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Hamlet notes
Ghost- ​John Dover Wilson (critic)- the ghost’s identity is never meant to be revealed or clear
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Is the ghost real?
Gertrude doesn’t see him but it is seen by people at the start
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‘Foul
crimes are burnt and purged away’- what crimes has he done? Or are we all sinners?
Ears- a means of surveying and spying on other people
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The ghost seems to want to manipulate Hamlet through the persuasive language- he revels in
the detail of his situation, and uses emotional bias- ‘If you ever loved your father’
He doesn’t say what hell is really like, just leaves it to our imagination
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The ghost and Hamlet think very similarly, so the ghost may just be a part of
Hamlet’s mind
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But- perhaps the ghost is justified because he’s suffering which justifies all this emotional
language
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‘Secure hour’ ‘cursed hebenon’ ‘leperous distilment’ - a sort of even rhythm to the speech at the
start
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‘All my smooth body’- a half line
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Links to the idea of disease yet again
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Deliberately offensive a lot of the time
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C- very political and manipulative
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Sculpted, rhetorical speech
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Inclusive pronouns
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Either he’s just an old man or he’s being manipulative
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Act 1 scene 1Hamlet doesn’t appear at the start
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Creates suspense and a dark atmosphere wrapping the play
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Most of the characters are in expectation that the ghost will reappear which creates tension and
uncertainty
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Insecure leader of a country may result in society becoming divided
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After the king dies, there is a divide in opinion as to who should be the new ruler
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‘Not a mouse stirring’ ‘I am sick at heart’- we haven’t even got to Hamlet yet and a guard is sick
at heart- affecting the public
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‘Stalks away’- makes the ghost out to be stalking/malign
‘This bodes some strange eruption to our state’- manifestation of decay
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Horatio is very dismissive of the ghost- ‘tush, tush, twill not appear’
Act 1 scene 2Claudius’ speech
Inclusive pronouns
Long sentences and fluent so rehearsed
Antithesis is used commonly
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Balance between pleasure and pain
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Connotations of fairness
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Claudius is a consummate politician- how far do I agree with this?
He is very good at speaking publicly
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He deals with issues by negotiation in
a peaceful political way, not by violence
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He seems to flatter Laertes
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Claudius dealing with Hamlet’s grief:
Makes him wait until last, builds up a lot of tension
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He tells Hamlet to get over it
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Hamlet and Claudius’ relationship is very public, but also very private
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- ‘Tis Unmanly grief’
‘Mourning duties to your father’- duties conveys expectation but not genuine grief which could
be offensive to H
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The queen may be judged for moving on and remarrying so quickly
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Claudius wants H to remain in the ‘cheer and comfort’ of our eye- surveillance is significant
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Surveillance emphasises this
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‘Yet within a month’
‘Incestuous sheets’- he is repulsed by the relationship
‘O that this too too solid flesh would melt, thaw and resolve itself into a dew’- it’s too real
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The world is so bad, he doesn’t want
to be a part of it
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A
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Women are, in this case,
the personification of frailty
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Calling his mother ‘madam’ suggests lack of intimacy in relationship
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He’s trying to put himself in contrast with Claudius
definitely
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‘Or your chaste treasure open to his unmastered importunity’- her virginity, her innocence, her
value to the family
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Idea that love is a war, a
game, a strategy, and that you cannot rely on your emotions
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Laertes doesn’t want Ophelia’s virginity to be lost
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Perhaps O is a character who
understands she is in a mans world
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Imagery of disease as the rose- ‘canker galls the infants of the spring’- Laertes's fears of
Ophelia’s sexuality
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Polonius treats her like
a baby- like she is money
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Wants to exchange her at her highest value
as a virgin
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His advice makes sense
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He has a darker side
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He seems to enjoy other’s mistakes
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He is higher than Ophelia and has authority over her, but isn’t at all fatherly or loving
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Using patriotism as an excuse to get pissed (Claudius)
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Reputation of Denmark:
‘Makes us traduced and taxed of other nations’
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So the reputation of Denmark has been lost very quickly due to Claudius
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‘The king takes his rouse’
‘They clepe us drunkards’
Links to ‘something is rotten in the state of denmark’ and perhaps this stems from Claudius’
irresponsibility
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Exclaims- ‘O god!’ ‘Alas poor ghost!’ ‘Murder?’ Doesn’t say much, so the ghost has control of
the conversation
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‘Haste me to know’t, that I with wings as swift as meditation or thoughts of love may sweep to
my revenge’- quick decision, doesn’t require much thought
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Act 2 scene 1- Polonius
Is he rather a humorous character?
False sense of pride- believes he is more knowledgeable and therefore superior, but when put
in his place, he just rambled on
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He makes all the wrong assumptions, as
he thinks he knows the cause of H’s madness
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‘And how, and who… at what expense’
But we see a lot more of a dark side to his character
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He is very sly
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Why does Shakespeare make Polonius waffle?
To throw people off- if you talk for long enough using big words, people will forget what the point
is, but they will still respect your point and see you as important
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P is just a victim
when subjected to H
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A lower ranking character talks in prose as they don’t
have the ability to sculpt/craft language
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‘Fishmonger’- disrespect, degrading
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‘For if the sunbred maggots in a dead dog, being a good kissing carrion- have you a daughter?’if the sun kisses Ophelia, she may breed
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He is taking H too seriously
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Hamlet is very cynical- ‘Denmark’s a prison’
Lack of structure in his speech, so he’s putting on madness (or is just mad)
Is H rejecting the artifice of blank verse and using prose to make a statement of putting on a
show to fulfil your ‘status’? He’s showing that this is futile
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The troop of actors are struggling to keep going because of political power? Theatre companies
aren’t doing so well any more
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In line 335- people change from wanting quality acting to seeing kids do
magic tricks
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Hamlet’s soliloquy
‘Rogue and peasant slave’- strayed from his responsibility as someone high up
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‘Force his soul to his own conceit’- unwillingly force his own feelings away
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He might see himself as a martyr because he has had to force his own soul to hide
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He’s not noble because he hasn’t yet
done the deed so he’s a bit weak
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He feels self disgust
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But what is the actor to Hecuba? Or Hecuba to
him? Nothing at all
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He’s aware of his own incapacity to act but there is irony because he’s an actor in real life
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‘Make mad’ ‘appal’ ‘confound’ ‘amaze’- all the things a skilled actor could do if he had the
motivation Hamlet does
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He has too much of a conscious to
carry out chivalrous deeds- not from a feudal world
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‘Am I a coward?’
‘Who calls me villain…
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‘Pigeon livered, and lack gall’- he lacks the nerve or the bitterness to provide motivation for
murder
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‘Remorseless,
treacherous, lecherous, kindless villain’- throws us off
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He’s de-manning himself
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‘About, my brains’- commanding his brains to activate
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He doesn’t
want to commit an immoral act
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‘And’- continuation of previous conversation
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THey’re meant to be an entity- washing together as a pair of characters
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This scene starts with ‘And’- a continuation of previous conversation- media rez (dropping into
action)
Are R and G guilty of sugaring over the devil? They may be as they selfishly ruin Hamlet to gain
money or rewards
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C ignores any concern he may have for H’s emotions and takes advantage of his
vulnerable emotional behaviour
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Polonius makes Ophelia read a book so that she looks natural
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‘With devotion’s visage, and pious action, we do sugar o’er the devil himself’
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Ophelia submits to Claudius and Polonius
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She
doesn’t even speak when being told what to do which shows her as voiceless
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TBONTB speech
Not really a soliloquy
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He is being taken advantage of as he is
opening up whilst people are invading
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H maybe sees it as noble to
commit suicide
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‘But
that the dread of something after death’
Within this speech, there is no context
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He’s not caring about
himself, it’s quite generic
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H has inhabited us all- we
see things from his perspective as we see bits of ourselves in him
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Lots of this speech is not at all physical, except for the ‘bare bodkin’
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There is no rhythm to the speech- seizuras are common- very awkward and broken up
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We want H to be this sensitive person as
we’re on his side
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His battle with things that life
throws at you
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‘Fortune- set in stone, can’t be helped
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‘To die, to sleep’- break in his thoughts- doubt? Questioning which to do
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Lots of lists used to exaggerate despair
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H with Ophelia
Hamlet is using prose
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Massive contrast with the ‘TBONTB’ speech with his outburst at ophelia's- calm and
contemplative contrasts with massive outburst of anger
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‘Those that are married already, all but one shall live’- a threat to Claudius, referring to C and G
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Ophelia’s response to H- ‘Oh what a noble mind is here o’erthrown!’- Ophelia loves Hamlet
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She hardly addresses her own problems at all, she’s just concerned about Hamlet’s wellbeing
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‘Get thee to a nunnery’- could be slang for ‘brothel’
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‘I have heard of your paintings too, well enough’- The way women paint their faces to pretend to
be different
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H wants to
persuade people to take Ophelia away
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When Polonius and C enter afterwards, they’re not at all sympathetic to Ophelia, they just see
her as an object they can use
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‘Madness in great ones’ She
fell into a trap falling for him, and it has bad consequences
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‘Metal’- objectifying
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H and Polonius​- ‘I did enact Julius Caesar
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Brutus killed me’
‘It was a brute part of him to kill so capital a calf there’- taking the piss- ridiculing him
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You cannot feed
capons so’- the air is full of unspoken things and H is ‘feeding’ from it
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H and Ophelia
‘I think nothing my lord’- does she understand H? Or is she just not allowed to say anything
back?
‘Do you think I meant country matters’- refers to ‘cunt’ which generates awkward tension
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‘Tis brief, my lord’ ‘as woman’s love’- H commenting on women again
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Sexual ridicule- he talks directly to Ophelia about their sexual relationship
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This makes it hard to understand what is
being said
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The problem is, the entire play within the play uses rhyming couplets- it is too much
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The function of the play is to catch the king’s conscience
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The publicity of the play would make it obvious to H that C was the murderer
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‘Will you play upon this pipe?’- ‘though you
can fret me, you cannot play upon me’
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H keeps changing his mind to
test P about the shape of the clouds
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A contrast with before
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’
Act 3 scene 3- Is Hamlet procrastinating?
Hamlet wants Claudius to suffer, not just to die
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H wants to hold off so that ‘his soul may be as damned and black as hell whereto it goes’
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Claudius
‘Oh my offence is rank, it smells to heaven’- decay
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‘Is there not rain enough in the sweet heavens to wash it white as snow’- to make him innocent
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These questions are triggered by fear, not meant for an effect
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The queen is at the end of the list of 3- perhaps because of this she stands out as she is the
most important, or she is the least important coming last
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‘Wretched, rash intruding fool, farewell!’
‘I took thee for thy better’
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‘Enseamed bed’- he may be purging his mother’s greasy soul- goes against what the ghost says
which is ‘leave your mother for heaven’
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‘Look here upon this picture, and on this’
Old H- ‘Hyperion’s curls’ ‘an eye like mars’- H almost saw his father as a god
Compared with ‘mildewed ear’- diseased
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G- ‘These words like daggers in my ears’
‘What have I done that thou dar’st wag thy tongue in noise so rude against me?’
Antithesis between ‘fair forehead’ and ‘blister’
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Blister is a mark of shame, branding of a prostitute
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Hamlet’s
bitterness at his mother’s betrayal? ‘The heyday in the blood is tame, it’s humble’- lost this idea
of love, more reference to lust
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Act 4 scene 2Hamlet calls Rosencrantz a ‘sponge’
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In context, last time we saw H, he was dragging away P’s body
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H is being deliberately complex using riddles to put the guards off
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Takes away his value
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Kinda gruesome
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‘Not where he eats but where he is eaten’- idea of body decaying, the life cycle, but not all a
comfortable topic to be discussing
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‘We fat ourselves for maggots’
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Hamlet is speaking in riddles saying repellant things
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His use of language puts a different view
on it- Hamlet is described using disease imagery which manipulates those listening to Claudius
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‘Must seem deliberate pause’- must look as if the decision to axe hamlet has been considered
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When H arrives, dialogue becomes very disjunct and broken up and fast paced
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‘No profit by the name’- worthless landscape they’re
fighting for
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Fortinbras in search of honour and reputation
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Definitely not mad here
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All about him? It seems as if he is playing the victim
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Alternatively, it’s not the world that’s against him, it’s himself
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‘A beast no more’- Hamlet establishing unique ability of man which distinguishes us from
animals
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Or is this soliloquy a study of depression? H is wallowing- Fintan O’tool- ‘H is a slob, a shirker’
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Act 4 scene 5The rabble has not been seen before
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We therefore question Claudius’ morality
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Ophelia enters- ‘her speech is nothing’ ‘pretty lady’- her speech is dismissed because she is a
woman and is sexualised
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Only in madness does she get a voice
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They just
accept it and move on without a second thought
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Both H and
L have lost their mothers
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He seems very angry here- ‘blood’ ‘revenge’
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But now he is
unleashing his anger
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‘The drop of blood that’s calm… brands the harlot…
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He is focused on his family’s reputation
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He’s determined
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Ophelia’s death

Everyone decides they love Ophelia the most- Hamlet and Laertes are competing
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Perhaps foreshadowing of the bloodbath that is to come?
The ending
Claudius is going to purgatory/hell
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H and Laertes forgive each other and H
prays before death so heaven
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But only lightly
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Nobody got away with anything- all that did wrong died
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They all die in a very short
space of time
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Fortinbras wants the throne and may get the throne
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TELMAH- Hamlet is the same backwards and forwards
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Bigger sense of loss of H because things move on
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Quotations from act 4
‘Mad as the sea and wind when both contend
which is the mightier
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(Claudius)- Hamlet is loved publically
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’
(Claudius)
‘Take you me for a sponge, my lord?’
(Rosencrantz)
‘The rabble call him lord;
And, as the world were now but to begin,
Antiquity forgot, custom not known,
The ratfiers and props of every word,
They cry ‘choose we: Laertes shall be king:’
Caps, hands and tongues, applaud it to the clouds:
‘Laertes shall be king, Laertes king!’
(Horatio)
‘Laertes, was your father dear to you?
Or are you like the painting of a sorrow,
A face without a heart?’
(Ophelia)
Ophelia
CriticsElaine Showalter- does her madness represent the oppression of women in society? Probably
not as shakespeare isn’t a feminist ahead of his time- he may not mean it in this way, may not
be his intention
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Has
to speak in the language of flowers to be able to voice her opinions with no consequence
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Ophelia parallels with Hamlet- Ophelia is really mad, doesn’t have as much of an audience so
can only voice her opinions through this madness
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So is Ophelia just a manifestation of
H’s misogyny? This would mean that the whole play just revolves around H which is pretty true
tbh
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Lost father and mother, lost her lover, possibly had sex so society views her

as ‘immoral’
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But in the context of the play, it seems
insignificant as it’s all about Hamlet
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He seems genuinely sad about losing his queen at the end
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Or is he just playing the role of politician to fulfil his role as leader of Denmark? He doesn’t
mean any of his repenting- ‘words without thoughts never to heaven go’- couplet
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Act 3 sc 3- even though he’s repenting, he’s unable to give up his crown so he’s selfish
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NO- his political skills are advanced
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Very gifted with manipulation through use of language
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Not a traditional king, deals with things through reason, not killing
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He drinks too much
Plots/spies
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Denmark has a bad reputation
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Everything he says is long winded, so feels like he is more important than others
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He is the king’s most senior so he feels superior
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3‘To thine own self be true’
‘Neither a borrower nor a lender be’
‘The apparel oft proclaim the man’- you are judged by your appearance
‘Grapple them unto your soul with hoops of steel’- hold onto your friends as much as possible
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The things he says to Ophelia contradict lots that he said to Laertes
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How far is he in control?
Is he the Prince of Denmark in character or just a private man? His soliloquies focus on himself
as a man, his real genuine emotions
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In act 3 scene 4, the ghost can only be seen by Hamlet which makes him out as being mad
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She would know if he was mad
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He is disturbed by what he’s seen, as Shakespeare has set it out to
make us believe he’s mad
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H talks to G very quick witted
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He compares a lot C to old H
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Or a plot device used for
emphasis? H has managed to hallucinate
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The audience turns against him when he is inappropriate to
Ophelia
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He’s not consistent
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C talks to Laertes about getting revenge on Hamlet
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Is this typical of Claudius? Links back to act 1 scene 2 with his political speech
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Claudius is pushing L to take revenge on H and trying to disguise it
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He is very skillful
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The king uses sickness imagery- ‘ulcers’
Laertes response- is L a victim of manipulation?
Why doesn’t Claudius bump H off himself? Claudius is looking to make his future ‘hamlet-proof’
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The men ignore warning signs from Ophelia’s madness and instead try to focus on killing H
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Group 4H’s soliloquy at the end of scene 4
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He is frustrated that he didn’t kill C when he had the chance
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Is H’s problem that he overthinks everything?
He has a real moral issue with Fortinbras- fighting for land and potentially killing 2000 men
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He has conflict within himself- what he is feeling and what he should be feeling
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H calls them ‘good lads’ they call him ‘my most dear lord’
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Loyalty- ‘My lord, we were sent for’- why would they tell him if not loyal?
‘Fortune’s cap’- referencing fortune as a woman- sexualising her
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‘My lord, you once did love me’- line 305 act 3 sc 2
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Adders​- ‘Your visitations shall receive such thanks as fits a king’s remembrance’- financial gain
for them to betray their friend
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Maybe the only reason they told H they were spying on him is because he got it out of them
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A good woman who does things that have
unforeseen negative consequences? ‘As kill a king?’- no idea of C’s guilt
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Public persona- passive and submissive
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She’s not powerful as a woman
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She has comparatively few lines to male characters
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Easily persuaded by C
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