Hamlet (1601)
THE PLOT
Young Hamlet returns home from university to discover the world-shattering news that, not only is his father (Old Hamlet) newly dead, but that his mother, Gertrude, has married Old Hamlet’s brother, Claudius, and that Claudius is now king.The resultant instability has also led to threats of invasion by a soldier from a neighbouring state, Fortinbras.
GHOSTLY ENCOUNTER
Late one night, the ghost of Hamlet’s father appears to him, accusing Claudius of his murder and urging Hamlet to revenge. This sets in motion a train of events that destroys both family and state.
MADNESS
No longer able to trust his own senses, the loyalty of his old friends, Rosencrantz and Guildernstern, or even the affections of his young love, Ophelia, Hamlet fakes madness in an attempt to provide himself with proof that the ghost is telling the truth. Aided only by his most loyal companion, Horatio, he persuades a travelling band of actors to re-enact the story of his father’s murder in front of Claudius and Gertrude, hoping that Claudius will be so stirred by remorse that he will confess his crime.
During an intense meeting with his mother, Hamlet hears a noise and realises that they are being spied upon. In rage, he stabs the hidden eavesdropper, believing it to be Claudius. Instead his discovers it is the King’s adviser, Polonius, father to both Ophelia and her brother, Laertes. Polonius dies.
REVENGE
Afraid of what Hamlet might do next, Claudius has him arrested and despatched to England under guard, where he has arranged to have Hamlet murdered. Hamlet escapes, returns to his homeland and finally achieves his revenge.
The psychological effects of these upheavals on Hamlet lead to some of the greatest soliloquies in the English language and take the audience deep into the mind of Shakespeare’s most famous protagonist.
My father’s died,
my mother has married my uncle
and I’m being watched
Hamlet is mourning the death of his father. His widowed mother Gertrude has hastily married his uncle Claudius. Both of them beg him to stay in Denmark and not go back to university in Germany. He’s being closely watched and everybody thinks he’s going mad. But is he?
Summarising…
You are the son of the dead King • You are at university and have returned for your father’s funeral • You are still wearing your mourning clothes despite the fact that since the funeral your mother has remarried. • You are struggling to get over your father’s death • You have been friendly with Ophelia recently
How would you feel? Describe your thoughts and anxieties.
Act III Scene I, Hamlet’s soliloquy
To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them?
To die, to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to,
‘tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish’d.
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 makes calamity of so long life;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover’d country from whose bourn
No traveller returns,
puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others 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 cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.
In modern English…
The question is: is it better to be alive or dead? Is it nobler to put up with all the nasty things that luck throws your way, or to fight against all those troubles by simply putting an end to them once and for all? Dying, sleeping—that’s all dying is—a sleep that ends all the heartache and shocks that life on earth gives us—that’s an achievement to wish for. To die, to sleep—to sleep, maybe to dream. Ah, but there’s the catch: in death’s sleep who knows what kind of dreams might come, after we’ve put the noise and commotion of life behind us. That’s certainly something to worry about. That’s the consideration that makes us stretch out our sufferings so long.
Different actors:
To be or not to be – Kenneth Branagh HD (HAMLET)
Mel Gibson – Hamlet’s Soliloquy
Hamlet | Act 3 Scene 1 | Royal Shakespeare Company
David Tennant – Hamlet’s Soliloquy (RSC Hamlet)
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