Introduction to Shakespeare’s Hamlet

Hamlet is the most widely produced Shakespearean play. In spite of the nearly 400 years that have passed
since it was first staged, Hamlet continues to intrigue and attract theatrical and literary audiences. As a
result, it is also the most widely critiqued Shakespearean play. The story of Hamlet contains all the
elements necessary for a good tragedy. The protagonist is a young prince of Denmark who is caught
between his desire for revenge and the dictates of his conscience. His uncle Claudius has killed Hamlet’s
father, and the ghost of the old king has appeared to Hamlet and demanded revenge for his “foul and most
unnatural murder” (I.5.25). To complicate the story further, Claudius has married his brother’s widow and
Hamlet’s mother, Gertrude. Hamlet’s dilemma constitutes the focal point of the action and, in turn, the
language of the play, which is some of the most poignant and profound of any that Shakespeare wrote.
We have a difficult time dating Hamlet definitively because there are references to a Hamlet being staged
in London as early as 1589. Scholars traditionally have believed that this version of the play, called the
Ur-Hamlet (meaning the first or earliest version), was written by Thomas Kyd. But because the evidence
connecting Kyd to the Ur-Hamlet is sketchy and speculative, some scholars are now questioning that
theory. In light of recent studies, it seems more likely that Shakespeare wrote the early Hamlet, possibly
in 1586 or 1587. Among his connections to the story, Shakespeare was intimately familiar with the name
of Hamlet. He named his son Hamnet after his best friend in Stratford, Hamnet Sadler. Hamnet is a
variation on the name Hamlet.

Shakespeare’s sources

There are several theories about the inspiration for Hamlet, from 12th century Danish literature to Indo-
European character tropes. Shakespeare’s sources for Hamlet are undoubtedly those found in the stories
of François de Belleforest’s Histoires Tragique, published in 1570 when Shakespeare was six years old.
Belleforest’s version was based on the legend of the Danish prince named Amleth. In the twelfth century,
the historian Saxo Grammaticus compiled several old Danish legends and wrote them down in Latin in a
book titled Historica Danicae or The History of the Danes, published in Paris in 1514. Books 3 and 4 of
this compilation include the story of Amleth, a story with all the basic plot lines found in Shakespeare’s
play.

Scholars can trace a similar story to a 9th century Scandinavian folktale of Amleth, a prince who feigned
madness to exact revenge on his uncle for killing his father. “Amleth” actually is translated into “mad” or
“not sane” in Norse. Beyond just the similarity between the names, the themes of madness and revenge
are concrete plot points in each story and it becomes relatively easy to see how Amleth was the
predecessor to the Elizabethan tragedy. Eventually, the legend of Amleth was translated into French
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during the 16th century, which is where Shakespeare would likely have first encountered this story and
character. While the lore of Amleth is certainly appears analogous, historic literature is riddled with
interpretations of mad princes, including Icelandic sagas and Roman legends. Knowing precisely where
Shakespeare found his inspiration for Hamlet is practically impossible, but these glimpses into history
give us some possible context clues. Beyond historical influences, Shakespeare may have taken
inspiration from his own life. In 1596, Shakespeare’s only son, Hamnet, passed away at only eleven years
old. Hamlet’s own struggle with grief mirrors Shakespeare’s, each traversing through the after effects of
loss, not to mention the similarity between the titular character and his son’s name. However, most
scholars argue that the origin story of Hamlet is too obviously derived from legend and that Hamnet’s
death was auxiliary in Shakespeare’s writing process. It is difficult to discern what truly motivated
Shakespeare to write his famous epic, but we can agree that Hamlet has certainly transformed theatre and
English. From introducing new idioms into the English language to The Lion King, even to a Calvin and
Hobbes comic strip, Hamlet is pervasive throughout history and in our current culture. While trying to
uncover the mysteries of Hamlet remains significant, it is thrilling to see where the play has taken us and
where it will continue to go as we adapt and experiment with the Bard’s magnum opus.

Saxo Grammaticus

In The History of the Danes, Amleth’s father, King Horwendil of Denmark, is killed by his brother Feng.
Feng subsequently marries Gerutha, who is Horwendil’s widow and Amleth’s mother. Amleth secretly
vows to take revenge on Feng. Amleth, whose name means “simpleton,” must pretend to be mad as he
plots his revenge; if Feng feels threatened by Amleth, he may kill him. Other similarities between Saxo’s
story and Shakespeare’s play include the young woman sent by Feng to try to ferret out Amleth’s secrets
and the conversation that Amleth has with his mother in her bedchamber. One of the king’s councilors
hides himself under the bed in order to eavesdrop on Amleth and Gerutha. He is discovered and
subsequently killed by Amleth. Feng sends Amleth to England accompanied by two members of the court
with a letter demanding Amleth’s death at the hands of the King of England. Amleth substitutes a letter
requesting that the courtiers be killed instead. Amleth then returns to Denmark, kills the king, and is
elected to the throne.

François de Belleforest

Belleforest includes all these plot elements in his French prose translation, but he gives the characters
added depth, thereby providing a starting point for the character development that Shakespeare would
complete in his play. Belleforest expands upon Saxo’s reference to the battle with the Norwegian king,
thus creating an opportunity for the introduction of the character of young Fortinbras. In addition,
Belleforest writes about Amleth’s relationship with a young woman who has loved him since they were

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children and about the dead king’s “shade” (or ghost) demanding revenge from his living son. All these
elements reappear in some form in Shakespeare’s Hamlet, but Hamlet’s internal dialogues, punning
riddles, and wordplay are purely Shakespearean innovations.

Summary of the play Hamlet

On a dark winter night, a ghost walks the ramparts of Elsinore Castle in Denmark. Discovered first by a
pair of watchmen, then by the scholar Horatio, the ghost resembles the recently deceased King Hamlet,
whose brother Claudius has inherited the throne and married the king’s widow, Queen Gertrude. When
Horatio and the watchmen bring Prince Hamlet, the son of Gertrude and the dead king, to see the ghost, it
speaks to him, declaring ominously that it is indeed his father’s spirit, and that he was murdered by none
other than Claudius. Ordering Hamlet to seek revenge on the man who usurped his throne and married his
wife, the ghost disappears with the dawn.

Prince Hamlet devotes himself to avenging his father’s death, but, because he is contemplative and
thoughtful by nature, he delays, entering into a deep melancholy and even apparent madness. Claudius
and Gertrude worry about the prince’s erratic behavior and attempt to discover its cause. They employ a
pair of Hamlet’s friends, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, to watch him. When Polonius, the pompous Lord
Chamberlain, suggests that Hamlet may be mad with love for his daughter, Ophelia, Claudius agrees to
spy on Hamlet in conversation with the girl. But though Hamlet certainly seems mad, he does not seem to
love Ophelia: he orders her to enter a nunnery and declares that he wishes to ban marriages. AD A group
of traveling actors comes to Elsinore, and Hamlet seizes upon an idea to test his uncle’s guilt. He will
have the players perform a scene closely resembling the sequence by which Hamlet imagines his uncle to
have murdered his father, so that if Claudius is guilty, he will surely react. When the moment of the
murder arrives in the theater, Claudius leaps up and leaves the room. Hamlet and Horatio agree that this
proves his guilt. Hamlet goes to kill Claudius but finds him praying.

Since he believes that killing Claudius while in prayer would send Claudius’s soul to heaven, Hamlet
considers that it would be an inadequate revenge and decides to wait. Claudius, now frightened of
Hamlet’s madness and fearing for his own safety, orders that Hamlet be sent to England at once. Hamlet
goes to confront his mother, in whose bedchamber Polonius has hidden behind a tapestry. Hearing a noise
from behind the tapestry, Hamlet believes the king is hiding there. He draws his sword and stabs through
the fabric, killing Polonius. For this crime, he is immediately dispatched to England with Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern. However, Claudius’s plan for Hamlet includes more than banishment, as he has given
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern sealed orders for the King of England demanding that Hamlet be put to
death. AD In the aftermath of her father’s death, Ophelia goes mad with grief and drowns in the river.
Polonius’s son, Laertes, who has been staying in France, returns to Denmark in a rage. Claudius

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convinces him that Hamlet is to blame for his father’s and sister’s deaths. When Horatio and the king
receive letters from Hamlet indicating that the prince has returned to Denmark after pirates attacked his
ship en route to England, Claudius concocts a plan to use Laertes’ desire for revenge to secure Hamlet’s
death. Laertes will fence with Hamlet in innocent sport, but Claudius will poison Laertes’ blade so that if
he draws blood, Hamlet will die. As a backup plan, the king decides to poison a goblet, which he will
give Hamlet to drink should Hamlet score the first or second hits of the match. Hamlet returns to the
vicinity of Elsinore just as Ophelia’s funeral is taking place. Stricken with grief, he attacks Laertes and
declares that he had in fact always loved Ophelia.

Back at the castle, he tells Horatio that he believes one must be prepared to die, since death can come at
any moment. A foolish courtier named Osric arrives on Claudius’s orders to arrange the fencing match
between Hamlet and Laertes. AD The sword-fighting begins. Hamlet scores the first hit, but declines to
drink from the king’s proffered goblet. Instead, Gertrude takes a drink from it and is swiftly killed by the
poison. Laertes succeeds in wounding Hamlet, though Hamlet does not die of the poison immediately.
First, Laertes is cut by his own sword’s blade, and, after revealing to Hamlet that Claudius is responsible
for the queen’s death, he dies from the blade’s poison. Hamlet then stabs Claudius through with the
poisoned sword and forces him to drink down the rest of the poisoned wine. Claudius dies, and Hamlet
dies immediately after achieving his revenge. At this moment, a Norwegian prince named Fortinbras, who
has led an army to Denmark and attacked Poland earlier in the play, enters with ambassadors from
England, who report that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead. Fortinbras is stunned by the gruesome
sight of the entire royal family lying sprawled on the floor dead. He moves to take power of the kingdom.
Horatio, fulfilling Hamlet’s last request, tells him Hamlet’s tragic story. Fortinbras orders that Hamlet be
carried away in a manner befitting a fallen soldier.

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Setting a snare

Hamlet struggles with his vengeful duty. He must fulfill his father’s request, but he is not convinced that
killing Claudius is the right thing to do. When a troupe of players comes to Elsinore, Hamlet uses them to
verify Claudius’s guilt. A play staged at Hamlet’s request convinces Hamlet that the ghost spoke the truth
about the crime against his father. After the play, Hamlet discovers Claudius in a position of prayer. The
audience realizes that Claudius cannot truly repent, because doing so would require him to give up his
throne and Gertrude, something he knows he cannot do. Claudius realizes that he is damned. Hamlet
draws his dagger to kill Claudius, but he hesitates. To kill the king at prayer would be to send him straight
to heaven — a privilege his own father did not receive from Claudius. Hamlet decides that the time is not
right. He wants to kill Claudius when the king is steeped in sin. Only then will the revenge be complete.

Shakespeare’s techniques

Shakespeare lived and wrote during a time when elocution, memory, writing, and drama were taught as
elemental parts of grammar school education. He learned techniques that we do not emphasize in our
curricula today. For example, his understanding of the classics, the Greek and Roman authors who lived

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and wrote long before the time of Christ, far surpassed what we are taught today. He was expected to
memorize long passages from Seneca, Virgil, Plautus, and other ancient authors. He learned the classical
format for plays and poetry. He understood the nature of comedy and the nature of tragedy as the classical
authors viewed them. Comedy allows us to see human nature with all of its flaws and foibles and helps us
to laugh at ourselves. Tragedy deals with the extreme emotions of life. In a tragedy, one man reaches the
pinnacle of success, only to fall down to utter defeat and death. Shakespeare patterned his tragedies after
those of the Roman author Seneca, but then he expanded on the formulaic pattern to create a richer, more
insightful story. Shakespearean tragedies expose the intimacies of the human mind and explore the
workings of human behavior and human relationships. Hamlet fits this pattern perfectly. He is a great
nobleman, and the well-being of the state is dependent on his well-being. He is a Renaissance prince; he
is a scholar, a swordsman, a lover of the arts, a wit, and an athlete. He is concerned with the welfare of the
people of Denmark, and he is aware of his responsibilities. Hamlet must make a moral choice in response
to the evil actions of his uncle. He knows that the choice he makes will ultimately mean his own
destruction. Nevertheless, he takes the moral high ground, sacrificing his own desires for the greater good
of doing what is right. The result is catastrophic for Hamlet and his family, but in another sense, Hamlet
restores order in a universe turned upside down by the actions of the king.

Classical elements

Shakespeare has written this play in such a way that the audience cannot help but respond both
individually and collectively. In that way, the audience shares fully in the tragic emotions of the play. As
Aristotle taught, effective tragedy allows catharsis; that is, through the action of the play, the audience is
able to experience all the emotions of pity and sympathy, fear and horror, tremendous grief and
exhilarating happiness that are inherent in human life. In classical tragedy, the hero is greater or larger
than life. Hamlet varies from that pattern of tragedy in that the protagonist, or hero, is a man of inner
greatness. His choices, like his internal dialogues, are not clear-cut. It takes him a long time to decide
what his action should be, and even then, he is not sure how to accomplish his goal. These very human
qualities allow the audience to relate to Hamlet. We can understand this kind of hero and sympathize
deeply with his plight. Shakespeare stocked this play with believable characters and realistic action.
Intrigue, denied love, secret murder, preparations for war, drinking, traveling players, references to far-off
places like Paris, Wittenberg, and England all contribute to the colorful, exciting, and unpredictable
nature of the drama. Shakespeare did not divide this play into acts and scenes. Theatrical practitioners
added those elements in 1676. The divisions help to clarify the action and the shifts in place and mood.
There are three main kinds of scenes in Hamlet: court scenes, domestic or family scenes, and Hamlet’s
soliloquies, where he muses on life, the nature of man, and the dilemmas posed by fate.

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Anachronism

An anachronism occurs when a character is placed in a place or a situation that could not be possible
during that person’s lifetime. For example, if one were to write a story of a person living in the twentieth
century who meets Shakespeare, the story would be anachronistic. Shakespeare did not spend much time
making sure that dates and people in his plays fit where he put them. For example, Hamlet lived in
seventh-century Denmark, but Shakespeare has him studying at Wittenberg, a university founded in 1502.
This reference helped Shakespeare’s audience to identify with the play and its characters. The audience
would recognize that Hamlet is a scholar, that he is probably a Protestant, and that he would most likely
be a skeptic — not a believer in spirits and ghosts.

Imagery

Shakespeare conveys much of his meaning by planting patterns of images in the minds of his audience
members. Denmark under the rule of Claudius is repeatedly associated with corruption and disease.
Hamlet wears an “inky cloak” that connects him with the black cloud of grief. Feeling betrayed by
Gertrude and Ophelia, Hamlet associates all women with makeup, or the artificial appearance that hides
their true faces. Ophelia is linked to the image of violets, and her destroyed relationship with Hamlet is
linked to weeds.

Irony

Irony is essentially the use of words or actions that simultaneously convey a literal meaning and its
opposite. We are most familiar with verbal irony: the use of words or phrases that convey these multiple
meanings. The gravedigger scene at the opening of Act V contains many instances of verbal irony. But
actions can also convey irony with great effect. For example, when Hamlet discovers Claudius at prayer,
he believes that he sees Claudius making his peace with God. This belief halts his action and changes the
course of the play. The irony inherent in this scene is that Claudius cannot pray. He puts on the show of
prayer but finds that he is not fully repentant. His action contains both the appearance of prayer and the
inability to pray. Dramatic irony is another device that Shakespeare uses to draw the audience in.
Dramatic irony occurs when one character knows more than another does, and/or when the audience
knows more than the characters do. From its privileged position, the audience can interpret an otherwise
innocent sounding remark and realize its full meaning. For example, when Hamlet witnesses the funeral
procession in Act V, he naively remarks that the “maimed rites” indicate the person being buried took her
own life (V.1.229). His remarks are casual, and yet they evoke great emotion in the audience, which
already knows that the funeral is for Ophelia. Hamlet’s soliloquies are a great source of dramatic irony,
because they allow the audience to know more than the other characters about Hamlet’s state of mind.

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Shakespeare’s language

Shakespeare wrote his plays in a combination of verse (rhythmic patterned lines, both rhymed and
unrhymed) and prose (sentences that are neither rhythmic nor rhymed). In Shakespeare’s time, the
Doctrine of Decorum was a formula that writers were expected to follow. The Doctrine had to do with the
accepted hierarchical view of society. Highly ranked characters, such as kings, nobles, bishops, and gods,
spoke in verse. Lowly ranked characters, such as clowns, laborers, and mad people, spoke in prose.

Blank verse

Shakespeare’s use of blank verse, or unrhymed iambic pentameter, is an important element of his plays.
In rhymed verse, the words that fall at the end of lines sound very similar, like “love” and “dove,” or
“moon” and “june.” Shakespeare sometimes uses rhyming couplets in his plays, which are two
consecutive lines of rhyming verse. An example would be “Indeed this counsellor / Is now most still,
most secret, and most grave, / Who was in life a foolish prating knave” (III.4.213–215).

Shifts

Hamlet, like all of Shakespeare’s plays, contains both verse and prose. For the most part, it follows the
Doctrine of Decorum. The gravediggers speak in prose. Hamlet’s mad scenes are all written in prose, as
are Ophelia’s (with the exception of her bawdy songs). But Hamlet does not always follow expectations.
Shakespeare was flexible with his language, and if a certain style fit a certain mood, he did not hesitate to
break the rules. For example, the soldiers, who are certainly not noble, speak in beautiful blank verse.
Also, Hamlet sometimes speaks in prose when he is neither mad nor comic. Shakespeare tempers his
early adherence to form with a more mature voice in Hamlet. Compare the player’s speech about Pyrrhus
(II.2.448–513), written in a very structured style, with Hamlet’s soliloquy (II.2.543–601) that ends the
same scene. The voices are distinct and indicate Shakespeare’s dexterity with both formulaic and more
flexible language.