 Major plot points
 Setting
 Who dies and how
 Famous soliloquies
 Characters
 Quotes
 1. Beginning: Ghost orders
revenge
 2. Rising action: Hamlet acts
mad
 3. Turning point (Climax?):
Hamlet does things (puts on
a play, berates his mother,
kills Polonius)
4. Counterstroke: Events
conspire against Hamlet
while he sails to England
(Fortinbras, Ophelia, Laertes)
 5. Resolution: Hamlet
apologizes, kills king, dies.

 Hamlet’s opinion on women
 Hamlet’s doubts
 Why is the revenge
complicated?
 Is Hamlet crazy?
Hamlet is a play of questions, and
leaves a lot open to interpretation:
 The ghost? Is it really the King?
 The crime? Do we really know
for sure? No witnesses.
 Why?
 Why kill the brother?
 Why the marriage?
 Revenge
 Action/Inaction
 Death/Suicide
 Madness/Disease
There is a code of conduct in
the society of Hamlet. Scenes:
 Claudius lectures Hamlet on
the proper show of grief
 Polonius advises Laertes on
practical rules for getting by
at university in France
 Hamlet constantly lectures
himself on what he should be
doing.
Defined by religion and an
aristocratic code that demands
honor and revenge if honor has
been soiled.
 As Hamlet begins to pursue
revenge against Claudius, he
discovers that the codes of
conduct don’t fit together.
They are contradictory.
 Religion actually opposes
revenge, which would mean
that taking revenge could
endanger Hamlet’s own soul.
 In such a world, Hamlet
suggests, the reasons for
revenge become muddy, and
the idea of justice confused.
 Hamlet fits in a literary tradition
called the revenge play, in
which a man must take revenge
against those who have in some
way wronged him.
 Yet Hamlet can’t actually bring
himself to take revenge. For
reason after reason, some clear
to the audience, some not, he
delays.
 Hamlet is slow to take action
 He contemplates all the moral
and social consequences of his
actions
 Suicide is a theme that links



Hamlet and Ophelia
Hamlet thinks deeply about it,
and perhaps "contemplates";
Ophelia perhaps commits it.
Hamlet appears to suggest that
were it not for the social stigma
attached to suicide by religious
authorities, and the unknown
nature of whatever happens after
death, there would be a lot more
self-slaughter.
One of the major interpretive
issues of Hamlet is whether or
not Ophelia's death was
accidental or a suicide?
 Madness – both real and



feigned – is at the heart of
the play.
Does Hamlet truly go "mad"
or is it all an act? An
impossible mystery, it's one
of many unanswered
questions raised by the play.
Hamlet's mental state and
erratic behavior adds to the
atmosphere of uncertainty
and doubt.
Denmark itself is ‘diseased.’
Corruption.
 Ears/Hearing
 Disease
 Poison
 Deception (spies)
 Death
 What else….
 Yorick’s skull is a symbol
of death – or a reminder
 The Murder of Gonzago the play-within-a-play is
significant in that it
represents the murder of
the King.
 The play-within-a-play in
Hamlet is an example of
“metafiction” (writing that
deliberately examines
itself – Hamlet is
examining the nature of
plays and acting).
 Ophelia’s flowers appear
in multiple places in the
play.
 The flowers she
distributes in her state of
madness symbolize how
she feels about the
characters who receive
them (either in reality of
imagination).
 The flowers at her
drowning can symbolize
her life, character, and
final situation.