Hamlet

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For other uses, see Hamlet (disambiguation).

Image:Hamlet play scene cropped.png The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark is a tragedy by William Shakespeare and is one of his best-known and most often quoted plays. It was written at an uncertain date between 1600 and the summer of 1602.

Hamlet may be the most frequently produced work in almost every western country, and it is considered a crucial test for mature actors. Hamlet's "To be, or not to be" soliloquy (Act Three, Scene One), the most popular passage in the play, is so well known that it has become a stumbling-block for many modern actors.

Hamlet is one of the world's most famous literary works, and has been translated into every major living language.

Contents

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Sources

Shakespeare's play tells the story of the legendary Danish Prince Hamlet, or Amleth (see: the legendary Hamlet) whose exploits were recorded by Saxo Grammaticus in his Gesta Danorum around 1200 AD; François de Belleforest adapted Saxo's story in his Histoires Tragiques (1570).

Shakespeare's main source, however, is believed to be an earlier play about Hamlet (known as the Ur-Hamlet), which is attributed to Thomas Kyd and is known to have introduced a ghost to the story. The 'Ur-Hamlet' was never printed, and is now lost. However, it was praised in print in Thomas Nashe's preface to Robert Greene's Menaphon as early as 1589. It made the phrase "Hamlet, revenge!" (which does not appear in Shakespeare's play) famous. While the Ur-Hamlet is usually assumed to have been written by Kyd, it is sometimes suggested that it may have been written by Shakespeare himself, and later revised or rewritten into the play as it has been preserved in print.

Shakespeare may also have taken some elements from Kyd's other play, The Spanish Tragedy, especially the hero's procrastination.

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Texts

There are three extant texts of Hamlet from the early 1600s: two quarto editions, and one from the first folio (see Quarto and Folio).

The play first appeared in print in 1603 in a version now known as the 'bad Quarto'. This edition follows essentially the same plot as the play we know as Hamlet but it is much shorter and its language is often different to that which we are accustomed to encounter; for example, where the accepted version reads "To be or not to be, that is the question", the 1603 Quarto reads "To be or not to be, aye there's the point". These discrepancies, which many critics view as aesthetically weaker than the other versions, have led to the suggestion that the text may have been published without the permission of the playing company, and put together by stenography or by minor actors recalling the lines of others by memory. It was common practise at the time for actors in rehearsal to be given only their individual part and cue lines; consequently, the finger has been pointed at the actor playing Marcellus as the likely culprit for the source of the "Bad Quarto", as his scenes and lines are rendered most "accurately" compared to other Quartos. When he is absent from the stage the text seems more divergent from other extant copies. Some modern textual scholars consider this theory to be fanciful, since a minor actor would be unlikely to have memorised the lines of other actors, even inaccurately -- but actors and other theatrical professionals (who often have large portions of plays they work on memorized without even attempting to) would likely dispute this point.

The authorized 'Second Quarto' (Q2) was published in 1604, and was described on its title page as "enlarged to almost as much again as it was". This is the longest text of Hamlet to be published in the period.

The third edition was the version published in the First Folio of Shakespeare's complete works. This text is shorter but also contains scenes not in Q2.

Modern editions are a compromise between the Second Quarto text and the Folio text. Some conflate the two to produce one very long text. Others assume that the Folio text represents Shakespeare's final intentions and that the cuts were made by him; they therefore present the cut Q2 passages in an appendix.

In the theatre, performing the full, conflated Q2/Folio text takes around 4 hours. Because of this, most productions use a cut text. For example, the Royal Shakespeare Company's Artistic Director Michael Boyd staged Hamlet in the summer of 2004 using lines from various Quartos; his text was dubbed the "Boyd Quarto" by newspaper reviewers.

Some theatre companies have experimented with performing the Bad Quarto, which takes only 2 hours. They claim that while it reads badly on the page, in performance it is faster-paced and more direct than the 'official' versions.

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Main characters

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Prince Hamlet, the title character, is the son of the late King of Denmark, who was also named Hamlet. He is a student at a school in Wittenberg. He is charged by the ghost of his father to avenge his murder, which he finally succeeds in doing, but only after the rest of the royal house has been wiped out and he himself has been mortally wounded with a poisoned rapier by Laertes at the end of the play.

Claudius is the current King of Denmark, Hamlet's uncle, who succeeded to the throne upon the death of his brother. The ghost of King Hamlet tells Prince Hamlet that he was murdered by brother Claudius, who poured hebenon in his ear while he was asleep. Claudius is killed with a poisoned rapier by Hamlet. Claudius also accidentally kills Gertrude, his wife and Hamlet's mother, with the draught he actually had intended to poison Hamlet with at the end of the play.

King Hamlet (referred to in the stage directions as Ghost) was Hamlet's father. At the start of the play, it has not been long since his death. He appears to Hamlet as a ghost seeking vengeance for his murder by poison at the hands of his brother, Claudius. Hamlet questions the contention that the spirit really is the ghost of King Hamlet or is actually a malicious demon in disguise. He cannot find a definitive answer.

Gertrude is Hamlet's mother. Widowed because of King Hamlet's death, she has quickly been remarried to Claudius, the late king's brother, a relationship considered incestuous by Hamlet and in Shakespeare's time (although religious authorities could and did grant dispensations for such marriages). She dies by accidentally drinking poisoned wine intended for Hamlet at the end of the play.

Polonius is Claudius's chief councillor, who is distrustful of Hamlet's relationship with Ophelia, his own daughter, because she is a social inferior to him. He fears Hamlet will only take her virginity and won't marry her, so he forbids her from continuing with their relationship. He is sometimes portrayed as a fatuous bore, and Hamlet frequently teases him while pretending to be mad. He is fatally stabbed by Hamlet, who mistakes him for Claudius, when he hides himself behind an arras while trying to eavesdrop on a conversation between Hamlet and his mother.

Laertes is Polonius's son, who deeply cares for Ophelia, his sister, and spends much of the play in France. In the end, appalled by Hamlet's role in his sister's death, he works with Claudius to rig a duelling contest. In this contest, he kills Hamlet with a poisoned rapier to avenge the deaths of Polonius and Ophelia. Hamlet kills him with the same rapier, without realising that it was poisoned.

Ophelia is Polonius's daughter. She and Hamlet have had romantic feelings for each other, although they (at least implicitly) have been warned that it would be politically inexpedient for them to marry. Tormented by Hamlet as part of his 'madness', her father's death causes her to go insane, and she drowns in a brook.

Horatio is a friend of Hamlet's from university. Apparently a commoner, or in any event not a close relative of the royal family, he is not directly involved in the intrigue at the Danish court, which enables the author to use him as a foil or sounding board for Hamlet. Hamlet commissions him to name Fortinbras King of Denmark after the deaths of the royal household.

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are old school-fellows of Hamlet, who were summoned to the castle by Claudius to keep a watch on Hamlet. Hamlet soon suspects that they are spies. They die off-stage in England, executed by the King's warrant for Hamlet's death which was altered by Hamlet to name them instead.

Fortinbras is the Norwegian crown prince. He is the son of King Fortinbras, who was killed in battle by Hamlet's father, and thus has vengeance on his mind. His firm and decisive action contrasts with Hamlet's procrastination.

Osric is a courtier who referees the sword fight between Hamlet and Laertes, in which both are mortally wounded by a poisoned rapier.

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Plot summary

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

The play concerns the revenge of Prince Hamlet, whose father, the late King of Denmark, victor over the sled-riding Polish army, died suddenly while Hamlet was away from home at Wittenberg University. Prior to the opening of the play, the King's brother Claudius has been proclaimed king, and cemented his claim to the throne by marrying Hamlet's mother Gertrude, the widowed Queen.

The play opens on the battlements of Elsinore Castle, seat of the Danish monarchy, where a group of sentries is terrified by the sight of the ghost of the recently deceased King Hamlet. Hamlet's friend Horatio joins the soldiers on their watch and when the ghost appears, bids it to speak. They suspect it has some message to deliver, but it vanishes without speaking.

The next day, the Danish court meets to celebrate the wedding of Claudius and Gertrude. The new King urges Hamlet not to persist in his grief. When he is alone again, Hamlet expresses his anger at the accession of his uncle Claudius to the throne and his mother's hasty remarriage. Horatio and the guards come to the scene and tell him of the appearance of the ghost of his father. Hamlet is determined to investigate this.

Joining Horatio on the watch on the battlements that night, the ghost appears again. It beckons him to come along with him and then reveals a fearful secret: his father was indeed murdered. He was poisoned through the ear by Claudius, and the Ghost commands Hamlet to avenge him. Shocked by this discovery, Hamlet returns to Horatio and the sentries, making them swear an oath not to reveal details of the night's events to anyone.

Hamlet is unsure whether the ghost he has seen is really his father, and suspects that it might be the Devil taking his father's appearance in order to take his soul to hell. He therefore sets out to test the king's conscience through putting on an "antic disposition" (feigning madness), in the hope that his behaviour might reveal the truth, or otherwise provide the opportunity to put an end to Claudius.

Hamlet feigns insanity in order to convict Claudius of murder and treason, and takes special delight in making a fool of Polonius, the king's chief councillor. Polonius, convinced of Hamlet's madness, is certain that it stems from his unrequited love for his daughter Ophelia. He forbids his daughter to continue her relationship with Hamlet. Polonius fears for his status at court and offers his services to the King in this matter in an attempt to redeem himself before the King of any guilt. He suggests arranging a meeting between Hamlet and Ophelia during which Polonius and Claudius will spy upon them both. Claudius, perhaps suspecting Hamlet's ruse, also asks Hamlet's schoolmates Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to monitor him, but Hamlet does not let his guard down and sees the intention behind his schoolmates' sudden visit. He enlists a company of travelling performers to stage an existing play which he has modified to re-enact the circumstances of his father's murder.

"The play's the thing
Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the King."
[Act II, scene II]

Shortly after the play begins, Claudius cannot bear to watch, rises and asks for lights. The king's anguished reaction to the performance (which Horatio also notices) convinces Hamlet of his guilt. Shortly afterwards, Claudius arranges for Hamlet to be deported to the Danish territories of England along with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, where he is to be killed upon arrival. Alone, Claudius privately expresses his disgust at what he has done, and offers a prayer of repentance. Hamlet discovers Claudius at prayer and prepares to kill him, but then stops, reasoning that he does not want his revenge to have the result of sending the repentant Claudius to Heaven. Ironically, after Hamlet slips away, Claudius concludes that he is unable to repent in his current state of mind; thus, if Hamlet had not attempted to arrogate to himself the destiny of Claudius's soul, rather than just his life, he would have achieved the ultimate justice he sought. By trying to go beyond the ghost's orders, he has doomed his efforts to failure.

Hamlet confronts his mother about the murder of his father and her sexual relations with her new husband. During their conversation, he stabs Polonius, who has been hiding behind a tapestry and eavesdropping on their conversation. Initially suspecting his victim was Claudius, he appears unrepentant and unconcerned when Polonius is revealed, continuing to admonish his mother. King Hamlet's ghost makes a reappearance to rebuke Hamlet. Hamlet's mother cannot see the ghost, but sees him conversing with it, convinced that her son has really gone mad.

Claudius, who has finally understood Hamlet's real motivation, sends Hamlet to England, supposedly for his safety, but accompanied by a sealed letter to the English ordering his death. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are sent along to ensure the orders are carried out. When later he returns to Denmark, Hamlet describes how his ship was attacked by pirates, who took him prisoner but then returned him to Denmark.

During Hamlet's absence, Ophelia loses her sanity, being gravely disturbed by Hamlet's rejection and the death of Polonius. She sings a number of rustic melodies that Shakespeare may have borrowed from the English folk tradition. In what may have been a suicide, she falls into a brook and drowns. Laertes, her brother, returns from overseas, and is hungry to avenge his father's and sister's death.

Returning from his voyage, Hamlet meets Horatio at a graveyard outside Elsinore castle just as Ophelia's funeral cortege arrives there, where a gravedigger (jester/clown) is digging. Hamlet finds the skull of Yorick (see skull as a symbol), an old jester to the court who carried him on his back during his childhood days, and proclaims, "Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know not how oft." As Hamlet broods on mortality, the cortege arrives with the King, Queen and Laertes. Hamlet is so distraught to learn of Ophelia's death that he leaps into the open grave and grapples with Laertes.

When Laertes and Claudius learn of Hamlet's return to Denmark, they scheme to kill Hamlet with the intention of making the death look like an accident. To this end, Claudius instructs Laertes to challenge Hamlet to a fencing match. In order to encourage Hamlet to accept, Claudius lays stakes on the match which are very unfavourable to himself. Unbeknownst to Hamlet, Laertes will be fighting with a sharpened and poisoned foil, instead of the customary bated blade. In addition, Claudius prepares some poisoned wine for Hamlet to drink as a toast, just in case Laertes is unable to hit him.

When the match begins, Hamlet wins the first two rounds, and Gertrude drinks some of the wine to toast him, unaware that it is poisoned. Hamlet is hit with the sword and fatally poisoned, but in the ensuing brawl, he swaps blades with Laertes, and deals a deep wound to Laertes with the poisoned sword as well. The Queen dies from the wine, warning Hamlet that the drink is poisoned. With his dying breath, Laertes also confesses the whole plot to Hamlet. Enraged, Hamlet kills Claudius with the poisoned weapon, forcing him also to drink the poisoned wine, at last avenging his father's death.

Horatio, horrified at the turn of events, seizes the poisoned wine and proposes to join his friend in death, but Hamlet wrests the cup away from him. He orders him to tell his story to the world to restore his good name. Hamlet also recommends that the Norwegian prince, Fortinbras, be chosen as the successor to the Danish throne. Hamlet dies, and Horatio mourns his passing:

"Now cracks a noble heart: Good night sweet prince:
And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest!"
[Act V, scene II]

Fortinbras enters with English ambassadors. Shocked by the carnage, he orders a military funeral for Hamlet, whilst Horatio offers to relate the whole tale.

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Hamlet as a character

Image:Smoktun.jpg

Like the play itself, Hamlet the character is possibly the most discussed and contentious character in the whole of world drama and indeed in the whole of Western literature. While conceding he is one of Shakespeare's greatest creations, critics are at odds over the inner motivations and psyche of this character. His relationships with the various characters of the story, including his father, his uncle Claudius, his mother Gertrude and his beloved Ophelia, have all been subjected to multiple speculations, including modern psychological theories. Critics as varied as Goethe, Coleridge, Hegel, Schlegel, Nietzsche, Turgenev, Freud, T. S. Eliot, C.S. Lewis, and Asimov have written essays on him, all with their own special insights. J. Dover Wilson produced one of the most influential readings of the first half of the 20th century; Harold Bloom was dominant in the second half. Besides being Shakespeare's most demanding role (with over 1,400 lines), Hamlet is also the most introspective. Actors have traditionally struggled with this role, and it can be safely said that any one performance can capture only some of the many facets of the creation. This, however, has made the role of Hamlet to be one of the most desired roles in theatre.

The plot summary above presents perhaps the simplest view of Hamlet, as a person seeking truth in order to be certain that he is justified in carrying out the revenge called for by a ghost that claims to be the spirit of his father. The most standard view is that Hamlet is highly indecisive, which is the view as proposed by Coleridge and a number of other critics. "Shakespeare wished to impress upon us the truth, that action is the chief end to existence". The 1948 movie with Laurence Olivier in the title role is introduced by a voiceover: "This is a story of a man who could not make up his mind."

Others see Hamlet as a person charged to carry out a duty that he both knows and feels is right, yet is unwilling to. In this view, all of his efforts to satisfy himself of King Claudius' guilt or his failure to act when he can are evidence of this unwillingness, and Hamlet berates himself for his inability to carry out his task. After observing a play-actor performing a scene, he notes that the actor was moved to tears in the passion of the story and compares this passion for an ancient Greek character, Hecuba, in light of his own situation:

"O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I!
Is it not monstrous that this player here,
But in a fiction, in a dream of passion,
Could force his soul so to his own conceit
That from her working all his visage wan'd;
Tears in his eyes, distraction in's aspect,
A broken voice, and his whole function suiting
With forms to his conceit? And all for nothing!
For Hecuba?
What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba,
That he should weep for her?" [...]

And he acknowledges to himself the terrible deed he must avenge, yet responds only with words:

"Yet I,
A dull and muddy-mettled rascal, peak,
Like John-a-dreams, unpregnant of my cause,
And can say nothing; no, not for a king
Upon whose property and most dear life
A damn'd defeat was made. Am I a coward?
[...]
But I am pigeon-liver'd, and lack gall
[...]
Why, what an ass am I! This is most brave,
That I, the son of a dear father murder'd,
Prompted to my revenge by heaven and hell,
Must, like a whore, unpack my heart with words"
[Act II, sc. ii]

Hamlet's verbose and painful analyses of his situation and actions encourage many others to see his struggle as something far more existential in nature, having less to do with the revenge drama than with the human condition.

"The time is out of joint: Oh cursed spite,
That ever I was born to set it right."
[Act I, sc. v]

Another view of Hamlet, advanced by Isaac Asimov in his Guide to Shakespeare, holds that his actions are attributable not to indecision, but to multiple motivations: his desire to avenge the wrong done to his father, coupled with his own ambition to succeed to the throne. The tragic error committed by Hamlet, in Asimov's view, is his overreaching wish to see Claudius damned, and not merely dead, which prevents him from killing Claudius at the opportune moment.

It has also been suggested that Hamlet's hesitations may also be rooted in the religious beliefs of Shakespeare's time. The Reformation had generated debate about the existence of purgatory (where King Hamlet claims he currently resides). The concept of purgatory is a Catholic one, and was frowned on in Protestant England. A devout Protestant might therefore presume the Ghost to be a spirit from Hell that must be ignored. This has led to the speculation that the elder Hamlet represented Catholicism while the son represented Protestantism.

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Performances and adaptations

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Hamlet in cinema and TV

According to the Internet Movie Database there have been 22 theatrically released movies entitled Hamlet, plus another 16 made for TV. Another 50 productions have included this name as part of the title or have used a foreign language variation of the name. See also Shakespeare on screen (Hamlet).

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Straight adaptations

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Films that reference Hamlet

Note: a number of films have also used lines from Hamlet's soliloquy as film titles. See To be, or not to be for a list of these films.

  • A King in New York (1957), directed by Charlie Chaplin includes a scene in which Chaplin recites the "to be or not to be" speech, and is arguably on a par with other famous renditions.
  • Tom Stoppard's popular play and movie Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead depicts the two title characters contemplating their roles as minor players in a bigger drama. Occasional scenes are taken directly from Hamlet.
  • Tom Stoppard also has a short entitled The Fifteen Minute Hamlet which includes Philip Seymour Hoffman in the cast. The fifteen minute version is followed by an even shorter version.
  • Hamlet Goes Business (Hamlet liikemaailmassa) (1987) by Aki Kaurismäki is a comic reworking of the story as a power struggle in a rubber duck factory.
  • Episode 43 of Monty Python's Flying Circus (1974) is entitled Hamlet.
  • The comedy Strange Brew (1983) is loosely based on Hamlet. Among other jokes, scenes takes place at Elsinore Brewery.
  • The Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991) character General Chang, a Klingon officer, was a Shakespeare aficionado, and opined that Shakespearian works were best experienced in the "original" Klingon. Indeed, Klingonists Nick Nicholas and Andrew Strader published a Klingon translation of Hamlet in 1996. The Klingon version of the famous quote, which Chang recites in the film, is taH pagh taHbe'.
  • Hamlet features strongly in the film Renaissance Man, in which Danny DeVito's character uses its plot and characters to introduce a group of under-achieving soldiers to critical thinking.
  • The Simpsons offered a shortened version of Hamlet in the episode "Tales from the Public Domain".
  • Transformers Beast Wars mirrored Hamlet's death in the episode "Code of Hero" in which former Predacon Dinobot takes on the entire Predacon team without backup utimately saving humanity before it evolved into today's current existence. With his Maximal comrades he quotes, "Tell my story, tell it truly, the good and the bad; and let me be judged accordingly. The rest is silence."
  • The Brak Show referenced the basic plot of Hamlet in the episode "Braklet, Prince of Spaceland". In the episode, Brak's father is killed by Zorak, who also hypnotizes Brak's mother into believing that the two are married. Brak's father appears as a ghost, and informs Brak what has happened. Brak goes insane and makes a movie of the murder, which he shows to Zorak.
  • The action movie and comedy film Last Action Hero starts with Arnold Schwarzenegger starring in the advert of a (fictional)action movie that is an adaptation of Hamlet.
  • There was an episode of South Park in which Terrance and Philip's professional relationship failed, resulting in one of them moving to Canada to become a Shakespearean actor, subsequently performing Hamlet with other Canadian actors, with the ending of the play being shown in the episode.
  • Egyptian director Youssef Chahine frequently cites from Hamlet in his films. His films Alexandria.. Why? (1978) and Alexandria.. New York(2004) feature performances of soliliquies. In Alexandria Again and Forever (1990) Hamlet appears as a film within the film.
  • Princess Diaries Two: The Royal Engagement. Lily, the Princess Mia's best friend refers to Mia's two chambermaids as "Rosencrantz" and "Guildenstern"
  • René (Robert Lepage) quotes part of the "To Be or Not to Be" soliloquy during his portion of The Passion Play in the 1989 film Jésus de Montréal. The film also refers to Hamlet in its trailer.
  • The Ninth Configuration featured mentally ill soldiers in an asylum, one of whom wants to stage an all-dog production of Hamlet--the title role, of course, going to a Great Dane.
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Hamlet in music

At least 26 operas have been written based on Hamlet, including:

Instrumental works based on Hamlet include:

Contemporary popular music includes:

  • What a Piece of Work is Man from the 1967 musical Hair is Hamlet's speech from act 2 scene 2 set to music.
  • The Dream Theater song Pull Me Under is influenced by, and makes reference to, Hamlet.
  • Lou Reed's song "Goodnight Ladies", from his 1972 album Transformer, uses a line from Ophelia's mad speech (Act 4, Scene 5) as its chorus.
  • Darling Violetta's song Ophelia, from the band's debut album Bath-Water-Flowers, references Ophelia's death/suicide.
  • Rasputina's song Dig Ophelia from the debut album Thanks for the Ether also references the death of Ophelia.
  • Your Forgotten Love has a song entitled "Her Fair Judgment", with lyrics rearranged from Ophelia's mad speech.
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External links

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