hamlet insanity thesis

Website navigation

The madness of hamlet and king lear: when psychiatrists used shakespeare to argue legal definitions of insanity in the courtroom.

Shakespeare & Beyond

King Lear, III, 2. Johann Heinrich Ramberg. 19th century. Folger Shakespeare Library.

Well-known Shakespeare characters such as King Lear and Hamlet suffer (or appear to suffer) from madness — and early American psychiatrists took note. Observations drawn from literature began to bleed into courtroom testimony regarding insanity pleas.

“From the mid-1840s through about the mid-1860s in the United States, during the first generation of American psychiatry, no figure was cited as an authority on insanity and mental functioning more frequently than William Shakespeare,” according to Benjamin Reiss, the author of a book called Theaters of Madness: Insane Asylums and Nineteenth-Century American Culture .

Reiss, the Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of English at Emory University , was interviewed for the Folger’s Shakespeare Unlimited podcast by Rebecca Sheir for an episode about Shakespeare and insane asylums . See an excerpt from the interview below, with Sheir’s interjections and questions in bold.

“In the 19th century, psychiatrists were often called to testify in legal cases and this could take several forms. One, they could be testifying to somebody’s mental status, somebody who had been accused of committing a crime. Was this person truly competent to stand trial or was the person even culpable for his or her actions?

Another instance in which they would be called to trial would be if somebody had written a will, which was disputed on the grounds that the person was not in possession of his or her full faculties. Isaac Ray, who is the superintendent, first at a state-run asylum in Maine and then a private asylum in Rhode Island, was considered the foremost expert on psychiatric matters as they pertain to law, and he counseled other psychiatrists to turn frequently to great literature, and specifically to Shakespeare, to give examples of the kinds of problems that people who came before the law might face.

So, for instance, if they wanted to establish that somebody had only recently become fully insane, somebody, say, an older person, who had never manifested any signs of mental illness until the past year or two, at which point this person wrote a will that was contested, the psychiatrists were enjoined to explain to the jurors or to the judge that King Lear himself had shown no signs of insanity or shown very few signs of insanity until late in life, but that if you read the play very carefully, you could see in those early conversations he has with his daughters, that something was beginning to go amiss and it was only an environmental trigger…

That led him to go fully over the edge. Another famous case that they referred to was the case of Hamlet, and for generations, there had been debate within literary critical circles about whether Hamlet was really mad, or whether he was feigning madness in order to hide his plot against the king. The asylum superintendents agreed almost unanimously that Hamlet really was mad. But the point they wanted to make, and it was a very important one for them, was that he had a partial madness, that it was possible to be completely sane in the majority of one’s behaviors and dealings with others, and to have a mental illness that was isolated to either a certain part of the brain or to certain realms of experience and thought, and that this explained why so many people considered Hamlet not really to be mad, because he only acted crazy part of the time.

Okay, so we have this diagnosis of partial madness. What was the advantage of having that? What did it allow them to do?

They tried to show, they tried to widen the definition of what “insanity” meant. So that, in other words, somebody might be able to get off on a charge of murder or some other serious crime, on cause of insanity or mental incompetence, and it wasn’t just that the person had to act like a beast, or the previous test had been, you had to have the mental capacity of somebody younger than 14 years old, in order to get off on a crime for reason of mental incompetence. The psychiatrists were gradually widening this definition of insanity, so that it included all kinds of mental illness, which didn’t appear to the public to be full-blown, and they turned to Hamlet to indicate this.

Listen to the full podcast episode or read the transcript

Stay connected

Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

[…] The madness of Hamlet and King Lear: When psychiatrists used Shakespeare to argue legal definitions … […]

Resource Guide: 'We That Are Young' by Preti Taneja - The Folger Spotlight — August 23, 2021

Find out what’s on, read our latest stories, and learn how you can get involved.

Home — Essay Samples — Literature — Plays — Hamlet Madness

Essays on Hamlet Madness

Prompt examples for "hamlet" madness essays, exploring hamlet's madness.

Examine the character of Hamlet and his descent into madness throughout the play. What are the triggers for his madness, and how does his behavior change over the course of the story?

Madness as a Theme

Discuss the theme of madness in "Hamlet." How is madness portrayed in the play, and what purpose does it serve in the overall narrative? Explore different characters' experiences with madness.

The Feigned Madness of Hamlet

Analyze Hamlet's decision to feign madness as part of his plan for revenge. What are his motivations for this deception, and how does it impact the other characters and the unfolding events?

Ophelia's Madness

Explore the character of Ophelia and the circumstances leading to her madness. How does Ophelia's madness highlight the themes of love, loss, and vulnerability in the play?

Polonius's Role in Hamlet's Madness

Discuss the role of Polonius in Hamlet's descent into madness. How does Polonius's spying and manipulation contribute to the unfolding events, and what are the consequences?

Moral and Psychological Implications

Examine the moral and psychological implications of madness in "Hamlet." How does the theme of madness shed light on the characters' inner conflicts and the broader moral questions raised in the play?

Comparative Analysis: Madness in Shakespeare's Works

Compare and contrast the portrayal of madness in "Hamlet" with its treatment in other Shakespearean plays, such as "King Lear" or "Macbeth." How do these depictions differ?

Madness and Reality

Explore the blurred lines between madness and reality in "Hamlet." How do characters, including Hamlet, perceive the world around them, and how does this perception influence their actions?

The Impact of Madness on Relationships

Analyze how madness affects the relationships between characters in "Hamlet." How do characters' perceptions of each other change as madness becomes a central theme?

The Tragic Consequences of Madness

Discuss the tragic outcomes resulting from the theme of madness in "Hamlet." How do the characters' actions driven by madness lead to the play's final events and resolution?

The Representation of Madness in Shakespeare's Text, Hamlet

Analysis of the expression of madness in shakespeare’s hamlet, made-to-order essay as fast as you need it.

Each essay is customized to cater to your unique preferences

+ experts online

The Important Theme of Madness in Hamlet by William Shakespeare

Madness and melancholy in hamlet by william shakespeare, depiction of madness in shakespeare’s hamlet: ophelia’s schizophrenia, analysis of the significance of ophelia's madness, let us write you an essay from scratch.

• 450+ experts on 30 subjects ready to help
• Custom essay delivered in as few as 3 hours

How Hamlet is Faking Insanity: Appearance Vs Reality in Shakespeare's Play

Hamlet’s and ophelia’s experience of madness in shakespeare’s play, a study of the complexity of hamlet's mind as illustrated in hamlet, a play by shakespeare, madness and identity crisis in hamlet, get a personalized essay in under 3 hours.

Expert-written essays crafted with your exact needs in mind

Unveiling Motives Why Does Hamlet Pretend to Be Mad

A mad tragic hero as one of the themes in shakespeare's 'hamlet'.

c. 1599-1601, by William Shakespeare

Set in Denmark, the play depicts Prince Hamlet and his revenge against his uncle, Claudius, who has murdered Hamlet's father in order to seize his throne and marry Hamlet's mother.

Madness is one of the most pervasive themes in Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Several of the characters in Hamlet could be considered mad. Most notably, Hamlet and Ophelia characterize the idea of madness in this play. The madness displayed by each of these characters is driven in part by the deaths of their fathers, however, they each portray it in different ways regardless of the similar origins. The madness of each of these characters ultimately ends in tragedy.

Hamlet, Claudius, Gertrude, Polonius, Ophelia, Goratio, Laertes, Voltimand and Cornelius, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, Osric, Marcellus, Barnardo, Francisco, Ghost

Shakespeare’s telling of the story of Prince Hamlet was derived from several sources, notably from Books III and IV of Saxo Grammaticus’s 12th-century Gesta Danorum and from volume 5 (1570) of Histoires tragiques, a free translation of Saxo by François de Belleforest. The play was evidently preceded by another play of Hamlet (now lost), usually referred to as the Ur-Hamlet, of which Thomas Kyd is a conjectured author.

“Though this be madness, yet there is method in't.” “Madness in great ones must not unwatched go.” “There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”

Relevant topics

• Macbeth Ambition
• Romeo and Juliet
• A Raisin in The Sun
• A Streetcar Named Desire
• Death of a Salesman
• Hamlet Theme
• Macbeth Guilt
• Twelfth Night

By clicking “Check Writers’ Offers”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy policy . We’ll occasionally send you promo and account related email

No need to pay just yet!

Bibliography

We use cookies to personalyze your web-site experience. By continuing we’ll assume you board with our cookie policy .

• Instructions Followed To The Letter
• Deadlines Met At Every Stage
• Unique And Plagiarism Free

• Utility Menu

Jeffrey R. Wilson

Essays on hamlet.

Written as the author taught Hamlet every semester for a decade, these lightning essays ask big conceptual questions about the play with the urgency of a Shakespeare lover, and answer them with the rigor of a Shakespeare scholar. In doing so, Hamlet becomes a lens for life today, generating insights on everything from xenophobia, American fraternities, and religious fundamentalism to structural misogyny, suicide contagion, and toxic love.

Prioritizing close reading over historical context, these explorations are highly textual and highly theoretical, often philosophical, ethical, social, and political. Readers see King Hamlet as a pre-modern villain, King Claudius as a modern villain, and Prince Hamlet as a post-modern villain. Hamlet’s feigned madness becomes a window into failed insanity defenses in legal trials. He knows he’s being watched in “To be or not to be”: the soliloquy is a satire of philosophy. Horatio emerges as Shakespeare’s authorial avatar for meta-theatrical commentary, Fortinbras as the hero of the play. Fate becomes a viable concept for modern life, and honor a source of tragedy. The metaphor of music in the play makes Ophelia Hamlet’s instrument. Shakespeare, like the modern corporation, stands against sexism, yet perpetuates it unknowingly. We hear his thoughts on single parenting, sending children off to college, and the working class, plus his advice on acting and writing, and his claims to be the next Homer or Virgil. In the context of four centuries of Hamlet hate, we hear how the text draws audiences in, how it became so famous, and why it continues to captivate audiences.

At a time when the humanities are said to be in crisis, these essays are concrete examples of the mind-altering power of literature and literary studies, unravelling the ongoing implications of the English language’s most significant artistic object of the past millennium.

Publications

Why is Hamlet the most famous English artwork of the past millennium? Is it a sexist text? Why does Hamlet speak in prose? Why must he die? Does Hamlet depict revenge, or justice? How did the death of Shakespeare’s son, Hamnet, transform into a story about a son dealing with the death of a father? Did Shakespeare know Aristotle’s theory of tragedy? How did our literary icon, Shakespeare, see his literary icons, Homer and Virgil? Why is there so much comedy in Shakespeare’s greatest tragedy? Why is love a force of evil in the play? Did Shakespeare believe there’s a divinity that shapes our ends? How did he define virtue? What did he think about psychology? politics? philosophy? What was Shakespeare’s image of himself as an author? What can he, arguably the greatest writer of all time, teach us about our own writing? What was his theory of literature? Why do people like Hamlet ? How do the Hamlet haters of today compare to those of yesteryears? Is it dangerous for our children to read a play that’s all about suicide? 

These are some of the questions asked in this book, a collection of essays on Shakespeare’s Hamlet stemming from my time teaching the play every semester in my Why Shakespeare? course at Harvard University. During this time, I saw a series of bright young minds from wildly diverse backgrounds find their footing in Hamlet, and it taught me a lot about how Shakespeare’s tragedy works, and why it remains with us in the modern world. Beyond ghosts, revenge, and tragedy, Hamlet is a play about being in college, being in love, gender, misogyny, friendship, theater, philosophy, theology, injustice, loss, comedy, depression, death, self-doubt, mental illness, white privilege, overbearing parents, existential angst, international politics, the classics, the afterlife, and the meaning of it all. 

These essays grow from the central paradox of the play: it helps us understand the world we live in, yet we don't really understand the text itself very well. For all the attention given to Hamlet , there’s no consensus on the big questions—how it works, why it grips people so fiercely, what it’s about. These essays pose first-order questions about what happens in Hamlet and why, mobilizing answers for reflections on life, making the essays both highly textual and highly theoretical. 

Each semester that I taught the play, I would write a new essay about Hamlet . They were meant to be models for students, the sort of essay that undergrads read and write – more rigorous than the puff pieces in the popular press, but riskier than the scholarship in most academic journals. While I later added scholarly outerwear, these pieces all began just like the essays I was assigning to students – as short close readings with a reader and a text and a desire to determine meaning when faced with a puzzling question or problem. 

The turn from text to context in recent scholarly books about Hamlet is quizzical since we still don’t have a strong sense of, to quote the title of John Dover Wilson’s 1935 book, What Happens in Hamlet. Is the ghost real? Is Hamlet mad, or just faking? Why does he delay? These are the kinds of questions students love to ask, but they haven’t been – can’t be – answered by reading the play in the context of its sources (recently addressed in Laurie Johnson’s The Tain of Hamlet [2013]), its multiple texts (analyzed by Paul Menzer in The Hamlets [2008] and Zachary Lesser in Hamlet after Q1 [2015]), the Protestant reformation (the focus of Stephen Greenblatt’s Hamlet in Purgatory [2001] and John E. Curran, Jr.’s Hamlet, Protestantism, and the Mourning of Contingency [2006]), Renaissance humanism (see Rhodri Lewis, Hamlet and the Vision of Darkness [2017]), Elizabethan political theory (see Margreta de Grazia, Hamlet without Hamlet [2007]), the play’s reception history (see David Bevington, Murder Most Foul: Hamlet through the Ages [2011]), its appropriation by modern philosophers (covered in Simon Critchley and Jamieson Webster’s The Hamlet Doctrine [2013] and Andrew Cutrofello’s All for Nothing: Hamlet’s Negativity [2014]), or its recent global travels (addressed, for example, in Margaret Latvian’s Hamlet’s Arab Journey [2011] and Dominic Dromgoole’s Hamlet Globe to Globe [2017]). 

Considering the context and afterlives of Hamlet is a worthy pursuit. I certainly consulted the above books for my essays, yet the confidence that comes from introducing context obscures the sharp panic we feel when confronting Shakespeare’s text itself. Even as the excellent recent book from Sonya Freeman Loftis, Allison Kellar, and Lisa Ulevich announces Hamlet has entered “an age of textual exhaustion,” there’s an odd tendency to avoid the text of Hamlet —to grasp for something more firm—when writing about it. There is a need to return to the text in a more immediate way to understand how Hamlet operates as a literary work, and how it can help us understand the world in which we live. 

That latter goal, yes, clings nostalgically to the notion that literature can help us understand life. Questions about life send us to literature in search of answers. Those of us who love literature learn to ask and answer questions about it as we become professional literary scholars. But often our answers to the questions scholars ask of literature do not connect back up with the questions about life that sent us to literature in the first place—which are often philosophical, ethical, social, and political. Those first-order questions are diluted and avoided in the minutia of much scholarship, left unanswered. Thus, my goal was to pose questions about Hamlet with the urgency of a Shakespeare lover and to answer them with the rigor of a Shakespeare scholar. 

In doing so, these essays challenge the conventional relationship between literature and theory. They pursue a kind of criticism where literature is not merely the recipient of philosophical ideas in the service of exegesis. Instead, the creative risks of literature provide exemplars to be theorized outward to help us understand on-going issues in life today. Beyond an occasion for the demonstration of existing theory, literature is a source for the creation of new theory.

Chapter One How Hamlet Works

Whether you love or hate Hamlet , you can acknowledge its massive popularity. So how does Hamlet work? How does it create audience enjoyment? Why is it so appealing, and to whom? Of all the available options, why Hamlet ? This chapter entertains three possible explanations for why the play is so popular in the modern world: the literary answer (as the English language’s best artwork about death—one of the very few universal human experiences in a modern world increasingly marked by cultural differences— Hamlet is timeless); the theatrical answer (with its mixture of tragedy and comedy, the role of Hamlet requires the best actor of each age, and the play’s popularity derives from the celebrity of its stars); and the philosophical answer (the play invites, encourages, facilitates, and sustains philosophical introspection and conversation from people who do not usually do such things, who find themselves doing those things with Hamlet , who sometimes feel embarrassed about doing those things, but who ultimately find the experience of having done them rewarding).

Chapter Two “It Started Like a Guilty Thing”: The Beginning of Hamlet and the Beginning of Modern Politics

King Hamlet is a tyrant and King Claudius a traitor but, because Shakespeare asked us to experience the events in Hamlet from the perspective of the young Prince Hamlet, we are much more inclined to detect and detest King Claudius’s political failings than King Hamlet’s. If so, then Shakespeare’s play Hamlet , so often seen as the birth of modern psychology, might also tell us a little bit about the beginnings of modern politics as well.

Chapter Three Horatio as Author: Storytelling and Stoic Tragedy

This chapter addresses Horatio’s emotionlessness in light of his role as a narrator, using this discussion to think about Shakespeare’s motives for writing tragedy in the wake of his son’s death. By rationalizing pain and suffering as tragedy, both Horatio and Shakespeare were able to avoid the self-destruction entailed in Hamlet’s emotional response to life’s hardships and injustices. Thus, the stoic Horatio, rather than the passionate Hamlet who repeatedly interrupts ‘The Mousetrap’, is the best authorial avatar for a Shakespeare who strategically wrote himself and his own voice out of his works. This argument then expands into a theory of ‘authorial catharsis’ and the suggestion that we can conceive of Shakespeare as a ‘poet of reason’ in contrast to a ‘poet of emotion’.

Chapter Four “To thine own self be true”: What Shakespeare Says about Sending Our Children Off to College

What does “To thine own self be true” actually mean? Be yourself? Don’t change who you are? Follow your own convictions? Don’t lie to yourself? This chapter argues that, if we understand meaning as intent, then “To thine own self be true” means, paradoxically, that “the self” does not exist. Or, more accurately, Shakespeare’s Hamlet implies that “the self” exists only as a rhetorical, philosophical, and psychological construct that we use to make sense of our experiences and actions in the world, not as anything real. If this is so, then this passage may offer us a way of thinking about Shakespeare as not just a playwright but also a moral philosopher, one who did his ethics in drama.

Chapter Five In Defense of Polonius

Your wife dies. You raise two children by yourself. You build a great career to provide for your family. You send your son off to college in another country, though you know he’s not ready. Now the prince wants to marry your daughter—that’s not easy to navigate. Then—get this—while you’re trying to save the queen’s life, the prince murders you. Your death destroys your kids. They die tragically. And what do you get for your efforts? Centuries of Shakespeare scholars dumping on you. If we see Polonius not through the eyes of his enemy, Prince Hamlet—the point of view Shakespeare’s play asks audiences to adopt—but in analogy to the common challenges of twenty-first-century parenting, Polonius is a single father struggling with work-life balance who sadly choses his career over his daughter’s well-being.

Chapter Six Sigma Alpha Elsinore: The Culture of Drunkenness in Shakespeare’s Hamlet

Claudius likes to party—a bit too much. He frequently binge drinks, is arguably an alcoholic, but not an aberration. Hamlet says Denmark is internationally known for heavy drinking. That’s what Shakespeare would have heard in the sixteenth century. By the seventeenth, English writers feared Denmark had taught their nation its drinking habits. Synthesizing criticism on alcoholism as an individual problem in Shakespeare’s texts and times with scholarship on national drinking habits in the early-modern age, this essay asks what the tragedy of alcoholism looks like when located not on the level of the individual, but on the level of a culture, as Shakespeare depicted in Hamlet. One window into these early-modern cultures of drunkenness is sociological studies of American college fraternities, especially the social-learning theories that explain how one person—one culture—teaches another its habits. For Claudius’s alcoholism is both culturally learned and culturally significant. And, as in fraternities, alcoholism in Hamlet is bound up with wealth, privilege, toxic masculinity, and tragedy. Thus, alcohol imagistically reappears in the vial of “cursed hebona,” Ophelia’s liquid death, and the poisoned cup in the final scene—moments that stand out in recent performances and adaptations with alcoholic Claudiuses and Gertrudes.

Chapter Seven Tragic Foundationalism

This chapter puts the modern philosopher Alain Badiou’s theory of foundationalism into dialogue with the early-modern playwright William Shakespeare’s play Hamlet . Doing so allows us to identify a new candidate for Hamlet’s traditionally hard-to-define hamartia – i.e., his “tragic mistake” – but it also allows us to consider the possibility of foundationalism as hamartia. Tragic foundationalism is the notion that fidelity to a single and substantive truth at the expense of an openness to evidence, reason, and change is an acute mistake which can lead to miscalculations of fact and virtue that create conflict and can end up in catastrophic destruction and the downfall of otherwise strong and noble people.

Chapter Eight “As a stranger give it welcome”: Shakespeare’s Advice for First-Year College Students

Encountering a new idea can be like meeting a strange person for the first time. Similarly, we dismiss new ideas before we get to know them. There is an answer to the problem of the human antipathy to strangeness in a somewhat strange place: a single line usually overlooked in William Shakespeare’s play Hamlet . If the ghost is “wondrous strange,” Hamlet says, invoking the ancient ethics of hospitality, “Therefore as a stranger give it welcome.” In this word, strange, and the social conventions attached to it, is both the instinctual, animalistic fear and aggression toward what is new and different (the problem) and a cultivated, humane response in hospitality and curiosity (the solution). Intellectual xenia is the answer to intellectual xenophobia.

Chapter Nine Parallels in Hamlet

Hamlet is more parallely than other texts. Fortinbras, Hamlet, and Laertes have their fathers murdered, then seek revenge. Brothers King Hamlet and King Claudius mirror brothers Old Norway and Old Fortinbras. Hamlet and Ophelia both lose their fathers, go mad, but there’s a method in their madness, and become suicidal. King Hamlet and Polonius are both domineering fathers. Hamlet and Polonius are both scholars, actors, verbose, pedantic, detectives using indirection, spying upon others, “by indirections find directions out." King Hamlet and King Claudius are both kings who are killed. Claudius using Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to spy on Hamlet mirrors Polonius using Reynaldo to spy on Laertes. Reynaldo and Hamlet both pretend to be something other than what they are in order to spy on and detect foes. Young Fortinbras and Prince Hamlet both have their forward momentum “arrest[ed].” Pyrrhus and Hamlet are son seeking revenge but paused a “neutral to his will.” The main plot of Hamlet reappears in the play-within-the-play. The Act I duel between King Hamlet and Old Fortinbras echoes in the Act V duel between Hamlet and Laertes. Claudius and Hamlet are both king killers. Sheesh—why are there so many dang parallels in Hamlet ? Is there some detectable reason why the story of Hamlet would call for the literary device of parallelism?

Chapter Ten Rosencrantz and Guildenstern: Why Hamlet Has Two Childhood Friends, Not Just One

Why have two of Hamlet’s childhood friends rather than just one? Do Rosencrantz and Guildenstern have individuated personalities? First of all, by increasing the number of friends who visit Hamlet, Shakespeare creates an atmosphere of being outnumbered, of multiple enemies encroaching upon Hamlet, of Hamlet feeling that the world is against him. Second, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are not interchangeable, as commonly thought. Shakespeare gave each an individuated personality. Guildenstern is friendlier with Hamlet, and their friendship collapses, while Rosencrantz is more distant and devious—a frenemy.

Chapter Eleven Shakespeare on the Classics, Shakespeare as a Classic: A Reading of Aeneas’s Tale to Dido

Of all the stories Shakespeare might have chosen, why have Hamlet ask the players to recite Aeneas’ tale to Dido of Pyrrhus’s slaughter of Priam? In this story, which comes not from Homer’s Iliad but from Virgil’s Aeneid and had already been adapted for the Elizabethan stage in Christopher Marlowe’s The Tragedy of Dido, Pyrrhus – more commonly known as Neoptolemus, the son of the famous Greek warrior Achilles – savagely slays Priam, the king of the Trojans and the father of Paris, who killed Pyrrhus’s father, Achilles, who killed Paris’s brother, Hector, who killed Achilles’s comrade, Patroclus. Clearly, the theme of revenge at work in this story would have appealed to Shakespeare as he was writing what would become the greatest revenge tragedy of all time. Moreover, Aeneas’s tale to Dido supplied Shakespeare with all of the connections he sought to make at this crucial point in his play and his career – connections between himself and Marlowe, between the start of Hamlet and the end, between Prince Hamlet and King Claudius, between epic poetry and tragic drama, and between the classical literature Shakespeare was still reading hundreds of years later and his own potential as a classic who might (and would) be read hundreds of years into the future.

Chapter Twelve How Theater Works, according to Hamlet

According to Hamlet, people who are guilty of a crime will, when seeing that crime represented on stage, “proclaim [their] malefactions”—but that simply isn’t how theater works. Guilty people sit though shows that depict their crimes all the time without being prompted to public confession. Why did Shakespeare—a remarkably observant student of theater—write this demonstrably false theory of drama into his protagonist? And why did Shakespeare then write the plot of the play to affirm that obviously inaccurate vision of theater? For Claudius is indeed stirred to confession by the play-within-the-play. Perhaps Hamlet’s theory of people proclaiming malefactions upon seeing their crimes represented onstage is not as outlandish as it first appears. Perhaps four centuries of obsession with Hamlet is the English-speaking world proclaiming its malefactions upon seeing them represented dramatically.

Chapter Thirteen “To be, or not to be”: Shakespeare Against Philosophy

This chapter hazards a new reading of the most famous passage in Western literature: “To be, or not to be” from William Shakespeare’s Hamlet . With this line, Hamlet poses his personal struggle, a question of life and death, as a metaphysical problem, as a question of existence and nothingness. However, “To be, or not to be” is not what it seems to be. It seems to be a representation of tragic angst, yet a consideration of the context of the speech reveals that “To be, or not to be” is actually a satire of philosophy and Shakespeare’s representation of the theatricality of everyday life. In this chapter, a close reading of the context and meaning of this passage leads into an attempt to formulate a Shakespearean image of philosophy.

Chapter Fourteen Contagious Suicide in and Around Hamlet

As in society today, suicide is contagious in Hamlet , at least in the example of Ophelia, the only death by suicide in the play, because she only becomes suicidal after hearing Hamlet talk about his own suicidal thoughts in “To be, or not to be.” Just as there are media guidelines for reporting on suicide, there are better and worse ways of handling Hamlet . Careful suicide coverage can change public misperceptions and reduce suicide contagion. Is the same true for careful literary criticism and classroom discussion of suicide texts? How can teachers and literary critics reduce suicide contagion and increase help-seeking behavior?

Chapter Fifteen Is Hamlet a Sexist Text? Overt Misogyny vs. Unconscious Bias

Students and fans of Shakespeare’s Hamlet persistently ask a question scholars and critics of the play have not yet definitively answered: is it a sexist text? The author of this text has been described as everything from a male chauvinist pig to a trailblazing proto-feminist, but recent work on the science behind discrimination and prejudice offers a new, better vocabulary in the notion of unconscious bias. More pervasive and slippery than explicit bigotry, unconscious bias involves the subtle, often unintentional words and actions which indicate the presence of biases we may not be aware of, ones we may even fight against. The Shakespeare who wrote Hamlet exhibited an unconscious bias against women, I argue, even as he sought to critique the mistreatment of women in a patriarchal society. The evidence for this unconscious bias is not to be found in the misogynistic statements made by the characters in the play. It exists, instead, in the demonstrable preference Shakespeare showed for men over women when deciding where to deploy his literary talents. Thus, Shakespeare's Hamlet is a powerful literary example – one which speaks to, say, the modern corporation – showing that deliberate efforts for egalitarianism do not insulate one from the effects of structural inequalities that both stem from and create unconscious bias.

Chapter Sixteen Style and Purpose in Acting and Writing

Purpose and style are connected in academic writing. To answer the question of style ( How should we write academic papers? ) we must first answer the question of purpose ( Why do we write academic papers? ). We can answer these questions, I suggest, by turning to an unexpected style guide that’s more than 400 years old: the famous passage on “the purpose of playing” in William Shakespeare’s Hamlet . In both acting and writing, a high style often accompanies an expressive purpose attempting to impress an elite audience yet actually alienating intellectual people, while a low style and mimetic purpose effectively engage an intellectual audience.

Chapter Seventeen 13 Ways of Looking at a Ghost

Why doesn’t Gertrude see the Ghost of King Hamlet in Act III, even though Horatio, Bernardo, Francisco, Marcellus, and Prince Hamlet all saw it in Act I? It’s a bit embarrassing that Shakespeare scholars don’t have a widely agreed-upon consensus that explains this really basic question that puzzles a lot of people who read or see Hamlet .

Chapter Eighteen The Tragedy of Love in Hamlet

The word “love” appears 84 times in Shakespeare’s Hamlet . “Father” only appears 73 times, “play” 60, “think” 55, “mother” 46, “mad” 44, “soul” 40, “God" 39, “death” 38, “life” 34, “nothing” 28, “son” 26, “honor” 21, “spirit” 19, “kill” 18, “revenge” 14, and “action” 12. Love isn’t the first theme that comes to mind when we think of Hamlet , but is surprisingly prominent. But love is tragic in Hamlet . The bloody catastrophe at the end of that play is principally driven not by hatred or a longing for revenge, but by love.

Chapter Nineteen Ophelia’s Songs: Moral Agency, Manipulation, and the Metaphor of Music in Hamlet

This chapter reads Ophelia’s songs in Act IV of Shakespeare’s Hamlet in the context of the meaning of music established elsewhere in the play. While the songs are usually seen as a marker of Ophelia’s madness (as a result of the death of her father) or freedom (from the constraints of patriarchy), they come – when read in light of the metaphor of music as manipulation – to symbolize her role as a pawn in Hamlet’s efforts to deceive his family. Thus, music was Shakespeare’s platform for connecting Ophelia’s story to one of the central questions in Hamlet : Do we have control over our own actions (like the musician), or are we controlled by others (like the instrument)?

Chapter Twenty A Quantitative Study of Prose and Verse in Hamlet

Why does Hamlet have so much prose? Did Shakespeare deliberately shift from verse to prose to signal something to his audiences? How would actors have handled the shifts from verse to prose? Would audiences have detected shifts from verse to prose? Is there an overarching principle that governs Shakespeare’s decision to use prose—a coherent principle that says, “If X, then use prose?”

Chapter Twenty-One The Fortunes of Fate in Hamlet : Divine Providence and Social Determinism

In Hamlet , fate is attacked from both sides: “fortune” presents a world of random happenstance, “will” a theory of efficacious human action. On this backdrop, this essay considers—irrespective of what the characters say and believe—what the structure and imagery Shakespeare wrote into Hamlet say about the possibility that some version of fate is at work in the play. I contend the world of Hamlet is governed by neither fate nor fortune, nor even the Christianized version of fate called “providence.” Yet there is a modern, secular, disenchanted form of fate at work in Hamlet—what is sometimes called “social determinism”—which calls into question the freedom of the individual will. As such, Shakespeare’s Hamlet both commented on the transformation of pagan fate into Christian providence that happened in the centuries leading up to the play, and anticipated the further transformation of fate from a theological to a sociological idea, which occurred in the centuries following Hamlet .

Chapter Twenty-Two The Working Class in Hamlet

There’s a lot for working-class folks to hate about Hamlet —not just because it’s old, dusty, difficult to understand, crammed down our throats in school, and filled with frills, tights, and those weird lace neck thingies that are just socially awkward to think about. Peak Renaissance weirdness. Claustrophobicly cloistered inside the castle of Elsinore, quaintly angsty over royal family problems, Hamlet feels like the literary epitome of elitism. “Lawless resolutes” is how the Wittenberg scholar Horatio describes the soldiers who join Fortinbras’s army in exchange “for food.” The Prince Hamlet who has never worked a day in his life denigrates Polonius as a “fishmonger”: quite the insult for a royal advisor to be called a working man. And King Claudius complains of the simplicity of "the distracted multitude.” But, in Hamlet , Shakespeare juxtaposed the nobles’ denigrations of the working class as readily available metaphors for all-things-awful with the rather valuable behavior of working-class characters themselves. When allowed to represent themselves, the working class in Hamlet are characterized as makers of things—of material goods and services like ships, graves, and plays, but also of ethical and political virtues like security, education, justice, and democracy. Meanwhile, Elsinore has a bad case of affluenza, the make-believe disease invented by an American lawyer who argued that his client's social privilege was so great that it created an obliviousness to law. While social elites rot society through the twin corrosives of political corruption and scholarly detachment, the working class keeps the machine running. They build the ships, plays, and graves society needs to function, and monitor the nuts-and-bolts of the ideals—like education and justice—that we aspire to uphold.

Chapter Twenty-Three The Honor Code at Harvard and in Hamlet

Students at Harvard College are asked, when they first join the school and several times during their years there, to affirm their awareness of and commitment to the school’s honor code. But instead of “the foundation of our community” that it is at Harvard, honor is tragic in Hamlet —a source of anxiety, blunder, and catastrophe. As this chapter shows, looking at Hamlet from our place at Harvard can bring us to see what a tangled knot honor can be, and we can start to theorize the difference between heroic and tragic honor.

Chapter Twenty-Four The Meaning of Death in Shakespeare’s Hamlet

By connecting the ways characters live their lives in Hamlet to the ways they die – on-stage or off, poisoned or stabbed, etc. – Shakespeare symbolized hamartia in catastrophe. In advancing this argument, this chapter develops two supporting ideas. First, the dissemination of tragic necessity: Shakespeare distributed the Aristotelian notion of tragic necessity – a causal relationship between a character’s hamartia (fault or error) and the catastrophe at the end of the play – from the protagonist to the other characters, such that, in Hamlet , those who are guilty must die, and those who die are guilty. Second, the spectacularity of death: there exists in Hamlet a positive correlation between the severity of a character’s hamartia (error or flaw) and the “spectacularity” of his or her death – that is, the extent to which it is presented as a visible and visceral spectacle on-stage.

Chapter Twenty-Five Tragic Excess in Hamlet

In Hamlet , Shakespeare paralleled the situations of Hamlet, Laertes, and Fortinbras (the father of each is killed, and each then seeks revenge) to promote the virtue of moderation: Hamlet moves too slowly, Laertes too swiftly – and they both die at the end of the play – but Fortinbras represents a golden mean which marries the slowness of Hamlet with the swiftness of Laertes. As argued in this essay, Shakespeare endorsed the virtue of balance by allowing Fortinbras to be one of the very few survivors of the play. In other words, excess is tragic in Hamlet .

Bibliography

Anand, Manpreet Kaur. An Overview of Hamlet Studies . Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2019.

Anglin, Emily. “‘Something in me dangerous’: Hamlet, Melancholy, and the Early Modern Scholar.” Shakespeare 13.1 (2017): 15-29.

Baker, Christopher. “Hamlet and the Kairos.” Ben Jonson Journal 26.1 (2019): 62-77.

Baker, Naomi. “‘Sore Distraction’: Hamlet, Augustine and Time.” Literature and Theology 32.4 (2018): 381-96.

Belsey, Catherine. “The Question of Hamlet.” The Oxford Handbook of Shakespearean Tragedy, ed. Michael Neill and David Schalkwyk (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016:

Bevington, David, ed. Twentieth Century Interpretations of Hamlet: A Collection of Critical Essays . Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1968.

Bevington, David. Murder Most Foul: Hamlet through the Ages . Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011.

Bloom, Harold, ed. Modern Critical Interpretations: Hamlet . New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1986.

Booth, Stephen. “On the Value of Hamlet.” Reinterpretations of Elizabethan Drama. Ed. By Norman Rabkin. New York: Columbia University Press, 1969. 137-76.

Bowers, Fredson. Hamlet as Minister and Scourge and Other Studies in Shakespeare and Milton. Charlottesville, VA: University Press of Virginia, 1989.

Brancher, Dominique. “Universals in the Bush: The Case of Hamlet.” Shakespeare and Space: Theatrical Explorations of the Spatial Paradigm , ed. Ina Habermann and Michelle Witen (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016): 143-62.

Bourus, Terri. Young Shakespeare’s Young Hamlet: Print, Piracy, and Performance . New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014.

Bourus, Terri. Canonizing Q1 Hamlet . Special issue of Critical Survey 31.1-2 (2019).

Burnett, Mark Thornton. ‘Hamlet' and World Cinema . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019.

Calderwood, James L. To Be and Not to Be: Negation and Metadrama in Hamlet . New York: Columbia, 1983.

Carlson, Marvin. Shattering Hamlet's Mirror: Theatre and Reality . Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2016.

Cavell, Stanley. “Hamlet’s Burden of Proof.” Disowning Knowledge in Seven Plays of Shakespeare . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. 179–91.

Chamberlain, Richard. “What's Happiness in Hamlet?” The Renaissance of Emotion: Understanding Affect in Shakespeare and his Contemporaries , ed. Richard Meek and Erin Sullivan (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2017): 153-74.

Cormack, Bradin. “Paper Justice, Parchment Justice: Shakespeare, Hamlet, and the Life of Legal Documents.” Taking Exception to the Law: Materializing Injustice in Early Modern English Literature , ed. Donald Beecher, Travis Decook, and Andrew Wallace (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2015): 44-70.

Craig, Leon Harold. Philosophy and the Puzzles of Hamlet: A Study of Shakespeare's Method . London: Bloomsbury, 2014.

Critchley, Simon; Webster, Jamieson. Stay, Illusion!: The Hamlet Doctrine . New York: Pantheon Books, 2013.

Curran, John E., Jr. Hamlet, Protestantism, and the Mourning of Contingency: Not to Be . Aldershot and Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2006.

Cutrofello, Andrew. All for Nothing: Hamlet's Negativity . Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2014.

Dawson, Anthony B. Hamlet: Shakespeare in Performance . Manchester and New York: Manchester UP, 1995.

Desmet, Christy. “Text, Style, and Author in Hamlet Q1.” Journal of Early Modern Studies 5 (2016): 135-156

Dodsworth, Martin. Hamlet Closely Observed . London: Athlone, 1985.

De Grazia, Margreta. Hamlet without Hamlet . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007.

Dromgoole, Dominic. Hamlet: Globe to Globe : 193,000 Miles, 197 Countries, One Play . Edinburgh: Canongate, 2018.

Dunne, Derek. “Decentring the Law in Hamlet .” Law and Humanities 9.1 (2015): 55-77.

Eliot, T. S. “Hamlet and His Problems.” The Sacred Wood: Essays on Poetry and Criticism . London: Methuen, 1920. 87–94.

Evans, Robert C., ed. Critical Insights: Hamlet . Amenia: Grey House Publishing, 2019.

Farley-Hills, David, ed. Critical Responses to Hamlet, 1600-1900 . 5 vols. New York: AMS Press, 1996.

Foakes, R.A. Hamlet Versus Lear: Cultural Politics and Shakespeare's Art . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993.

Frank, Arthur W. “‘Who’s There?’: A Vulnerable Reading of Hamlet,” Literaature and Medicine 37.2 (2019): 396-419.

Frye, Roland Mushat. The Renaissance Hamlet: Issues and Responses in 1600 . Princeton: Princeton UP, 1984.

Josipovici, Gabriel. Hamlet: Fold on Fold . New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016.

Kastan, David Scott, ed. Critical Essays on Shakespeare’s Hamlet . New York: G. K. Hall, 1995.

Khan, Amir. “My Kingdom for a Ghost: Counterfactual Thinking and Hamlet.” Shakespeare Quarerly 66.1 (2015): 29-46.

Keener, Joe. “Evolving Hamlet: Brains, Behavior, and the Bard.” Interdisciplinary Literary Studies 14.2 (2012): 150-163

Kott, Jan. “Hamlet of the Mid-Century.” Shakespeare, Our Contemporary . Trans. Boleslaw Taborski. Garden City: Doubleday, 1964.

Lake, Peter. Hamlet’s Choice: Religion and Resistance in Shakespeare's Revenge Tragedies . New Haven: Yale University Press, 2020.

Lerer, Seth. “Hamlet’s Boyhood.” Childhood, Education and the Stage in Early Modern England , ed. Richard Preiss and Deanne Williams (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017):17-36.

Levy, Eric P. Hamlet and the Rethinking of Man . Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2008.

Lewis, C.S. “Hamlet: The Prince or the Poem?” (1942). Studies in Shakespeare , ed. Peter Alexander (1964): 201-18.

Loftis, Sonya Freeman; Allison Kellar; and Lisa Ulevich, ed. Shakespeare's Hamlet in an Era of Textual Exhaustion . New York, NY: Routledge, 2018.

Luke, Jillian. “What If the Play Were Called Ophelia ? Gender and Genre in Hamlet .” Cambridge Quarterly 49.1 (2020): 1-18.

Gates, Sarah. “Assembling the Ophelia Fragments: Gender, Genre, and Revenge in Hamlet.” Explorations in Renaissance Culture 34.2 (2008): 229-47.

Gottschalk, Paul. The Meanings of Hamlet: Modes of Literary Interpretation Since Bradley . Albequerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1972.

Greenblatt, Stephen. Hamlet in Purgatory . Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2001.

Hunt, Marvin W. Looking for Hamlet . New York and Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan, 2007.

Iyengar, Sujata. "Gertrude/Ophelia: Feminist Intermediality, Ekphrasis, and Tenderness in Hamlet," in Loomba, Rethinking Feminism In Early Modern Studies: Race, Gender, and Sexuality (2016), 165-84.

Iyengar, Sujata; Feracho, Lesley. “Hamlet (RSC, 2016) and Representations of Diasporic Blackness,” Cahiers Élisabéthains 99, no. 1 (2019): 147-60.

Johnson, Laurie. The Tain of Hamlet . Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2013.

Jolly, Margrethe. The First Two Quartos of Hamlet: A New View of the Origins and Relationship of the Texts . Jefferson: McFarland, 2014.

Jones, Ernest. Hamlet and Oedipus . Garden City: Doubleday, 1949.

Keegan, Daniel L. “Indigested in the Scenes: Hamlet's Dramatic Theory and Ours.” PMLA 133.1 (2018): 71-87.

Kinney, Arthur F., ed. Hamlet: Critical Essays . New York: Routledge, 2002.

Kiséry, András. Hamlet's Moment: Drama and Political Knowledge in Early Modern England . Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016.

Kottman, Paul A. “Why Think About Shakespearean Tragedy Today?” The Cambridge Companion to Shakespearean Tragedy , ed. Claire McEachern (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013): 240-61.

Langis, Unhae. “Virtue, Justice and Moral Action in Shakespeare’s Hamlet .” Literature and Ethics: From the Green Knight to the Dark Knight , ed. Steve Brie and William T. Rossiter (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2010): 53-74.

Lawrence, Sean. "'As a stranger, bid it welcome': Alterity and Ethics in Hamlet and the New Historicism," European Journal of English Studies 4 (2000): 155-69.

Lesser, Zachary. Hamlet after Q1: An Uncanny History of the Shakespearean Text . Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015.

Levin, Harry. The Question of Hamlet . New York: Oxford UP, 1959.

Lewis, Rhodri. Hamlet and the Vision of Darkness . Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2017.

Litvin, Margaret. Hamlet's Arab Journey: Shakespeare's Prince and Nasser's Ghost . Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011.

Loftis, Sonya Freeman, and Lisa Ulevich. “Obsession/Rationality/Agency: Autistic Shakespeare.” Disability, Health, and Happiness in the Shakespearean Body , edited by Sujata Iyengar. Routledge, 2015, pp. 58-75.

Marino, James J. “Ophelia’s Desire.” ELH 84.4 (2017): 817-39.

Massai, Sonia, and Lucy Munro. Hamlet: The State of Play . London: Bloomsbury, 2021.

McGee, Arthur. The Elizabethan Hamlet . New Haven: Yale UP, 1987.

Megna, Paul, Bríd Phillips, and R.S. White, ed. Hamlet and Emotion . New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019.

Menzer, Paul. The Hamlets: Cues, Qs, and Remembered Texts . Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2008.

Mercer, Peter. Hamlet and the Acting of Revenge . Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1987.

Oldham, Thomas A. “Unhouseled, Disappointed, Unaneled”: Catholicism, Transubstantiation, and Hamlet .” Ecumenica 8.1 (Spring 2015): 39-51.

Owen, Ruth J. The Hamlet Zone: Reworking Hamlet for European Cultures . Newcastle-Upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2012.

Price, Joeseph G., ed. Hamlet: Critical Essays . New York: Routledge, 1986.

Prosser, Eleanor. Hamlet and Revenge . 2nd ed. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1971.

Rosenberg, Marvin. The Masks of Hamlet . Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1992.

Row-Heyveld, Lindsey. “Antic Dispositions: Mental and Intellectual Disabilities in Early Modern Revenge Tragedy.” Recovering Disability in Early Modern England , ed. Allison P. Hobgood and David Houston Wood. Ohio State University Press, 2013, pp. 73-87.

Shakespeare, William. Hamlet . Ed. Neil Taylor and Ann Thompson. Revised Ed. London: Arden Third Series, 2006.

Shakespeare, William. Hamlet . Ed. Robert S. Miola. New York: Norton, 2010.

Stritmatter, Roger. "Two More Censored Passages from Q2 Hamlet." Cahiers Élisabéthains 91.1 (2016): 88-95.

Thompson, Ann. “Hamlet 3.1: 'To be or not to be’.” The Cambridge Guide to the Worlds of Shakespeare: The World's Shakespeare, 1660-Present, ed. Bruce R. Smith (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016): 1144-50.

Seibers, Tobin. “Shakespeare Differently Disabled.” The Oxford Handbook of Shakespeare and Embodiement: Gender, Sexuality, and Race , ed. Valerie Traub (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016): 435-54.

Skinner, Quentin. “Confirmation: The Conjectural Issue.” Forensic Shakespeare (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014): 226-68.

Slater, Michael. “The Ghost in the Machine: Emotion and Mind–Body Union in Hamlet and Descartes," Criticism 58 (2016).

Thompson, Ann, and Neil Taylor, eds. Hamlet: A Critical Reader . London: Bloomsbury, 2016.

Weiss, Larry. “The Branches of an Act: Shakespeare's Hamlet Explains his Inaction.” Shakespeare 16.2 (2020): 117-27.

Wells, Stanley, ed. Hamlet and Its Afterlife . Special edition of Shakespeare Survey 45 (1992).

Williams, Deanne. “Enter Ofelia playing on a Lute.” Shakespeare and the Performance of Girlhood (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014): 73-91

Williamson, Claude C.H., ed. Readings on the Character of Hamlet: Compiled from Over Three Hundred Sources .

White, R.S. Avant-Garde Hamlet: Text, Stage, Screen . Lanham: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2015.

Wiles, David. “Hamlet’s Advice to the Players.” The Players’ Advice to Hamlet: The Rhetorical Acting Method from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020): 10-38

Wilson, J. Dover. What Happens in Hamlet . 3rd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1951.

Zamir, Tzachi, ed. Shakespeare's Hamlet: Philosophical Perspectives . Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018.

Hamlet Madness Essay

Hamlet’s madness is a key element to the play Hamlet. Hamlet, the protagonist of Hamlet, becomes depressed and horrified after discovering that his uncle Claudius has murdered his father and married Hamlet’s mother. Hamlet seeks revenge on Claudius for this transgression but feels like he has lost all agency because he can’t be sure if people are lying or telling him the truth. His refusal to make any decisions based on anything other than absolute certainty destroys everything around him until Hamlet finally goes mad himself and dies as a result of complications brought about by pneumonia.

Hamlet’s Madness While it seems likely that Hamlet becomes insane mostly due to grief, guilt and regret (all exacerbated by being ignored by his father, betrayed by his mother and uncle, forced to stay in the same house as the murderer of Hamlet’s father, etc), Hamlet does show symptoms consistent with mental illness in early scenes. For example, Hamlet sees Claudius praying and has “A lunatic could not be so proud / A madman would not hear it” (II. ii. 298-99) because Hamlet knows that Claudius killed Hamlet’s father but Claudius is praying for forgiveness from a man that he murdered.

Another symptom of Hamlet’s madness is Hamlet’s overreaction to Polonious death when he stabs through a curtain at him once he realizes that it isn’t actually the king who had been eavesdropping on Hamlet and Ophelia. Hamlet also claims to be “A dull and muddy-mettled rascal” (I. ii. 132), a lack of will to do anything after learning that his father is dead and Hamlets inability to accept what is happening around him as reality (thinking that Claudius was praying) all suggest Hamlet’s madness throughout the play.

Hamlet does not go mad immediately after discovering Claudius’ crime however; Hamlet has clearly been contemplating this for most of the play, especially since he is already thinking about such things before meeting his father’s ghost at the beginning of the play. Hamlet thinks about death and revenge almost constantly throughout the entirety of Hamlet, so it seems unlikely that he would flip out the minute he hears that his father was killed.

Hamlet simply can’t make decisions for himself, and Hamlet spends most of the play looking for the reason why Claudius would murder Hamlet’s father if it wasn’t for Hamlet’s death; because Hamlet has still not made a decision on what to do after he has discovered the truth about his uncle Claudius, Hamlet does not move forward and instead must take time to “catch [his] breath” (I. v. 43). Hamlet often seems very confused in early scenes of Hamlet, which is understandable considering that Hamlet’s father dies at the beginning of the play, right in front of him.

Hamlet’s inability to cope with this compounded by everything else going on around Hamlet results in Hamlet’s madness. Although Hamlet’s father is dead, Hamlet does have other family members around him throughout the play who could have helped Hamlet cope with his loss. While Hamlet’s mother remarries soon after Hamlet’s father’s death, she has an opportunity to discuss this with Hamlet before announcing it at a public event which can be seen as very rude without speaking to Hamlet about it first. Laertes also returns from France prematurely for his sister’s funeral so he could have been there for support if needed.

Both of these characters are related to Hamlet and know what Hamlet has gone through recently; Claudius knows that killing someone’s parent would look bad but he probably did not understand how much grief this would cause Hamlet. Hamlet’s mother, on the other hand, should know firsthand how Hamlet would react to losing his father especially since Hamlet was already very upset before he saw Claudius praying. Even after Hamlet learns that his uncle murdered his father, Hamlet is still not completely sure of what to do for almost half the play until Laertes goes crazy with grief which pushes Hamlet into action.

This long period where Hamlet has trouble deciding what to do suggests mental illness or at least heavy grief and stress. Rosenthal notes that Hamlet’s madness doesn’t have any effect on him throughout most of the play except during Act V when it becomes clear that “the weight of all these past months descends upon Hamlet” and Hamlet finally understands the consequence of what he has been planning. Hamlet’s death in this scene is described as “gently, even graciously,” which shows that Hamlet is at peace with himself and accepting of his fate.

Hamlet’s madness throughout Hamlet usually demonstrates Hamlet’s struggle to cope and understand what’s going on around him but it does not usually affect his actions until the end of Hamlet when Hamlet realizes how much time has passed while he was delayed in avenging his father’s death. After all the other characters are dead, Hamlet dies speaking to Horatio about Fortinbras marching through Denmark after Hamlet’s death which could be a reference to Fortinbras’ against Poland during which Fortinbras takes Hamlet’s words, “the readiness is all” (V. ii. 98) to mean that Hamlet wished his death to be as convenient for Fortinbras as possible.

Hamlet uses this quote earlier in the play when he tells Horatio not to reveal Hamlet’s plan to kill Claudius until after it has happened because Hamlet wants everything set up before he reveals himself again. Not everyone views Hamlet’s madness as physical, though. For example, Peter Ure argues that Hamlet’s madness was caused by opium instead of grief and stress, which could provide an alternate explanation for Hamlet’s behavior throughout the play including during Act V where Hamlet finally sees the consequences of what he has done so far.

However, Hamlet’s very traditional views on death suggest that Hamlet is not the type of person to seek out drugs for pleasure. Hamlet references heaven and hell multiple times throughout Hamlet which shows Hamlet’s strong belief in afterlife. Hamlet also mentions superstition multiple times regarding ghosts and describes “the dread of something after death” (III. i. 78) as one reason Hamlet’s father’s spirit cannot rest which suggests Hamlet does not want to risk dying because he would not be able to go to heaven if he kills himself.

The only time Hamlet questions his beliefs is during his conversation with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern where he is trying to figure out what they know about him but this conversation is less about Hamlet doubting his beliefs and more about Hamlet no longer enjoying acting like the way he usually does. Hamlet’s strong views on death Hamlet also show that Hamlet is not likely to disregard his own life just because it’s getting harder for him to live it.

More Essays

• Hamlet Analysis Essay
• Hamlet Revenge Essay
• Revenge vs Justice Hamlet
• Revenge Is Not Justified Analysis Essay
• The play Hamlet
• Hamlet Procrastinates The Murder Analysis Essay
• What Is Hamlet’s Tragic Flaw?
• Hamlet’s Loss Of His Father Analysis Essay
• Revenge And Vengeance In Hamlet By William Shakespeare Essay
• Theme Of Death In Hamlet Research Paper

Leave a Comment Cancel reply

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

• Search Menu
• Author Guidelines
• Open Access
• Join the author community
• About Essays in Criticism
• Editorial Board
• Advertising and Corporate Services
• Journals Career Network
• Self-Archiving Policy
• Dispatch Dates
• Terms and Conditions
• Journals on Oxford Academic
• Books on Oxford Academic
• < Previous

Hamlet and the Limits of Narrative

• Article contents
• Figures & tables
• Supplementary Data

Rebecca Yearling, Hamlet and the Limits of Narrative, Essays in Criticism , Volume 65, Issue 4, October 2015, Pages 368–382, https://doi.org/10.1093/escrit/cgv022

• Permissions Icon Permissions

HORATIO'S PENULTIMATE SPEECH, in the last few moments of Hamlet , is famously odd. The prince, dying, has just told his friend,

At this point in the play no one in the court, bar Hamlet and Horatio, knows that Claudius killed Old Hamlet: from an outsider's perspective, it must look as if the prince (believed to be subject to fits of madness and violence) has slaughtered his uncle, the rightful king, for no reason at all. Indeed, when Hamlet attacks Claudius immediately after the duel, using Laertes' poisoned rapier, the response of the courtiers is to cry, ‘Treason, treason!’ (V. ii. 275). Hamlet's concern is for his posthumous reputation; the record must be put straight about what he has done and why. Horatio agrees, and shortly afterwards gives the newly arrived Fortinbras an outline of the story he will tell:

Email alerts

Citing articles via.

• Recommend to your Library

Affiliations

• Online ISSN 1471-6852
• Print ISSN 0014-0856
• Copyright © 2024 Oxford University Press
• About Oxford Academic
• Publish journals with us
• University press partners
• What we publish
• New features  
• Open access
• Institutional account management
• Rights and permissions
• Get help with access
• Accessibility
• Advertising
• Media enquiries
• Oxford University Press
• Oxford Languages
• University of Oxford

Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide

• Copyright © 2024 Oxford University Press
• Cookie settings
• Cookie policy
• Privacy policy
• Legal notice

This Feature Is Available To Subscribers Only

Sign In or Create an Account

This PDF is available to Subscribers Only

For full access to this pdf, sign in to an existing account, or purchase an annual subscription.

151 Hamlet Essay Topics & Thesis Ideas

We know how long students search for interesting Hamlet essay topics. In this post, you will find a list of the most debating Hamlet essay titles and thesis ideas. We’ve also developed a guide on how to write a Hamlet paper and included some helpful Hamlet essay examples.

👍 Hamlet Essay Writing – Tips & Ideas

🏆 best hamlet essay examples, 📜 hamlet research paper topics & thesis ideas, 📌 catchy hamlet essay titles, 🌟 best hamlet thesis ideas, 🔍 easy hamlet essay topics, ❓ hamlet essay questions.

Here, at IvyPanda, we know how daunting can be the task of writing a Hamlet Essay. In this post, you will find out how to write a paper that would get top marks.

Tip #1. Read critically before starting hamlet essay outline

Critical reading will help you to prepare for writing your paper. There are a lot of techniques that can increase your reading speed. You may try some of them, described below:

Highlighting

Grab a few highlighters and use them to underline things that might suit for various topics. For example, use green when you see something pertaining to a tragic hero character analysis; pink for a particular symbol, etc. Don’t forget to make a key, so you know what each color means.

This method helps you to organize your evidence and allows you to see if you have enough support to write your essay.

Note-taking

Take notes and record your ideas and critical aspects while reading the plot. This approach will help you to avoid multiple re-readings. However, be sure to remark what part of the essay your notes pertain to.

Making annotations in the margins of the book, you will ensure that you understand what is happening in a text after you’ve read it. Note the author’s key points, central areas of focus, and your thoughts.

Annotating will help you to summarize, highlight crucial pieces of information, and prepare yourself for writing Hamlet essay prompts that your professor may give you

You can use the methods mentioned above or try any other, or even come up with your own technique. This simple exercise will help you to recall which points to write about in your paper.

Tip #2. Write a detailed outline

Now, when you’ve done the prewriting work, it’s time to focus on what you’re going to write in and create your Hamlet essay outline.

Here’s the trick: the more detailed your outline will be, the less time you will spend on the writing process. If you put a lot of detail in the outline, all you will have to do is connect arguments and make it readable.

If you have to turn in a formal outline, as part of your essay, check that each level has at least two parts.

Tip #3. Write your Hamlet essay thesis statement

A thesis statement is among the crucial parts of your entire essay. It tells your readers what you will write in the rest of the paper. It should correspond with the essay title and act as a short preview of the assignment.

You will bring up may points in the paper, although the thesis should tie all of them together.

Write your Hamlet essay thesis statement during outlining and refine it when you start writing. It is possible to revise it when the essay is already finished, and you see ways to improve the thesis.

Tip #4. Start writing your Hamlet essay

When you begin to write an essay, you can check available samples and titles to get inspiration. However, make it personal. Ask yourself questions.

Here are some question examples: What interests me about the play? Is it Hamlet’s monologues? Is it the figure of the Ghost of Hamlet’s father? Or is it something even more obscure?

If you are still struggling to find your Hamlet essay topics or ideas to add to the paper, check these free samples of high-quality papers!

• Hamlet’s Relationship with His Mother (Gertrude) – Attitude Towards Her The conversation between Hamlet and his mother brings back Gertrude to her senses where she feels guilty and ashamed of her actions.
• A Critical Analysis of Hamlet’s Constant Procrastination in Shakespeare’s Hamlet Claudius is successful in his ambition and Hamlet is left with the decision on whether or not to kill his uncle so as to avenge his father’s death.
• Hamlet, Laertes, Fortinbras: Revenge for the Deaths of Their Fathers He thinks about the fact that revenge is not a good action to make his soul get to heavens. His is a prince of Norway, but likewise Hamlet did not receive the crown, he was […]
• Shakespeare’s “Hamlet”: The Use of Allusion and Metaphors Shakespeare’s use of allusion and metaphors in Hamlet is vital to creating the dramatic imagery surrounding the play and foreshadowing the extent of the growing conflict.
• Gertrude’s Character in “Hamlet” by William Shakespeare However, in the second part of the play, when Gertrude faces the truth of her first husband’s dead, she immediately stands a reformed character, sympathetic to Hamlet’s cause.
• Shakespeare: Hamlet The scene that is the subject of this report refers to a scene in the play that takes place at the graveyard following the death of Ophelia.
• Psychoanalytic Study of Hamlet by Ernest Jones (Critical Writing) I agree with the author regarding the dialogues, the flow of the play, and the sequence of the events in it.
• Hamlet’s Attitude Toward Women in Shakespear’s “Hamlet” The event that gives birth to his hatred is Gertrude’s marriage to her brother-in-law Claudius very soon after the untimely death of her husband, King Hamlet.
• William Shakespeare: Hamlet and Macbeth It is important to examine the role that the setting plays in Hamlet and Macbeth in relation to the tragic flaw and developments of the plot.
• Blindness in Oedipus Rex & Hamlet Therefore, in this play, the sighted like Oedipus and Jocasta are ‘blind’ to the truth whilst the blind like Teiresias can see the truth.
• Hamlet Analysis Essay: Shakespeare’s Play Analysis Example The writer used the name of the play as the name of the main actor while other characters in the play helped in development of the predominant theme in the main character.
• Why Is Hamlet a Complex Character: Critical Analysis When Hamlet’s father requests him to avenge his death against King Claudius, he is unable to carry out his revenge. In addition, Shakespeare mission to delay Hamlet’s plan to avenge his father’s death highlights the […]
• Hamlet & Laertes: Fathers’ Death Reactions King Hamlet’s ghost then informs prince Hamlet of the person who killed him; consequently, Hamlet accepts the ghost’s demands, swears his accomplices to secrecy and reveals to them his intention of killing the king to […]
• Hamlet vs. Oedipus Compare and Contrast Essay In his speech to his brother-in-law Creon, the proud king voices the desire to find the murderer to secure not only the wellbeing of his state but his safety as a ruler as well.
• Father-Son Relationships in Hamlet – Hamlet’s Opinion In the case of Hamlet, he surrenders his own life and future to the will of his father, albeit following significant hesitation, not to mention the passage of an entire play.
• Literary Analysis of “Hamlet” by William Shakespeare They are the symbolic image of Hamlet’s father the ghost of the King, the flowers and Ophelia, the skull, and the grave of Yorick.
• Minor Characters in Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” Some of the stories that the reader comes to know, about some people or events in the play, come inform of narrations from the minor characters. The minor characters give most of the information known […]
• “The Lion King” Movie as Adaptation of Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” The film parallels Hamlet as the main characters in the play and the film are both princes, and the antagonists are uncles who murder their brothers to gain power.
• Hamlet’s Choice of Fortinbras as His Successor Choice of Fortinbras is an act to usurp his place as the rightful king and avenge for the injustice done to Fortinbras, as well as him. Another reason could be an act to reconcile with […]
• Resilience of Hamlet and Oedipus The plot of the tragedy of Sophocles is built on a chain of accidents, which are in fact the fatal will of the powerful gods.
• Role of Women in Twelfth Night and Hamlet by Shakespeare Purpose of the research The purpose of this study is to compare specific women characters in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night and Hamlet and to explore their similarities in terms of their passivity, relationships with other characters […]
• Shakespeare versus Olivier: A Depiction of ‘Hamlet’ The presentation of the Ghost in the film builds the main theme of revenge and tragedy. Olivier shows that the Oedipus complex is a crucial aspect in understanding the play especially the character of Hamlet […]
• Characterization of Hamlet When Hamlet learns in a dream that he is supposed to revenge the death of his father, he promises to do so “with wings as swift as meditation or the thoughts of love, may sweep […]
• Elements of Literature Used in Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” The audience may be able to show a degree of empathy with Hamlet as the play was written in a slightly satirical manner and shows that he is very much human in his qualities and […]
• Lying, Acting, Hypocrisy in Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” This paper will argue that, although the concepts of hypocrisy, lying, and acting are brought up directly only a few times in Hamlet, the manifestations thereof can be found throughout the poem, the Dutch prince […]
• Hamlet And Laertes: A Comparison Hamlet, shocked by the revelation and shaken to the core by the knowledge of his mother’s role in the act, immediately makes his intention clear in the presence of the ghost.
• Horatio (Hamlet): Character Analysis Hamlet does not follow his friend’s caution and goes with the ghost, where he learns of his father’s murder and swears to avenge him.
• Comparison of “Hamlet”, “King Lear” and “Othello” by Shakespeare Iago’s reports and the loss of the handkerchief appear to Othello reliable proofs of Desdemona’s unfaithfulness, and under the effect of anger the protagonist is both unable and unwilling to do further investigation.
• “Hamlet and His Problems” by Thomas Stearns Eliot Hamlet assumes the role of both the father and the son and the need to detect his identity about his idea of the father becomes problematic in the presence of his mother.
• Hamlet’s Mental State and Issues That Affected Him To begin with, it is evident to the reader that the main character is overwhelmed by the grief and mourning of his father.
• The Theme of Revenge in Shakespeare’s Hamlet The latter, after seeing his father’s ghost and learning the truth, feels that he is taken over by revenge and sets up a performance that copies Claudius’s, the murderer’s, plan and results in a tragic […]
• Creative Process in William Shakespeare Works Creativity in his works, Merchant of Venice and Hamlet, is portrayed by the manner he makes choice of characters, the way themes are tied up with stylistic language to reflect hidden meanings reflective of the […]
• Hamlet’s Renaissance Culture Conflict The death of Hamlet as the play ends indicates that though he was the definite answer to all the questions before him as he faced death, he was not in any position to give any […]
• Hamlet and King Oedipus Literature Comparison This essay compares the characters and roles of both Hamlet and King Oedipus as the sons who have to deliver justice to their fathers’ killers.
• Education and Knowledge in “Hamlet” by Shakespeare Shakespeare portrays that in a world of complexity, instability, and unpredictability, people are struggling to make sense of the changes and to situate themselves within the new milieu.
• Ophelia from Shakespeare’s ”Hamlet” Shakespeare employs the traditional view of the woman as a means of illustrating its more dangerous elements through his portrayal of Ophelia in her innocence, the ease with which others use her, and the suspicion […]
• Hamlet in the Film and the Play: Comparing and Contrasting There is a certain discrepancy in the way Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Gibson’s hero unveil the tragic style of the play. This assumption is justified by the scenes from the movie because many of the dialogues […]
• “Hamlet” and “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead” The link of “Hamlet” and “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead” to the present days can be seen in the lost characters.
• Hamlet’s Hesitation in Revenge: Four Separate Theories The play within a play is one of many tactics Hamlet employs over the course of the play to delay the revenge and therefore avoid his own death.
• The Use of Revenge in William Shakespeare`s “Hamlet” The only character in the play to claim to have first-hand knowledge of the murder of Hamlet’s father and who speaks aloud about them to another character is the ghost of Hamlet’s father.
• Comparing Dr. Faustus and Hamlet Hamlet kills numerous characters in the play and this goes to show his excessive pride or in other words his sin of pride.
• Macbeth and Hamlet Characters Comparison The queens in Hamlet and Macbeth play a pivotal role in the life of the heroes of the play. She is portrayed as a mother who, in her awareness of Hamlet’s crisis, feels guilty and […]
• “The Prince” by Machiavelli and “Hamlet” by Shakespeare The author tries to bring to light the concepts of life when he uses the different aspects of death in the piece of work.
• William Shakespeare: Hamlet’s Actions and Inactions This paper is an attempt to analyze Hamlet’s actions and inactions to prove the authenticity of the application of these maxims to the protagonist.
• Rosencrantz and Guildenstern in the “Hamlet” Hamlet is a son to the former King and a nephew to the current King Claudius These two characters seem indispensable throughout and serve as informants of Claudius. In the play, they fit in as […]
• The Importance of Paintings in Hamlet The play revolves around the two opposing forces: truth and deceit, and we see a contrast between the importance of being true to one’s self and the importance of being truthful with others.
• Anti-Heroism in Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Cervantes’ Don Quixote This ghost will only talk to Hamlet, and when the time is right, he will share his side of the account with the prince.
• Consideration of the Ghost in “Hamlet” by Shakespeare The Ghost in the play is charitable because it helps Hamlet to know the truth about the way his father died and to begin finding clues for the murder.
• Appearance vs. Reality in Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” and Sophocles’ “Oedipus Rex” In preparing for the performance, Hamlet provides the players with specific lines and actions to include within the overall play they are about to perform and gives them lengthy instructions as to the acting of […]
• The Function of the Soliloquies in Hamlet This happens when it influences the plot, the characterization in the play, and the play’s mood, on top of expressing themes that could be termed to be the main themes.
• Hamlet: Gertrude’s Complicit Character However, Queen Gertrude seems to be more on the inside of the plotting and scheming occurring within the castle than an innocent woman should have.
• Human Nature and Morality in “Hamlet” and “Dr. Faustus” These are the problems we are going to discuss in the current essay, and we are going to address for help with it such masterpieces of literature as the play “Hamlet, the Prince of Denmark” […]
• Depression and Melancholia Expressed by Hamlet The paper will not attempt and sketch the way the signs or symptoms of depression/melancholia play a part in the way Shakespeare’s period or culture concerning depression/melancholia, but in its place portrays the way particular […]
• The Role of Queen Gertrude in Play “Hamlet” Whether or not Queen Gertrude, Prince Hamlet’s mother, was guilty of being part of the conspiracy that led to the murder of her husband, King Hamlet is debatable.
• Key Themes in “Hamlet” by William Shakespeare Among the characters in this play include Claudius, hamlet, Gertrude, Polonius, Ophelia, Horatio, Laertes, Voltimand, Rosencrantz, Osric, ghost of Hamlet’s father, Barnardo to mention but a few Mystery of death is one theme that clearly […]
• Deceiving Appearances in “Hamlet” and “The Lion King” In particular, Claudius and Scar represent villains under the guise of well-wishers, while Rosencrantz and Guildenstern from Hamlet and hyenas from The Lion King appear worse than they seem.
• The Idea of Insanity in “Hamlet” He is maybe a bit spoiled and used to getting his own way, but he knows he has a duty to the state and to his family and he knows he is destined to someday […]
• “Hamlet” by William Shakespeare: To Be or Not to Be It begins with supernatural such as the presence of the ghost and Hamlet attempting to glance into Claudius’ soul, to the mystery of the crime and the need for revenge. The masterful use of style, […]
• Shakespeare Authorship Question: Thorough Analysis of Style, Context, and Violence in the Plays Hamlet, Julius Caesar, Twelfth Night It should be stated that even though most of the scholars point to the fact that Shakespeare was not the author of the plays, I would like to contradict this opinion and prove that Shakespeare’s […]
• The Issue of Human Manipulation in ‘Hamlet’ by W. Shakespeare It seems the love he contains in his heart is not enough for him to forgive and forget what has happened.
• Shakespeare’s Hamlet’s Behavior in Act III In the end, he comes to the conclusion that this obscurity is the reason people do not want to die and prefer to lead the lives full of suffering.
• “Hamlet the Prince of Denmark” by William Shakespeare The first one is the plot of the play that lasts from the beginning till the scene when Hamlet meets the ghost of his father.
• Aeschylus’ Oresteia and Shakespeare’s Hamlet One such device in Hamlet is Shakespeare’s placing of the Danish prince in the context of Fortinbras and Laertes as the characters that, like Hamlet, find themselves in the role of having to avenge their […]
• A Play Within a Play: Hamlet and Second Shepherd’s Play In contrast to Hamlet, the role of ‘a play within a play’ is to underline onstage and offstage characters and their qualities.
• The Hamlet’s Emotional Feelings in the Shakespearean Tragedy The grief that Hamlet feels at the death of his father is tempered by a Claudius’s statement to him that grief is ‘unmanly.’ He also associates women with deception beginning with his mother with whom […]
• “The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark” and “A Raisin in the Sun” In this regard, the decisions of Hamlet, Claudius, Walter, and Lena illustrate the character’s commitment to family despite differences of opinion and disagreements.
• Protagonist in Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” The Protagonist plays a major part to achieve the goals of the story while the antagonist is an adversary who struggles against the efforts of the protagonist.
• The Play “Hamlet Prince of Denmark” by W.Shakespeare Hamlet, a Denmark Prince, is the main character in the play. In the climax of the play, Claudius appears to be responsible for the death of King Hamlet.
• Hamlet and Forgiveness: A Personal Reflection Some of the most prominent themes in the story are the ideas of mutual forgiveness, people’s motivation to be proactive and take risks, and their willingness to forgive and ask for forgiveness.
• Resiliency in Sophocles’ Oedipus and Shakespeare’s Hamlet According to the information provided the reader rises with the question dealing with the resiliency of both Hamlet and Oedipus and what does it mean to them.
• Hamlet: A New Type of Independent Thinker Hamlet considers the plan to disturb Claudius and convince the audience of his guilt distracting attention from prayer and confession. Such innovations permeate the entire text, which allows the reader to assert that Hamlet did […]
• Hamlet’s Descent Into Darkness: A Tale of Revenge, Death, and Uncertainty Hamlet was thinking about the afterlife and suicide to achieve peace, and during this speech, a reader might feel the pain and despair of the main character.
• Hamlet vs. Oedipus Rex: Who Is More Resilient? In Sophocles’ Oedipus the King, Oedipus is a protagonist; he is seeking the truth and is unconcerned about the harm it may pose.
• Reality and Illusion in Shakespeare’s Hamlet The last and the greatest deceiving character is Claudius, who is far from being the brave brother of the monarch who ascended to the throne in order to protect the kingdom. It is evident that […]
• Shakespeare’s “Hamlet”: Hamlet as a Masculine Character Initially, the themes and scenes of the play were designed for staging at the Shakespeare theatre, and the costumes and the actors’ play were supposed to evoke awe for the rich life of medieval nobles.
• Coping With Changes in Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” and O’Connor’s “A Good Man…” Tragedies in “Hamlet” and “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” lead characters to rely on the change as a coping mechanism.”Hamlet” narrates the story of an individual dealing with a loss which leads him […]
• Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” and the Modern World The tragedy of Hamlet addresses eternal problems: the incompatibility of lofty ideals and dreams with reality, the mismatch between the goals and the means of achieving them, and the role of the individual in history.
• Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” Play: Then and Now Hamlet’s cynicism, as well as his sense of meaning, distinguish him as a uniquely contemporary figure and a watershed moment in the theatrical past.
• Does Shakespearean Hamlet Love Ophelia? The love that Hamlet has for Ophelia is demonstrated in letters that he wrote to her. Hamlet reminds Ophelia that he is in love with her in the later stages of Act 3 of the […]
• Hamlet and Gertrude Relationships in Shakespeare’s Play However, even though Hamlet threatens to murder Gertrude to “wring” her heart, the audience can understand that he loves his mother and wants her to repent of her sins and end the relationship with Hamlet’s […]
• Power and Importance of Hamlet’s Role in Shakespeare’s Play The first striking problem of Hamlet is the one of choice, which may be considered a reflection of the main conflict of the tragedy.
• Gender Roles and Representation of Women in “Hamlet” Specifically, the author refers to the problem of being confined in the prison of gender stereotypes that can be experienced when reading Shakespeare’s works.
• Is Shakespeare’s Hamlet Really Crazy? According to the first one, Hamlet pretends to be mad, so that he is not taken seriously and is not considered as dangerous, under the guise of a madman, he can say anything.
• Oedipus and Hamlet Characters’ Contrast and Comparison The purpose of this essay is to compare and contrast one of the main characters of literature – Oedipus and Hamlet, as well as to determine the qualities and skills of people which make them […]
• “Oedipus King” by Sophocles and “Hamlet” by Shakespeare The protagonist is on the verge of madness: an intelligent and unexcelled humanist in the world, which is an enemy to his ideas. However, Oedipus later comes to terms with his fate and takes responsibility […]
• Hamlet: Analyzing Various Scenes On top of this, Hamlet hopes that seeing a replay of the murder of his father would move the king’s conscience to a point where he would be forced to admit his crime.
• Human Nature in Shakespearean Tragedy “Hamlet” Soliloquies maintain significant place in the play Hamlet, which start with the beginning of the play, and chase the protagonist almost near the close of the end of the play.
• Shakespearean Hamlet’s Character Interpretation For example, Hamlet believed that his mother was loyal to his father and to the kingdom, but he felt unhappy with how events unfolded when grieving.
• Hamlet’s Relationship With His Mother and Uncle Hamlet’s assessment of his issues is accurate in the sense that he already associates Claudius with problems, but the prince is too quick to judge his mother.
• Supporting Characters in “The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark” Shakespeare utilizes secondary characters to depict the theme of friendship and loyalty, as these aspects are influential on the main character.
• “Hamlet” by William Shakespeare: Overview In the play Hamlet is a noble soldier with admirable qualities but he avenges the death of his father using his free will.
• Genji, Hamlet, Oedipus and Jesus Christ Character Analysis This paper will attempt to asses the characters in the following set of books and plays: The New Testament, Oedipus the King, Shakespeare Hamlet and Shikibu the tale of the Genji.
• Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” as the Central Tragedy for Revenge Understanding The core concept of revenge in Hamlet, Shakespeare’s play, is the hesitation of the main character and his doubt moral and philosophical maxims in the whole world; the main idea of the play may be […]
• The Vision of the Main Character in Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” The main character of the tragedy is Hamlet, a young man who comes to know about the real reasons of his father’s death from the ghost that claims to be the spirit of his father. […]
• Hamlet’s Parental Relationships The death of his father, the actions of his mother and his existing relationship with his uncle all have Hamlet confused regarding the true nature of the world.
• The Character of Gertrude in ‘Hamlet’ The character of Ophelia is responsible for projecting an aura of guilt and deception to the role of women in ‘Hamlet.’ She is not treacherous or complicated, but instead weak and insensibly dependent on the […]
• Themes in “Hamlet” by William Shakespeare With consideration of critical responses, use of language and structure, and through a close analysis of Hamlet’s soliloquies, the role of Shakespeare’s characterization of Hamlet in shaping the enduring power of the text is appreciated […]
• “Hamlet” Scene Comparison: Hawke’s and Gibson’s Films In both Hawke’s and Gibson’s versions of Hamlet, the original text is used for dialogue between Hamlet and Ophelia as she is sent to trap the reasons for Hamlet’s insanity out of him.
• William Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” Drama Play These soliloquies are dramatic and ironical, Harold Wilson submits, with an irony that is implicit and eloquent in the extravagances of Hamlet’s rhetoric.
• Hamlet: The Circumstances That Lead Hamlet to Soliloquy Out of his anger, he worries about the death of his father and the hasty marriage of his mother to his uncle.
• The Reflection of Time in “Hamlet” by Shakespeare Thesis Human existence and purpose of life were considered unimportant because the human soul had a divine nature, thus, they were afraid of death as an unknown state of human existence.
• Hesitation and Indeterminacy of Hamlet There is no denying the importance of the fact that the whole fabric of Shakespeare’s tragedy unfolds in Hamlet subjective perception and interpretation of his uncle and mother’ treason.
• Hamlet, Ophelia and Insanity in Shakespear’s “Hamlet” The knowledge the Queen has as to the specific nature of Ophelia’s death calls into question her sincerity in her lament.
• Gender Equality Question: “Hamlet” by William Shakespeare For the past few centuries, the rise of various movements have marked a certain change in the ideas and philosophies of man regarding the true nature of his existence, the pronounced inequalities of not only […]
• Hamlet by William Shakespeare: A Filmic Event In bringing Shakespeare’s classic story of Hamlet to the big screen and reset into a modern context, director Michael Almereyda is forced to reinterpret the role of Ophelia due to significant changes in modern women’s […]
• Roles of Poison in Shakespeari’s “Hamlet” It is obvious that Hamlet is the representative of the new world. I think that the answer to this riddle is that his ways of revenge are not good.
• Characters in “The Scarlet Letter” and “Hamlet” Film Hester returns to Boston just before her death, in order to be buried in the same grave as Dimmesdale, with ‘A’ inscribed on their tombstone. Much to her son’s anger and disgust, she marries Claudius […]
• Comparison of Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” and Perrault’s “Cinderella” The paper also includes the analysis of the narratives in accordance with the epic laws introduced by Axel Olrik. In Cinderella’s story, the presence of royalty is only limited to the prince.
• Freud and Hamlet’s Relationship with His Mother When analyzing the relationship between Hamlet and his mother, one can note that even at a young age, the Oedipus complex manifests in the boy, which reflects a number of his conflicting experiences about his […]
• Ghost in Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” Play In Shakespeare’s play Hamlet, the titular character begins plotting his revenge after he encounters the ghost of his father, who informs him of the murder as well as the culprits.
• Act 1 Scene 2 of the “Hamlet” Play by Shakespeare The use of honorifics, stichomythia, and imagery is discussed, as well as the aside, the motif of spying, and the overall mood of the scene will be discussed and evaluated. The overall mood of the […]
• Ophelia and Hamlet’s Dialogue in Shakespeare’s Play In some ways, this scene represents the conflict between Hamlet and the society he lives in, as no one is capable of understanding his concerns.
• The Masks of William Shakespeare’s Play “Hamlet” The first thing that has to be determined is the truth behind the claim that Hamlet saw the ghost of his departed father.
• Ghosts and Revenge in Shakespeare’s Hamlet Despite the common beliefs concerning the existence of ghosts, it seems that the ghost’s presence is still supported by the testimonies of all characters in the story, including Horatio, Francisco, and the protagonist himself.
• Act II of Hamlet by William Shakespeare The King is worried about Hamlet’s madness and starts to suspect that he might have found out the real reasons for his father’s death.
• Meditative and Passionate Responses in the Play “Hamlet” This is seen in his soliloquy “to be, or not to be: that is the question; /Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer?
• Portrayal of Hamlet in Shakespeare’s Play and Zaffirelli’s Film In fact, Mel Gisbon’s power as an act does not provide a sufficient understanding of his ability to penetrate to Shakespeare’s world and reach the ideas in the play.
• Psychiatric Analysis of Hamlet Literature Analysis However, he tells the doctor that he is not actually aware of the reasons that are taking him to his death.
• The Value of Source Study of Hamlet by Shakespeare In regards to the intended significance, Stopes, Belleforest, and Shakespeare report that Shakespeare designed the role of the ghost to appear to Hamlet relentlessly to enhance the melancholy motif of the play.
• William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Prince of Denmark Generally, the main idea of the play is considered to be the impact of people’s actions on their future.”The ghost of Hamlet’s father does urge him to action”.
• Relationships Among Individuals in Shakespeare’s Plays The events that take place in Athens are symbolic in the sense that they represent the sequence of events during the day whereas the events in the forest represent the dream like circumstances.
• Canonical Status of Hamlet by William Shakespeare However, the technique has been defended by some of the scholars who argue that Shakespeare’s skill is to develop and emphasize the purpose of duality and dislocation in the play.
• Oedipus the King and Hamlet However, the fact is both Oedipus and Claudius managed to get the post of kingship after killing the former kings leaving the seats vacant. In conclusion, both Oedipus and King Claudius attained their crown after […]
• How a Film Interprets Hamlet Laurence Olivier’s need to focus on less traditional approaches, his need to shorten the production, and the need to perform a psychological analysis of the characters determine his interpretation of the play ‘Hamlet’.
• A Play “Hamlet” by William Shakespear Hamlet decides to prove whether Claudius really killed his father and in act three, he uses the play “The Murder of Gonzago” to get the truth.
• Recurring Theme of Revenge in Hamlet On top of this, Laertes wants to revenge the insanity and subsequent death of his sister, which he blames on Hamlet.
• How Effectively Does Shakespeare Introduce the Characters and Themes of “Hamlet”?
• How Does Shakespeare Present Women and Sex in “Hamlet”?
• Is Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” Based on a True Story?
• What Are the Symbols in “Hamlet”?
• Where Did Shakespeare Get His Inspiration for “Hamlet”?
• How Does Shakespeare Use Conflict in “Hamlet” as a Way of Exploring Ideas?
• What Is the Language Style in “Hamlet” Play?
• How “Hamlet” Was Inspired by an Obscure Tale From Finland’s Kalavala?
• How Does Shakespeare Introduce the Theme of Madness in “Hamlet”?
• What Does “Hamlet” Teach Us About Humanity?
• Did William Shakespeare Really Write “Hamlet”?
• How Strange Behavior and Ghosts Are Depicted in “Hamlet”?
• What Is the Most Important Theme in “Hamlet”?
• What Is the Contrast Between Hamlet and Claudius in “Hamlet”?
• What Is the the Meaning of Soliloquy in “Hamlet”?
• How Perennial Issues of the Human Condition Are Imaged in “Hamlet”?
• What Are the Similar Motifs Between “Wuthering Heights” and “Hamlet”?
• Why Did Shakespeare Choose Loyalty and Betrayal as Lead Themes in “Hamlet”?
• What Are the Inward and Outward Conflicts in “Hamlet”?
• How Does Shakespeare Use Language in “Hamlet” to Teach the Reader?
• What Is the Significance of “Hamlet’s” Creating?
• How Do “Hamlet” Characters Solve Their Mental Problems?
• How Crime Fiction and Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” Are Connected?
• What Is Corruption and How Its Rampant Impact Is Depicted in “Hamlet”?
• Why Is the Ending of “Hamlet” Ironic?
• Chicago (A-D)
• Chicago (N-B)

IvyPanda. (2024, February 27). 151 Hamlet Essay Topics & Thesis Ideas. https://ivypanda.com/essays/topic/hamlet-essay-examples/

"151 Hamlet Essay Topics & Thesis Ideas." IvyPanda , 27 Feb. 2024, ivypanda.com/essays/topic/hamlet-essay-examples/.

IvyPanda . (2024) '151 Hamlet Essay Topics & Thesis Ideas'. 27 February.

IvyPanda . 2024. "151 Hamlet Essay Topics & Thesis Ideas." February 27, 2024. https://ivypanda.com/essays/topic/hamlet-essay-examples/.

1. IvyPanda . "151 Hamlet Essay Topics & Thesis Ideas." February 27, 2024. https://ivypanda.com/essays/topic/hamlet-essay-examples/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "151 Hamlet Essay Topics & Thesis Ideas." February 27, 2024. https://ivypanda.com/essays/topic/hamlet-essay-examples/.

• Death of a Salesman Ideas
• Call of the Wild Questions
• Grapes of Wrath Ideas
• Allegory of the Cave Topics
• Heart of Darkness Essay Ideas
• Much Ado About Nothing Paper Topics
• Oedipus the King Essay Topics
• Antigone Ideas

• Share full article

Advertisement

Supported by

Living small

They Found a Rare Species in the Wild: An Original Bolt-Together House

The tiny cabin, one of the few extant examples of a popular 1970s design, had no heat or toilet. But it was theirs for $85,000.

By Julie Lasky

One weekend in 2021, Gemma Warren was doing what she did every weekend: sitting over coffee in her home in Tulum, Mexico, combing through the real estate listings for cabins in the Catskill Mountains of New York.

She and her husband, Nick Warren, who are English, had discovered the Catskills several years earlier, while living in Brooklyn and working for public relations and marketing companies headquartered in London. They fell for the region’s scented forests, sunny meadows, icy streams and not terribly threatening bears (unless provoked). They wanted to buy a weekend house, but found nothing to fit their budget.

So six years ago, they picked up and moved to Tulum, on the Yucatán Peninsula, because they also had a sunny, oceanic side to their natures. There, they worked remotely. But the Catskills still beckoned.

In that fateful website-browsing session three years ago, Ms. Warren, now 37, saw a listing for a cabin in the western Catskills hamlet of Delancey, N.Y. The asking price: $65,000. The house was 192 square feet and lacked heating and a toilet.

“A shack” is how Mr. Warren, 38, described it: “There was running water. But that was pretty much it.”

And yet it sat on 6.8 acres thick with old trees and tall grasses. Flowing next to it was a creek that audibly burbled in a video. A large picture window looked out to the water and forest.

Investigating further, the Warrens discovered that the tiny building with its projecting shed roof had an unusual provenance. It was one of the few extant examples of a Bolt-Together House, a bare-bones cutie that Family Circle magazine published in 1972 in a series on D.I.Y. dwellings.

A young architect named Jeffrey Milstein had designed the house on paper as something that could be taken apart and moved if one didn’t happen to own the land it occupied. The building was conceived as rough-sawed plywood panels bolted to a collapsible framework of timber posts and trusses attached to four concrete piers embedded in the earth.

Family Circle, riding the wave of eco-consciousness that washed through the 1970s, handed Mr. Milstein the money to construct the house, gave it a big spread and sold the plans.

“If you have a large garage, your husband can prefabricate the panels (none is larger than 4’x8’); cut, drill and paint the posts and trusses; then move the entire house to your site in a 16-foot rented truck,” the magazine suggested to the readers it took for granted were female and married.

The cost of construction was about $2,500 ($18,680 in today’s dollars), inclusive of lumber, wiring, plumbing, heating (with a wood-burning stove), kitchen appliances and some built-in furnishings, including a fold-down dining table. There was also a platform bed on a mezzanine level reached by a wall ladder.

• Tony Cenicola/The New York Times

The house was a hit; Family Circle sold a reported 25,000 plans, more than for any other project in its series. The Italian shelter magazine Abitare featured it in the May 1979 issue along with another of Mr. Milstein’s projects that combined a house with a camping tent. Both designs were published in Lester Walker’s seminal 1993 guide to small living, “ The Tiny Book of Tiny Houses .”

Today, the Bolt-Together House is a rare species in the wild, a snow leopard for tiny-home enthusiasts. A YouTube video posted a dozen years ago of a shabby survivor in New Brunswick, Canada, has attracted more than 53,000 views.

All of which explains why the Warrens were besotted with the Delancey listing. “It was just a dreamy little place to us that was in our budget and so unique,” Ms. Warren said.

They were far from the only admirers, but were determined to have it. “We put an offer on it direct from Mexico, without even going to the town or seeing the cabin, which I think threw the Realtor for six,” Ms. Warren said, using a term derived from the game of cricket to describe the feeling of being whacked hard by a bat.

The sellers interpreted the couple’s pre-emptive bid of $85,000 as less a gesture of enthusiasm than of possible instability and accepted the second-best offer. As Mr. Warren interpreted the rejection, the sellers were afraid he and his wife weren’t serious and would “mess them around.” As fate would have it, he added, “a few weeks later, the second highest bidder actually messed them around.”

The Bolt-Together House was now the couple’s, a retreat where they could spend several months a year with their dogs, Taco, Margarita and Chili. But it still smacked of shack.

Had its builder followed Mr. Milstein’s plans to the letter, the walls would have been insulated and there would have been sanitation facilities. (The house would also have been 224 square feet.) Yet neither comfort in winter nor an indoor commode appeared to be a priority. Instead, there was an outhouse some distance away, in the meadow.

The Warrens installed insulation as well as baseboard electric heating. Their dream of a speedily acquired and affordable septic system, however, was dashed by the complexity of the site, with its creek, and by pandemic-related delays.

At that point, they discovered the Cinderella toilet , which incinerates waste with the push of a button. At $5,000, it was a comparative bargain. They put it into a new bathroom, along with a walk-in shower with glazed green wall tile.

Working with a local carpenter, they doubled the size of the kitchenette, from subatomic to minuscule. Its counters and cabinets are maple with brass hardware, and there is a two-burner electric cooktop and a dainty farmhouse sink.

The couple also expanded the size of the mezzanine’s sleeping platform to fit a queen-size bed. They put in Wi-Fi that they said works far better than their Wi-Fi in Tulum.

Outside, they laid down a driveway through the meadow and built a floating deck overlooking the creek.

The total cost of renovations, they estimated, was $60,000.

Recently, the Warrens welcomed Mr. Milstein, now 79, to check out the place. Despite the plaudits he received for his innovative shelter designs, he chucked the practice of architecture decades ago and now works as an aerial photographer with a studio in Kingston, N.Y.

“It was cute,” he said of the Warrens’ house. He understood why the couple had brightened the interior with white paint, although he described himself as more of a natural-wood man. He also understood the sacrifice of the ground-level sleeping area in his original design to make room for a bigger kitchen.

“It was surprising how comfortable it was, with four of us hanging out there,” he added, alluding to the Warrens and his girlfriend, Kim Cantine. Ms. Cantine “had the idea that she wants to find these around the country and photograph me standing in front of them.”

Living Small is a biweekly column exploring what it takes to lead a simpler, more sustainable or more compact life.

For weekly email updates on residential real estate news, sign up here .

The capsule summary with a previous version of this article misstated the cost of Gemma and Nick Warren’s Bolt-Together House. They paid $85,000, not $65,000.

How we handle corrections

The State of Real Estate

Whether you’re renting, buying or selling, here’s a look at real estate trends..

A couple’s tiny cabin in the Catskills, one of the few extant examples of a popular 1970s design, had no heat or toilet . But it was theirs for $85,000.

Fueled by the public’s love of reality TV and desire to view luxury homes,  real estate agents are chasing fame  as fervently as they chase deals.

Property is generally worth less if it’s owned by a Black American. Here’s how the “Black tax” has affected homeownership  for Black Americans.

It’s not that easy to tell fake Donald Judd furniture from the real thing. See if you can do a better job  than Kim Kardashian.

A utilitarian walk-in shower works just as well as something nicer, so why spend the time and effort — and the money — to upgrade it? Here’s why .