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Hamlet
Includes questions specifically asking about this Shakespeare play. Questions about the movie version should be placed under "Movies." Questions about Shakespeare should be placed under his category under Authors and Poets.
2,117 Questions
What are some examples of loyalty shown by hamlet?
Loyalty to his father by risking his reputation to expose his uncles malicious acts. The main thing I can think of is mainly loyalty to his father.
Was Hamlet's madness feigned or genuine?
Hamlet's madness begins as feigned, to distract from the fact that he is attempting to kill Claudius as revenge for Claudius killing Hamlet's father. He even tells Horatio and Marcellus not to be concerned if they see him acting strangely because he will be putting on an "antic disposition" (Act 1 Scene 5).
However, the farce of his madness can be questioned later as the play continues. Hamlet is under incredible stress and pressure, with his love interest Ophelia breaking up with him, his obsession with killing Claudius, his mother's hasty marriage to Claudius himself, and his madness seems more and more genuine. His blow-up at Ophelia in Act 3 Scene 1 is one such example. After first saying he did love her, he reverses and insists he did not, then orders her to "get thee to a nunnery," amongst other orders and insults. How much of this is just an act and how much is genuine madness is continually debated.
Other examples include Hamlet's irrational and hasty actions throughout the play, such as his murder of Polonius through his mother's bedroom curtain without even knowing who it was hiding there (Act 3 Scene 4).
There is no definite answer as to whether Hamlet's madness truly is an act throughout the play or whether he does begin to genuinely go mad. His words and actions must be carefully evaluated and interpreted and his personal situation must be understood in order for each reader to come up with a personal opinion on this question.
You mean William Shakespeare's Hamlet? It was written around 1600.
Why is it necessary for all the main players to die at the end of a play?
It isn't, because not all plays are tragedies. In a tragedy, to be sure, there is a pile of bodies at the end; that is what makes it a tragedy. But in fact only about 25% of Shakespeare's plays were tragedies, and almost half were comedies, which usually ended with all the main players getting married to each other, or families reuniting happily.
Why does king Hamlets ghost come back to speak with Hamlet?
There are a couple of interpretations of the ghost's motives, the two most common are:
A) The Ghost appears to Hamlet because he wants Hamlet to avenge his "murder, Most foul!"
B) The Ghost is not an "honest ghost" but rather the devil.
'Hamlet' is in the general category of "revenge tragedy."
The ghost of Hamlet's father is being referred to here.
What major event in the play happens just before the conclusion of act 3 in hamlet?
The last scene in Act III is the closet scene in which Hamlet kills Polonius, Gertrude recognizes that Claudius may have murdered Hamlet Senior and the Ghost makes a reappearance telling Hamlet to get on with it.
What favor does hamlet ask of the player?
"You could for a need study a speech of some dozen or fourteen lines which I would set down and insert in't, could you not?"
The collective deaths of the core cast in the last scene.
How was act you of Hamlet from first to last based on when they occur in the story?
Hamlet gives his "To be, or not to be" soliloquy.
Hamlet tells Ophelia, "Get thee to a nunnery!"
Hamlet decides not to kill Claudius while he prays.
Hamlet kills Polonius.
What does it mean when Hamlet says what is this quintessence of dust?
In order to understand this quotation, you must do three things. First you must go to a dictionary and look up "quintessence". Go ahead. I'll wait.
OK, now you know what the word means, you need to know that according to Christian teachings, the first man was made from dirt. And essentially, according to Christian thought, people are nothing more than animated bags of dust. And after we die, we go back to being dirt, hence the line from the funeral service "ashes to ashes; dust to dust".
Now read the whole passage the quotation is taken from, starting with the words "What a piece of work is a man?" (It's about halfway through the immensely long Act 2 Scene 2 of Hamlet, if you are looking) What does that first bit mean? "What a piece of work is a man; how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving, how express and admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god; the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals . . ." Yes, you may have to look up "paragon", but even if you don't you should get what Hamlet is talking about here. He's praising the human race. In fact he's heaping praise on humanity, saying how wonderful people are as a species. And then he drops the other shoe: "and yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust?" Hamlet doesn't care how great the human race appears to be. To him it's just the "quintessence of dust." And you know what that means.
As always, however, when looking at lines from a play, it is not enough just to understand the words and how they fit into the context of the sentence, but we have to look at the character who is saying them, and who he is saying them to. At this point in the play, two of Hamlet's schoolfellows, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, have been hired by the King to spy on Hamlet. But Hamlet has outed them and is messing with their minds so they will tell the King what Hamlet wants the King to hear. Therefore he tells them that he is terribly depressed, that he has "foregone all custom of exercise" (which we know to be a lie--he tells us in Act 5 that he has "kept in continual practice") and that "Man delights not me", which is the line immediately after "What to me is this quintessence of dust?" Basically this is all a show for the benefit of Ros and Guil.
Oh, yes, he loves it. He wilfully misunderstands them and leads them off on tangents just to baffle them. Eventually, in this scene, he gets tired of fencing with them and outright accuses them of attempting to manipulate him so as to find out more about him (which, of course, is exactly what they are doing). Guildenstern gives the mealy-mouthed answer "Oh, my lord, if my duty be too bold, my love is too unmannerly" which is to say "We're only doing this because we care about you." and Hamlet gets really mad at them and compares what they are doing to playing a musical instrument. Basically, by the end of the scene he tells them to get lost, and for the rest of the play he holds them in utter contempt (see the next time they meet when Hamlet calls Rosencrantz a sponge)
Instead of Hamlet being killed by the king's orders who is killed instead?
Rosencrantz and Guildenstein. Which are two of the courtiers in Fortinbras of Denmark.
