Teacher Key: Example of Well Done Google Presentation

Author, Genre, Time Period Written, Title  

    "Hamlet" is a play, or more specifically a tragedy, written by William Shakespeare and is considered the most popular yet most puzzling of his plays.  He wrote it around 1599 during his company's residency in the famous Globe Theater near London. 

    Shakespeare's writing reflects how during this period, the English discovered, translated, and printed many Greek and Roman classics, which began a literary period of interrogative energy related to Christian texts and beliefs.  For example, the ghost in the drama is believed to reference Roman tragedy's spirit returning from the dead to seek revenge.  This lends itself to another example; Shakespeare transitions throughout the work between descriptions of humankind through "Neoplatonic wonderment" and "Christian disparagement of human sinners."  The Neoplatonic view developed by the third century philosopher Plotinus would describe the ghost as divinely sent to be reunited with its soul, while the Christian view might describe the ghost as a demon coming as punishment for sin.  

    The title "Hamlet" encompasses the protagonist character of the play, Hamlet Prince of Denmark as he journeys throughout the play.

Plot

Setting

    Elsinore, Denmark sometime between the 1300s and the 1400s � 

Conflict

    The conflict of the play is between Hamlet and the kingdom, mostly concerning the King and Queen.  His father has just passed and there is much corruption surrounding the situation as Claudius has taken the throne and married Hamlet's mother. Later when Hamlet finds out that Claudius killed his father, he must work on getting revenge.

Rising Action

    The ghost appearing to Hamlet spurs him to think that Claudius is the one who killed his father.  By putting on his play, Hamlet is made sure that Claudius murdered his father by poisoning him.  Hamlet also accidently kills Polonius thinking it's Claudius and then is sent away from the kingdom.

Plot cont.

Climax

    The climax takes place in Act 4 during Hamlet's soliloquy where he decides that all his actions from that point on will be bloody. The entire play he's wanted to get revenge for his father's death but has not had the courage enough to take action.  This is his turning point in the play.

Falling Action

    Hamlet returns to the kingdom and things start to go downhill at Ophelia's funeral.  Laertes is upset about his father's murder and Ophelia's death and him and Hamlet begin to fight.  They decide to duel at the castle.  During the duel, everyone ends up dying by poison in order of the Queen, then King, then Laertes, and lastly Hamlet. 

Resolution

    Horatio is the only one to live to tell the story and Fortinbras takes over Denmark and the kingdom.

Style; Literary Devices

Symbol

    Yorick's skull- symbol for death and that everyone experiences it and there is no way around it.  Also shows the carelessness of the body after death and that no mater how well known or respected a person was during life, they will inevitably end up in the groud and disregarded. 

Allusion  

    There are many mythological allusions in Hamlet such as Mars, the Roman god of war, Hecuba, the wife of Priam, king of Troy, in Act II and Phoebus, Greek sun god, Neptune, Roman god of seas, and Mercury, Roman messanger of the gods, in Act III.  These allusions are put into Shakespear's plays because the audience, at the time that his plays were first preformed, would have recognized the allusions right away and made connections between the mythological stories and the play's characters.

Style cont.

Metaphor

    The world "'Tis an unweeded garden / That grows to seed." Act I Sc II Lines (139-140)

    "He keeps them like / an apple in the corner of his jaw, first mouthed, / to be last swallowed. When [Claudius] needs what [Rosencrantz has] / gleaned, it is but squeezing [Rosencrantz], and, sponge, [Rosencrantz] / shall be dry again." Act IV Sc II Lines (17-21)

    "A man may fish with the worm that hath eat / of a king and eat of the fish that hath fed of that / worm. Act IV Sc II Lines (30-32)

Wordplay

    "A little more than kin and less than kind" Act I Sc II Line 67

    "Not so, my lord; I am too much in the sun." Act I Sc II Line 69

**Hamlet uses metephors and a play on words to confuse the people he is talking to, especially Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, and Claudius.  He also lays out simple truths for the audience to take away as more life messages then something just to be taken as a part of the play.

Point of View

** Since Hamlet is a play there is no real point of view. However, Hamlet is the only character who has soliloquies that let the audience into his innermost thoughts. So I'll discuss those briefly...

Act 1- This first soliloquy begins Hamlets contemplation on suicide, life and death, that follows him throughout the entire play.  He finds it painful to live in the world that he is living in with his father murdered and his mother's quick marriage to his corrupted uncle. Hamlet has givin up on religion and his deteriorating family is also unable to help him though this struggle

Act 2- Hamlet has just watched the player's perform and is amazed at their abilities to control an audience.  He has also just found out the thruth of his father's murder and wants to get revenge.  To do this however, he must take action which he is not too excited about since he is scared of the consequences and death.  He calls himself a coward for this reason.

Point of View cont.

Act 3- Hamlet's most famous soliloquy, "To be or not to be." In this one he is again considering life and death and the purpose of life and death and existence.  He is experiencing so much pain and hurt that it would be easier for him to give up and end his life then to continue living but he also already knows all the evils of the world and is unaquainted with the evils of the afterlife.  For this reason, Hamlet says that everyone is a coward and afraid of death and in the end, he decides against suicide. 

Act 4- Hamlet finally makes a decision to take action against Claudius.  On the boat, on his way to England he sees Fortinbra's army on their way to war over a very small piece of land and Hamlet concludes that if they can fight for that small of a piece of land and risk their lives for it, he can risk his life in avenging for his father's murder.  His last lines are "My thoughts be bloody or be nothing worth!" Act IV Sc V Line 69

Characters & Their Notable Traits

• Hamlet - Prince of Denmark; father is murdered by Claudius (his uncle) whom marries his mother, Gertrude; is obsessed with avenging his father's death
• Thoughtful, introspective, indecisive, & rash
•  Claudius - King of Denmark; Hamlet's uncle & stepfather; murdered King Hamlet to get the crown
•  Manipulative, selfish, &
•  Polonius - Claudius' "right hand man"; father of Ophelia & Laertes
• Loyal (to Polonius) and conniving
• Gertrude - Queen of Denmark; mother of Hamlet & wife of Claudius
•  Weak, but loving

Characters & Traits, con't.

• Ophelia - daughter of Polonius; sister of Laertes; main love interest of Hamlet's
•  Dutiful, loving, & innocent
•  Laertes - son of Polonius; brother of Ophelia
• Passionate & strong-willed (quick to act)
• Horatio - Hamlet's one true friend from university
• Loyal, trustworthy, & patient
•  Fortinbras - Prince of Norway; wishes to attack Denmark for K.H. murdering his father K.F.
• Strong, decisive, & powerful
•  Ghost - appears to Hamlet & guards as K.H., asking Hamlet to avenge his father's death
• Sad (not red faced), understanding (of Gertrude's situation), & determined

Characters & Traits, con't.

• Rosencrantz & Guildenstern - friends of Hamlet's from university; ordered by Claudius to spy on Hamlet
•  No backbone or true purpose; float until are given command

Major Themes

• Mystery of Death
•  Beginning with the murder of his father, Hamlet is obsessed with death throughout the entire play, contemplating on it multiple times. He ponders the spiritual aftermath of death (in regards to the ghost) as well as the physical (when observing Yorick's skull.) Death is also the cause and result of the revenge being seeked, which also could be tied to the theme of revenge and justice.
• The question of Hamlet's own death bothers him as well, often contemplating his own suicide ("To be or not to be...") He is grief-stricken by living in the corrupted world of Denmark and believes death will be the way to end it all, but is worried what the afterlife will be like should he take his own life.
• Hamlet concludes that no human would choose to live the miserable lives they are forced to live, but are so afraid of death and what is after it that they wait it out.

Major Themes, con't.

• Madness
•  Whether real or feigned, madness is central to the play Hamlet. The complexity and ambiguity of Hamlet's mental state and his erratic behavior is compelling and seems to speak to the play's overall atmosphere of uncertainty and doubt.
• Ophelia's clear descent into madness (and later drowning) tends to be due to her cracking under the strain of Hamlet's abuse and the weight of patriarchal forces, as well as the sudden murder of her father by Hamlet. The world of corruption was just too much for Ophelia to handle.

Major Themes, con't.

• Uncertainty
• Even at the beginning of the play we are uncertain as to whether or not the ghost is truly Hamlet's father seeking revenge, or if it is the devil come to trick Prince Hamlet into murder. Throughout the play Hamlet's uncertainty delays him from taking action and thus causing unneccessary deaths (Polonius, Ophelia, Laertes, Gertrude, Rosencrantz, and Guildenstern)
•  Even at the end of the play readers are left unsure as to the future state of Denmark when Hamlet quickly leaves the throne to Fortinbras, who had been seeking revenge on Denmark himself during the play

Profound Quotation

• "To be or not to be..." (Act III, Sc. i)
•  Hamlet asks himself whether or not he should commit suicide as a logical question - to live or not to live?
• Then weighs the consequences of living or dying
• Is it nobler to suffer life, "the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune" passively
• Or to actively seek the end of one's suffering and die?
• Compares death to sleep and thinks about the end of all of the uncertainty and pain it could possibly bring
• Desides suicide is a desirable choice, but that religion causes him to question what would happen in his afterlife should he take his own earthly life & is what prevents people from committing suicide

"To be or not to be..." Full Quote

"To be or not to be-that is the question:

Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer

The slings and arrows of outraeous fortune,

Or to take arms against a sea of troubles

And, by opposing them, end them. To die, to sleep-

No more-and by a sleep to say we end

The heartache and the thousand natural shocks

That flesh is heir to-'tis a consummation

Devoutly to be wished. To die, to sleep-

To sleep, perchance to dream. Ay, there's the rub,

For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,

When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,

Must give us pause. There's the respect

That mkes calamity of so long life.

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 spurns

That patient merit of th' unworthy takes,

When he himself might his quietus make

With a bare bodkin? 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 bourn

No traveler returns, puzzles the will

And makes us rather bear those ills we have

Than fly to tohers that we know not of?

Thus conscience does make cowards of us all,

And thus the native hue of resolution

Is sicklied o'er with the pale case of thought,

And enterprises of great pitch and moment

With this regard their currents turn awry

And lose the name of action."

Profound Quotation, con't.

• "Give thy thoughts no tongue..." (Act I, Sc. iii)
•  Here Polonius is giving Laertes some cliched father to son advice before he returns to university - keep your thoughts to yourself, don't act rashly, treat people with familiarity, but not too much so, keep old friends and be slow to trust new ones, avoid fighting, be a good listener, accept criticism, but don't be judgemental, etc. And of course, be true to yourself. "...to thine own self be true."
• This quote emphasizes the regularity of Laertes' family life compared to Hamlet's quite disfunctional family

Connections to Thomas C. Foster's 

How to Read Literature Like a Professor

  by Katherine Love

Chapter 1: Every Trip Is a Quest (Except When It's Not)

    Foster states that a quest consists of five things: "(a) a quester, (b) a place to go, (c) a stated reason to go there, (d) challenges and trials en route, and (e) a real reason to go there."  He later says that "the real reason for a quest is always self-knowledge," which is why "questers are so often young, inexperienced, immature, sheltered" (3).

    Hamlet's quest in Act IV follows this model precisely.  After he has mistakenly murdered Polonius instead of Claudius, Claudius senses that Hamlet is a threat to his stature and/or life in general.  And Hamlet's action provides Claudius with a logical argument that Hamlet's unstable state of mind is a threat to the royalty.  Thus, Claudius orders Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to take Hamlet away to be killed in England.

    So the quest begins:

            -Quester = Hamlet

            -Place to go = England

            -Stated reason = Claudius wants him to be killed

            -Challenges/trials = Encounter Fortinbras' troops

            -Real reason = Hamlet gain's self-knowledge by comparing his cowardice to Fortinbras' forthright courage.  Hamlet has all these mental plots for avenging Claudius, but he can't find the courage to kill this one man.  Fortinbras, on the other hand, is willing to sacrifice his 20,000 troops over something as simple as winning a plot of land.

How to Read Literature Like a Professor

cont'd.

Chapter 11: More Than It's Gonna Hurt You: Concerning Violence

    Foster develops two different types of violence, one being a narrative violence rather than injury caused between characters.  Thus, it is in the "interest of plot advancement or thematic development" (90).

    In the final scene of "Hamlet," both types of violence are incorporated, but the narrative violence carries the deeper meaning.  The fencing match between Hamlet and Horatio, which turns deadly for multiple characters brings the plot development via the character-to-character imposed injury and culminates Hamlet's plot of revenge.  It is later, however, when Fortinbras arrives and receives the throne without the battle he anticipated that Shakespeare incorporates more thematic development.  Similar to Hamlet's self-knowledge gained on his Act IV quest, Shakespeare seems to salute the courageous even if overbearing of heart (Fortinbras) as opposed to cowardly Hamlet.  Fortinbras brings his thousands of soldiers ready to fight, ready to sacrifice, but in the end, gets the throne handed to him painlessly, while Hamlet on the other hand perishes in his first fight, even if he perished with his dignity reclaimed.