Hamlet Summary and Analysis

Summary:

Hamlet returns from the University of Wittenberg to find that his father, Lord Hamlet, is dead, and that his uncle Claudius has married the Queen Gertrude and taken the throne for himself. When watchmen and Hamlet's friend, Horatio, inform him that they have seen the ghost of his father, Hamlet seeks him out and talks to him. The ghost tells Hamlet that Claudius murdered him, has usurped the throne, and that Hamlet must avenge his death but not physically punish Gertrude for her infidelity.

Hamlet assumes the task and uses mad behavior as a way to survey the events going on around him. However, this causes trouble when he violently rejects his love interest, Ophelia, confusing her father Polonius in regard to the source of his behavior. Hamlet sets out to prove to himself that the ghost is telling the truth by having a troop of actors perform The Murther of Gonzago, whose plot starkly imitates Claudius' crime. The ploy works and Claudius becomes visibly distressed.

As a result, Claudius plans to send Hamlet away from the castle. Hamlet causes several deaths in an attempt to kill Claudius. In the first, he meets with his mother in her closet and, upon erroneously suspecting Claudius of eavesdropping, makes a fatal stab at Polonius through the curtains. This murder inspires Claudius to send Hamlet away for England with instructions for him to be executed. In addition, the grief of losing a lover and a father to madness drives Ophelia into a melancholy state of insanity herself, leading to an intentional or possibly unintentional suicide. Meanwhile, Hamlet escapes the boat carrying him to England and changes the letter to demand the deaths of his friends, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Laertes is so stricken by his sister's and father's deaths that he plots with Claudius to kill Hamlet once and for all.

Laertes challenges Hamlet to a fencing match where Laertes will have a poisoned rapier and Claudius will present Hamlet with a poisoned drink as a celebration of his victory, should he evade Laertes. However, this plan backfires when Hamlet wins the first two rounds and Gertrude drinks the poisoned goblet to celebrate. Laertes becomes impatient and strikes Hamlet, who then realizes the whole plan and strikes Laertes with his own sword. As Laertes and Gertrude succumb to the poison, Hamlet stabs and kills Claudius and finally dies. As this happens, Fortinbras invades Elsinor and we see the end of the Danish royalty.

Analysis:
Useful Quotes:

"Oh that this too too solid flesh would melt and resolve itself into a dew." and
"The funeral bake'd meats do coldly furnish forth the marriage tables"
-Shows Hamlet's frustration at the situation between Gertrude and Claudius and sets the tone for his impression of the events at Elsinore before he encounters his father's ghost. The second quote especially shows his anger at the brevity of the mourning period for his father and the hasty marriage that followed.

"O cursed spite that ever I was meant to set it right"
-Expresses Hamlet's frustration at the task set before him of avenging his father's death and supposedly restoring order to the kingdom, although this is quite far from what actually happens.

"To be or not to be, that is the question, Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to go willingly into a sea of troubles and by opposing end them."
-Part of maybe the most famous English soliloquy ever written, this expresses perfectly the dilemma of the will to live, and whether suicide is a relief from the pain of living.

"Conscience doth make cowards of us all"
-From the same speech, this applies to Hamlet's overall behavior. While he is talking about the way our perception of reality makes us cling to life in response to the fear of the uncertain, it can also be taken as meaning that he lets his contemplation of everything around him get in the way of acting. His trepidation over carrying out the murder fuels the direction of the entire play.

Theme Statement: In Shakespeare's Hamlet, a quest for vengeance creates a cycle of death and insanity fueled by frustration, sexual desire, and a number of hidden agendas that resolve tragically.

The tone of the work is hard to determine from the text alone and often varies depending on interpretation. However, Hamlet's character is often portrayed as having a dark sense of humor coupled with frustration and cunning. These qualities manifest themselves in the language of the play. Symbolism is most prominent in the use of props chosen in the production, but one clear symbol is Yorick's skull, which represents the passing from life to death and asks questions about the meaning of life in the context of death, which is the very question Hamlet ponders in his famous "to be or not to be" soliloquy. The play makes many different allusions, some of which are so obscure to modern readers that the origins are not clear, such as the "famous ape" mentioned in the closet scene. The imagery is open to interpretation in many parts, but the description of the castle at night when the ghost appears suggests a dark and shadowy landscape, and the description of Ophelia's drowning paints a clear picture of the water enveloping her billowing garments and dragging her to "muddy death."
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