…the most important playwright of London

writes one of his masterpieces…

• Hamlet’s father, king of Denmark has just dead

• His brother Claudius takes the throne and married Gertrude, Hamlet’s mother

• Horatio sees king Hamlet’s ghost and tells it to Hamlet

• A night king’s ghost appears to Hamlet and tells him that Claudius murdered him, so Hamlet decides to avenge him

• Hamlet pretends to be mad so Claudius and Gertrude give to Polonius the task of discovering the cause of his madness

• Polonius attributes the cause of madness to Hamlet’s love for Ophelia, Polonius daughter

• Hamlet tries to stage a play with a company of actors, in order to re-enact his father’s murder and determine Claudius guilt or innocence

• Claudius is disturbed to see that scene, so Hamlet decides to kill him

• Gertrude asks to Hamlet the reason of his behaviour and he tells her the truth about his father’s death

• Hamlet believing to kill Claudius murders Polonius while he is hidden

• Ophelia goes mad for her father’s death and drowns in a river

• At the Ophelia’s funeral procession her brother Laertes and Hamlet brave themselves

• Laertes pierces Hamlet with a poisoned blade but is wounded by it himself

• Gertrude drinks a poisoned wine and dies

• Hamlet manages to kill Claudius and names Fortimbras as his heir

Saga of Hrolf Kraki

(Scandinavian)

Vita Amlethi(Saxo)

Ur-Hamlet(Thimas Kyd)

Legend of Brutus(Roman)

• 1603 : Ling and Trundell’s “bad first Quarto”

• 1604 : Ling and Roberts’ second Quarto

• 1623 : Heminges and Condell’ s First Folio

• Focus on characters, not on action, using soliloquies

• There’s no strong subplot

• Play full of seeming discontinuities and irregularities of action

• The play lasts much more than usual plays at that time (4hrs to 2hrs)

• Courtly language (elaborate, witty discourse)

• Great use of rhetoric (Hamlet’s the most skilled of all at rhetoric)

• Presence of hendiadys

• Great use of introspection, particularly in Hamlet’s soliloquies

• Mention of Purgatory

• Ophelia’s burial ceremony

• Mention of Wittenberg

• Belief that will of God controls everything

• The impossibility of certainty

• The complexity of action

• The mistery of death

• The nation as adiseased body