Images from Kennet Branagh ‘Hamlet’

SETTING • Denmark in Middle Ages Time

Sources • Saxo Grammaticus (a Danish Historian who had written a collection of stories centred upon revengerevenge in Medieval time (around the 12 th century). They had been published in the early 16th century and Shakespeare had probably read them in a French translation.

•Thomas Kyd ( a Renaissance dramatist) who had written ‘the Spanish tragedy’ (with violent murders) in which he had dealt with the theme of madnessmadness’ and inserted the ghostghost and ‘the play in the play’

CHARACTERS

• Old Hamlet (King of Denmark)

• Prince Hamlet

•Queen Gertrude

• Claudius (old Hamlet’s brother)

• Ophelia (Prince Hamlet’s fiancée)

• Polonius (Ophelia’s father and king's counsellor)

•Laertes (Ophelia’s brother)

•The Ghost (King Hamlet’s ghost)

PLOT (1)

• Old Hamlet is killed by his brother in order to usurp the throne and marry Gertrude

• Hamlet is advised by the father’s ghost that he hadn’t died a natural death ( Claudius poured poison into his ear while

sleeping in the orchard) so he urges him to avenge his death whereas his mother’s punishment should be left to heaven.

PLOT (2)

•In order to disguise / to get the evidence of the murderer and find out the truth Hamlet stages a ‘play within the play’ (The murder of Gonzago). Claudius is trapped when he expresses disgust and defiance, when he tells Hamlet, “Away”

•From now on Hamlet (who has got the evidence of Claudius’involvement in the murder) becomes an inconvenient and disturbing presence at Court.

• So Claudius, tries to have Hamlet executed by sending him to England with his own death warrant.

•Hamlet survives, however, and returns home to claim his revenge.

A scene from ‘The murder of Gonzago’

PLOT (3)

•Hamlet, deeply depressed starts making sad considerations about life and death (suicide or going on struggling) and while thinking about the best action to restore justice, he pretends being mad.

• He rejects Ophelia, who, overcome by sorrow, drowns herself

•Polonius is accidentally killed by Hamlet while overhearing a speech from behind a curtain

•Laertes wants to take revenge and so a duel with Hamlet is organized by Claudius

Polonius’s death

Hamlet and Laertes fight in the grave

PLOT (3)

•In the duel everything goes wrong: the poisoned sword prepared by Claudius for Laertes wounds both Hamlet and Laertes. The latter will die soon after.

•A poisoned cup is accidentally drunk by Gertrude and Hamlet succeeds in killing Claudius before dying himself.

The death of Hamlet

• He’s always dressed in black (sad and innerly tormented).

• He’s indecisive.Shocked by his father’s death he’s no longer in peace. Life changes its meaning and colour, love loses its spirituality, the State its stability. Everything becomes absurd and and bitter.

•He’s solitary, melancholic, depressed and speaks about the futility of human life. He’s angry with the corruption of the world

•He is a religious man / a believer and his decision to go on on living comes from his faith but also from the fear of being accused of cowardice induce him to go on living

WHO IS HAMLET? -1-

•He’s a philosopher (meditations on the ultimate meaning of life and death, on evil – whethe inherent in human nature or socially originated)

• He’s a revenger (he behaves savagely, as if obsessed by the idea of revenge)

but also

• noble, aristocratic in behaviour, elegant and brave

WHO IS HAMLET? – 2 -

THEMES

Hamlet revolves mainly around revenge, even if it’s not the only theme

•In Elizabethan times revenge was not tolerated either by the Church and the moral of the the time because sinful. HOWEVER people liked wathcing it performed at the theatre.

•Revenge usually originates from a violent or sexual crime which laws and justice cannot punish.

•Before taking revenge the hero goes through planned action. A ghost usually helps him carry on the task. The hero grows in isolation and often turns into madness. He speaks to himself (long soliloquies in which the hero has a close relationship with the audience). Deep reflections of the hero on the outside world

•All this hesitation highlights the main theme of the time: DOUBT and UNCERTAINTY (epoch of great changes- Renaissance man)

THEMES

•LIFE & DEATH

• ACTION (meaning of – consequences of - how to act – whether it is right or not - )

• DOUBT and MELANCHOLY

• CONTRAST BETWEEN APPEARANCE AND REALITY (how to distinguish what appears to be real from what is truly so? interior evil and exterior health and appearance – ‘There is something rotten in Denmark)

• JUSTICE (how to repair the EVIL committed)

•RESTORATION OF ORDER

‘TO BE OR NOT TO BE’:Central dilemma of Hamlet’s most famous monologue (ACT III). Hamlet seems incapable of taking revenge on his uncle as his father’s ghost asked him

MEANING:

• what to choose between ACTION and INACTION.

• To make the audience reflect on what cowardice is.

• Behind the two ways out are two philosophical positions:

• Stoic attitude (endure life’s evils and misfortunes at all costs and to the end)

• Suicide (death = unknown country where no traveller comes back)

In both cases the decision is hard and can imply both courage and cowardice.

ACTION

ANOTHER THEME: misoginy

• Hatred for women - Gertrude and Ophelia – at the beginning - are the most beloved in the tragedy but then something changes

•Gertrude is violently accused by Hamlet who takes the opportunity for stressing the deceiving (ingannevole) nature of women. He resents her mother’s behaviour because she married Claudius (his uncle)

•There is some question as to whether or not she was involved in the murder. Her actions are often suspect, particularly because she scarcely mourned her husband's death before marrying his brother. These actions destroy Hamlet's trust in the fidelity of women.

•But which is her guilt? After all she has just married Claudius after her husband died or should we infer that she had committed adultery before Hamlet’s death?

Gertrude

Ophelia

Misoginy (2)

• Ophelia’s neglected by Hamlet and abandoned as a consequence of his loss of interest in life but also in women

• She has to obey her father and leave Hamlet and put an end to her romance. She’s driven to madness and suicide by her lover’s cruelty.

•Both seem the victims of men’s domination over WOMEN.

Hamlet reproaches Ophelia