Hamlet – A. J. Drake's Shakespeare Site

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Shakespeare’s Tragedies

Shakespeare, William. The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. Second Quarto with additions from the Folio. (The Norton Shakespeare: Tragedies, 3rd ed. Combined text 358-447.)

ACT 1

1. In Act 1, Scene 1, the watchmen Marcellus and Bernardo look to Hamlet’s friend Horatio to interpret the apparition they have already seen twice, and as luck would have it, the Ghost appears again. How does the Ghost behave this time? What assumptions does Horatio make about the Ghost and its purpose for appearing? What current goings-on in Denmark lead him to make such assumptions?

2. In Act 1, Scene 2, what figure does Denmark’s new king, Claudius (the brother of Hamlet Sr.) cut when we first encounter him? How does he handle the delicate subject of his marriage to his former sister-in-law, Queen Gertrude? How does he deal with the matter of state regarding Young Fortinbras of Norway, and then with Laertes’s ardent request to return to France? Is there anything incongruous about Claudius’s performance? If so, what is it?

3. In Act 1, Scene 2, Claudius and Gertrude turn their attention to the troubled Prince Hamlet, only to be confronted with his continued bitterness over the death of his father the late King. What arguments do Gertrude and then Claudius offer to turn Hamlet away from his mourning and toward their wishes for his future? Why don’t they want him to return to his studies at Wittenberg? How does the Prince respond to their efforts to engage with him?

4. In Act 1, Scene 2, Hamlet offers his first soliloquy of seven (i.e., passages in which he speaks to or by himself), beginning “Oh, that this too, too sallied flesh would melt …” (line 129ff) after he talks with Claudius and Gertrude. To what extent is suicide on Hamlet’s mind? Beyond that topic, what other topic takes up most of the soliloquy? Why is Hamlet so angry at Gertrude? On the whole, what does the Prince’s first soliloquy suggest about the true cause of his depressed state?

5. In Act 1, Scene 2, Horatio, accompanied by Marcellus and Barnardo, visits Hamlet to break the news of his father’s appearance as a ghost on the watch platform. How does Hamlet receive the news? Why does he ask so many questions of his old friend Horatio regarding the Ghost’s characteristics? How does he express his determination to get to the bottom of this strange visitation? When he is alone and free to reflect, what does Hamlet immediately surmise about the Ghost’s purpose in appearing?

6. In Act 1, Scene 3, Ophelia first listens to her brother’s departing sermon about chastity and politics, and then faces her father Polonius, who admonishes her for getting involved with Prince Hamlet. How do both men respectively interpret Hamlet’s attentions to Ophelia? More importantly, what first impression of Ophelia does this scene encourage us to form? How well is she able to defend herself when confronted with her brother’s affectionate pontificating (“mansplaining”?) and her father’s sterner but allied commands?

7. In Act 1, Scene 4, the Ghost interrupts Hamlet’s musings on Danish drunkenness, beckoning him to a private audience. What does the Ghost do, and what does he look like? What does Hamlet at once want to know from him, and how do all three men present (Hamlet, Horatio, and Marcellus) respectively react to this supernatural visitation? What seems to be Hamlet’s mental state as he faces the Ghost? A practical question: if you were directing Hamlet, how would you represent the Ghost on stage, and why?

8. In Act 1, Scene 5, the Ghost leads Hamlet away from the platform and soon tells the story of his untimely death and continuing punishment in Purgatory. What is that story—by what specific means did Claudius take the life of his brother? How and at what point (if we can tell—can we?) did Claudius win the affections of Gertrude? What does the Ghost suggest should happen to Claudius and to Gertrude, respectively? Do the demands that the Ghost makes of Hamlet seem reasonable? Why or why not?

9. In Act 1, Scene 5, what effect does the Ghost’s interaction with Hamlet have on him? Follow Hamlet’s behavior in the wake of the Ghost’s appearance to him: how, specifically, in this his second soliloquy, beginning “O all you host of heaven! …” (line 92ff), does the Prince express his determination to carry out the Ghost’s revenge command? In what sense, and why, does he treat Marcellus and even Horatio differently when they greet him after his ordeal? Finally, what should we make of Hamlet’s concluding utterance, “The time is out of joint: oh, cursèd spite / That ever I was born to set it right” (lines 189-90)? How committed is he?

ACT 2

10. In Act 2, Scene 1, Polonius instructs Reynaldo to keep tabs on Laertes in France, and based on Ophelia’s distressed report about Hamlet’s comportment toward her, he is sure the Prince has gone mad for love. Understandably, Polonius is often portrayed to match Hamlet’s post-mortem estimation of him as a “foolish, prating knave.” But based on the present scene, what kind of Polonius emerges? To what extent is this “prating knave” also a cunning intelligencer? (Polonius’s machinations in Act 2, Scene 2 might also be included in your response to this question, if that idea appeals to you.) If you directed Hamlet, how would you stage Polonius?

11. In Act 2, Scene 2, evidently without prompting from Polonius, Claudius and Gertrude have summoned Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to talk to their old friend Hamlet. What do they want these two men to draw from discussion with the Prince? What does the Queen suspect is at the root of Hamlet’s unhappiness? What is the King’s view on what he calls Hamlet’s “distemper” so far? As an aside, in what sense are the courtly figures “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern” already in part comic figures in an undeniably tragic play?

12. In Act 2, Scene 2, Polonius ushers in the ambassador Voltimand, who informs Claudius that the King of Norway has rebuked young Fortinbras for trying to claw back the lands his slain father had lost to Hamlet Sr. What is the rest of the news from Norway, based on the present King of Norway’s recent conversation with Voltimand—what request has been made to Claudius? What might Claudius’s response to this news suggest about his acumen or prowess as a statesman?

13. In Act 2, Scene 2, Polonius pitches to Claudius and Gertrude his theory that Hamlet’s odd behavior at court is being caused by the Prince’s lovesickness for Ophelia. How does Polonius’s delivery show him to be at once a competent royal spymaster and a member of the rather large assembly of word-mangling and logic-chopping characters distributed throughout Shakespeare’s plays? Following the pitch, how does Polonius’s staged conversation with the Prince go? How does Hamlet outsmart the old counselor? What do the Prince’s madcap replies reveal that is beyond Polonius’s understanding?

14. In Act 2, Scene 2, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern try their luck at getting the Prince to talk. How does this conversation go from the perspective of the questioners who mean to gain usable intelligence? What does Hamlet get his old friends to admit about their purpose in visiting him? What should we make of Hamlet’s remarkable speech that begins, “I have of late, but wherefore I / know not …” (line 257ff)? What drives Hamlet to utter in such company this eloquent mixture of high praise for humanity and disillusionment? Still, to what extent do Hamlet’s words also seem sincere? Explain.

15. In Act 2, Scene 2, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern tell Hamlet that his favorite acting troupe is on the way to Elsinore, and a brief discussion ensues about the competition between London’s adult playing companies and fashionable child actors. After this conversation and a bit of edgy back-and-forth with Polonius, how does Hamlet greet the acting troupe that has just arrived at Elsinore? What “passionate speech” does he call upon the First Player to recite—what is the subject of it, and how does it relate to Hamlet’s own situation? What request does Hamlet go on to make of the First Player?

16. At the end of Act 2, Scene 2, Hamlet speaks his third soliloquy, beginning “Now I am alone. / Oh, what a rogue and peasant slave am I!” (line 468ff) What accusations does he level against himself? What inspiration does he draw from the speech he has just heard the First Player recite, and how does he analyze his own feelings and circumstances in comparison with it? At the end of this soliloquy, what hope does Hamlet invest in the improvised performance of The Murder of Gonzago that he has in mind—how will it help him accomplish his mission?

ACT 3

17. In Act 3, Scene 1, Hamlet speaks his fourth soliloquy, beginning “To be or not to be …” (line 55ff). What are the main reasons, according to Hamlet, why he would do well to end his life, and what are the main reasons preventing him from doing so? What is ironic about Hamlet’s questioning attitude towards the afterlife, given his prior experience? Moreover, in his first soliloquy (1.2.129-49), Hamlet had already ruled out suicide as impermissible by the Church’s law. What, then, is the dramatic value of his return to that rejected topic now?

18. In Act 3, Scene 1, Polonius and Claudius conceal themselves to hear Hamlet’s conversation with Ophelia. The scene has been variously played, based on the director’s surmises. How would you act the scene—when does Hamlet become aware that he is being spied upon, and how does this knowledge inflect what he says? Also, what seems to be Hamlet’s main purpose in speaking to Ophelia as roughly as he does—what effect does he want his words to have on her, and why? When Hamlet departs, what effect has his interaction with Ophelia actually had on her, based on her reaction?

19. In Act 3, Scene 1, once Hamlet’s conversation with Ophelia has ended and the Prince has departed, we see that the interaction has unsettled Claudius and left Polonius looking foolish with his “love-madness” theory. What are Claudius’s observations at this juncture: what is his fear now that he can see it isn’t love that is making Hamlet act so strangely? What does the King decide to do, and why? Moreover, even before his witnessing of Hamlet’s strange performance, how does Claudius reveal to us in this scene that the murder he committed is beginning to take its toll?

20. In Act 3, Scene 2, Hamlet offers succinct advice to the actors who have come to Elsinore, perhaps giving us a bit of the real Shakespeare-as-drama-theorist in the process. What does he advise the players on craft-based and theoretical matters such as proper expression in word and gesture while acting; the relationship between words and action on the stage; the degree to which drama should represent or imitate “real life”; the moral dimension of drama; and the intellectual or aesthetic capacity of the “groundlings” in the audience? Discuss Hamlet’s view of two or three of these matters.

21. In Act 3, Scene 2, Hamlet enlists Horatio in his attempt to “catch the conscience of the King” with a dumb-show and a play. After Hamlet callously teases Ophelia by tossing out sexually inappropriate jests, we proceed to the dumb-show. What brief story does the dumb-show unfold, and what does it suggest about Claudius’s real-life killing of Hamlet Sr.? What does the dumb-show suggest about Gertrude’s part in the crime? Why might the representational doubling that the dumb-show makes possible—i.e. since it will be followed by a speaking play—be even more effective in rattling Claudius than only one kind of representation?

22. In Act 3, Scene 2, the actors proceed to stage The Murder of Gonzago (or The Mousetrap, as Hamlet calls his own adaptation). Bearing in mind that the Player King is patterned after Hamlet Sr., and the Player Queen after Gertrude, consider the following: what is the focus of the conversation between the Player King and the Player Queen? Why does so much of it have to do with the Player Queen’s protestations of loyalty—why would Hamlet insist on inserting this new material into the original play? In the end, what effect does this entire Gonzago production have on Claudius?

23. In Act 3, Scene 2, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are tasked with informing Hamlet that the King is angry and the Queen wants to speak with him privately. How does the Prince manage his conversation with these mercenary old friends—what figures and turns of thought does he use to expose their duplicity? When these two, and then Polonius as well, have gone, Hamlet utters his fifth soliloquy, beginning “’Tis now the very witching time of night …” (line 359ff). With regard to Hamlet’s attitude towards the relationship between words and action, how does this soliloquy differ from the previous four?

24. In Act 3, Scene 3, Claudius (having decided to send Hamlet to England), privately assesses his own spiritual state. Hamlet, in his sixth soliloquy, beginning “Now might I do it, but now ‘a is a-praying …” (line 73ff), decides that killing the King just now would doing him an undeserved favor. Based on what the audience hears, is Hamlet correct? What does Claudius’s attempt at prayer teach him about his prospects for salvation? How does this scene also illuminate the uneasy relationship between the play’s revenge plot and its Christian overtones?

25. In Act 3, Scene 4, Hamlet confronts Gertrude, mistakenly killing Polonius in the process. What accusations does Hamlet level against his mother: what errors in judgment, and possibly even criminal conduct, does he insist she must repent for? Are his charges strictly factual? How does Gertrude respond to them? Also, how much of this scene has to do with Hamlet’s private obsessions, and how much of it has to with his actual revenge mission as set forth by the Ghost of his father? (Consider the timely appearance of the Ghost to Hamlet in this regard.)

26. In Act 3, Scene 4, again with respect to Hamlet’s confrontation of Gertrude, how does he end up killing Polonius, and how does he react to this “rash and bloody deed,” as Gertrude rightly calls it? When he has won Gertrude to his judgment of her, how does Hamlet enlist her in his plan to outmaneuver Claudius and his agents Rosencrantz and Guildenstern? What is that plan? When Claudius arrives, how does he take the death of Polonius, and what does he tell Gertrude he is going to do about Hamlet?

27. In Act 3, Scenes 5-6, Hamlet jests with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, and then with Claudius, about the location of Polonius’s body. What should we make of those jests, the first one consisting in Hamlet’s statement that “The body is with the King, but the King is not with / the body…” (3.5.26-27, 29) and the second to Claudius in person, beginning “Not where he eats …” (3.6.19-24) and centering on “worms” as devourers of dead flesh? What harsh lesson lies in such reasoning for Claudius? When the latter is alone, what final version of his plan for Hamlet does he reveal to us?

ACT 4

28. In Act 4, Scene 1, Hamlet catches sight of Fortinbras’ troops on their way to war in a small patch of Poland. In his seventh and final soliloquy, beginning “How all occasions do inform against me …” (line 31ff), what insight does the Prince gather from this incident? Is the renewed resolution he draws from it convincing, given what we have heard from him already in this play? Explain.

29. In Act 4, Scene 2, Ophelia enters twice, her madness on full display both times to the dismay of Gertrude, Claudius, and Laertes. What earlier factors have led to her insanity, and what continuing traumas and obsessions manifest themselves through the bawdy songs and floral symbolism that so distresses everyone around her?

30. In Act 4, Scene 3, Horatio reads a letter that the newly returned Hamlet has sent him. What is the import of the letter? To what extent does it fit the pattern established up to this point in the play with regard to Hamlet’s reluctant struggle to drive events and accomplish his revenge for Hamlet Sr.’s death? What is he now suggesting that Horatio should do, and why?

31. In Act 4, Scene 4, Claudius steers Laertes—who in Scene 2 had burst into Elsinore demanding revenge for Polonius—toward a strong plot against Hamlet’s life. What are that plot’s particulars, and in what spirit does Laertes accept the role he must play in it? In both Scenes 2 and 4, how does Laertes contrast with Hamlet in terms of his character traits and his relationship to the revenge code? That is, what makes Laertes almost a perfect revenger?

32. In Act 4, Scene 4, Gertrude offers an elaborate description of Ophelia in her final moments and then in her death. This passage, which begins with “There is a willow grows askant the brook …” (line 165ff), is memorialized in John Everett Millais’ Pre-Raphaelite painting “Ophelia.”) How is it symptomatic of Ophelia’s treatment throughout the play that she was not being watched closely in spite of her known insanity? In what sense might Gertrude’s beautiful “word-painting” amount to an acknowledgement that Ophelia has been greatly wronged? Might it also be read as an unwitting perpetuation of Ophelia’s mistreatment? Explain.

ACT 5

33. In Act 5, Scene 1, Hamlet will join Horatio in a partly comic confrontation with a clever Gravedigger, but before Hamlet and Horatio arrive, what legal argument is the Gravedigger pursuing with his assistant, the “Second Man”? What is his opinion about the matter, which has to do mainly with how suicide is defined? (See Hales v. Petit, 1558-62, in Edmund Plowden’s Commentaries.) What relation in terms of events and concepts does the case bear to Ophelia’s untimely death? Moreover, what observations does the Gravedigger make in support of his own profession?

34. In Act 5, Scene 1, once Hamlet and Horatio arrive near the spot where the Gravedigger is hollowing out a fresh grave, what is it about the Gravedigger’s attitude that impresses and somewhat shocks Hamlet? What observations is the Prince moved to make as he watches the Gravedigger tossing up old bones with the dirt that he is digging? What point do these observations tend to reinforce? (See lines 59-104).

35. In Act 5, Scene 1, what further thoughts about the fact and significance of death come to Hamlet during his conversation with the Gravedigger from lines 104-95? How does Yorick the Jester’s skull, once the Gravedigger has duly tossed it up, identified it, and given it to Hamlet as an impromptu memento mori, provide the Prince with some of his deepest insights up to this point? What makes Yorick’s skull, and the fact of his death, so moving and even unsettling for Hamlet? What is the point of bringing the departed Alexander the Great and “Imperious Caesar” into the matter, as Hamlet does to Horatio’s consternation?

36. In Act 5, Scene 1, Ophelia’s funeral party arrives at the cemetery, and after Laertes argues with a “churlish priest” over the limited nature of his sister’s rites, Hamlet and Laertes vie to outdo each other in excessive expressions of grief. What is the substance of their argument? How does this part of Scene 1 amount to another instance in which Ophelia is mistreated? In terms of theme and structure, what does this funeral gathering accomplish—to what extent does it advance or affect Hamlet’s revenge quest?

37. In Act 5, Scene 2, Hamlet explains to Horatio how he managed to return to Denmark. What are the main features of the story Hamlet tells at this point? Does this seemingly minor portion of Scene 2 amount to a significant moment of recognition on Hamlet’s part? (Aristotle’s term anagnorisis in Poetics generally meansrecognition of one’s situation, errors, key truths, etc.)? What change in perspective may be signaled by Hamlet’s remark to Horatio about “a divinity that shapes our ends” (line 10)? What is Hamlet suggesting about the nature of his mission and the right way to accomplish it?

38. In Act 5, Scene 2, the foppish courtier Osric delivers to Hamlet the King’s challenge for a fencing match with Laertes, and Hamlet accepts. When Horatio expresses misgivings, how—as he did earlier in the same scene—does Hamlet justify his action in accepting the challenge by reference to God’s will, or “Providence” (lines 191-95)? Does this second invocation of special status as an agent of God seem plausible or convincing, coming from Hamlet? Why or why not?

39. In Act 5, Scene 2, how is Hamlet’s revenge against Claudius finally accomplished: what sequence of events leads to the deaths of Gertrude, Claudius, Laertes, and Hamlet himself? Does Hamlet seem like an active revenge-agent, in control of the actions he takes, or does he seem more passive than active? Who, or what, would you say is truly responsible for the accomplishment of Hamlet’s revenge mission?

40. In Act 5, Scene 2, Fortinbras, having finished his bloody task in Poland, marches into Elsinore and takes command of the kingdom of Denmark—what does he make of the carnage that greets him, and what does he apparently think of Hamlet? Fortinbras’s accession no doubt solves Denmark’s immediate problem, which is that the entire Danish royal line is now extinct with Hamlet’s death and needs a new ruler. But was this play about such large political matters? How would you describe the main purpose of the injunction that the ghostly Hamlet Sr. laid upon his son?

41. In Act 5, Scene 2, why is it appropriate that Horatio, who has been tasked by Hamlet with telling the court what really happened, should insist on a public venue for his explanation of the tragic events? To what extent can Horatio explain those events—what kind of explanation does he promise to give? How might Hamlet’s explanation, had he lived, differ from the one Horatio seems likely to provide?

42. In Act 5, Scene 2, theater-goers and critics have long noted the bizarre, almost postmodern quality of Hamlet’s final scene—aptly embodied in the English Ambassador’s announcement, “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead.” The British playwright Tom Stoppard even wrote a play by that title, starring Shakespeare’s famous courtiers after they are executed in England. Aside from offering a bit of play’s-end comic relief, what seems to be the significance of the Ambassador’s utterance?

Edition. Greenblatt, Stephen et al., editors. The Norton Shakespeare: Tragedies + Digital Edition. 3rd ed. W. W. Norton, 2016. ISBN-13: 978-0-393-93860-9.