fencing match against Laertes but not knowing that Claudius intended to make Hamlet drink from that cup if the plant to poison him from fencing fails.

His father died because his uncle poisoned him and that his mother got married to his uncle so fast that she had no time to mourn the loss of her husband.

Polonius dies in Act 3. Ophelia dies offstage in Act 4; Rosencrantz and Guildenstern die offstage sometime after Act 4. Hamlet, Claudius, Gertrude and Laertes all die in Act 5.