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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.”

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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 .

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Grand Theft Hamlet Review

A documentary about the greatest shakespearean gta stunt ever pulled..

This review is based on a screening at the 2024 SXSW Film Festival.

Spoiler alert: I cried at the end of Grand Theft Hamlet. Yeah, the documentary about a performance of the Shakespere tragedy staged entirely within Grand Theft Auto Online . And not because it’s an especially sophisticated and moving piece of theater, either. Grand Theft Hamlet might be sold as an improbable story about renegade performers turning Rockstar’s felonious video game world into a thespian’s fantasy, but there’s also a focus on how the COVID-19 pandemic decimated industries as well as lifestyles. More importantly, it shows how video games became one of the only ways to emulate social engagements at the height of COVID lockdown.

My Playstation escape of choice was Call of Duty: Warzone. Sam Crane and his good friend Mark Oosterveen, a fellow out-of-work actor, retreated to GTA's massively multiplayer online world. The mindsets, paranoias, and bouts of sadness they discuss in Grand Theft Hamlet were like reliving traumas I haven’t yet been able to process. Sorry to start on such a sobering note, but I use the anecdote as testament to the power of documentary filmmaking – or, more importantly, an affecting and accomplished documentary. I went into the “Shakespearean GTA Movie” only expecting laughs and incredulous pixelated feats. Instead, I was brought back to a period in global history when time stopped, socialization shifted online, and video games became a salvation for many.

Upcoming New Video Game Movies and TV Shows: 2024 Release Dates and Beyond

Sam and Mark’s amazing journey starts during the UK’s third lockdown in January 2021. Before the pandemic, Sam had been cast in a life-changingly prominent role in the London production of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. His wife – and Grand Theft Hamlet co-director – Pinny Grylls was a documentary filmmaker with promising career prospects. Mark’s multifaceted stage, television, and film career was as stable as ever. All three Londoners had the sunniest of dispositions, projecting positivity into the future – but the novel coronavirus brought all that to a screeching halt. Sam and Pinny's 12-year-old (at the time) son started going on about a Minecraft YouTuber developing fiction narratives within the game, which sparked Sam and Mark’s eventual idea, as well as Pinny’s decision to document their never-before-seen objective.

The thought of corralling Grand Theft Auto players to do anything but commit robbery and murder is hilarious, and Grand Theft Hamlet records it in all of its cartoonishly violent glory. Practice runs are frequently interrupted by rogue players with rocket launchers or NPC police officers who rain bullets on actors as they try to deliver moody monologues. Los Santos encourages deviant behavior that Sam and Mark cannot pause or avoid, so they learn to adapt around delays like respawns, accidental blimp crashes, and uninvited guests. The result is as hilariously chaotic and unpredictable as you might imagine, and accounts for quite possibly the funniest and most wholesome scene in the whole film, when a supportive player named “ParTeb” doesn’t want to act, yet offers his talents as security. Cue ParTeb hovering over Sam and Mark’s rehearsal in a fighter jet, blasting machine gun rounds at anyone who dares approach.

What Is Your Favorite Grand Theft Auto Game?

Any production needs actors, and the process of casting Hamlet exclusively in Grand Theft Auto means auditions are held over typically crummy console headsets. Sam and Mark try wandering up to strangers in-game, but that hardly ends well. There’s comedy in their errors, but then hopeful participants start appearing thanks to a virtual casting call recorded by Pinny (who uses her character’s POV to stage cinematography). You start to hear why anyone would try out for Hamlet in this medium, and the film’s communal spirit grows stronger.

There’s no stage fright when the audience is made up of avatars; dodgy audio quality means any voice will suffice, which lets shy but curious blokes like Gareth, aka “Turkomas,” try out even though they have a self-proclaimed “face for radio and voice for mime.” Anyone with an internet connection – from stay-at-home dads to recently out trans persons – could pursue their acting dreams with the fewest risk factors and roadblocks. Some professionals even lend their prestige to the production, including the voice of Overwatch ’s Pharah herself, Jen Cohn. A recurring theme throughout Grand Theft Hamlet is the petrifying loneliness many felt during lockdown, in addition to stagnation and restlessness – but for a brief period, Sam and Mark’s project gives everyone involved a reprieve from increasingly normalized stay-at-home malaise.

As for the dramatic angles that unfold throughout Grand Theft Hamlet, heartfelt speeches are sometimes drowned out by microphone static, and avatars struggle to convey emotional depths. There’s an uncanny unease to the blue-haired, skeleton-clothed digital representations of Sam and Pinny standing at attention as Pinny confesses her frustrations with Sam’s obsessive prioritization of Hamlet over real life – but this scene between two avatars has trouble generating genuine empathy. Sam and Mark meet Dipo, aka “Dolla101,” in a distracting Los Santos subway station, where he reveals that due to relaxed lockdown restrictions, he’s landed a new job and can no longer play Hamlet. They try to drum up tension and conflict as Dipo cuts his apology short because he’s enamored by the game’s transportation mechanics, but it’s another hard sell with the digital tools at the filmmaker’s disposal.

What transcends Grand Theft Auto’s coded barriers is Mark’s passionate admission that Grand Theft Hamlet is all he has; he is a man riding out the pandemic without human companionship. No family, no roommate. That’s where the documentary morphs from a gamer-culture curio into a defining exploration of lockdown conditions and how people of various situations coped with COVID-19 seclusion. I felt the heart and soul of Charli XCX: Alone Together beating in tandem with Grand Theft Hamlet, two docs about niche communities that came together to lift one another during quarantine. You could also relate Grand Theft Hamlet to Alien on Stage , another British doc about amateur performers who fantasized about bringing a humble production to the masses. Grand Theft Hamlet is more than Pinny’s documentation of the logistical madness; it shares vulnerabilities and an inspiring tale, finding hope even in lawless, dystopian video game universes.

Grand Theft Hamlet is more than a documentary about logistical madness, randomly hump-thrust-emoting alien avatars, and mindless virtual violence. Sam and Mark are visionaries who desperately craved a creative outlet and saw untapped potential, which becomes an outrageous story of blind ambition. Where many ask “Should we?,” these two maniacs thought “How can we?” and leapt into action. Whatever human elements Grand Theft Hamlet discards by staying in-game, it’s not enough to erase the magic in Pinny’s behind-the-scenes account of every bonkers detail from Vinewood location scouting to crowd control. This is an irreplicable experience that speaks volumes about following your dreams despite the challenges that await. The reward will always be worthwhile, even if it’s just about the friends you make and NPC cops you massacre along the way.

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‘Strike Madness’ Hits Germany While Its Economy Stumbles

A wave of strikes by German workers, feeling the sting of inflation and stagnant growth, is the latest sign of the bleak outlook for Europe’s economic powerhouse.

By Christopher F. Schuetze and Erika Solomon

Christopher F. Schuetze reported from the picket lines in Rötha, in eastern Germany. Erika Solomon reported from Berlin.

For those striking at the gates of the SRW scrap metal plant, just outside Germany’s eastern city of Leipzig, time can be counted not just in days — 136 so far — but in the thousands of card games played, the liters of coffee imbibed and the armfuls of firewood burned.

Or it can be measured by the length of Jonny Bohne’s beard. He vows not to shave until he returns to the job he has held for two decades. Wearing his red union baseball cap and tending the blaze inside an oil drum, Mr. Bohne, 56, looks like a scruffy Santa Claus.

The dozens of workers at the SRW recycling center say their strike has become the longest in postwar German history — a dubious honor in a nation with a history of harmonious labor relations. (The previous record, 114 days, was held by shipyard workers in the northern city of Kiel who struck in the 1950s.)

While monthslong strikes may be commonplace in some other European countries like Spain, Belgium or France, where workers’ protests are something of a national pastime, Germany has long prided itself on nondisruptive collective bargaining.

A wave of strikes this year has Germans asking whether that is now changing. By some measures, the first three months of 2024 have had the most strikes in the country in 25 years.

Striking workers have brought railways and airports to a standstill. Doctors have walked out of hospitals. Bank employees left work for days.

“Germany — strike nation?” a recent headline in the German magazine Der Spiegel asked. Jens Spahn, deputy leader of the conservative Christian Democrats in the Parliament, denounced a “strike madness” that he said risked paralyzing the country.

The strikes are the latest chapter in the story of how Germany, the “economic miracle” of the 20th century, looks at risk of becoming a cautionary tale for the 21st.

Long the economic powerhouse of Europe, Germany is now the slowest-growing among the 20 countries using the euro. It went into recession in 2023 and is forecast to stagnate in 2024. Under the weight of soaring energy prices and falling production, the country last year suffered its highest inflation in 50 years.

The burden has fallen most heavily on its low- and middle-income workers. Since 2022, their real wages, according to a recent study , have shrunk more than at any time since World War II.

At the same time, Germany is facing an ever more severe shortage of labor and an aging population, with officials estimating there will be a shortage of seven million workers by 2035. That spells trouble for the generous welfare system German citizens have long depended on.

It is a unique moment of opportunity for workers, at a very vulnerable moment for the national economy.

“Germany is coming more slowly out of the crisis than expected,” Robert Habeck, the economy minister, said last week, criticizing what he called “a bit too much striking.”

“We really can’t afford this,” he said.

For decades, Germany’s economy chugged along profitably, underpinned by exports to China and cheap gas from Russia. But Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine prompted Europe to wean itself off the Russian gas that powered German industry. And Beijing’s deepening “Made in China” strategy is turning a huge Asian market that once was a source of growth for Germany into an industrial rival.

The impact on Germany has been worse than elsewhere in Europe precisely because of its enormous manufacturing industry, which makes up a fifth of the country’s overall economic output — almost double that in France or Britain.

For lower-income workers, now bracing for a future less prosperous than the present, there is little to fall back on. Some 40 percent of households have little or no net savings, said Marcel Fratzscher, president of the German Institute for Economic Research.

“The concerns, dissatisfactions and the fears of young people are fully justified — and of course of the parents who fear for their kids,” he said.

“People had been trusting that social welfare could provide, “ he added. “It can no longer provide what it used to.”

At the metal scrap plant, workers like Mr. Bohne take shifts to maintain their 24-hour strike outside the main gates, warming themselves inside construction containers or around makeshift firepits fueled with scrap wood.

The stoppages have forced the plant to halt night shifts, and only one of the four production lines is operating. The strikers, who want an 8 percent pay raise, are feeling emboldened.

“You notice the solidarity has become stronger,” said Christoph Leonardt, 35, one of the picketing workers.

Yet the issue is not only about pay. Workers are also demanding better working conditions, the ability to plan work shifts and vacations long in advance, a better work-life balance and fewer hours.

“The worker has become more self-assured,” said Katrin Heller, a 61-year-old security worker who marched with hundreds of striking colleagues in Day-Glo vests through the Berlin airport’s gleaming new departure hall last week, forcing flights to be canceled.

“We know we have value to the employers so we expect to be treated fairly,” she said. Officially, airport security workers are demanding a 15 percent raise to keep up with inflation, but many seemed more frustrated with shift schedules that force them to stand for up to six hours without a break.

Robert Wegener, 56, a security screener for 19 years, warned that jobs like his were no longer attractive to younger people: “If we don’t get these extras, there’s not much incentive to work here.”

His employer, Securitas, agrees. Jonas Timm, a company spokesman, said recruiting had becoming increasingly difficult since the pandemic, when he began noticing a “change in mentality” about shift work.

Many employers have expressed frustrations that more job applicants, for example, demand shorter hours or four-day work weeks.

Analysts are not in agreement as to why Germans want to work less, but many say that a major problem is Germany’s tax system, which taxes income far more heavily than it does private wealth, disproportionately affecting low- and middle-income workers.

Clemens Feust, president of the Ifo Institute for Economic Research, says working full time can be more costly than staying at home. An Ifo study showed that, because of the way taxes are structured for married couples, a family with one partner working full time and the other working part time had more income at the end of the month than two full-time working parents.

“The fact that it’s not worth working in our middle income brackets is really a problem,” he said.

As striking workers flex their might, the costs to the overall economy risk piling up as critical infrastructure across Germany grinds to a halt.

According to an industry group, the one-day strike at airports in Berlin and Hamburg last week grounded some 570 flights and affected 90,000 travelers.

The Kiel Institute for the World Economy has estimated that the train conductors’ strikes cost the German economy about 100 million euros per day.

Mr. Feust said such costs were often made up as companies and affected travelers made adjustments. The more serious damage, he said, is the economic mood.

“This is more about psychology,” he said, particularly in a time when Germany feels polarized by both economic struggles and political ones, including the war in Ukraine and the resurgence of the far right. “It leads to a heightened sense of crisis.”

Striking workers say they, too, are looking for a feeling of security as much as increased pay.

“We need more reliability, and we need to be able to plan in the long term,” Mr. Bohne said.

Only then, he said, will he shave his beard.

Christopher F. Schuetze is a reporter for The Times based in Berlin, covering politics, society and culture in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. More about Christopher F. Schuetze

Hamlet’s Mental State and Issues That Affected Him Essay

The challenges which Hamlet faces during his story seem truly harsh and brutal to endure without them affecting at least slightly his mental condition and developing obsessional grief. Therefore, it is unmistakable that the main character may experience difficulties withstanding all the issues during his life. By and whole, it appears that Hamlet’s complicated relationships with his relatives, along with their actions, are the reasons for him becoming uncertain about him continuing to live his life.

To begin with, it is evident to the reader that the main character is overwhelmed by the grief and mourning of his father. As a matter of fact, his father was killed by his uncle, Claudius, who then became his step-father (Shakespeare, 2016). Undoubtedly, such a situation is likely to negatively impact anyone’s health, considering that the deaths of loved ones seem challenging to withstand at any time. Indeed, Hamlet is no exception as he experiences a vicious cycle of mania replacing depression, which affects his moods, leading to him obsessing over his father’s death and seeking his revenge.

Furthermore, Hamlet experiences difficulties in explaining his grief to his mother, Gertrude. It seems that the fact that they do not share the same opinion about his father’s death complicates Hamlet’s grief even more. Therefore, the character recognizes this loss as something more profound in his soul that never lets him just be. That is why when Hamlet meets his father’s ghost, he experiences a feeling of importance, meaning that he has to do something to not only make himself feel better but to avenge his dear parent. To be more exact, he starts planning his vengeance thoroughly, but it appears that after the “For Hecuba” part, he loses his rush and becomes more cautious about his aim (Shakespeare, 2016, p. 25). Overall, his focus on vengeance shifts to inaction, which is slowly killing him from inside and making him feel guilty, but his evident depression and grief take the best of him, so he continues doing nothing.

In fact, Hamlet also faces numerous difficulties in his relationship with Ophelia, his love interest, which only develops his obsession and uncertainty. Hamlet’s attempts to avenge his father definitely border on him losing his sanity, so Ophelia becomes especially worried about his mental state. Moreover, it seems that it is actually Hamlet’s goal to prove to everyone that he is genuinely insane and is losing his mind so that he can continue working on his plan of vendetta without any interference from others.

Even though his aforementioned mental issues indeed cloud his judgments, including his goal of striking his uncle for Claudius to pay for Hamlet’s father’s death, the main character still believes in his deep connection and love to Ophelia (Shakespeare, 2016). Nevertheless, his manic episodes become even more intense when he experiences one more death of his dear Ophelia. As a matter of fact, it seems that this loss has even more impact on his condition as Hamlet desires to be buried with her just so that no one can separate them ever (Shakespeare, 2016). Hamlet shows the character’s suicidal inclinations as he thinks about passing not to experience this endless pain, “and by a sleep to say we end / The heart-ache and the thousand … shocks” (Shakespeare, 2016, p. 25). In other words, Ophelia’s death leads to Hamlet losing his mind entirely and falling into an endless cycle of grief, uncertainty, and depression.

To sum up, Hamlet’s insanity seems understandable after comprehending what he has experienced in his life. Losses of his two loved ones led to him developing an obsession and suicidal inclinations, which is an endless cycle of manic episodes and depression. In addition, Hamlet feels guilty for not avenging his father and making his uncle pay for his cruel misdeed. However, the death of the love of his life is the last straw, so he ends this journey by losing his mind once and for all.

Shakespeare, William. Hamlet . Van Haren Publishing, 2016.

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Should college essays touch on race? Some feel the affirmative action ruling leaves them no choice

Hillary Amofa listens to others member of the Lincoln Park High School step team after school Friday, March 8, 2024, in Chicago. (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)

When the Supreme Court ended affirmative action, it left the college essay as one of few places where race can play a role in admissions decisions. (AP Video: Noreen Nasir)

Hillary Amofa listens to others member of the Lincoln Park High School step team after school Friday, March 8, 2024, in Chicago. When she started writing her college essay, Amofa told the story she thought admissions offices wanted to hear. She wrote about being the daughter of immigrants from Ghana, about growing up in a small apartment in Chicago. She described hardship and struggle. Then she deleted it all. “I would just find myself kind of trauma-dumping,” said the 18 year-old senior, “And I’m just like, this doesn’t really say anything about me as a person.” (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)

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Hillary Amofa, laughs as she participates in a team building game with members of the Lincoln Park High School step team after school Friday, March 8, 2024, in Chicago. When she started writing her college essay, Amofa told the story she thought admissions offices wanted to hear. She wrote about being the daughter of immigrants from Ghana, about growing up in a small apartment in Chicago. She described hardship and struggle. Then she deleted it all. “I would just find myself kind of trauma-dumping,” said the 18 year-old senior, “And I’m just like, this doesn’t really say anything about me as a person.” (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)

Hillary Amofa stands for a portrait after practice with members of the Lincoln Park High School step team Friday, March 8, 2024, in Chicago. When she started writing her college essay, Amofa told the story she thought admissions offices wanted to hear. She wrote about being the daughter of immigrants from Ghana, about growing up in a small apartment in Chicago. She described hardship and struggle. Then she deleted it all. “I would just find myself kind of trauma-dumping,” said the 18 year-old senior, “And I’m just like, this doesn’t really say anything about me as a person.” (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)

Max Decker, a senior at Lincoln High School, sits for a portrait in the school library where he often worked on writing his college essays, in Portland, Ore., Wednesday, March 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Amanda Loman)

Hillary Amofa stands for a portrait after practice with members of the Lincoln Park High School step team Friday, March 8, 2024, in Chicago. When she started writing her college essay, Amofa told the story she thought admissions offices wanted to hear. She wrote about being the daughter of immigrants from Ghana, about growing up in a small apartment in Chicago. (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)

Hillary Amofa, second from left, practices with members of the Lincoln Park High School step team after school Friday, March 8, 2024, in Chicago. When she started writing her college essay, Amofa told the story she thought admissions offices wanted to hear. She wrote about being the daughter of immigrants from Ghana, about growing up in a small apartment in Chicago. She described hardship and struggle. Then she deleted it all. “I would just find myself kind of trauma-dumping,” said the 18 year-old senior, “And I’m just like, this doesn’t really say anything about me as a person.” (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)

Max Decker, a senior at Lincoln High School, stands for a portrait outside of the school in Portland, Ore., Wednesday, March 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Amanda Loman)

*Hillary Amofa, reflected right, practices in a mirror with members of the Lincoln Park High School step team after school Friday, March 8, 2024, in Chicago. When she started writing her college essay, Amofa told the story she thought admissions offices wanted to hear. She wrote about being the daughter of immigrants from Ghana, about growing up in a small apartment in Chicago. She described hardship and struggle. Then she deleted it all. “I would just find myself kind of trauma-dumping,” said the 18 year-old senior, “And I’m just like, this doesn’t really say anything about me as a person.” (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)

Max Decker, a senior at Lincoln High School, sits for a portrait outside of the school in Portland, Ore., Wednesday, March 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Amanda Loman)

Hillary Amofa, left, practices with members of the Lincoln Park High School step team after school Friday, March 8, 2024, in Chicago. When she started writing her college essay, Amofa told the story she thought admissions offices wanted to hear. She wrote about being the daughter of immigrants from Ghana, about growing up in a small apartment in Chicago. She described hardship and struggle. Then she deleted it all. “I would just find myself kind of trauma-dumping,” said the 18 year-old senior, “And I’m just like, this doesn’t really say anything about me as a person.” (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)

Hillary Amofa sits for a portrait after her step team practice at Lincoln Park High School Friday, March 8, 2024, in Chicago. When she started writing her college essay, Amofa told the story she thought admissions offices wanted to hear. She wrote about being the daughter of immigrants from Ghana, about growing up in a small apartment in Chicago. She described hardship and struggle. Then she deleted it all. “I would just find myself kind of trauma-dumping,” said the 18 year-old senior, “And I’m just like, this doesn’t really say anything about me as a person.” (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)

FILE - Demonstrators protest outside of the Supreme Court in Washington, in this June 29, 2023 file photo, after the Supreme Court struck down affirmative action in college admissions, saying race cannot be a factor. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

CHICAGO (AP) — When she started writing her college essay, Hillary Amofa told the story she thought admissions offices wanted to hear. About being the daughter of immigrants from Ghana and growing up in a small apartment in Chicago. About hardship and struggle.

Then she deleted it all.

“I would just find myself kind of trauma-dumping,” said the 18-year-old senior at Lincoln Park High School in Chicago. “And I’m just like, this doesn’t really say anything about me as a person.”

When the Supreme Court ended affirmative action in higher education, it left the college essay as one of few places where race can play a role in admissions decisions. For many students of color, instantly more was riding on the already high-stakes writing assignment. Some say they felt pressure to exploit their hardships as they competed for a spot on campus.

Amofa was just starting to think about her essay when the court issued its decision, and it left her with a wave of questions. Could she still write about her race? Could she be penalized for it? She wanted to tell colleges about her heritage but she didn’t want to be defined by it.

In English class, Amofa and her classmates read sample essays that all seemed to focus on some trauma or hardship. It left her with the impression she had to write about her life’s hardest moments to show how far she’d come. But she and some of her classmates wondered if their lives had been hard enough to catch the attention of admissions offices.

“For a lot of students, there’s a feeling of, like, having to go through something so horrible to feel worthy of going to school, which is kind of sad,” said Amofa, the daughter of a hospital technician and an Uber driver.

This year’s senior class is the first in decades to navigate college admissions without affirmative action . The Supreme Court upheld the practice in decisions going back to the 1970s, but this court’s conservative supermajority found it is unconstitutional for colleges to give students extra weight because of their race alone.

Still, the decision left room for race to play an indirect role: Chief Justice John Roberts wrote universities can still consider how an applicant’s life was shaped by their race, “so long as that discussion is concretely tied to a quality of character or unique ability.”

“A benefit to a student who overcame racial discrimination, for example, must be tied to that student’s courage and determination,” he wrote.

Scores of colleges responded with new essay prompts asking about students’ backgrounds. Brown University asked applicants how “an aspect of your growing up has inspired or challenged you.” Rice University asked students how their perspectives were shaped by their “background, experiences, upbringing, and/or racial identity.”

Hillary Amofa, reflected right, practices in a mirror with members of the Lincoln Park High School step team after school, March 8, 2024, in Chicago. (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)

WONDERING IF SCHOOLS ‘EXPECT A SOB STORY’

When Darrian Merritt started writing his essay, he knew the stakes were higher than ever because of the court’s decision. His first instinct was to write about events that led to him going to live with his grandmother as a child.

Those were painful memories, but he thought they might play well at schools like Yale, Stanford and Vanderbilt.

“I feel like the admissions committee might expect a sob story or a tragic story,” said Merritt, a senior in Cleveland. “And if you don’t provide that, then maybe they’re not going to feel like you went through enough to deserve having a spot at the university. I wrestled with that a lot.”

He wrote drafts focusing on his childhood, but it never amounted to more than a collection of memories. Eventually he abandoned the idea and aimed for an essay that would stand out for its positivity.

Merritt wrote about a summer camp where he started to feel more comfortable in his own skin. He described embracing his personality and defying his tendency to please others. The essay had humor — it centered on a water gun fight where he had victory in sight but, in a comedic twist, slipped and fell. But the essay also reflects on his feelings of not being “Black enough” and getting made fun of for listening to “white people music.”

“I was like, ‘OK, I’m going to write this for me, and we’re just going to see how it goes,’” he said. “It just felt real, and it felt like an honest story.”

The essay describes a breakthrough as he learned “to take ownership of myself and my future by sharing my true personality with the people I encounter. ... I realized that the first chapter of my own story had just been written.”

Max Decker, a senior at Lincoln High School, sits for a portrait in the school library where he often worked on writing his college essays, in Portland, Ore., March 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Amanda Loman)

A RULING PROMPTS PIVOTS ON ESSAY TOPICS

Like many students, Max Decker of Portland, Oregon, had drafted a college essay on one topic, only to change direction after the Supreme Court ruling in June.

Decker initially wrote about his love for video games. In a childhood surrounded by constant change, navigating his parents’ divorce, the games he took from place to place on his Nintendo DS were a source of comfort.

But the essay he submitted to colleges focused on the community he found through Word is Bond, a leadership group for young Black men in Portland.

As the only biracial, Jewish kid with divorced parents in a predominantly white, Christian community, Decker wrote he constantly felt like the odd one out. On a trip with Word is Bond to Capitol Hill, he and friends who looked just like him shook hands with lawmakers. The experience, he wrote, changed how he saw himself.

“It’s because I’m different that I provide something precious to the world, not the other way around,” he wrote.

As a first-generation college student, Decker thought about the subtle ways his peers seemed to know more about navigating the admissions process . They made sure to get into advanced classes at the start of high school, and they knew how to secure glowing letters of recommendation.

Max Decker reads his college essay on his experience with a leadership group for young Black men. (AP Video/Noreen Nasir)

If writing about race would give him a slight edge and show admissions officers a fuller picture of his achievements, he wanted to take that small advantage.

His first memory about race, Decker said, was when he went to get a haircut in elementary school and the barber made rude comments about his curly hair. Until recently, the insecurity that moment created led him to keep his hair buzzed short.

Through Word is Bond, Decker said he found a space to explore his identity as a Black man. It was one of the first times he was surrounded by Black peers and saw Black role models. It filled him with a sense of pride in his identity. No more buzzcut.

The pressure to write about race involved a tradeoff with other important things in his life, Decker said. That included his passion for journalism, like the piece he wrote on efforts to revive a once-thriving Black neighborhood in Portland. In the end, he squeezed in 100 characters about his journalism under the application’s activities section.

“My final essay, it felt true to myself. But the difference between that and my other essay was the fact that it wasn’t the truth that I necessarily wanted to share,” said Decker, whose top college choice is Tulane, in New Orleans, because of the region’s diversity. “It felt like I just had to limit the truth I was sharing to what I feel like the world is expecting of me.”

Demonstrators protest outside of the Supreme Court in Washington, in this June 29, 2023 file photo, after the Supreme Court struck down affirmative action in college admissions, saying race cannot be a factor. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

SPELLING OUT THE IMPACT OF RACE

Before the Supreme Court ruling, it seemed a given to Imani Laird that colleges would consider the ways that race had touched her life. But now, she felt like she had to spell it out.

As she started her essay, she reflected on how she had faced bias or felt overlooked as a Black student in predominantly white spaces.

There was the year in math class when the teacher kept calling her by the name of another Black student. There were the comments that she’d have an easier time getting into college because she was Black .

“I didn’t have it easier because of my race,” said Laird, a senior at Newton South High School in the Boston suburbs who was accepted at Wellesley and Howard University, and is waiting to hear from several Ivy League colleges. “I had stuff I had to overcome.”

In her final essays, she wrote about her grandfather, who served in the military but was denied access to GI Bill benefits because of his race.

She described how discrimination fueled her ambition to excel and pursue a career in public policy.

“So, I never settled for mediocrity,” she wrote. “Regardless of the subject, my goal in class was not just to participate but to excel. Beyond academics, I wanted to excel while remembering what started this motivation in the first place.”

Hillary Amofa stands for a portrait after practice with members of the Lincoln Park High School step team, March 8, 2024, in Chicago. (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)

WILL SCHOOLS LOSE RACIAL DIVERSITY?

Amofa used to think affirmative action was only a factor at schools like Harvard and Yale. After the court’s ruling, she was surprised to find that race was taken into account even at some public universities she was applying to.

Now, without affirmative action, she wondered if mostly white schools will become even whiter.

It’s been on her mind as she chooses between Indiana University and the University of Dayton, both of which have relatively few Black students. When she was one of the only Black students in her grade school, she could fall back on her family and Ghanaian friends at church. At college, she worries about loneliness.

“That’s what I’m nervous about,” she said. “Going and just feeling so isolated, even though I’m constantly around people.”

Hillary Amofa reads her college essay on embracing her natural hair. (AP Video/Noreen Nasir)

The first drafts of her essay focused on growing up in a low-income family, sharing a bedroom with her brother and grandmother. But it didn’t tell colleges about who she is now, she said.

Her final essay tells how she came to embrace her natural hair . She wrote about going to a mostly white grade school where classmates made jokes about her afro. When her grandmother sent her back with braids or cornrows, they made fun of those too.

Over time, she ignored their insults and found beauty in the styles worn by women in her life. She now runs a business doing braids and other hairstyles in her neighborhood.

“I stopped seeing myself through the lens of the European traditional beauty standards and started seeing myself through the lens that I created,” Amofa wrote.

“Criticism will persist, but it loses its power when you know there’s a crown on your head!”

Ma reported from Portland, Oregon.

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