Hamlet

      1.  Author/Setting:  Set in Elsinore, Denmark, Shakespeare’s Hamlet is one of his most well-known works.  It takes place in the late medieval years, though its exact time frame is unknown.

1.            2.  Characters:  The main character here is Hamlet, a young man distraught after the death of his father and his mother’s “o’er hasty marriage”. He starts to go mad, though it is argued by some literary critics that he is only faking being mad.  The Ghost of Hamlet the elder is a prominent character for though he is not always on stage he is the reason for most of Hamlet’s actions and possibly for his madness.  Another really prominent character is Ophelia, Hamlet’s girlfriend of sorts.  She is a sweet girl, she inspires love in all who surround her, which ironically leads to bitter fights later.

            3.  Plot:  Hamlet just came home from school for his father’s funeral/mother’s wedding when the guards see his recently deceased father wandering the grounds.  They decide that he should be informed of the matter and so he keeps watch with them that night and after seeing the ghost decides to go peak with him.  The ghost tells him that Claudius, Hamlet’s uncle, killed him, and that he must be avenged.  Now for a good while Hamlet ponders what he’s heard seeing opportunities to kill Claudius and holding off.  Ophelia talks to him on her father’s orders, trying to discern the cause of his madness, but he spurns her and that is where we mark the beginning of Ophelia’s madness.  Eventually Ophelia drowns, and Hamlet and Laertes, Ophelia’s brother, both jump into her grave and fight over who loved her more.  In the end of Hamlet the queen drinks poison meant for Hamlet, Laertes cuts Hamlet with a poisoned blade, Hamlet kills Laertes with a poisoned blade, Hamlet kills Claudius with said blade, and then Hamlet dies of his wounds, leaving almost everyone dead on the stage. 

1.            4.  Quotes:  “Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.” – Marcellus.  When Marcellus says this he is probably referring to multiple things.  One of the things he is talking about is the “damned incest” between the Queen and Claudius, another thing is the corruption in the monarchy that led to Claudius being king in the first place.  Besides the political corruption there’s also the rampant murders and madness which is spreading like the plague.  “Now, whether it be Bestial oblivion, or some craven scruple Of thinking too precisely on the event, A thought which, quarter’d, hath but one part wisdom And ever three parts coward…” – Hamlet.  One point that is commonly made about Hamlet is that he spends most of the play wondering whether or not he should kill Claudius.  This quote shows why he’s reluctant and what he thinks about his own decisions.  He's reluctant, because he's worried that his idea is based in idiocy, yet he thinks himself a coward for being reluctant.

1.            5.  Theme Sentence:  We don’t know the meaning of life or if there's anything after death, so we can’t sit around and wait for life to come to us, people have to take action or bad things will happen.  In Hamlet’s “To be or not to be” soliloquy he  discusses the ideas of life and death and what both of them mean.  We also see the symbolism of death come through with the skull, and the symbol of religion in the ghost, which goes to shows that Shakespeare is pointing out how little we know about death.  In Hamlet’s Act IV soliloquy “How all occasions do inform against me,” he says “to find quarrel in a straw when honor’s at the stake,” this quote shows us that he believes action is the right course, and where does his pondering get him? Dead.  Along with the rest of his family and multiple other people.