An Introduction to Shakespeare’s Hamlet Hamlet is perhaps Shakespeare’s most well known tragedy. A tragedy—in the time of Shakespeare—comes about from the ancient Greeks. Perhaps you’ve seen the picture of a face split in two—one side laughing, the other crying. In a tragedy, the protagonist experiences difficulty, mainly due to a fatal/tragic flaw. While there tends to be death and destruction in all good plays, if you are unsure whether a Shakespeare play is a tragedy or a comedy, ask yourself: did the main character die? Or did the play end in marriage? Marriage equals comedy, and the total death and unhappiness of most characters involved equals tragedy.

As you read more Shakespeare, you realize something about the setting of most of his plays—they do not take place in England. Hamlet, for example, takes place in Denmark, others take place in Italy, and still other plays take place in Spain or France. If a play does happen to be set in England, Shakespeare takes care to make it very far in the past. It’s not difficult to infer why he does this—writing about a real life monarch makes it highly likely you would lose your head.

Four Main Themes Revenge can ruin your life Appearance versus Reality Sanity versus Insanity Decay and Corruption are omnipresent

Journal Topics To what extent do parents have the right to "spy" or check up on their children? What circumstance might allow or prevent this? How common do you believe the act of revenge is in everyday life? How are relationships between stepparents and stepchildren generally depicted in fiction or film? What conflicts and barriers must be overcome? Are parents generally blind to their children’s faults? Why or why not? Do you know what an "apple polisher" is? Have you every known one or been one yourself? Why do you think people do this? How do you feel about it? Write about a time when you discovered that someone was purposefully plotting against you for some reason. Explain the situation—how you felt, how it turned out.