William Shakespeare's play Hamlet explores different types of kings through the characters of Old Hamlet and Claudius. Shakespeare questions whether Claudius' accession to the throne through regicide was acceptable, and criticizes the view of kings as being above the law. He portrays Claudius as a Machiavellian ruler and compares him to Old Hamlet, examining the necessary qualities of a good king. Shakespeare brings up debates around kingship that were prominent during the Renaissance, such as the divine right of kings and where a ruler's power comes from.

1. Presented for:
Jahidul Alam
Assistant Professor
Department of English
Comilla University
Presented By:
Monir Hossen
Masters: 1st Semester
Roll: 0900152
Session : 2012-2013
Department of English
Course Code: Eng: 514; Title: Film and Literature
Date of Presentation: August 3, 2015

2. The treatment of Kingship in Shakespearian Plays

3. Introduction
 William Shakespeare through 'Hamlet' exposes the corruption amongst rulers
both through his use of disease imagery and in Hamlets continuous
comparisons between Old Hamlet and King Claudius. Shakespeare portrays
Claudius as a typical Machiavellian king, in his exploration of the necessary
qualities of a King, made clear in Claudius' astuteness as a politician.
Shakespeare brings to question the traditional view of the King being above the
law, punishment and correction, exposing Claudius' human faults, as well as
pushing the audience to morally question whether Claudius' means of
accession was acceptable. A Shakespearean king differs from that of the
Revengers Tradegy, as unlike the Duke, Claudius still has some
acknowledgment of his wrongs as seen in his prayer scene, whereas the Duke is
openly lecherous and unjust seen in the delay the Youngest sons punishment
despite his lack of remorse.

4. Biography of William Shakespeare
 Name : William Shakespeare
 Occupation : Poet, Playwright, Philosopher.
 Birth Date : April 23, 1564
 Death Date : April 23, 1616
 Education : King's New School
 Place of Birth : Stratford-upon-Avon, United Kingdom
 Place of Death : Stratford-upon-Avon, United Kingdom
 Nickname : "Bard of Avon“ "Swan of Avon” "The Bard“
 Works : Poem (154 Sonnets) & Drama: 37 Plays

5. William Shakespeare( 1564-1616)

6. Original Identity of HAMLET Drama
 Full title : The Tragedy of
Hamlet, Prince of Denmark
 Author : William Shakespeare
 Type of work : Play
 Genre : Tragedy
 Language : English
 Written : ( 1600 or 1601)
 Performed : July 1602
 Published : 1603 (Printed)
 Age : The Renaissance

7. From Hamlet play to Film Hamlet

8. A short View of Hamlet Film
 Hamlet is a 1990 drama film based
on the Shakespearean tragedy of the
same name directed by Franco
Zeffirelli and starring Mel Gibson as
the eponymous character. The film
also features Glenn Close, Alan Bates,
Paul Scofield, Ian Holm, Helena
Bonham Carter, Stephen Dillane, and
Nathaniel Parker. It is notable for
being the first film from Icon
Productions, a company co-founded
by Gibson.
 Plot: In Denmark, Prince Hamlet
finds himself involved in a conspiracy
of power to the royal palace. Cruel
uncle Claudius kills his brother and
takes the power of the kingdom. After
an encounter with the restless ghost
of his murdered father, Hamlet feigns
madness and plots to take vengeance.

9. Cast:
 Mel Gibson as Prince Hamlet
 Glenn Close as Queen Gertrude
 Alan Bates as King Claudius
 Paul Scofield as the ghost of King Hamlet
 Ian Holm as Polonius
 Helena Bonham Carter as Ophelia
 Stephen Dillane as Horatio
 Nathaniel Parker as Laertes
 Michael Maloney and Sean Murray as Rosencrantz and Guildenstern
 Trevor Peacock as The Gravedigger
 Pete Postlethwaite as the Player King
 Christopher Fairbank as the Player Queen
 John McEnery as Osric
 Richard Warwick as Bernardo
 Christien Anholt as Marcellus

10. Setting of the play and also the film

11. Characters Map of the Film Hamlet

12. The Ghost of Hamlet Claudius

13. Hamlet Ophelia

14. The Story in Brief
 Hamlet’s father, king of Denmark has just dead. His brother Claudius takes the
throne and married Gertrude, Hamlet’s mother.
 Horatio sees king Hamlet’s ghost and tells it to Hamlet. A night king’s ghost
appears to Hamlet and tells him that Claudius murdered him, so Hamlet
decides to avenge him.
 Hamlet pretends to be mad so Claudius and Gertrude give to Polonius the task
of discovering the cause of his madness.
 Polonius attributes the cause of madness to Hamlet’s love for Ophelia, Polonius
daughter
 Hamlet tries to stage a play with a company of actors, in order to re-enact his
father’s murder and determine Claudius guilt or innocence.
 Gertrude asks to Hamlet the reason of his behaviour and he tells her the truth
about his father’s death

15.  Hamlet believing to kill Claudius murders Polonius while he is hidden
 Ophelia goes mad for her father’s death and drowns in a river.
 After this, Claudius sent Hamlet with his close friend, Horatio to England to
study there, even though the real goal is to expel Hamlet from Denmark.
 At the Ophelia’s funeral procession her brother Laertes and Hamlet brave
themselves
 When Hamlet returned back to Denmark. There was an Ophelia’s funeral
procession. Hamlet was very sad for losing her and suddenly he jumped into
Ophelia’s grave when the funeral took place. Laertes, her brother was angry of
what Hamlet did.
 Laertes decided to kill Hamlet in revenge for his father’s death. He challenged
Hamlet to a sword fight. Laertes pierces Hamlet with a poisoned blade but is
wounded by it himself
 Gertrude drinks a poisoned wine and dies
 Hamlet manages to kill Claudius and names Fortimbras as his heir
 Finally, the film is ended with morning song

16. Kingship in Hamlet
 Shakespeare exposes through Hamlet the corruption amongst rulers. Accordingly,
Shakespeare explores the different types of kings through Hamlets continuous
comparison of Old Hamlet and Claudius.
 Shakespeare through Hamlet puts up for the debate the rights of a king to the
throne, allowing the audience to question whether Claudius' accession to the throne
was acceptable.
 In 'Hamlet' Shakespeare explores the necessary qualities of a king and compares
and contrasts these with the necessary qualities put forward by King James I,
Machiavelli and Erasmus.
 Shakespeare questions the traditional view of whether or not the king was above the
law and so could do whatever he willed.

17.  Shakespeare draws connections with the state of the court and kings land and the
state, with the power of a king and his control over his people.
 Shakespeare looks at whether a morally inept king is beyond punishment or
correction.
 Shakespeare criticizes above-humanity and the almost super-human view of kings
and through Claudius reiterates the human element of Kings.
 Through the violence and the way in which Claudius gained the throne,
Shakespeare presumably is questioning/criticizing the conventional view that
Kingship is a God-given rights.

18. Kingship in the Renaissance
 In Shakespeare’s time kingship was a complicated concept which varied from country to
country in Europe, accounting for hereditary monarchy, the divine right of kings,
primogeniture and elective monarchy.
 Within those divisions were subdivisions of where the king’s power came from, for example,
from God, from the state, or from documents which regulated and checked the king’s power
such as the Magna Carta in England.
 Niccolo Machiavelli’s work Il Principe (The Prince) (c.1513) muddied these unclear waters even
further as his concept of kingship was divorced from any moral obligations which an individual
ruler felt he had to either himself or his people, and instead was located solely on how to gain
and retain power, by any means necessary.
 This situation is similar to the one facing the young Prince in Hamlet. While absent at
university in Wittenburg he is ‘usurped’ by Claudius despite being the hereditary heir to the
throne. To an English Renaissance audience who had become accustomed to the hereditary
monarchy of the Tudors, such an action would have the ring of a Machiavellian plot.
 However, the Danish throne itself was not subject to the same rules of kingship as the English
throne. Instead, the Danes had a form of elective monarchy; therefore under their own rules
the election of Claudius to the throne would not, in itself, be illegal.

19.  The main problem is that Claudius has killed the king in order to obtain his position. It is the
gross action of regicide which is the catalyst for the cataclysmic events that will result in the
destruction of the entire Danish royal family.
 For most of the European monarchies of the seventeenth century the divine right of kings, and
the proposition, that all their powers were ordained by God was common ground across
virtually the entire spectrum of political thinking in early modern Europe.
 The phrase: The King is dead, long live the King, was a poignant declaration of the
perpetual nature of kingship and was first introduced into English royal funerals with the
Tudors.
 This understanding of the transference of power from king to king helps to explain Hamlet’s
enigmatic lines, ‘The body is with the king, but the king is not with the body. The king is
a thing –.’
 Under the Renaissance idea of kingship the body politic was joined to the king, but the king
was not joined to the body politic, but a thing apart.
 This political interpretation of the two roles accounts for Hamlet’s words, but it also
demonstrates awareness of the Tudor attempts to cement the hereditary line into English
political consciousness.

20. The King is to blame !! I am no more my lord.

21. Conclusion:
 William Shakespeare is regarded by many as the greatest dramatist of
all times. An Englishman, Shakespeare was also a poet and an actor. His
works such as Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet hold a significant place in
world literature and occupy a major part of literary academics. Often
referred to as England’s national poet, Shakespeare is one author whose
works have been translated into every major language of the world and
his plays are performed more than that of any other playwright living
or dead. However, Shakespeare’s great skill is that in Hamlet he is aware
not only of English concepts of kingship, but is conscious of, and adept
at including, European ideas on kingship to add levels of political
theory which complicates the play even further.

22. Thank you