1. Understanding Hamlet:
Themes, Characters, and Motifs Recurrent in the Play

2. The Background
Women who killed themselves for love (recurrent theme in Renaissance times)
An Italian barber who murders an Italian Duke by pouring lotion in his ear (Gonzago)
Ur – Hamlet – a play written in 1594 by Thomas Kyd

3. Hamlet’s Popularity The most oft-performed of Shakespeare’s plays
Filmed 25 times
Everybody wants to play “Hamlet”
Also frequently parodied

4. Recurring Motifs Women as the weaker sex: Revenge
“Frailty, thy name is woman.”
“O, most pernicious woman.”
“Get thee to a nunnery!”
Revenge
Hamlet against Claudius
Fortinbras against Denmark
Laertes against Hamlet

5. More Motifs: Fate Madness
“There’s a divinity that shapes our ends, Rough−hew them how we will.” Act V
The unlikely series of events at the end of the play
Madness
Hamlet’s – feigned?
Ophelia’s

6. Literary Technique Irony Plant Imagery Claudius praying – not!
Ophelia’s burial in unsanctified ground
Hamlet’s claim to love Ophelia more than “40 brothers.”
Plant Imagery
Denmark as an “unweeded garden”
Ophelia and her flowers

7. Foils
Foil – a character who contrasts with another character to highlight certain traits
Hamlet vs. Fortinbras – highlights Hamlet’s indecisiveness
Hamlet vs. Laertes – highlights Hamlet’s indecisiveness
Claudius vs. Old Hamlet– highlights Old Hamlet’s goodness

8. Major Themes Indecisiveness Sickness Hamlet let’s opportunity pass
Tragedy occurs due to Hamlet’s failure to act
Sickness
“Moral” sickness – “Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.”
Ophelia’s illness
The dead king’s supposed sickness
Gertrude’s “sickness” upon seeing the “worser part of” herself

9. More Themes Pretense Parenting Claudius pretending things are normal
Hamlet pretending to be crazy
Ophelia pretending not to love Hamlet
Parenting
Claudius as a “false” parent
Gertrude as an ineffective parent
Polonius as a genuine parent