This tutorial is intended to help teachers prepare a study ofWilliam Shakespeare’s HAMLET

both from a literary and a philosophical point of view.

Most of it consists on adaptations ofSPARK NOTES on HAMLET

(http://www.sparknotes.com/shakespeare/hamlet/)for class use.

CONTENTSPLOT OVERVIEW

From SparkNotes to multimedia summary

CHARACTERS(+ IN-DEPTH ANALYSIS)

NO FEAR HAMLETTo be or not to be

HAMLET VIDEO from SPARKNOTES

TIMINGof the main scenes in Kenneth Branagh’s version

(Total time, 41:50 )

IES Pedro Floriani – Redondela1st Bacharelato, 2013-14Department of English

Departmente of Philosophy

HAMLET - PLOT OVERVIEWFrom SparkNotes to multimedia summary

http://www.sparknotes.com/shakespeare/hamlet/summary.html

SparkNotes Prepare presentation

On a dark winter night, a ghost walks the ramparts ofElsinore Castle in Denmark. Discovered first by a pair ofwatchmen, then by the scholar Horatio, the ghost resemblesthe recently deceased King Hamlet, whose brother Claudiushas inherited the throne and married the king’s widow,Queen Gertrude. When Horatio and the watchmen bringPrince Hamlet, the son of Gertrude and the dead king, tosee the ghost, it speaks to him, declaring ominously that itis indeed his father’s spirit, and that he was murdered bynone other than Claudius. Ordering Hamlet to seek revengeon the man who usurped his throne and married his wife,the ghost disappears with the dawn.

Hamlet is the prince of Denmark.His father has recently diedHis uncle, Claudius, has married hismother, Gertrud and is the king now.Hamlet's father appears as a ghostand tells him that he has to killClaudius

Prince Hamlet devotes himself to avenging his father’sdeath, but, because he is contemplative and thoughtful bynature, he delays, entering into a deep melancholy and evenapparent madness. Claudius and Gertrude worry about theprince’s erratic behavior and attempt to discover its cause.They employ a pair of Hamlet’s friends, Rosencrantz andGuildenstern, to watch him. When Polonius, the pompousLord Chamberlain, suggests that Hamlet may be mad withlove for his daughter, Ophelia, Claudius agrees to spy onHamlet in conversation with the girl. But though Hamletcertainly seems mad, he does not seem to love Ophelia: heorders her to enter a nunnery and declares that he wishes toban marriages.

Hamlet is a person who alwaysTHINKS to decide what to DO.He wants to kill Claudius.He pretends to be mad because thiscould help him... but the questionremains through the play: Does heactually go mad?Polonius is the chamberlain.Ophelia is Polonius's daughter.Claudius and Polonius want to knowif Hamlet is mad with love forOphelia.

TO BE OR NOT TO BE solilloquy

A group of traveling actors comes to Elsinore, and Hamletseizes upon an idea to test his uncle’s guilt. He will havethe players perform a scene closely resembling thesequence by which Hamlet imagines his uncle to havemurdered his father, so that if Claudius is guilty, he willsurely react. When the moment of the murder arrives in thetheater, Claudius leaps up and leaves the room. Hamlet andHoratio agree that this proves his guilt. Hamlet goes to killClaudius but finds him praying. Since he believes thatkilling Claudius while in prayer would send Claudius’s soulto heaven, Hamlet considers that it would be an inadequaterevenge and decides to wait. Claudius, now frightened ofHamlet’s madness and fearing for his own safety, ordersthat Hamlet be sent to England at once.

Hamlet designs a trick to prove thatClaudius killed his father: someactors will perform a play where aking is murdered by his brother.Hamlet watches Claudius's reaction.Claudius is frightened, leaves thetheatre and starts to pray.Hamlet tries to kill Claudius now buthe stops: Claudius would go toheaven while his father is suffering inhell.

Hamlet goes to confront his mother, in whose bedchamberPolonius has hidden behind a tapestry. Hearing a noise frombehind the tapestry, Hamlet believes the king is hidingthere. He draws his sword and stabs through the fabric,killing Polonius. For this crime, he is immediatelydispatched to England with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.However, Claudius’s plan for Hamlet includes more thanbanishment, as he has given Rosencrantz and Guildensternsealed orders for the King of England demanding thatHamlet be put to death.

Hamlet confronts his mother.He says that it is a shame that she ismarried to Claudius, someone soinferior to her former husband(Hamlet's father).Polonius is hearing from behind acurtain. Hamlet discovers him andkills him thinking that it is Claudiuswho is hiding there.

In the aftermath of her father’s death, Ophelia goes madwith grief and drowns in the river. Polonius’s son, Laertes,who has been staying in France, returns to Denmark in arage. Claudius convinces him that Hamlet is to blame forhis father’s and sister’s deaths. When Horatio and the kingreceive letters from Hamlet indicating that the prince hasreturned to Denmark after pirates attacked his ship en routeto England, Claudius concocts a plan to use Laertes’ desirefor revenge to secure Hamlet’s death. Laertes will fencewith Hamlet in innocent sport, but Claudius will poisonLaertes’ blade so that if he draws blood, Hamlet will die. Asa backup plan, the king decides to poison a goblet, whichhe will give Hamlet to drink should Hamlet score the firstor second hits of the match. Hamlet returns to the vicinityof Elsinore just as Ophelia’s funeral is taking place.Stricken with grief, he attacks Laertes and declares that hehad in fact always loved Ophelia. Back at the castle, he tellsHoratio that he believes one must be prepared to die, sincedeath can come at any moment. A foolish courtier namedOsric arrives on Claudius’s orders to arrange the fencingmatch between Hamlet and Laertes.

Ophelia goes mad.She drowns herself in a river.Her brother, Laertes, is very sad.Hamlet doesn't know Ophelia is deadand walks through the fields. Hediscovers someone is digging a graveand finds Yorik's skull, a clown heused to know as a child. He thinks ofthe consequences of death.

The sword-fighting begins. Hamlet scores the first hit, butdeclines to drink from the king’s proffered goblet. Instead,Gertrude takes a drink from it and is swiftly killed by thepoison. Laertes succeeds in wounding Hamlet, thoughHamlet does not die of the poison immediately. First,Laertes is cut by his own sword’s blade, and, after revealingto Hamlet that Claudius is responsible for the queen’sdeath, he dies from the blade’s poison. Hamlet then stabsClaudius through with the poisoned sword and forces himto drink down the rest of the poisoned wine. Claudius dies,and Hamlet dies immediately after achieving his revenge.

The play ends with a long scenewhere Hamlet and Laertes fight withswords, apparently only for sport.But Claudius has put poison onLaertes's sword and in Hamlet'sdrink.After some confusions, Gertruddrinks the poison and dies andLaertes and Hamlet are killed by thesword.Before dying, Hamlet kills Claudius.

At this moment, a Norwegian prince named Fortinbras,who has led an army to Denmark and attacked Polandearlier in the play, enters with ambassadors from England,who report that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead.Fortinbras is stunned by the gruesome sight of the entireroyal family lying sprawled on the floor dead. He moves totake power of the kingdom. Horatio, fulfilling Hamlet’s lastrequest, tells him Hamlet’s tragic story. Fortinbras ordersthat Hamlet be carried away in a manner befitting a fallensoldier.

Denmark dies as a country, too:Fontinbras, king of Norway, who hasconquered Poland, finds the royalfamily dead and takes power of thekingdom.

HAMLET - CHARACTERS

http://www.sparknotes.com/shakespeare/hamlet/characters.htmlhttp://www.sparknotes.com/shakespeare/hamlet/canalysis.html

HamletThe Prince of Denmark, the title character, and the protagonist. About thirty years old atthe start of the play, Hamlet is the son of Queen Gertrude and the late King Hamlet, andthe nephew of the present king, Claudius. Hamlet is melancholy, bitter, and cynical, full ofhatred for his uncle’s scheming and disgust for his mother’s sexuality. A reflective andthoughtful young man who has studied at the University of Wittenberg, Hamlet is oftenindecisive and hesitant, but at other times prone to rash and impulsive acts.

ClaudiusThe King of Denmark, Hamlet’s uncle, and the play’s antagonist. The villain of the play,Claudius is a calculating, ambitious politician, driven by his sexual appetites and his lustfor power, but he occasionally shows signs of guilt and human feeling—his love forGertrude, for instance, seems sincere.

GertrudeThe Queen of Denmark, Hamlet’s mother, recently married to Claudius. Gertrude lovesHamlet deeply, but she is a shallow, weak woman who seeks affection and status moreurgently than moral rectitude or truth.

PoloniusThe Lord Chamberlain of Claudius’s court, a pompous, conniving old man. Polonius is thefather of Laertes and Ophelia.

HoratioHamlet’s close friend, who studied with the prince at the university in Wittenberg. Horatio isloyal and helpful to Hamlet throughout the play. After Hamlet’s death, Horatio remains aliveto tell Hamlet’s story.

OpheliaPolonius’s daughter, a beautiful young woman with whom Hamlet has been in love.Ophelia is a sweet and innocent young girl, who obeys her father and her brother, Laertes.Dependent on men to tell her how to behave, she gives in to Polonius’s schemes to spy onHamlet. Even in her lapse into madness and death, she remains maidenly, singing songsabout flowers and finally drowning in the river amid the flower garlands she had gathered.

LaertesPolonius’s son and Ophelia’s brother, a young man who spends much of the play inFrance. Passionate and quick to action, Laertes is clearly a foil for the reflective Hamlet.

FortinbrasThe young Prince of Norway, whose father the king (also named Fortinbras) was killed byHamlet’s father (also named Hamlet). Now Fortinbras wishes to attack Denmark to avengehis father’s honor, making him another foil for Prince Hamlet.

The GhostThe specter of Hamlet’s recently deceased father. The ghost, who claims to have beenmurdered by Claudius, calls upon Hamlet to avenge him. However, it is not entirely certainwhether the ghost is what it appears to be, or whether it is something else. Hamletspeculates that the ghost might be a devil sent to deceive him and tempt him into murder,and the question of what the ghost is or where it comes from is never definitively resolved.

Rosencrantz and GuildensternTwo slightly bumbling courtiers, former friends of Hamlet from Wittenberg, who aresummoned by Claudius and Gertrude to discover the cause of Hamlet’s strange behavior.

OsricThe foolish courtier who summons Hamlet to his duel with Laertes.

Voltimand and CorneliusCourtiers whom Claudius sends to Norway to persuade the king to prevent Fortinbras fromattacking.

Marcellus and BernardoThe officers who first see the ghost walking the ramparts of Elsinore and who summonHoratio to witness it. Marcellus is present when Hamlet first encounters the ghost.

FranciscoA soldier and guardsman at Elsinore.

ReynaldoPolonius’s servant, who is sent to France by Polonius to check up on and spy on Laertes.

HAMLET - CHARACTERSIN-DEPTH ANALYSIS

Hamlet

Hamlet has fascinated audiences and readers for centuries, and the first thing to point outabout him is that he is enigmatic. There is always more to him than the other characters inthe play can figure out; even the most careful and clever readers come away with thesense that they don’t know everything there is to know about this character. Hamletactually tells other characters that there is more to him than meets the eye—notably, hismother, and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern—but his fascination involves much more thanthis. When he speaks, he sounds as if there’s something important he’s not saying, maybesomething even he is not aware of. The ability to write soliloquies and dialogues thatcreate this effect is one of Shakespeare’s most impressive achievements.

A university student whose studies are interrupted by his father’s death, Hamlet isextremely philosophical and contemplative. He is particularly drawn to difficult questions orquestions that cannot be answered with any certainty. Faced with evidence that his unclemurdered his father, evidence that any other character in a play would believe, Hamletbecomes obsessed with proving his uncle’s guilt before trying to act. The standard of“beyond a reasonable doubt” is simply unacceptable to him. He is equally plagued withquestions about the afterlife, about the wisdom of suicide, about what happens to bodiesafter they die—the list is extensive.But even though he is thoughtful to the point of obsession, Hamlet also behaves rashlyand impulsively. When he does act, it is with surprising swiftness and little or nopremeditation, as when he stabs Polonius through a curtain without even checking to seewho he is. He seems to step very easily into the role of a madman, behaving erraticallyand upsetting the other characters with his wild speech and pointed innuendos.It is also important to note that Hamlet is extremely melancholy and discontented with thestate of affairs in Denmark and in his own family—indeed, in the world at large. He isextremely disappointed with his mother for marrying his uncle so quickly, and herepudiates Ophelia, a woman he once claimed to love, in the harshest terms. His wordsoften indicate his disgust with and distrust of women in general. At a number of points inthe play, he contemplates his own death and even the option of suicide.But, despite all of the things with which Hamlet professes dissatisfaction, it is remarkablethat the prince and heir apparent of Denmark should think about these problems only inpersonal and philosophical terms. He spends relatively little time thinking about the threatsto Denmark’s national security from without or the threats to its stability from within (someof which he helps to create through his own carelessness).

Claudius

Hamlet’s major antagonist is a shrewd, lustful, conniving king who contrasts sharply withthe other male characters in the play. Whereas most of the other important men in Hamletare preoccupied with ideas of justice, revenge, and moral balance, Claudius is bent uponmaintaining his own power. The old King Hamlet was apparently a stern warrior, butClaudius is a corrupt politician whose main weapon is his ability to manipulate othersthrough his skillful use of language. Claudius’s speech is compared to poison beingpoured in the ear—the method he used to murder Hamlet’s father. Claudius’s love forGertrude may be sincere, but it also seems likely that he married her as a strategic move,to help him win the throne away from Hamlet after the death of the king. As the playprogresses, Claudius’s mounting fear of Hamlet’s insanity leads him to ever greater self-preoccupation; when Gertrude tells him that Hamlet has killed Polonius, Claudius does notremark that Gertrude might have been in danger, but only that he would have been indanger had he been in the room. He tells Laertes the same thing as he attempts to soothethe young man’s anger after his father’s death. Claudius is ultimately too crafty for his owngood. In Act V, scene ii, rather than allowing Laertes only two methods of killing Hamlet,the sharpened sword and the poison on the blade, Claudius insists on a third, thepoisoned goblet. When Gertrude inadvertently drinks the poison and dies, Hamlet is at lastable to bring himself to kill Claudius, and the king is felled by his own cowardlymachination.

Gertrude

Few Shakespearean characters have caused as much uncertainty as Gertrude, thebeautiful Queen of Denmark. The play seems to raise more questions about Gertrude thanit answers, including: Was she involved with Claudius before the death of her husband?Did she love her husband? Did she know about Claudius’s plan to commit the murder? Didshe love Claudius, or did she marry him simply to keep her high station in Denmark? Doesshe believe Hamlet when he insists that he is not mad, or does she pretend to believe himsimply to protect herself? Does she intentionally betray Hamlet to Claudius, or does shebelieve that she is protecting her son’s secret?These questions can be answered in numerous ways, depending upon one’s reading ofthe play. The Gertrude who does emerge clearly in Hamlet is a woman defined by herdesire for station and affection, as well as by her tendency to use men to fulfill her instinctfor self-preservation—which, of course, makes her extremely dependent upon the men inher life. Hamlet’s most famous comment about Gertrude is his furious condemnation ofwomen in general: “Frailty, thy name is woman!” (I.ii.146). This comment is as muchindicative of Hamlet’s agonized state of mind as of anything else, but to a great extentGertrude does seem morally frail. She never exhibits the ability to think critically about hersituation, but seems merely to move instinctively toward seemingly safe choices, as whenshe immediately runs to Claudius after her confrontation with Hamlet. She is at her best insocial situations (I.ii and V.ii), when her natural grace and charm seem to indicate a rich,rounded personality. At times it seems that her grace and charm are her onlycharacteristics, and her reliance on men appears to be her sole way of capitalizing on herabilities.

NO FEAR HAMLET(Spark Notes on Hamlet)

To be or not to beAct 3, Scene 1

http://nfs.sparknotes.com/hamlet/page_138.html

This is a very famous speech.What Hamlet asks is if it is better to be alive or dead.

He answers that it would be easier to kill oneself with a knife than to suffer thepains life brings.

But if being dead is like being asleep, people have fear of the dreams that mightcome to them and, therefore, they do not want to die.

To be, or not to be? That is the question—Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to sufferThe slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,And, by opposing, end them?

The question is: is it better to be alive ordead? Is it nobler to put up with all the nastythings that luck throws your way, or to fightagainst all those troubles by simply puttingan end to them once and for all?

To die, to sleep—No more—and by a sleep to say we endThe heartache and the thousand natural shocksThat flesh is heir to—’tis a consummationDevoutly to be wished!

Dying, sleeping—that’s all dying is—a sleepthat ends all the heartache and shocks that lifeon earth gives us—that’s an achievement towish for.

To die, to sleep.To sleep, perchance to dream—ay, there’s the rub,For in that sleep of death what dreams may comeWhen we have shuffled off this mortal coil,Must give us pause. There’s the respectThat makes calamity of so long life.

To die, to sleep—to sleep, maybe to dream.Ah, but there’s the catch: in death’s sleepwho knows what kind of dreams might come,after we’ve put the noise and commotion oflife behind us. That’s certainly something toworry about. That’s the consideration thatmakes us stretch out our sufferings so long.

For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,Th' oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely,The pangs of despised love, the law’s delay,The insolence of office, and the spurnsThat patient merit of th' unworthy takes,When he himself might his quietus makeWith a bare bodkin?

After all, who would put up with all life’shumiliations—the abuse from superiors, theinsults of arrogant men, the pangs ofunrequited love, the inefficiency of the legalsystem, the rudeness of people in office, andthe mistreatment good people have to takefrom bad—when you could simply take outyour knife and call it quits?

Who would fardels bear,To grunt and sweat under a weary life,But that the dread of something after death,The undiscovered country from whose bournNo traveler returns, puzzles the willAnd makes us rather bear those ills we haveThan fly to others that we know not of?

Who would choose to grunt and sweatthrough an exhausting life, unless they wereafraid of something dreadful after death, theundiscovered country from which no visitorreturns, which we wonder about withoutgetting any answers from and which makesus stick to the evils we know rather than rushoff to seek the ones we don’t?

Thus conscience does make cowards of us all,And thus the native hue of resolutionIs sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,And enterprises of great pith and momentWith this regard their currents turn awry,And lose the name of action.

Fear of death makes us all cowards, and ournatural boldness becomes weak with toomuch thinking. Actions that should be carriedout at once get misdirected, and stop beingactions at all.

—Soft you now,The fair Ophelia!—Nymph, in thy orisonsBe all my sins remembered.

But shh, here comes the beautiful Ophelia.Pretty lady, please remember me when youpray.

http://www.sparknotes.com/shakespeare/hamlet/quotes.html

This soliloquy, probably the most famous speech in the English language, is spoken by Hamlet inAct III, scene i (58–90). His most logical and powerful examination of the theme of the morallegitimacy of suicide in an unbearably painful world, it touches on several of the other importantthemes of the play. Hamlet poses the problem of whether to commit suicide as a logical question:“To be, or not to be,” that is, to live or not to live. He then weighs the moral ramifications of livingand dying. Is it nobler to suffer life, “[t]he slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,” passively or toactively seek to end one’s suffering? He compares death to sleep and thinks of the end to suffering,pain, and uncertainty it might bring, “[t]he heartache, and the thousand natural shocks / That flesh isheir to.” Based on this metaphor, he decides that suicide is a desirable course of action, “aconsummation / Devoutly to be wished.” But, as the religious word “devoutly” signifies, there ismore to the question, namely, what will happen in the afterlife. Hamlet immediately realizes asmuch, and he reconfigures his metaphor of sleep to include the possibility of dreaming; he says thatthe dreams that may come in the sleep of death are daunting, that they “must give us pause.”

He then decides that the uncertainty of the afterlife, which is intimately related to the theme of thedifficulty of attaining truth in a spiritually ambiguous world, is essentially what prevents all ofhumanity from committing suicide to end the pain of life. He outlines a long list of the miseries ofexperience, ranging from lovesickness to hard work to political oppression, and asks who wouldchoose to bear those miseries if he could bring himself peace with a knife, “[w]hen he himselfmight his quietus make / With a bare bodkin?” He answers himself again, saying no one wouldchoose to live, except that “the dread of something after death” makes people submit to thesuffering of their lives rather than go to another state of existence which might be even moremiserable. The dread of the afterlife, Hamlet concludes, leads to excessive moral sensitivity thatmakes action impossible: “conscience does make cowards of us all . . . thus the native hue ofresolution / Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought.”

In this way, this speech connects many of the play’s main themes, including the idea of suicide anddeath, the difficulty of knowing the truth in a spiritually ambiguous universe, and the connection

between thought and action. In addition to its crucial thematic content, this speech is important forwhat it reveals about the quality of Hamlet’s mind. His deeply passionate nature is complementedby a relentlessly logical intellect, which works furiously to find a solution to his misery. He hasturned to religion and found it inadequate to help him either kill himself or resolve to kill Claudius.Here, he turns to a logical philosophical inquiry and finds it equally frustrating.

HAMLET VIDEO from SPARKNOTES

http://www.sparknotes.com/sparknotes/video/hamlet

DVD: Kenneth Branagh’s version of William Shakespeare’s HAMLET

Scenes (SparkNotes) View onDVD

Quotes, topics and symbols

The Ghost X Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.There are more things [...]Ay, that incestuous, that adulterate beast.Misogyny.Poison – Ears and hearing.Oedipical triangle.

King Claudius

Polonius, Laertes and Ophelia

King Hamlet's murder

Hamlet's madness X To be or not to be.Get thee to a nunnery.Misogyny.

Get thee to a nunnery

The mousetrap play X The lady doth protest too much, methinks.Misogyny.Poison – Ears and hearing.The play inside the play.

Claudius tries to pray X Paralising doubt – Neurosis.Transforming thought into action.Oedipical triangle.

Hamlet stabs Polonius through the arras X Transforming thought into action.Oedipical triangle.

Hamlet accuses Gertrud X Misogyny.Oedipical triangle.

The death sentence

Ophelia's madness and Laertes' return

The pirates

Ophelia's funeral X Transforming thought into action.Yorik's skull.

Rosencranz and Guildenstern are dead

The fencing match X Poison.Oedipical triangle.Transforming thought into action.

DEATH as a topic and as a symbol is present in all scenes.

Timing of the main scenes in Kenneth Branagh’s version

Total time: 41min., 58 sec.

DISC 1

0:19:48 (1. 2.146) Frailty, thy name is woman

THE GHOST0:35:40

0:36:40 (1.4.90) Something is rotten […]0:39:49 (1.5.42) Ay, that incestuous [...]

0:43:057:25 7:25

0:46:36 (1.5.166-7) There are more things [...]1:01:58 (2.2.116) Doubt thou the stars […]

TO BE OR NOT TO BE1:29:20

1:30:43 (3.1.56-90) To be or not to be […]1:35:25 (3.1.121) Get thee to a nunnery

1:38:188:58 16:23

THE MOUSETRAP PLAY1:52:48

1:54:16 (3.2.230) The lady doth protest […]1:56:32

3:44 20:07

CLAUDIUS PRAYS / DEATH OF POLONIUS2:02:462:07:53

5:07 25:14

DISC 2

OPHELIA’S MADNESS0:08:300:10:02

1:32 26:46

OPHELIA IS DEAD / THE GRAVEYARD0:28:080:28:58

0:50 27:36

YORICK'S SKULL0:35:500:37:32

1:42 29:18

THE FENCING MATCH0:58:401:10:40

12:00 41:58