There is "gold" in this slide show :) If you don't view the show all the way to the end... you will miss the most valuable bits!! ;)

1. THE TRAGEDY OF
HAMLET,
PRINCE OF DENMARK
By William Shakespeare

2. You are Hamlet:
• You are the only child of a mother and father who are married.
They have been married your whole life.
• Your father is King of Denmark. Your mother is queen. You are
next in line for the throne.
• Your father (before his death) had battled and killed-in-war
Fortinbras, the King of Norway. Fortinbras Junior seeks
revenge on you, your King and all of Denmark.
• Your father dies. Your mother remarries in less than 2 months.
• Your new step-dad is your uncle, your father’s brother.
• You are the only person who is not celebrating.
• Your best friend tells you that he has seen your father’s ghost
... it wants to see you...
• The ghost tells you it is the spirit of your father and that ‘he’
was MURDERED by his brother, your uncle, your mother’s new
husband, your step-father ... the man who is THE NEW KING.

3. Historical Context
• 1588 Shakespeare was 24. Spanish Arnarda is on the way. The coast
is heavily watched. Victory helps create the myth of Queen Elizabeth.
• Elizabethan England was a police state. Spies recorded
everything.
• The national religion changed from Catholicism to Protestantism, a
religious revolution started by Henry the Eighth. (Three changes within
12 years)

4. Elizabethan Age characterised by turmoil and
uncertainty.
• A time of religious doubt and fear of the supernatural spirit
world
• A time of spies and plots
• Queen Elizabeth was obsessive about keeping records of
EVERYTHING that happened in her Kingdom (hence all the
spies!)
• Threat of foreign invasion – from Catholic countries
• People did not know who to trust or what to “believe”
• Problems of succession, Queen Elizabeth had ruled Briton
for 45 years but she was getting old, who would lead the
country? (James 1 1603)

6. The Poisoned State
• The Elizabethan’s believed that the
ruler (King) was the life giving
center of the kingdom, with power
bestowed by God.
• The sickness or death of the King
is a national calamity.
• Hamlet is the story of a ruined
kingdom.
• Claudius’ reign looks impressive but is hollow
• Discrepancy and ambiguity between appearance
(performance) and reality. Hamlet, Polonius, Lartes,
Ophelia…???
• Everything is rotten: sickness, madness, poison (both
literally and figuratively).

7. Questions
Questions are about the limits of our perception; what we
can and cannot see.
“A play about doubt, about being unsure, about
ambiguity. ‘Who’s there’ reverberates though the entire
play.” Huw Griffiths
• Act 1, scene 1, sets the atmosphere for the play.
Doubt, limited perception…
 who can see who?

8. Act 1 .1
• MARCELLUS: Horatio says ’tis but our fantasy
And will not let belief take hold of him
Touching this dreaded sight twice seen of us.
Therefore I have entreated him along
With us to watch the minutes of this night,
That if again this apparition come
He may approve our eyes and speak to it.

9. HAMLET “Seems,” madam? Nay, it is. I know not “seems.”
'Tis not alone my inky cloak, good mother,
Nor customary suits of solemn black,
Nor windy suspiration of forced breath,
No, nor the fruitful river in the eye,
Nor the dejected 'havior of the visage,
Together with all forms, moods, shapes of grief,
That can denote me truly. These indeed “seem,”
For they are actions that a man might play.
But I have that within which passeth show,
These but the trappings and the suits of woe.

10. (lines 1-129):
How are we introduced to Hamlet?
How are we introduced to Claudius?
• There is ambiguity surrounding Claudius’s intentions? His
tone, attitude & treatment of Hamlet? Is he:
• warm & supportive?
• hard & uncompromising?
• rebuking Hamlet?
• reasonable & sincere?
• addressing the court rather than Hamlet personally?
• What is the significance of introduction to Hamlet through an
aside?
• Characterisation of Hamlet? is he:
• emotional? Melancholy? grief-stricken? (remember – he has no
idea that his father was – allegedly – murdered!!)
• What is the attitude towards masculinity? (“unmanly grief”)

11. Allusions and analysis of Hamlet’s
first soliloquy
Hyperion- one of the Titans
(Greek)- a sun-god
Satyr- half human but with
the legs of a goat..
synonymous with lechery.
Niobe- the mythical mother
whose fourteen children
were slain by the gods…she
wept until she was turned to
stone-and still the tears
flowed.

12. Explore Hamlet’s soliloquy.
• What does he feel about the world right now?
• What does Hamlet think of Gertrude?
• “O” creates an air of heaviness, depression and woe.
• Notice the use of commas before and after “thaw”  slow the
language down.
• Repetition is it used to indicate Hamlet’s desperation and
incomprehension at the speed at which his mother remarried?
• Explain the metaphor of the “unweeded garden”.
• Hamlet’s problems are seen as titanic and thus impossible to
overcome.
• Notice the tone of fury and disbelief.

13. Oh, that this too, too sullied flesh would melt,
Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew,
Or that the Everlasting had not fixed
His canon 'gainst self-slaughter! O God, God!
How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable
Seem to me all the uses of this world!
Fie on ’t, ah fie! 'Tis an unweeded garden
That grows to seed. Things rank and gross in nature
Possess it merely. That it should come to this.
But two months dead—nay, not so much, not two.
So excellent a king, that was to this
Hyperion to a satyr. So loving to my mother
That he might not beteem the winds of heaven
Visit her face too roughly.—Heaven and earth,
Must I remember? Why, she would hang on him
As if increase of appetite had grown
By what it fed on, and yet, within a month—
Let me not think on ’t. Frailty, thy name is woman!—
A little month, or ere those shoes were old
With which she followed my poor father’s body,
Like Niobe, all tears. Why she, even she—
O God, a beast that wants discourse of reason
Would have mourned longer!—married with my uncle,
My father’s brother, but no more like my father
Than I to Hercules. Within a month,
Ere yet the salt of most unrighteous tears
Had left the flushing in her gallèd eyes,
She married. O most wicked speed, to post
With such dexterity to incestuous sheets!
It is not nor it cannot come to good,
But break, my heart, for I must hold my tongue.
A meditation on suicide (a sin and a
crime)
Hamlet established as a man with a fine
mind, his world seems increasingly
meaningless.
long drawn out vowel sounds
a tone of exhaustion, despondency and
bitterness
synecdoche- part represents the whole-
flesh to represent his physical life
metaphor of an unweeded garden
indicating corruption
Allusions to compare his father to
Claudius
rhetorical devices: repetition, rhetorical
questions, exclamation
Hamlet’s attitude towards woman
moves from the personal to the
general...relationships with woman
continually disappoint
incestuous sheets “Marriage to a
brother’s wife was explicitly forbidden
by the Church”
drawn out vowels, sharp, rhythmic
consonants
imagery: organic, kinesthetic, tactile,
visual...

14. Act 1 scene 3
characterisation of Polonius
Give thy thoughts no tongue,
Nor any unproportioned thought his act.
Be thou familiar but by no means vulgar.
Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,
Grapple them unto thy soul with hoops of steel,
But do not dull thy palm with entertainment
Of each new-hatched, unfledged comrade. Beware
Of entrance to a quarrel, but being in,
Bear ’t that th' opposèd may beware of thee.
Give every man thy ear but few thy voice.
[…refer to entire speech and annotate key statements of
advice..]

15. Characterisation of Polonius?
Is he:
• a pompous bureaucra? a loving father? an
authoritarian guardian?
• What do Polonius’ 8 sentences of advice reveal
about his character, values and beliefs? On -
speech, friendship, quarrelling, judgement, dress,
money & consistency?
• Ophelia: lock/key analogy  but doesn’t hold
tongue? Why?
• Analyse Polonius’ treatment of Ophelia & his view of
Hamlet & young love?

16. Act 1 scene 4-
Angels and ministers of grace defend us!
Be thou a spirit of health or goblin damned,
Bring with thee airs from heaven or blasts from
hell,
Be thy intents wicked or charitable,
Thou comest in such a questionable shape
That I will speak to thee. I’ll call thee “Hamlet,”
“King,” “Father,” “royal Dane.” O, answer me!

17. Act 1 .4
• HORATIO:
What if it tempt you toward the flood, my lord,
Or to the dreadful summit of the cliff
That beetles o'er his base into the sea,
And there assume some other horrible form,
Which might deprive your sovereignty of reason
And draw you into madness? Think of it.

18. Is he more:
• Amazed? Questioning? Fearful? Pleading?
• Analyse Hamlet’s steely determination & strong will to
follow the Ghost? Ironic  decisiveness?
• Talk of courage &/or madness?
• Analyse the rotting/corruption motif?
Hamlet’s reaction to the Ghost?

19. Act 1:5-
I am thy father’s spirit,
Doomed for a certain term to walk the night
And for the day confined to fast in fires,
Till the foul crimes done in my days of nature
Are burnt and purged away. But that I am forbid
To tell the secrets of my prison house,
I could a tale unfold whose lightest word
Would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood,
Make thy two eyes, like stars, start from their spheres,
Thy knotted and combinèd locks to part

20. Context
• Renaissance-growth of liberal ideas that focused on the value
of the individual.
• This milieu valued intellect, ideas, philosophy and moral
speculation.
• Structured and ordered society with a strict hierarchy of class and
position.
• The disrupted state is restored to social and political stability at the
end of the play
Elizabethan values: a belief in Christianity and faith 
reinforcing the notions of sin, virtue, fixed moral laws,
punishment and redemption.

21. Theory of Elizabethan Revenge Tragedy:
Revenge Tragedies have a specific structure.
Identify the key event that fits with the element in eachAct 
• Exposition Act 1
• Anticipation Act 2
• Confrontation Act 3
• Delay Act 4
• Completion Act 5

22. O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I!
…What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba,
That he should weep for her? What would he do
Had he the motive and the cue for passion
That I have?...
• Hamlet breaks iambic pentameter lack of control
• Rhetorical questions  put emphasis on Hamlet’s
motivation and lack of resolve.
Use of apostrophe*, exclamation
and negative hyperbole to berate
himself and incite himself to action.
Self loathing (criticism)- indicative
of his grief.
*apostrophe = a rhetorical
device in which an absent or
imaginary person (or an
abstract entity is addressed
directly

23. Ha? 'Swounds, I should take it; for it cannot be
But I am pigeon-livered and lack gall…
Bloody, bawdy villain!
Remorseless, treacherous, lecherous, kindless
villain!
Metaphor  Hamlet
berates himself as a
coward? Is he? What
is holding him back
from taking revenge.
The alliteration and
exclamations break the
rhythm and conveys Hamlet’s
disgust at Claudius.
He appears to work himself up
into a frenzy with the repetition
of rhythmic, poly-syllabic
negative emotive words and the
repetition of “villain”

24. O, vengeance!—
Why, what an ass am I? Ay, sure, this is most brave,
That I, the son of the dear murderèd,
Prompted to my revenge by heaven and hell,
Must, like a whore, unpack my heart with words…
The spirit that I have seen
May be the devil, and the devil hath power
T' assume a pleasing shape;.... I'll have grounds
More relative than this. The play's the thing
Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the King.
How important is catching the “conscience of the King”? Rhyming
couplet drives this idea home and reinforces Hamlet’s resolve. Use of
monosyllabic words and confident tone emphasise the importance of
the plan to test the ghosts’ words.

25. 12 cases of espionage.
People watching others, people being watched.
• Night watch
• Polonius employs Reynaldo to spy on Laertes
• Ros and Guil asked to spy on Hamlet
• Polonius “loose” his daughter to Hamlet
• “To be or not to be..” watched
• The Mousetrap
• Ros and Guil sent to England with Hamlet
• Hamlet watches Claudius at prayer
• Polonius behind the arras in Gertrude’s chamber
• The ghost invisible to Gertrude
• Ophelia to be followed and watched
• Hamlet and Horatio watch Ophelia’s funeral
“